All work and no play makes Joe a dull boy

On today's work-ticket

Plant a tree in Southern Belle's orchard. One of the pear trees I planted last year never grew. I will be planting a Galarina apple that is grafted on a MM-111 rootstock. Since the dead pear is in the north row, an overly-large tree will not shade the other trees in the orchard (at least not very much).

---Added at 11:00 a.m.: There were two pear trees that needed replacements. I planted a Winecrisp/MM-111 in the southwest corner and a Galarina/MM111 immediately to the north of that tree. That gives her two Liberty apple trees, one each of Winecrisp, Galarina, Melrose, Fuji, Gold Rush, Harrow Sweet pear, Contender peach and Red Haven peach. She also has five hazelnut bushes, mostly cv. Somerset.--- 

Share some trees with the gentleman who remodeled our bathroom. He is building his own personal house for his retirement years and one of his goals is to produce as much food on the three acres as he can. He also asked for pruning and grafting lessons.

---Added at 6:00 p.m.: This ticket was punched by 4:32 p.m. The gentleman was a quick student and very capable with his eye-hand coordination.--- 

Plant potatoes in the garden. At a minimum, I want to plant forty hills of Red Pontiac for early potatoes. The detail that makes it awkward is that I want to put them in the row closest to the path for ease-of-harvest. I am contemplating moving the path so it runs up the middle of the 100'-by-40' plot. 

---Updated at 1:15 p.m.: I was assisted by Quicksilver in the garden and the Red Pontiac early potatoes are in.

I gave her an 8" long stick to use as a gauge to space the potatoes but she was a little bit unclear on the idea.---

I also decided to split the 100' length into two, 50' sub-parcels for ease of management. The west half is about 4' higher and the soil dries out and warms up more quickly than the east half. The early potatoes will be planted in the west half. That is NOT where they would be planted if I followed my usual "Plant the first items closest to the entrance to the plot" habit or "Start along a fence so the rows are efficiently spaced".

Well, well, well, would you look at that!

 

Twenty-one broccoli transplants into the ground!

Those were not on the work-ticket. Updated 2:30 p.m.

Quicksilver Musical Moment

Dance Monkey How do you say "Joyous abandon"?

Bonus headlines

This hospital treats many patients with "mental health issues"

Evil! Crazy-people need attention the way normal people need oxygen. They are performing for their "tribe" to get the "fix" that they crave.  They do that by inflaming the outrage of "the other side". This will not end well.

Planting asparagus

 

Today's adventure was to plant 60 asparagus plants ins a 60' long row.

First I tilled.

Then I trenched

 

The crowns look like octipii migrating in formation. The internet said that is not necessary to spread out the roots.

Looking up the row

The shorter stick in the foreground (that runs up-down in the photo) is 4' long with blazes every 12". I used it to space the crowns. The longer stick in the background is an 8' furring strip that I used to "calibrate" the compost application. One bag for every 8'.

Love is planting a row of asparagus because your wife loves asparagus. I can take it or leave it. I don't see what the big deal is. But if this makes her feel cherished, then it is time well spent.

Incidentally, the Caledonia Farmers Elevator on M-50 east of Charlotte has very large crowns of Millennium hybrid asparagus for $1.50 each. Best get them while they are in-stock. 

I also planted 7 fruit trees to round out the day.

3 hours time-on-task with a high temperature of 80F and no wind. Time to start taking electrolyte rather than plain water. I am worn out.

More than you ever wanted to know about rhubarb

More than you ever wanted to know about rhubarb

Rhubarb (sometimes called "Pie plant") varieties. 

The site advises buyers to not put a lot of trust in variety names. Some propagators plant seeds and call the seedlings by the mother's name. The seedlings will NOT be identical to the mother.

Two varieties that the authors of the website like are Canada Red and MacDonald. 

Most rhubarb from seeds are the variety Victoria which was introduced in 1837 and was very, very good for its time. The authors write:

Green-stemmed varieties, such as 'Goliath' or 'Victoria,' tend to be more acidic and potentially more fibrous than red-stemmed varieties....Victoria is often not recommended due to its frequent habit of producing flower stems; used almost exclusively for indoor winter forcing. 

Additionally, the prolific production of seeds results in seedlings crowding the rhubarb bed which necessitates more maintenance in terms of thinning or digging and replanting.

Expect variation in quality since much of what is available in commerce are not clones of the original Victoria plant. Rather, "Victoria" is a swarm of similar varieties that may or may-not resemble the original. Sadly, this is probably the most common rhubarb "variety" available to the average gardener. 

I will say that nothing attracts more pollinators than rhubarb when it is in flower. It must be blazingly bright in the infrared band that corresponds to sugars in the nectar. Sadly, they are attractive to pollinators for about three days unlike horseradish which feeds pollinators and parasitoid wasps for three weeks. 

The next most common rhubarb seeds in commerce are probable Glaskin's Perpetual. Glaskin's Perpetual was introduced to commerce in 1920 and is lower in acid and fiber than Victoria.

Final thoughts on rhubarb from seeds

Seeds are dirt-cheap. There is nothing to prevent you from planting a boatload of seeds and then sorting for the reddest stems. My thought process is that the seedlings with the reddest stems are more likely to have modern selections (which were selected for red stems and low fiber) in their recent ancestry. That is, you might be able to use red stems as a proxy for tender, lower-fiber stems.

A second thing about seeds is that most plant virus do not cross from the mother plant to the embryo. Plants that are propagated vegetatively tend to collect viruses which slowly drag-down vigor.

Why do people spend a disproportionate amount of time on food-security?

I put myself into the shoes of a person who might never have given much thought to the potential disintegration of society. One of the questions that such a person might ask is:

If the Rule of Threes implies that the fastest ways to die are to be stupid (three seconds), lose oxygen or blood (three minutes), exposure (three hours), dehydration (three days)...then why is so much more attention paid to food-security which might take three weeks (to three months) to result in death?

Three answers

1.) If the threat is across-the-board and everybody is exposed to it, the number of people who are close enough to your supply to be a threat to you is proportional to the amount of time the victims have before losing consciousness.

How many people could learn about and raid your pantry in three weeks? How many could figure out that you have a wood-stove and break-into your house in three hours? In the case of thirst, how many streams and puddles would a goblin have to walk past before they helped themselves to your supply?

2.) Dehydration and hypothermia result in lethargy and numbing of senses before death. In contrast, hunger makes people more observant. Most notably, hunger increases our ability to smell things by at least ten-fold. Hunger makes people smarter. Hunger makes them more aggressive right up until they slip into a coma. Hunger makes most people dangerous.

3.) Producing food is seasonal and there are very long lag-times. 

Assuming you already have a garden-tools-and-seeds, you might be able to harvest radishes and turnip-greens 28 days after planting the seeds, snap-peas, green beans and cucumbers 55 days, early potatoes and sweet corn at 70 days and so-on. Main-season crops, the heavy-lifters in terms of calorie production, might run 100 days.

If you buy a ewe that has been bred, you are looking at one-year before you have a fat lamb to slaughter. If you bought a bred-heifer, you are looking at 2-1/2 years before you have young beef. 

If you bought chicks, then you have to feed them human-quality food for four months before you have a snowball's chance of getting eggs. This is different from sheep and cows because they can eat food that humans cannot eat...grass, twigs, standing hay (i.e., the dried grass in that vacant lot or abandoned field) so they are not directly competing with humans for food.

Small-fruits are relatively fast. Everbearing strawberries will produce the summer you plant them. Other small fruits will produce modest amounts in the early years as the bush fills out its allotted space, but you should be getting full crops in three years.

Tree fruits and nuts CAN produce in two or four years but that is for intensive and expensive systems. More traditional, free-standing orchards are in the three-year to ten-year time horizon.

In contrast, harvesting rainwater can be as simple as running the downspout from your gutters into a barrel. Unless you have Chernobyl level pollution, boiling or filtering will give you potable water shortly after your first rainfall. Or, you can risk temporary diarrhea and drink it straight out of the barrel.

Those are the reasons why people who do not wish to become refugees seem to focus overly-much on food security: High external threats and long lead-times relative to how long it takes to starve to death. 

Bonus link

Greenhouses in Michigan's Upper Peninsula destroyed by heavy snowfall and winds. Hat-tip to Coyote Ken. 

Why "Russian" Dachas all look alike

My most prolific commenter "Anonymous" posted the following comment on the previous post:

"The Russian's images are very reminiscent of some of the Ukrainian village video scenes you have been linking to."

There are reasons for that.

People who live on the knife's-edge do not exhibit risk-seeking behaviors. There is already too much "risk" hunting them for comfort. They have no reason to go looking for more risk. 

If something works, they don't experiment. If something provably better comes along (electric or gas motors, disease resistant staple food crops, LED lights, synthetic fertilizers or pesticides) they jump on-board. Otherwise, they "...dance with the one that brung-ya".

As I watch these videos of these "dacha" that have been upgraded into life-boats I see the following commonalities:

• SERIOUS fences and gates
• Poultry
• A grape arbor
• Apple trees
• Walnut trees
• Hazelnut bushes
• A multitude of small-fruit species (raspberries, currants, elderberries, strawberries, gooseberries, viburnum species...)
• Stone fruits
• Pears
• Potatoes, lots of potatoes
• Root cellars 
• Garden seedlings started in every available window 
• A well that can be worked when there is no electricity
• Cats...lots of cats
• Fishing (also feeds the cats)
• Milk animals, if not on-property then kept by a nearby neighbor (feeds the cats) 
• A dog, often small-to-very small 
• Flowers
• Flavoring herbs (often in pots to bring inside during the winter). 
• A way to heat with wood
• A way to cook with wood (often outside)
• Trailers, a way to leverage the ability to haul cargo
• Buckets, shovels, rakes, knives, trowels
• Bees (not universal, but common)
• Pumpkins for oil-seed and to grind for animal feed 
• Icons on the wall (not universal, but common) 

What I do not see

• Extensive lawns
• Garages exclusively devoted to storing automobiles
• Any signs of liquid fuels stored on the property 
• Backpacks 
• Llama, emus, ostrich, pigeons, bison, yaks, Scottish Highland cattle, water-buffalo, cashmere or dwarf goats, small swine breeds, intensive aqua-culture.
• Pictures of the current, living generations on the wall
• Large monitors (TV, computer, gaming)
• Recliners 
• Pantries filled with nutritional supplements or OTC drugs
• Extravagant consumption of alcohol or cannabis

In the for-what-it-is-worth department

I am rethinking my Juglans regia walnut trees. I have a scant handful of them on my property but never really worked to get any return on them. In my mind they have been more like minor trophies (like my 6th grade diploma) rather than as a serious investment.

Before. This picture downplays the amount of vines in the canopy.

 

After

I spent part of today pruning dead-wood and pulling vines out of the canopies. I sprayed herbicide on the vegetation beneath them and will throw some fertilizer around them in a couple of weeks. Most important, I will cobble together some kind of squirrel guards to minimize losses.

I also marked several black walnut seedlings suitable for grafting. And I reached out to a friend who is brilliant in these kinds of things and asked for a cram-course on "How do I make these trees excellent investments". 

Is it "soup" yet?

I saw Pavlo's father put a dollop of sour cream into some heated, home-canned tomatoes and eat it as soup.

BRILLIANT!!!

It is pretty easy to put up +50 quarts of tomatoes but I am not always ambitious enough to use them in cooking. But...if "cooking" means heating some stewed tomatoes, adding some sliced up tortillas for noodles and adding some sour cream...well, what the heck. I can do that.

More for-what-it-is-worth

Music makes our brains grow.

Today's Quicksilver music moment was the introduction to The Lone Ranger. Yes, I know it has an official name...but Quicksilver likes horses. Her comment as she watched the video was "His horse runs really fast." Quicksilver can learn the fancy-schmancy stuff later.

Tomorrow's music will be John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy". She objected to my singing that while I was driving because she thought I was making up as I sang it. I chose this version because the video has motion which makes a difference in terms of keeping her attention...also...it is more interesting to watch singers demonstrating the lyrics than it is to watch the singers performing on a stage.

Ouch!

Daily Timewaster

Perfect picture. Perfect title.

Looking at Archie Bunker and Redd Foxx...try adding almost twenty years to that number!

I am old enough to remember when comedians were actually funny rather than "edgy". 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Titled "Their Eyes were Opened", from Luke 24:30,31

G.E. Mullan was born in Tyler, Texas (USA) in 1943 and died in San Antonio in 2015 at the age of 72. He painted in the "Santa Fe" style and frequently painted religious and American Indian themes.

A tip of the old fedora to Dwight Ezop for suggesting this artist 

Today will be a Two-fer

Nicolai Ivanovich Barchenkov was born in 1918 about 40 miles north of Moscow and died in 2002. 

While tireless gets the credit for suggesting this artist

Tireless on his way to the trading post to pick up supplies

 

Still here. Still working.

 

This showed up in the mail today

Also today.

Believe it or not, there are six grafts of King David apple on this tree. All marked with orange yarn. Mrs ERJ gently asked when she would be getting her refrigerator back, so I am grafting what I can and NOT putting the extra scion back into the fridge for "just-in-case" situations.

Looking due-south across the Hill Orchard from the pole barn. I have seen parking lots in West Virginia that were steeper than this...but in Michigan, this qualifies as a slope.

In a semi-panorama, this is looking west, up the hill, from the same place.

I hunted this property for many, many years. I believe that this much of it has not been mowed for at least ten years.

 

60 minutes grafting and picking up trash. 75 minutes mowing.

 

So far, it looks like we dodged the bullet on the frost-freeze last night. Time will tell.