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jrh

@jrheling.bsky.social
384 followers 282 following 3.5K posts

Nudger of complex systems. Small scale multi-species livestock farmer 🐑🐓🦃🐐. Regenerative+perennial focused. Stubborn DIY-er. Novo Collegian. Husband. Dad. formerly @jrheling on Twitter, occasionally @jrheling@mastodon.xyz

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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
I've kept hens for about 15 years now - generally have between 70-100 birds in my laying flock. So I've seen tens of thousands of eggs. There's kind of a normal size, and a distribution with some bigger (esp from old hens) and some smaller. Today I saw the biggest outlier ever
A gloved hand holding 3 eggs, one of which is over twice the size of the others
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
Spontaneous oyster on willow
Oyster mushroom fruit coming out of the end of a stack of logs
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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
Important and tragically timely article about Danish resistance to the goals of their Nazi occupiers: www.thenation.com/article/acti... Via @mskellymhayes.bsky.social’s excellent newsletter
thenation.com
The Danes Resisted Fascism, and So Can We
Danish resistance didn’t arrive all at once during World War II. But taken as a whole, the Danes’ actions are a testament to what’s possible when we work together to fight fascism.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
Spiders are amazing
Sunlight reflecting off of a spiderweb that appears to float about six feet off the ground in a wooded area against a backdrop of an exposed rock outcropping and the morning sun
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Solstice sheep stroll
Guy in the woods with a few dozen sheep walking behind him
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Anybody know what this fuzzy ball wrapped around a young white oak branch might be?
White oak tree with a fuzzy white ball surrounding one of its branches
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Fungal activity in the compost pile confirmed
A not quite finished compost pile with all kinds of little mushrooms sprouting up all over it
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
bonus playground for the lambs as the flock graze through my unfinished firewood work
Lambs on logs cut to firewood length laying in long green grass
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
It is written: whosoever uses the pressure washer to clean out the chicken trailer has dibs on the first shower
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Our very modest little “pond” is mostly minimally realized potential, but it’s at least enough for this turtle family to have decided to call it home
Small pond with a little log floating in it and a turtle on the log. A smaller turtle is poking its head out of the water a few feet from the log
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Yummy
Sheep grazing
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
I’m easing the flock from hay to grass gradually so their rumens have time to adjust, and feeding hay on bare patches that I seeded first, so the sheep do the work of pressing the seed into the soil and the hay remnants they won’t eat serve as mulch. Happy early spring in zone 5b
A few dozen sheep and lambs in a patch of green pasture with a few bales of hay scattered throughout
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
It is springing
A large dog laying in green grass with a row of fruit trees, the first of which has blossomed, and a bright clear blue sky
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Sam Halpert @samhalpert.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
2025 lambing season has begun - we expect 9 ewes to be expecting, so ballpark ~18 lambs en route. The white & black one here we've dubbed Lexi - a candidate to be kept for future breeding
A ewe tending to two small lambs
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
c'mon, @theguardian.com - compared to the alternatives you're a less-objectionable major news source but chainsaws don't have "blades" and missing that is a bad look
A portion of a newspaper story that reads:

As for Musk, he waved around the chainsaw – which had the words “Long live freedom, damn it” written along its blade – after an interview in which he pushed falsehoods about Europe jailing people for memes, astronauts being left in space for political reasons and Democrats having an electoral incentive “to maximise the number of illegals in the country”.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
A fantastic & inspiring read
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
🤌 (it's not both-sidesing to note the scale of a thing in comparison the scale of other things)
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
how many kittens does it take to replace the pressure switch on an air compressor?
A half disassembled air compressor on a cluttered workbench with two curious kittens
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
From "Hospicing Modernity". This is a good and ambitious (if challenging) book.
Paragraph of text from a book reading "Remember that I lovingly don't care about what you think, but I do care very deeply about our collective capacity to dig deeper, to relate wider, to engage in productive disillusionment, and to fall apart and together generatively, as we face the end of the world as we know it."
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midnightembers @tomschloegel.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
I’m now posting on behalf of the Deep Adaptation Forum (so I may quote post thoughts from there occasionally). DAF is a global community of individuals exploring the Four Rs of DA, practicing inner and outer adaptation to the predicaments we face. Times call us to face our fears, not hide from them.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Dudes posting their Ws
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Boo London @cmdrsue.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
media.tenor.com
a man in a yellow shirt is sitting in a chair and pointing at something
Alt: DiCaprio in a yellow shirt is sitting in a chair and pointing
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Getting close
turkeys eating grass next to a mobile shelter
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Departure from the status quo is unsettling - @alexsteffen.bsky.social's frame of "discontinuity" has really stuck with me as it implies a departure on the Nth order. The depth and unpredictability of resultant change is humbling and daunting.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
my personal motto along these lines has been "praxis or GTFO", but Sim's "Less Abstraction More Action" (LAMA? :) ) is pithier
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
We have cleared brush and opened forest canopy on 5-7 acres of our land in the last decade using a succession of animal rotation (goat, pig, sheep, chicken) and mechanical removal (chainsaws, brush hog).
dense woods with three goats grazing behind portable electric fence
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Thanks to @sim.bsky.social for this handy starter pack of folks involved in regenerative ag and future-oriented thoughtful land use. (On the bird app "doomer optimism" became a somewhat confused term, mixed w/ an unnecessary dose of culture war. That's thankfully missing here.) go.bsky.app/VrpsBhr
go.bsky.app
Regen and doomer optimist people
Join the conversation
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Having a workshop cat is underrated
Small gray kitten looking out from a hiding spot between bunch of scrap wood boards and the underside of a workbench
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 06/11/2024
I expected to wake up exhausted, despondent. but I looked up and for the first time in my life I thought, "there's no one left to look to. it's just us." so I am shocked at how I feel: furious, clear-eyed, galvanized. we who saw this from the beginning, for better or worse, it's our time to lead.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 02/11/2024
Always grateful for a weekend day after the leaves have all fallen that is neither rainy, windy, nor cold. Mid 50s F today, and nice views of one of the sheep breeding groups and the turkeys while I clean the gutters.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 29/10/2024
Good freakishly warm Oct 30th morning to you
The sun starting to poke through some clouds behind largely defoliated trees
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 26/10/2024
So we’ve got these new kittens destined to be mousers and two of them are being homed to my workshop bc it adjoins the area we keep livestock & feed and so I decided it’d be fun to train one to ride on my shoulder when I’m in the workshop and, well, it’s working
Small kitten on a person’s shoulder with tools in the background
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 25/10/2024
Nature’s palette is breathtaking
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 24/10/2024
We don’t normally think about poultry as grazers, but they definitely eat grass. Note the difference between the turkeys’ old area and the one they’re moving into
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 30/09/2024
Last year‘s shiitake logs are really popping off now
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 22/09/2024
Go home, lilac, you’re drunk
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 21/09/2024
After 7 weeks without rain, our grazing season here is nearly done (over a month earlier than usual). But the sheep don’t know that, and today’s fresh grass is still exciting and appealing.
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 19/09/2024
Owl deterrent
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 15/09/2024
We haven't had rain in weeks, but earlier in the season we had a lot of storms -- many trees and big branches down. Cleaning them up is always a chore, but the real challenge is what to do with the smaller branches or logs from bad-for-firewood species like willow...
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 10/09/2024
Anybody have recommendations (or anti-recommendations) for an ATV mounted spreader that can handle both seed and salt?
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 10/09/2024
Gm (gobble gobble)
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 08/09/2024
Incredible conversation podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-g…
podcasts.apple.com
Bioregional Futures: Reconnecting to Place for Planetary ...
Podcast Episode · The Great Simplification with Nate Hage...
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
The turkeys first foray onto grass is a fallow garden bed cleanup mission
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
Spiderweb with goat
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 17/08/2024
How quickly should one rotate pastured laying hens? For me, this question reduces to finding a balance between time/work required and impact on the foraging area. A 🧵
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jrh @jrheling.bsky.social · 15/08/2024
The shiitake logs are finally starting to fruit after a long quiet time - these are mostly from logs inoculated in 2022, a few from 2023
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