Wheat harvest started

Two hours time-on-task yesterday

Tilling. Hand weeding. Nothing glamorous. The basic blocking-and-tackling of gardening.

Lame duck

Our biggest duck was lame when I put them in jail last night. I was later than usual. I wonder if she had an encounter with a young predator that was learning to hunt?

On the way back to the house I turned off my head-lamp. Turning it off is a multi-stage process. Pressing the button the first time turns it on to BRIGHT. The second press of the button is DIM. The third press of the button is STROBE. The final press of the button is OFF.

After turning it off, I noticed about a million fireflies strobing. I read that they do that to inform the other fireflies that they are sexually available. That is, they are flirting. It is also a communal activity. When one firefly starts doing it, then the other, nearby fireflies start flirting.

I wondered if the strobing function on my headlamp had triggered a frenzy of firefly flirting.

I repeated the process. Another avalanche of firefly strobing resulted. 

Technology is a wonderful thing. It can make an old man an alpha-male, even if it only impresses the insects.

I will not let the ducks out this morning until it is fully light, just in case "Junior" is waiting around for another crack at Lucky Ducky. 

Today's work-tickets

Lift at the gym. 

Get my helper started with burning limbs and woody-trash in the upper orchard. Yes, I have a volunteer. Happy days are here again.

Spread ground limestone, potash and white clover seed over 5000 square-feet of the Hill Orchard that was not mowed last year and has no clover growing in it...yet.

I think "Ladino" clover is a bit of a scam. It sucks in the deer hunters who are trying to concoct the most awesome food-plot.

In my limited experience, Ladino clover, which is a giant form of white clover, doesn't self-seed as aggressively as the medium leaf forms of white clover and the stand quickly reverts back to the mean.

If you plant any locally-adapted strain of medium-leaf white clover and if you mow the grass when it gets taller than six-inches tall...you will have a significant percentage of the sward in clover. Certain caveats apply. Grass out-competes clover for potassium and phosphorous, so you need to make sure those are available. Clover struggles with low pH soils, so limestone is a good move.Clover is shallow-rooted, so you will rarely see much of it in dry areas or in sandy soils. Clover is not very tolerant of shade, so it is difficult to establish in a forest or under an over-grown orchard.

But if you can honor her restraints, you can plant it once and count on it being there forever. It even self-seeds with "time activated" seeds that can outlast a five-year drought and re-establish when the rains come back. 

Wheat harvest

One of my local farmers started harvesting yesterday.

One thing the "survival" and the "homesteading" communities often gloss over is the time-lag between planting and the harvest of any significant number of calories.

The history books tell us that the American Indians called late winter "The Hungry Time" but I think they miss the point that unless you live near water where large numbers of fatty fish spawn shortly after ice-out, The Hungry Time lasts much longer than the last month of winter. 

An early sweet corn hybrid might provide you with decent ears 65 days after the soil temperature hits 60 degrees F.

The earliest strains of potatoes can beat that because you can trick the tubers by holding them in a warm cellar for a few weeks before planting them.

Winter wheat and rye might even be a bit before that.

The point is that if you haven't been paying attention and are guided by "I feel like...", then you probably assume that food, calories, become available when things turn green in the spring. Around here, that might be April 15.

The reality is that in a subsistence environment (like Ukraine) unless you want to graze vast volumes of high-fiber greens, then you better have a safety net of redundant food sources:

• Stored grain, oils and fats
• Milk from a cow, goat, sheep other ruminant 
• Winter grains planted in late-Autumn the previous year
• Early potatoes and (maybe) turnips
• Some roots stored in a cellar, clamp or heavily mulched and left in the garden row. 

 In Eaton County, Michigan, the food situation starts to flip right-side up the second week of July. That is almost three months after the landscape turns green.

Fine Art Thursday

 

Renee Charles Edmond His was born in a suburb west of Paris in 1877. He died in 1960.

He made his reputation as a young man painting enormous, epic paintings. Then he spent the rest of his life capitalizing on that reputation.

Famous for landscapes featuring fertile-looking rivers.

One school of evolutionary biologists claim that our DNA is hardwired to seek places where multiple ecosystems converge and provide food, transportation and trade.  Your mileage may vary.

Office building rehab as apartments: FAIL

The former headquarters of Pfizer in Manhattan (NYC, New York) was being remodeled into 1600 residential units.

Workers noticed that the beams that support several floors more than twenty stories above ground-level were starting to buckle due to excessive compressive loads.

Authorities in NYC assured us today that everything is under-control and that all the steps required to mitigate the risk have been executed. 

Structural failures due to "mission creep" are not a new phenomena. The Quebec Bridge collapsed TWICE during its construction. Those failures became the impetus that led many Canadian engineers to wear iron rings:

The Iron Ring is a ring worn by many Canadian engineers as a symbol and reminder of the obligations and ethics associated with their profession. The ring is presented in a private ceremony known as the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer.

The text of the calling was written by English poet Rudyard Kipling, at the request of Haultain. Haultain asked Kipling to author the calling partly because of Kipling's poem The Sons of Martha, which paid tribute to an engineer.^[7] Kipling's calling sought to emphasize the responsibilities of an engineer, affirming their responsibility to "not henceforward suffer or pass, or be privy to the passing of, Bad Workmanship or Faulty Material."^[7] Kipling's calling also affirmed that an engineer must not compromise their work, in spite of external pressures; and was a call for professional unity between engineers 

Weeding

 

Before and after. Rutabagas.

Mrs ERJ shared with me that I have a tendency to generalize small tidbits of information to global significance. I am guilty as charged.

The photo on the left was taken after 30 minutes of weeding. I managed to hand-weed 50' of row on the extreme left in 30 minutes.

The photo on the right was taken after I weeded the second row. Based on the first photo, most people would have probably assumed that there was nothing worth saving in the second row. Looking at the photo on the right, it is clear that they would have been wrong.

My take-away lesson is that even when a "population" seems hopeless, there are often enough people-worth-saving to make it worth tilting the reward system in their favor. 

Slow? Yes. 

Tedious? Yes. 

Worth the effort? That depends. I have one row that I planted to beets where I uncovered two plants in about twenty feet of weeding. The economics point to mowing the weeds, tilling the entire row and replanting to a fall crop like Spinach, Daikon or Chinese Cabbage. The situation reminded me of Genesis 18:16-33. Abraham would have made an excellent lawyer!

Time-on-task

I managed to spend 4-1/2 hours in the garden today.

I was struggling after 1-1/2 hours. My back was talking to me.

I started alternating weeding with staking-and-tying-up plants. I also changed my posture every five minutes: Kneeling, kneeling on one knee (i.e. genuflecting), kneeling on the other knee while weeding the other side of the row, standing and bending over.

I planned to take a break every half hour. Sometimes that turned into fifty minutes.

The exercise yard of the duck-jail

Early on, I planted marigolds, Federle tomatoes and Tagetes minuta and Tagetes lucita around the exercise yard of the duck jail.

Predictably, they were swamped by aggressive, weedy grasses like Giant Foxtail and Echinochloa frumentacea.

Part of today's work-ticket was to recover the original intent: Train the tomatoes up, over the exercise area to provide shade and tomatoes for canning.

The photo is underwhelming.

The plan is to flop a feed-lot panel over the exercise yard and to train the tomatoes over it.

Autoimmune disorders

I recently went down the rabbit-hole looking at autoimmune disorders like Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Multiple Sclerosis.

78% of autoimmune disorder diagnosis are of women. That is, four cases cases diagnosed in women for every diagnosis made in a man. Virtually everybody in the medical care community knows that as a fact. The general consensus is that the hormones that are more common in women are largely to blame.

Having worked in the automotive industry, an industry that has endured increasingly hostile litigious environment since the 1960s, my gut tells me that the Transgender industry is facing a potential tsunami of class-action lawsuits where they are accused of "failing to exercise due diligence" in informing their patients (and the patients' parents and guardians) of the incremental and differential risks posed by exposure to feminizing hormones. Having a receptionist hand the patient literature or to have a non-doctor deliver Q-and-A isn't going to cut-it.

The sheer number of the potential plaintiffs (1% of the population now claims to be trans) and the possible settlement-per-plaintiff (mid-seven-figures) will bankrupt any institution that gets sucked into the litigation.

The same goes for exposure to masculinizing hormones. The few autoimmune disorders that are more likely to afflict men tend to have higher fatality rates...things like ischemic cardiac disease where inflammation of blood vessels starts the cascade of blood-clots spawning and then calving and floating into hearts, brains, lungs and other important organs.

Trimming vines

 

Surprise! This mulberry graft is alive.

The plan to spend most of yesterday mowing was a dud.

I had to run some errands plus a few other commitments. While batting about Eaton County, I laid down my smartphone and walked away.

I was getting ready to fire up the mower when I started patting my pockets. No phone.

I checked all of the places in the house where I habitually "lose" my phone. No phone.

I asked Mrs ERJ to call my phone and I listened for the ring. No phone.

So...I retraced my steps.

I did get the mower with the new engine fired up. The motor smoked a little bit on start-up as it burned off the oil it had been sprayed with for corrosion protection. I pushed it about 150 feet. Stopped to move a hose and the blade was loose when I restarted it.

Obviously, I had not torqued the bolt sufficiently. I suspect that the engine break (a safety feature) is pretty aggressive. The blade had not been loose before I shut it down for the hose.

Since the mower was hot and I didn't want to mess with it, I grabbed the old mower and started mowing the orchard. I was able to get about an hour of mowing and cutting vines done before I bagged it for the day.

Vines

One of the thoughts I had while working in the orchard is that vines are an apt metaphor for our subsidized classes.

Vines are able to out-grow their hosts because they don't have to invest any energy into "structure" to hold themselves upright. They scramble up into tree canopies, holding themselves in place with tendrils or suckers, and then over-top their supports.

Ultimately, the trees lose vigor, die and topple, taking the vines with them.

Lack of access to house ownership seems to be a flashpoint for many of the people who have grievances.

It is my impression that many of those people-with-grievances have no idea regarding the range-and-scope of the hassles that can go along with home-ownership.

One young, kind-hearted lady that I know wanted to move in with her boyfriend so she leased out her house. The tenants kept asking for various types of maintenance be done and since she wanted to be a good landlord, she complied with speed. Since she was compassionate, she didn't choose the most economical materials because she didn't think that renters should have less "premium" materials that homeowners. Two years later, she decided that she had to sell the house because the expenses had exceeded the income by over $90k.

An extreme case? Perhaps. But if you are not "handy" and have connections with people in the trades, then a rental unit can quickly turn into a money-pit. So, knowing that, what is the most likely trajectory if renters are given a no-skin-in-the-game entry into home ownership?

Windfalls 

One of Kubota's friends had a mother who won a "home make-over" in a contest. The house was gutted and fitted with premium fixtures and surfaces. It also raised the assessed value and more than doubled the property taxes.

So let me ask a simple question, "If the mother could not afford normal maintenance BEFORE the make-over, how will she be able to afford the maintenance on the grander house and be able to pay the higher taxes?"

Obviously, she couldn't. She got behind in her taxes. The house was trashed. So, she did what had worked before.

She approached the organization that had rehabbed it the first time and told them she needed another make-over so she could sell it.

There response was that their policy prevented them from going back. They didn't have enough resources and their sponsors had ZERO interest in "another last-chance" to anybody.

Grab bag

Lifting notes

A regulation, 45 pound bar was available today.

For warm-up, I did a set of six repetitions of dead-lifts at 135 pounds. Stretched and rested for five minutes and then did three repetitions of 185 pounds.

Another five minute rest. Then a single lift of 205. From there, I added five pounds per lift with about two minutes of rest between single-lifts.

I was able to lift 230 pounds but my body said "Enough for today". So that is where I stopped.

I had to keep reminding myself about "form" and to build lift slowly. I have a difficult time resisting the temptation to try to "rip" the weight off of the ground.

Since my goal is to build muscle, I hold the weight while locked-back for fifteen seconds and then slowly lower it. 

I am sure that my muscles will complain for at least the next two days.

Dog breeders

One of the other lifters is a fellow who likes to chat. That type seems to be rare at this gym.

He and his wife have been breeding and selling purebred dogs for the last thirty years.

A Dobie from British blood-lines

He was bemoaning the trends in the various breeds. Doberman Pinschers, for instance, used to be more massively muscled and carried some bone on them. The current trend is to push the breed to looking more-and-more like Greyhounds.

On the other hand, the Great Danes that are winning blue ribbons have ever-more-massive heads and more pendulous jowls. 

I don't see the pursuit of Blue Ribbons at dog-shows slowing down anytime soon. Nor do I expect the breeders to show any restrain in turning their dogs into clownish caricatures of what the dog breeds used to be.

The reason is that a single straw of frozen, diluted semen from a "#1 dog" runs $7000 each. Of course the breeders simply add that cost (plus a mark-up) to the cost of the puppies they produce.

A few garden pictures

A watermelon vine

Cucurbita maxima vines. Presumed to be Golden Hubbard.

Tomatoes being trained up a feedlot panel

These went into yesterday's dinner.

Today's work-ticket 

Today is scheduled to be a grass-mowing day. Anything beyond that will be a bonus.

Beetles, Bats, Weeds and the spy in our pockets

I saw the year's first Japanese Beetle yesterday. I saw damage on the leaves of some grape vines middle of last week that looked like JB damage but wasn't ready to believe they were here.

For those who aren't into garden-pests, Japanese Beetles have strong preferences in terms of adult food-plants. They like Sassafrass, Basswood (aka Linden, Lime), and Grapes. The beetles that are feeding emit sex pheromones which attract more beetles which creates a positive feedback loop. Consequently, it is common to see one tree or vine absolutely hammered while a seemingly identical one nearby is barely touched.

A Big Brown Bat in flight.

The Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus) specializes in feeding on beetles. One Japanese Beetle weighs as much as 15 mosquitoes and they are stationary targets. Often, they are mating and a BBB can catch two of them in one pass. The economics of the cost:benefits to the bat are inescapable.

Knowing that, I erected my bat-house in one of the corners where my fenced-in vegetable garden borders my orchard/vineyard. I don't know if the house is inhabited, but I am trying.

I harvested our first eggplant fruit yesterday. It was from one of three plants I picked up at the local nursery and was labeled "Japanese Eggplant". I will dig one of our early 2026 potatoes to get baby-boilers and Mrs ERJ will do something magical to make it all taste good. It will likely be served over rice.

The heat-wave last week killed many of the grafts that I made late in the season. I thought they had "taken". The buds were green and extending. Now everything is dark brown. A few of the grafts were in the shade and survived. Live and learn. In the future, grafts I make after June 10 will get wrapped with (unused) toilet paper to provide a sunscreen.

It was raining when I took these pictures

Two rows of rutabagas and weeds. I am not sharing these pictures because I am proud of my garden but because this is reality. Weather happens. Weeds grow.

The potato canopy continues to expand. I have (mostly) been able to keep up with keeping them weeded.

The weeds are growing very, very well. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday should be dry enough to mow, pull weeds and till, respectively. 

Walking data

I found a large sample-size source of data regarding how much people walk.

This sample is data pulled from a fitness-tracking app on smartphones of 717k US citizens who live in urban areas. 

The average participant walked approximately 5600 steps-per-day. The standard deviation of the data was approximately 55% of the mean.

That means that the distribution is not a "normal" curve but more of a Chi-Squared distribution where the majority of the samples are below the average. That is, the average is pulled up by a relatively small number of over-achievers.

Another thing to consider is that there is some degree of self-selection in the sample. People who own fitness trackers or download fitness tracker apps are more likely to take an active role in their own health. One source suggests that owners of those kinds of devices average 1800 more steps-per-day than those who do not.

A defensible, first order approximation for the number of steps the average urban US citizen (without fitness-tracking technology) makes every day is 3800 steps or approximately 1.7 miles (2.7km). Frankly, I am surprised it is that high.