Back in the day...

Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution and up into the 1950s, many manufacturing plants were a dreadful hodgepodge of equipment clumped in a semi-random way. As business grew, additional capacity would be added, often in a lean-to attached to the main facility. Sometimes shoehorned into space that had been used for something else.

Some captains of industry grouped equipment by type. All of the milling machines in one corner of a building. All of the lathes in another corner. Heat-treating in a different building. And so on and so forth.

There was rarely any over-arching plan about how things would be manufactured. Parts more-or-less percolated through the system as capacity opened up for the next operation. Because of the chaos and random routing, assembly lines were not feasible (and had not become mainstream until the 19-teens anyway).

The parts that were "in process" were moved from the pile of "finished goods" at one operation to the next process by employees classified as "shunters". They typically loaded parts on steel-wheeled carts and wheeled them to their next operation. Sometimes that that involved pushing the cart up a ramp to higher floors. Sometimes it involved pushing the cart along cratered pathways to different buildings.

They did that all day long. They were the human equivalent of a fork-truck: Lifting, moving, lowering.

If you look through an Industrial Engineering book written in the 1930s, you will notice that one of their primary metrics were the Calories consumed by workers in each classification. Shunters were among the very highest at 4500 to 5000 Calories per shift. 

Shunters are the Industrial Revolution's counterpart to the men pulling ships up the Volga river and pockets of them existed into the 1950s even in "civilized" countries like the US, England and Germany.

Back-in-the-day

Every farm boy who kept his ears open knew that if you were going to the newfangled "confinement" method of rearing livestock, you needed to ventilate the space to ensure a minimum of one complete air change-over every 15 minutes.

Chemical pneumonia from ammonia gas and stagnant air would kill far more adult animals than cold ever would.

I am keeping that rule-of-thumb in mind as I upgrade the duck-jail.

My primary motivation is to make it easier to collect the eggs. But as long as I am putting some effort into construction, I might as well be as smart as possible.

The current method of collecting eggs involves two chunks of firewood. One of them is put beneath the pick-ax so I can lift the side of the truck-cap high enough to wedge the second piece of firewood beneath it. Then I reach WAY IN to the space and feel around for new eggs. Sometimes I steal Quicksilver's toy rake to pull them to within my reach.

After collecting all that I can find, I double-check by looking from the back end of the truck cap to ensure I got them all. Then I lift up the edge, pull out the second chunk of firewood, lower the edge and then put all of the tools away.

The new method will be to have the cap sitting on 15" tall stud-frame walls with doors in the four corners. My fantasy is to look into the space from the back end and identify which corner the ducks decided to lay their eggs. Open the corresponding door. Remove eggs. Close door.

This part of the post fits with the first part because a lot of us newbie small-holders start with a hodgepodge of facilities and stop improving them as soon as they work almost-good-enough. 

Jonesing for some cattle

I am seriously wanting a couple of calves. I have about four acres of grass going to waste. Actually, worse than going to waste. It is festering with mice, ticks and other undesirables.

I could mow it, but that takes money out of my pocket and is hard on the local reptiles.

I found a neighbor with a livestock trailer. He will let me use it if I replace the rotted-out floorboards. Looks like a win-win to me.

The next task is to figure out what is wrong with the wiring harness on the truck and to fix it.

Their asking price is a little bit optimistic.

Then, I have to find a couple-three 400-to-600 pound calves that are less than $2k each. They are out there but I might have to drive 300 miles to get them and they might be beef-dairy breed crosses.

Subsistence peoples videos

Some folks like to jabber about "systemic racism" that is so pervasive that "we cannot see it".

I have my own thoughts on that, but the premise that our perspectives are flattened when our optics are within the same plane as what we are observing is a valid point.

I enjoy watching videos of "subsistence" cultures: People surviving on dacha in Ukraine, remote ethnic groups surviving in the Siberian wilderness, people in Alaska. However, I have to keep reminding myself that many of the things they do have "net-return-on-energy-invested".

Remember Oncle Horst who traded his water-soup for sawdust-bread to survive? That was a net-positive-net-return-on-energy-invested". The hot water had almost no energy (Calories) while the bread, crappy as it was, had significant energy.

Even though the videos are entertaining, riding two, 100 hp snow machines for hundreds of mile to bag a couple of caribou or to go ice-fishing or to collect a couple of pine marten for their fur is a black-hole for net-energy.

One prepper fantasy is that they will eat game to survive.

Suppose you live in a township like Eaton Rapids Township with 100 people per square mile. Suppose that we have a population density of 40 whitetail deer per mile. Furthermore, suppose that when brought-to-bag, each deer yields 30 pounds of lean meat at 500 Calories per pound. At an energy budget of 2500 Calories per person per day, how long could the population of Eaton Rapids Township live solely on the energy stored in the deer herd?

That is 600,000 Calories per square-mile on-the-hoof divided by a daily human Calorie burn-rate of 250,000 Calories per square-mile. The answer is: Less than three days.

A single milk cow in the summer can produce more than 6 gallons of milk a day. Between the fat (7,000 Calories), carbs and protein (another 7k Calories) a well-fed, lactating cow is producing almost as much food-energy as  dead deer EVERY DAY.

In seven weeks, one milk cow (which can be grazed on one acre of pretty-good, mid-western pasture) can produce more food energy than the meat from all of the deer on a square-mile (640 acres) of good deer range.

Fat is always a limiting factor in survival situations. If the milk is the only source of fat, then the milk provides enough fat to supply eight-and-a-half people with enough fat to supply 1/3 of their daily calorie needs.

I know one family that shares a cow with three other families. They have assigned days to milk the cow. If they cannot make-the-date, the family assigned the day has to make arrangments to get the cow milked. There are a lot of ways to skin that cat. 

Skid-steer Mike: Parley

I walked up to the oldest man, the one with the command voice and said “I am Mike Tardive. How can I help you?”

My announcement barely registered with the rabble.

The man I was addressing finally processed what I said, looked at me and said “Please repeat that”. 

I complied. “My name is Mike Tardive. How can I help you?” 

That caught everybody’s attention and they started babbling.

The leader made a motion with his hand to quiet the small crowd’s rising volume.

“We want to have words with you outside” the man said.

“I can agree to that as long it is ONE person representing you...and the rest of you stay in the building” I parried.

By God’s Grace, last Sunday’s readings at Mass had been about resolving conflicts with your brothers. Jesus told his disciples to directly confront one-on-one without a peanut gallery to amplify feelings ahead of facts.

The rabble disintegrated in to screeching. It was all about who was going to get a piece of me first and what they were going to do to me. Every person wanted to be the first one to take a whack at the piñata.

I kept my face as neutral as I could. The choice of their champion was not mine to make. Nothing was, literally, the only thing I could do to potentially defuse the situation.

Finally, the leader got impatient and told them to shut-up. “I will represent us” he said, with authority.

I stuck out my hand. “I already told you my name. What's yours?”

“Ricky. Ricky Adams” the man said.

He was probably 35. Clear manner of speaking. Great posture.  Understood how to work chain-of-command.  An inch shorter than 6', probably 185 pounds. His forearms had visible muscle-tone. He had almost certainly had been in the military.

“Let’s go” I suggested and started walking down the aisle toward the airlock that led to a feeder aisle that led to the waiting room and main doors. 

I purposely walked slowly. After a few steps, Ricky followed, and then caught up and walked beside me. The rest of the rabble fell in behind us, muttering dark threats.

When we reached the main lobby, Ricky turned to his little-ducklings and told them. “Sit here until I come back”.

We stepped into the sun of the early afternoon. Looking to the side, I saw the scruffy trees on the south side of the complex. I gave a half-nod with my head. “It will be more comfortable to talk in the shade”. Strategically, it was also out-of-sight of of the waiting room windows and closer to my truck.

Walking toward the Scots Pines and newly planted Red Maples, I scanned the perimeter. On the far side of the access drive that went around the facility, on the edge of the strip-mall’s parking lot, were two people recording us walking with their phones. If there had been any doubt in my mind about this being a spontaneous event, it was now gone. It was a set-up.

Once we were in the shade, I turned so my back was toward the building and I was facing outward. Interestingly, Ricky did the same. We were not directly facing each other. 

“What is your beef?” I asked, getting right down to business.

“You wrote that black people shouldn't get reparations because we are stupid” Ricky said. “You said that we would just waste the money”. 

That was not what I expected. I had expected him to say he was a Muslim and that my most recent post had offended him. My mind was churning furiously. I had never written anything like that.

“Did you read that on my blog or did somebody tell you that?” I asked. 

Ricky gave a little shrug and looked away.

I was holding my phone in my hand. “Let me show you what I wrote”.

The only thing I could remember that even came close to the ‘reparations’ for black people was a piece I had written on Universal Basic Income about six months ago. I pulled up that blog essay. It was about 400 words long and referenced how the Indian Tribes that distributed casino income to its members had markedly worse mental health markers than the same Tribes that did not have casinos.

Ricky scanned the essay. He was a relatively fast reader.

“This doesn’t say anything about Blacks or reparations” he commented when he was half-way through.

Then, right at the end, there was a paragraph generalizing the idea to include welfare and ‘reparations’.

He seemed to be processing what I had written and attempting to reconcile it with what he had been told I had said.

I interrupted his thoughts. “We have company” I said and I nodded toward the people recording with their phones.

“I think we were both set-up” I said. “I was set-up to get a beating and you were set-up to take the rap”.  

Ricky glanced over at the spectators recording us and a frown darkened his face.

That is when the cop cars started screaming down the road leading to the facility and turning into the access drive. 

“You and me, we were just standing here and shooting the shit, right?” I suggested to Ricky.

“Absolutely. Just two guys stepping outside for a smoke.” he said. He pulled out a white-and-green pack of cigarettes and shook one out. Then he lit it. He inhaled a deep pull of smoke and his face looked deep in thought.

“I don’t smoke...but it might be a good day to start.” I quipped. I looked down and saw some cigarette butts on the ground. We were not the first people to take a break in the shade of the trees.

I reached down and picked up a stubbed-out butt from the ground. I pinched it between my left thumb and index finger with the filter end out and the unlit end cupped by my other three fingers like I had seen a hundred other guys who didn't want the boss to see them smoking.

Something must have happened in the facility because the cops unassed in a hurry and most of them were hustling toward the main doors. A couple of them started our way. 

Then I commented "I am guessing that the crew you came with aren't your people, that somebody gave them to you".

Ricky didn't say anything. 

As two of the cops approached us, I raised the butt to my face and pretended to take one last draw and then flicked the unlit butt at one of the Red Maples that was off to the side. Then I said "Hello Officer. What brings you out this fine afternoon?" 

A pleasant surprise

There I was in the dentist's chair, getting my teeth cleaned.

I had been scheduled for Monday but events conspired against me and I had to cancel that appointment. Fortunately for me, they had a cancellation on Wednesday and I was able to make it. Unfortunately, it was not with my regular hygenists. Fortunately, they both have the same first name.

Small world

While sitting in the chair I learned that she was going to a Pawpaw festival in Illinois this coming weekend. I asked a few questions and learned that she and her husband have a small orchard on the south side of their property. When I asked where they live, she mentioned a town near the Upper and Hill Orchard site.

A few more questions pinned it down to being within four miles of the orchards!

One of her best buddies from high school lived (and still lives) just down the road from the orchards and she knows the area like the back-of-her-hand.

The trip to the dentist morphed from being a necessary time-sink to learning about a like-minded, "country neighbor" who I didn't know I had.

Shorter days

I seem to be getting less done around the place as the number of daylight hours shrink. I need to do triage. Some things don't have to get done before snow flies. Some should be done after the weather cools and slows down the ticks. Some is going to be much easier in the warm weather than when it is colder.

Bonus video

Education in rural, Latin America

Included in this post because watching first-grade kids' zest for life is refreshing. 

I bet they are not spending $17,000 a year to education that kid.

At one point in the video you might notice that the desks were rearranged during one of the lessons. All of the girls were looking at a dry-erase board at one end of the room and the boys were being taught lessons from a board on the other end of the room. There was no-mans-land between the two groups of desks.

I suppose that is one almost-free way to reduce distractions.

Or maybe it is two different grades in the same room. 

It is worth commenting that the diets of rural people around the world have been enshittified by highly processed, prepackaged foods. I suspect the boy's papa is working in the US and sending money home.

A kid running across old sheet-metal while barefoot. Ouch!

What a person displays on their walls tells you much about their priorities. Most of the items on that wall look like diplomas.

First-world, Gen-Z problems

The perils of putting your phone into speaker mode

A new word

A new word was added to my lexicon yesterday.

I am a "natty'.

No, Mack, it doesn't mean that I am 8% alcohol by volume.

Not "natty", the bulging blood vessels are the major tell

It means that I don't take steroids and my musculature, such as it is, is natural.

Natty. (Not me, by the way)

Thank-you for your attention in this matter. 

A happy red-neck, miracles

You know you are a red-neck when you get dressed up fancy to pick up compost at the landscape supply depot.

I put on my newest pair of jeans. A clean, high-viz yellow shirt. My cleanest high-vis baseball cap.

A big shout-out to Shane (at the desk) and Austin (running the front-end loader) at Hammond Farms in Grand Ledge. 

And then a miracle occurred

The issue that caused my life to get complicated unexpectedly resolved over-night.

Monday night, the patient went to bed with the pain that had been incapacitating them for four-maybe-five days. They woke up without the pain this morning. The patient attributes the impressive turn-around to prayer.

My schedule will in shambles for the next few days because I cleared-the-decks in anticipation of sailing through heavy winds.

The other scheduling thing that happened is that the team for the 5k never solidified, so I will not be running a formal 5k in early October. 

The Democratic candidate for Michigan's 7th Congressional seat

The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, has no problem pointing out that the Democratic candidate is a legally involved person. He plea-bargained to a felony.

Progressives will be very quick to accuse me of being a hypocrite. They will point out that Trump had been convicted multiple felonies. There are differences.

William Lawrence chained himself to a bulldozer that was creating/maintaining oil distribution infrastructure.  His goal was to make oil more expensive so people will use less of it. Hurting the "little people" of Michigan, Ohio and southern Ontario was his goal.

The felonies that a partisan court convicted Trump of involved quibbles about property valuation. If differences in opinion on property values are de facto felonies, then every tax assessor (i.e. property taxes) in the United States is a potential felon. 

Another factor is that the pipeline he was sabotaging delivered western Canadian oil to eastern Canada. It is Canadian oil. Sabotaging that pipeline is an international incident. 

The local media that screams when Trump makes mean-tweets about Canada is very uninterested in sharing the fact that the Democratic candidate for a Federal office attempted, through physical actions, to stop the supply of heating oil, gasoline and propane to Ontario, Canada.

Orchard and garden notes

Time to pick the Melrose apples. 

I inspected the new peach trees and a few of them set flower buds for the 2027 season. The peach trees were a gift from a friend out-west. The picture shown above is what they looked like in March of 2025 before I planted them. The chunk of firewood they are leaning against is about 9" in diameter.

It is dry enough to start digging potatoes again.

Smoke alarms

I keep hearing a smoke alarm going off with the low-battery chirp. Danged if I can find it.

I will keep looking. Maybe Quicksilver's younger ears can find it when she shows up. 

Boosting the signal

 I saw this on Midwest Chick's blog.

A change of pace

 

Girls shuffle-dancing to Cindi Lauper's "Girls just want to have Fun". Four minute run-time.

And yes, from what I can see of their faces, the girls seem to be having a lot of fun while dancing.

 

And, just so the lovers of Country Music don't feel left out, here is some music by Dwight Yoakam

 

Fine Art Tuesday

You get a two-fer today. Compare and contrast

A painting by Thomas Kinkade (American)

Hauling a Barge on the Volga by Ilia Efimovich Repin (Russian)

Rivers are highly symbolic in most cultures.

 

Rivers can be symbols of rebirth, as exemplified by the many before/after miracles in the Bible associated with the Jordan River. One example.

 

Rivers, which start with vigor and end up salty when they flow into the sea can be a simile for life.

 

Rivers can be a symbol of endless toil. (the second picture)

 

They can be symbols of wealth and industry. (Nile, Rhine River, grist mills)

 

They can be symbols of connection with the outside world. 

They can be symbols of death, as exemplified by the River Styx or images with a bridge across it. (the first picture)

Many thanks to Tireless Lucas and unnameable reader who suggested these artists. 

Skid-steer Mike (Introduction, fiction)

I was just settling in with Catherine to watch Judge Judy. I had rubbed lotion on her calves and shins and checked the length of her toe-nails.

My life had turned into a narrow tunnel since Kit's accident. I kept the house neat. I cooked and ate. I took care of Clyde, our dog and the chickens. I worked out at the gym for stress-relief. I went to Mass every Sunday. And I spent as much time with Kit as the rehab facility allowed me.

She had suffered a fall due to sudden vertigo. The doctors insisted on discharging her to the corporation’s step-down facility rather than sending her home. Their reasoning was murky. The vertigo was diagnosed as a viral infection that impacted her inner-ear. The doctors claimed she needed to be "in-patient" because she needed special physical therapy...but I had my doubts. The facility had recently added a wing specializing in "fall recovery" and they needed to fill it with patients to stop the financial bleeding.
 

Kit shared her room with Penny. Penny was in following a double rotator-cuff repair and was learning how to stand up.

I ate lunch with Kit every day and we watched Judge Judy. I brought my own lunch. I also brought Kit a sliced-up Fuji apple and a small container containing her favorite brand of Greek Yogurt. Institutional food is...well...lowest common denominator at best.

We kept the TV volume low. Penny was a Wheel-of-Fortune girl. She returned the favor by keeping her volume on her TV low, as well.

Early on, I greased the skids by asking Penny what she missed the most from “outside”. It was coffee. The step-down's kitchen brewed coffee in a massive urn. Other than being cold, weak, bitter and stale, it was acceptable coffee. I won Penny’s eternal cooperation by bringing a fresh coffee of the local coffee chain’s Premium Central American Arabica blend every time I visited.

I am not sure that the CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) who had to handle Penny’s bedpans were as happy with me, but I brought them donuts once a week so they couldn’t too mad.

The case was typical Judge Judy. The girlfriend had kicked her boyfriend out of the duplex and filed a restraining order against him. Then, she wouldn’t return his property claiming they had been “gifts”. The twist was that her ex-boyfriend’s father owned the duplex she had kicked her ex out of and the lease was in his name.

I was as comfortable as I could be considering the circumstances. That is when I started hearing angry voices in the hallway. At first they were distant, angry sounds. Many people involved. Sharp. Short bursts of syllables. Belligerent. Gutteral sounding, hard "ck" sounds. Command voices.

I was able to start resolving words. They were looking for somebody.

They were looking for Mike Tardive. “We seen his truck in the parking-lot...” 

Kit reached out and gripped my wrist.

My name is Mike Tardive. I write a blog. Sometimes I write about sensitive issues. That was not a problem a few years ago, but now every issue was like five gallons of hot nitroglycerin...looking for any excuse to explode.

I knew better. I never should have posted the essay about Mohammad (possibly) being a Jew who had been snubbed and not invited to be a rabbi. All the evidence was there. Mohammad claimed Abraham as an ancestor. Monotheistic. No local gods allowed. There was no knowledge-path of Abraham's existence outside of the tribes who left Egypt for the desert. The most logical plot was that Mohammad was a disgruntled Jew who went full L. Ron Hubbard on his peers.

The post went beyond my regular 30 readers. It got picked up by aggregators and then international newspapers. The chains all lead back to Skid-steer Mike's blog. The usual suspects were burning tires in the streets.

The usual suspects had found me. Somebody had doxed me, even to the extent of tracking my truck.

I felt an overwhelming desire to urinate. Not fear. Just a natural body reaction when I knew I might need to fight for my life.

I scanned the room. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon. By design.

I wasn’t carrying. I wasn’t even sure that I would use it if I had been. Too much possibility of collateral damages. Lots, and lots of fragile people in this facility.

It was just a matter of time before one of the CNAs spilled the beans. HIPPA does not allow it but they would either be scared or be sympathetic. "Sympathetic?" you sneer? Somebody let the mass of people into the facility.

Either one of the CNAs would rat me out or the thugs would start throwing open doors and search room-by-room.

Whatever was going to happen, I didn’t want it to play out in front of Kit. She didn’t need to be a victim of this, too.

I gave her a kiss. “It might be a few minutes before I come back” I warned her.

She closed her eyes and said “I love you…”

I pulled my arm away from her grasp.

Before I went out the door, I did 10 pushups to center myself.

Standing back up, I dusted off my hands. It was now or never.

I gently closed the door behind me. Then I walked up to the group. Every one of them, individually, outweighed me and the oldest one looked to be 30 years my junior, maybe even 40 years younger.

They were all looking past me.

I walked up to the oldest man, the one with the command voice and said “I am Mike Tardive. How can I help you?”

 

*** I don't know if this has the legs to go beyond a very short story-arc. I have things going that came up this week so I am tossing this out to fill space.***