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. 

A man has to know his limitations

Leigh, a reader of this blog and an author of several books poses the question..."Is Homesteading a Dying Trend?" on April 2.

The gentleman who runs the Possum Ridge video channel addressed some of that question in THIS video. Very briefly summarized, everything has positive momentum when you are starting out. You have new(er) equipment, new fence, new soil and are younger. Every year you can look back and see progress. At some point, the maintenance requirements grow to exceed the "fun" level and growth stops or even reverses.

My take on the subject is that many people get sucked into the myth that they can do it all. They can be:

• Blacksmith
• Welder
• Mason
• Carpenter
• Electrician
• Plumber 
• Mechanic 
• Weaver
• Spinner
• Fix fences 
• Sheep sheerer
• Butcher 
• Tan hides 
• Doctor
• Vet
• Herbalist 
• Hunter
• Fisher
• Gatherer
• Make soap 
• Cheese-maker
• Brewer
• Winemaker 
• Baker
• Artist 
• Grafter
• Apple picker 
• Dig wells 
• Lumberjack 
• General Laborer

There was a time when family or neighbors who had mastered those skills were on-tap and available with just a phone call. If you needed a crew of 10 people for an afternoon getting hay off the field, you could find them.

Good luck with that now.

For the record, I hired my nephew to "fix the riding mower". I am not sure what it needs but I trust him. I loaned him a copy of the key to the pole-barn. He trusts me to pay him. He is a busy guy and I might not get it back before July...but it will get fixed.

"A good man always knows his limitations." Harry Callahan 

A day of rest....

 

I got a call from somebody who scheduled a pump-out for their septic tank Monday 9:00 a.m. She needed help finding her septic tank...

Note for the future: 12 feet north of the southwest corner of her house (between 9 and 10 blocks) and about 12 east.

58 minutes to mow the Upper Orchard. It will go more slowly when the grass is thicker. The fact that I didn't have to mow between the trees where I spray herbicide made it go more quickly.

I was able to mow an additional 34 minutes on the Hill Orchard before I ran out of gas.

More mowing planed for Monday.

---Note added Monday at 5:00 a.m. Our thermometer reads 30F which is MUCH better than the 24F to 25F that had been predicted. Two more hours until sunrise. Maybe we will get lucky and dodge a bullet.---

Bonus Video

 

A few pictures

 

I saw these on a persimmon tree in my yard

Chrysalis (cocoons)

From the internet

Prometheus Moth chrysalis

Luna Moth chrysalis

Seedling update

It has been three weeks since most of these seeds were started. 

 

The lovage is starting to show true-leaves.

It is not all skittles-and-cream soda

Something is impacting the older Stupice tomato leaves

Bottom of leaf

These bumps look like aphids but don't move when I scrape them. Puzzling. I am going to treat it as if it was due to excessive fertilizer (note the purple) and put them on a well-water diet for a week.

And...we lost a duck today. They found a way out of the garden enclosure and were waddling around the yard. Then, a few hours later three of the four were back into the enclosure and there was no sign of the fourth one.

Coyotes and fox have their pups and kits to feed. My fault for not addressing the Great Duck Escape. 

Hoop houses

Gromit commented on an earlier post:

The lifestyle of Pavlo's parents is rooted in the fall of the Soviet Untion, not the Ukraine / Russia war. They've farmed that area, like they do now, for years. The content that shows his grandmothers a and neighbors places show well over 40 years of rough rural living. Pavlo's girlfriend fishing for perch is much as you describe, simple rig, simple location, fill the basket with fish then watch as half the catch is preserved and stored.

A minor correction, the girl who fishes for perch and Crucian Carp is not Pavlo's girlfriend. The perch fisher is about fifteen years-old and as far as I know is not related to Pavlo in any way. Pavlo's girlfriend/wife(?) is Luba and she is a blonde who usually braids her hair.

The adaptation to "technology" in subsistence cultures is a curious thing

On this channel the main character comments "I can double or triple my harvest of potatoes and cabbage with two gallons of gas. That is a pretty good deal." (Note: Units changed to something most of my readers can identify with and he is talking about enough cabbage, beets and potatoes to feed fifteen people for a year). He was talking about using an inexpensive, gasoline-powered pump to irrigate his family's fields of staple-vegetable crops.

Another technology that pops up in many videos are "hoop-houses". Suppose you lived in a place like Iron Mountain, Michigan and you could count on a 60 day growing season. Furthermore, you don't know if that will be from June first until August first or from July first until September first. Being able to guarantee SOME production from May 1 until November 1 triples your growing season. It won't triple your production of calories but it will armor you against scurvy and rickets.

Your lucky day

I am a bit of an idiot-savant about being able to look at a stick and determine what species of tree it came from. Images from this video:

Running a gasoline powered tiller inside of a hoop-house with limited ventilation. Not so smart.

Vertical supports and ridgepoles are Black Locust and the hoops and diagonal braces are Filbert (aka Hazelnut bush) shoots, probably three-years-old. They cut the shoots green and warmed them up before bending.

I am always astounded by how dry the soil is.

(Smiling), girls-be-girls. She made sure her hair was beautiful and her clothing was flattering before recording video. That is not mandatory in SHTF scenarios.

After watching this sequence a few times, I guestimate the width of the hoop-house to be between 10' and 12', the height to be about 7' and the length to be about 30'. The ends are opened-and-closed to control temperature

They plant tomatoes and cucumbers in the house in this video which was recorded in mid-April. In Michigan (pre-SHTF), I will be planting those crops outside in late-May and early-June rather than mid-April. They will be picking cucumbers (a 55 day crop) less than a week after I plant my seeds in the garden.

What tickles me about this video is that somebody executed a hoop-house that effectively doubles their growing season with very little money out-of-pocket. The Black Locust posts and poles and the filbert shoots were probably local. The plastic film might last three seasons (more likely two) if they don't peel it off the frame and stow it out of the sunlight (UV damage) after the risk of frost is over.

The thought-process also intrigues me. "I am trading 7 liters of petrol to gain 2000 kilos of potatoes" or "I am trading two handfuls of cornmeal which will attract minnows and then allow me to catch seven perch". 

This would be a fine cottage industry after the SHTF; throwing up hoop-houses made of (mostly) indigenous materials. 

 

We are running about two-weeks ahead of schedule

A wet driveway

The daffodils are finishing up their gig. The plums, service berries and ornamental pears are blooming while the pears in the orchard are tuning up their fiddles. 

Yes, I know. I have trash to pick up

Violets are still providing a beat with snare-drums. 

 

Bumblebees working Ground Ivy and Dead Nettle flowers are sketching out the melodies of summer. But not very many bumblebees, nope, not many of them.

The bumblebee is in the center of the picture. Look for a couple bands of pale yellow.

Bumblebees are ground-nesting bees. The constant rains have to be hard on them. I went to set a body-grip trap at a woodchuck hole yesterday and it was flooded. All of the woodchuck holes were flooded.

Looking at the plants that are in bloom, I estimate that we are ten days to two weeks "ahead" of a typical year in terms of bloom sequence. 

Raccoon guard update 

The 3" round vent was too small to fit around the mulberry trunks. It would have if the trunks were smooth and straight...but they are mulberries so that isn't going to happen.

The riding mower started after I filled the tank with gas but it stalls out when I start to lift the brake pedal. I might be starting the mowing season with a push mower. A mower with an effective cutting width of 18" must be push about 5.5 miles to mow an acre. At 2 mph, that pencils out to a freckle less than three hours.

King David Apple

The blurbs for this apple suggest that it is an accidental cross between Jonathan and Arkansas Black or Winesap.

According to the SSR genetic data published by the USDA, Jonathan as one parent and Winesap as the other is a much, much more likely scenario than Jonathan by Arkansas Black. Winesap matches across all nine microsatellites while Arkansas Black does not match at microsatellites CH01f02-A, GD142-A or GD147-A.

"Pavlo from Ukraine" parents starting their own gardening channel

Pavlo from Ukraine is one of the video-bloggers who I follow. If you click on the link it will take you to a tour of his mother's garden as-of a couple of days ago. One thing that I found notable was the number of small fruit crops and the area dedicated to them. They also have fruit trees and nut trees. And they have a vast garden dedicated to "staples" like potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and so-on.

It is my opinion that if you want to see effective food-growing technology (as opposed to "trendy" eye-candy) then you need to watch people who depend on what they produce to feed themselves.

If you are interested in hunting to put meat on your table then don't watch content put out by shooters critiquing the latest $1400 rifles and whiz-bang magnums at a shooting range. Find the guy who walks around with a simple, much-used shotgun or .22LR and maybe has a few live-traps and snares in strategic places. The first hunter is flying into Wyoming or Alaska and (maybe) shooting an elk or moose once a year. The other is likely bringing a squirrel, rabbit, woodchuck, muskrat or other critter into the kitchen EVERY DAY.

If you are interested in fishing for food, don't watch the guy flying across a reservoir at 60 mph in a brand new, $40k bass-boat. Find the guy who is fishing for catfish or panfish or whatever-bites-medley using set-lines and cane-poles. 

In a similar way, Martha Stewart isn't going to show you how to grow a million Calories a year per person. Nope. She is going to show you how to grow geraniums and micro-greens for salads.

You need to visit guys like Possum Ridge and Pavlo's parents. In the case of Pavlo's parents, they were forced into it by 300% inflation in the cost of food. Their pension check now only covers the price of dairy products and eggs. That is why I am excited to see that Pavlo split-off the content where his parents show us how to garden as a stand-alone channel.

Consider popping in on them every few weeks and seeing if any of their videos strike your fancy. Their videos are about 8 minutes long which I find to be a very watchable length.

One miraculous thing about knowledge is that it can scale very quickly and inexpensively when we engage our minds. I hope we never NEED those skills in the US but God laughs when men make plans.