A red-headed teen-ager in the orchard. What could go wrong?

Yesterday's work-tickets

The great news is that my volunteer-help yesterday was able to fix the lawn tractor that was in the pole barn at the Upper and Hill Orchards.

I asked him what he did to fix it and he shrugged his shoulders. He had done a handful of things and wasn't sure which one(s) had resolved the issue. He did caution me that there were likely to be mice nests in the shroud that directed cooling air from the fan and I needed to clean those out or I could warp the cylinders if I ran it for extended periods.

We spent the next two hours moving wood from piles in the orchard to the property line where the neighbor would claim it for firewood.

Near the end of the two hours, the generous neighbor lady (not the wood burner) who has been letting me use her hose brought over her niece and asked for a tour of the orchard.

I can be awkward around people until I "calibrate". It takes me longer to calibrate around women then around men. It takes me longer to calibrate around teenagers than around adults or children. It takes me longer to calibrate around red-heads than around brunettes.

Yes, her niece was a gangly, red-headed teen-ager. She looked like a colt whose body parts were at different stages of a violent growth-spurt. For all that, she comported herself with poise and grace. Gymnastics is a wonderful activity, I am thinking. 

Her parents had tried to grow fruit trees but their site was too shady, had too many squirrels and too much deer pressure. It was a bust.

The home-run was when I learned she was from Illinois "Born and bred...", I took her to an Illinois Everbearing Mulberry. She was impressed. She ate a handful and picked a handful for her aunt who had elected to drop out of the tour early.

From the comments

Anon @ 8:51 PM yesterday asked "Would you mind posting some of the sources for your knowledge?" 

The most concise answer I can give is that I used to be a member of an email list called NAFEX-L. NAFEX stands for North American Fruit EXplorers.

Very early in the days of the internet, it was a "thing" for people interested in arcane topics to join email lists where people discussed various problems and opportunities. At one time I was a member of SHEEP-L, GRAZE-L and NAFEX-L.

The members of NAFEX-L included giants in the field like Ed Fackler (Southern Indiana), Lon Rombaugh (Western Oregon), Lucky Pittman (Western Kentucky), Bob Purvis (Alaska, Minnesota, Idaho), Bernie Nikolia (Alberta) and hosts of others from Maine to Florida to Alaska to California.

NAFEX still exists and publishes four magazines (called Pomona) a year. It is organized around interest groups. Each interest group has a leader and members are encouraged to join various interest groups.

The common denominator in these groups are that most of the members are interested in growing fruit in areas that are not currently centers of commercial production. They are home fruit growers and holders of small orchards. They are people who push the boundaries.

Back to LIST format

I think the LIST format was one of the high-points of the internet. Most of the questions were well posed and the answers were well thought out and presented. The format encouraged dialogue. Threads were durable and could be referenced later on. The readership was large enough to have a wide range of expertise but small enough that trolls were rare. The topics tended to be quite focused. Most of the contributors were genuinely motivated by a desire to help their fellow man.

By contrast, today's social media is "open" to the general public. Any idiot can comment. Trolls abound. Forums get flooded with random, tangential off-topic threads. In many cases, contributors are instant-experts and mindlessly parrot the summary from the first line of a Google search as deep-truth.

Presented without comment

 

Things might not be what they first appear

 

One minute run-time.

My original reaction to this short video was the predictable one: How could she not know the card was "empty". My original impression was that the customer was trying to scam Walmart by bluffing/intimidating her way through.

A bit later it occurred to me that the woman working the cash register didn't say "the balance was zero" but that "the transaction was declined" which really means that there are insufficient funds to cover the amount requested.

So what if this was the last week before her balance is refreshed and she is trying to buy the same items in the same amounts that she has for the last two years? What if she has done this 24 times (24 months) before and there has always been enough money to make it to the next month? 

She doesn't have to do math because she solved this math problem two years ago. She "knows" there is plenty of money in the balance because she has 104 pieces of data (104 weeks in two years) that what is in her shopping cart SHOULD be covered.

If she was knowingly trying to scam the store, she would have used self-checkout. Nobody would have challenged her if she mis-scanned some items.  

What happens when the food prices go up but the deposits made in her SNAP account don't? 

You can tell by the reactions of the woman working the cash register and the manager that this event is not rare. Neither of them batted an eye and the woman's lack-of-funds.

So maybe this video is not about "ghetto culture" but about rising food prices surprising everybody.

Finally, a bit of background info: The annual inflation in food prices in Ukraine has been running between 20% and 25% a year since 2022. At 25%, because of the compounding effect, the price of food doubles every three years. 

Fertilizing fruit trees (in the North) and plum pollination woes

Random thought

The stone from plucked from the bottom of the wadi and used by David to kill Goliath is still out there, somewhere in the Valley of Elah. It may be entombed in concrete or in a road-bed...but it is probably still be out there.

While I have never read of it occurring, I assumed that hundreds of crusaders were sold "the stone that killed Goliath" by enterprising locals. Those crusaders carted off stones and random bones by the bushel-basket to take back home and to be displayed as Holy Relics. There have been mystery stories published that used the market for Medieval Relics as a backdrop.

Rain

The inch of rain that was promised has been down-graded to 0.25 inches. I will be lugging more water today.

Fertilizer and trees

Winter hardiness is a factor in northern climates. That would be USDA Zone 5 and lower. I am right on the edge between 5 and 6.

Bud on the tree that are richly endowed with carbohydrates (various types of sugar) are cold-hardy. Buds that are poorly endowed with carbohydrates are NOT cold-hardy.

It is usually not an issue of the leaves not photosynthesizing enough carbs although that can happen if insects or a wandering moose eat the leaves or if the tree is defoliated by disease. It is more often a consequence of how trees budget where the carbs go.

Developing seeds and fruit get first dibs on carbs. That is one reason why letting your tree over-bear is bad for the tree.

Actively growing shoots get second dibs. 

Last on the list are roots and buds.

In a perfect world, the tree would get a dose of nutrients and water early in the season. That would quickly fill the canopy with enough leaves to capture all of the sunlight that hits the tree. Additionally, it would be enough nutrients (primarily nitrogen) to hit the management's targets for shoot-extension. 

After the shoots had extended to the desired length, the nutrients would be shifted from high N to low-N and high-K to encourage the formation of a terminal bud on the shoot. The growing tips would no longer be "sinks" for carbohydrates and they could start accumulating in the buds. Additionally, the higher carb level helps the buds to "decide" to be fruiting buds rather than vegetative buds.

Since I don't have the power to instantly switch-off the nitrogen levels in the soil, that means I need to lead-the-duck and stop applying nitrogen before I want the shoots to stop growing. My best guess is that August 1 should be that date. That is when the supplemental water I am giving the newest trees should stop being supplemented with 300 PPM of nitrogen. I will use the last of the water I have premixed today and then will just water with simple well water.

The trees should coast through August and have set terminal buds by Labor Day. At least, that is the plan.

Hydroponics and organic fertilizers

Growers who use hydroponics do have almost absolute control over the nutrients available to their plants. I don't know of any hydroponics orchards but trees on sand (like stabilized dunes) are pretty darned close.

The downside of hydroponics is that if you screw up there is no forgiveness. If you don't put it in the irrigation water, Mother Nature isn't going to help you out.

Organic growers have a different problem. Most organic fertilizers like composted manure have a long, slow release. The traditional wisdom is to apply your compost early in the spring but then to not add any more. It isn't that a flush of growth is bad in July. The problem is that a flush of growth at the end of August can be catastrophic.

Plum pollination

Plums can present a lot of issues with pollination.

For one thing, there are two very different types of plums and they don't cross-pollinate.

European plums are hexaploids (six sets of chromosomes) and will not pollinate Japanese or wild American type plums.

Within the European plums there is a range of bloom times with the earliest ones having little overlap with the latest ones. 

Some European plums are at least partially self-fertile. Identifying and finding them is where the internet can be your friend.

The Japanese type plums are diploid (two sets of chromosomes). Burbank created the modern Japanese plum by crossing it with other species of diploid plums. Neils Hansen and breeders in the upper mid-west and in Canada crossed Japanese plums with the American plum and the Canadian Black plum to create hybrids that can resist the winter cold.

That ended up creating a dogs-breakfast of genetics all swept into one pile.

Unfortunately, most of the hardy hybrids (Waneta, Superior, Toka, Underwood) produce flowers that are not attractive to bees AND have very little viable pollen. HOWEVER, wild plums in the mid-west and Canada (P. americana and P. nigra) have large amounts of viable pollen. The challenge is getting the bees to fly the distance between the wild trees/bushes and the hybrid trees in your orchard; remember, bees are not attracted to the hybrid blossoms.

The textbook answer, if they are not already growing in the fence-row beside you orchard, is to plant a wild tree in your orchard or use them for rootstock and to allow one root-sucker to grown into a mini-tree large enough to produce blossoms. Problem solved.

A more labor intensive solution is to graft a branch from a wild tree into each hybrid tree. A word of caution is in order here. It is a near certainty that you will prune out that odd looking branch unless you mark it in some permanent and visually arresting way. 

Limping along .and. good-faith proposal in the event of a failed-harvest

Imagine my surprise! I got in two hours time-on-task today.

It wasn't pulling weeds, though. It was lugging water (38 minutes) with the remainder being cutting wood, loading it into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it to the pile that goes to the guy whose property adjoins the Upper Orchard and who heats with wood. The orchard floor is still a mess and clearing it will make it easier to maintain.

While some of the chunks were substantial, the dead-lifting I have been doing made the physical handling of the wood not-that-bad.

Drought and the price of food

The price that a farmer gets for the amount of wheat that goes into a loaf of bread is less than the cost of the printed, plastic bag that the baker packages the loaf of bread in. 

And bread is not typically thought of as a highly processed food. What that means from a practical standpoint is that the price of wheat could double and if nobody in the value-chain took advantage of the excuse, the price of a loaf of bread might increase by five or ten cents.

On the other hand, eggs, beef, pork and chicken are very sensitive to the price of grain because grain is a larger percentage of the cost-per-pound.

Hogs are efficient converters of feed. The last 200 pounds of gain for a 240 pound hog is about 650 pounds of "concentrate", i.e. grain, soymeal, brewer's waste and pedophiles. That 650 pounds of concentrate coverts to about 120 pounds of boneless meat.

The retail price of that concentrate at a "farm store" is about $45/100 pounds or about $2.40 per pound of meat.

Of course, the commercial producers don't pay that much per 100 pounds of feed. They don't by the fancy bags with the pretty pictures on them. But as a home producer, you can get a feel for how sensitive the price of meat is to the price of grain.

Yes, I know that somebody is ALWAYS crying out doom-and-gloom regarding food prices. This year is no exception. Some parts of the corn-belt are in drought status right now. That is a big deal because the soil moisture levels shortly after the corn "tassels" determines how many kernels on each ear are pollinated and that sets an upper limit on the amount of corn that will be harvested, even if abundant rains come afterward.

What if Congress could increase the corn crop by 50%?

Sounds like a stupid question, right? Keep an open mind.

Approximately 35% of the United States corn crop is diverted to ethanol production which is used to adulterate gasoline. Federal law allows gasoline to contain up to 10% ethanol. Various reasons have been given for the practice but in real-politiks it is a backdoor price support for corn producers and it increases the profit margins for the gas-wholesalers. The net increase in energy is virtually nill.

In a rational world, Congress (or the POTUS) would be watching the food market-basket like a hawk and have a series of trigger-points. When the cost of the market-basket punched upward through a trigger-point, the amount of ethanol allowed in motor-fuel would be reduced by some amount...perhaps two percent. Then if it punched through the next trigger-point, reduced by another two percent.

If such a plan was devised (and shared with the industry ahead of time), they could make rational plans regarding the economically rational way to moth-ball marginal ethanol plants with minimal collateral damages.

From the standpoint of the corn producer, if prices are extremely high, then the need for price-supports is not a strong argument. 

For the hair-splitters

If 65% of the corn crop is currently used for food, then increasing the amount to 100% is a net increase of 100%/65%. The basis (denominator) should not be the total but the fraction of the total that is currently employed for that purpose.

That is not a 35% increase over current levels. It is a 50% increase. 

...a cup of ambition...

My anatomy is dragging this morning. Pulling weeds is hard work and uses muscles that I don't normally exercise.

The weather-guessers are promising an inch of rain tomorrow. We will see.

This is prime-time to control yellow jacket populations. Their numbers explode through August and September. There are countless videos on streaming platforms regarding various traps that involve bait (fish guts, canned cat-food, ham, hotdogs...) and soapy water. It is easiest to spot the ground nests in the late evening when the light backlights the beasts and they circle in for landings. It is a great excuse for sitting on the east end of your lawn drinking a beverage or savoring a cigar. They generally nest in sandy soils that are slightly elevated above the surrounding lawn.

I should pull some more weeds today and cut some wood but I think I need another cup of coffee first. This is the kind of morning when I would walk the property with Zeus and we would discuss the important things in life.

Can do, will do

One of my brothers was grousing about his in-laws.

They were staunch union members and their conversations were as predictable as the tunes you can play on a piano with one unbroken string.

"Everybody in the United States could be in the middle-class if they just joined a union."

Because this particular brother is a peace-maker, he kept his mouth shut.

An interesting thing about keeping your mouth shut is that your brain works twice as fast as when your gums are flopping. The following is what he could have said but chose not to.

Lines of demarcation

One of the hallmarks of unions (and professional associations) are strict lines of demarcation regarding the qualifications required to do any kind of work.

In a union factory, an equipment break-down will require an electrician to address any electrical items. It requires a pipe-fitter to address any issues that arise during the repair that involve tubing or pipe that moves air, gas, water, oil or waste. It requires a tool-maker to address any issues involving bearings or tooling that touches the parts. It requires a millwright for any issues that involve conveyor parts and the portions of the equipment that does not directly touch the parts. It requires a building-repair-general tradesman for any issues that might involve the concrete in the floors or footings. 

The work stops whenever another trade must be called. They stand around until the Fluzenbech Calibrater tradesman shows up if the Fluzenbech got bumped while the building-repair-general was jackhammering a hole in the floor.

My brother's in-laws would greet this information with glee. "Look!!! Five families are now in the ranks of the middle-class" as if this was a good thing.

The reality is that the production line that could be producing hot-dogs or Cameros or other consumer items is silent until all of the tradesmen show up. It could be as simple as splicing a broken hose but under the rigid lines-of-demarcation can only be fixed by a journeyman pipe-fitter. Even though the issue announces itself and any reasonably able-bodied 6th grader (boy or girl) can fix the problem.

My brother's in-laws think that unions magically create wealth when, in fact, they redistribute it and...in the long run...reduce the creation of it.

There are some "union plants" that have a "can-do, will-do" policy. During a breakdown during regular production hours, an electrician or a tool-maker can splice a broken water or air hose BUT...it comes at the cost. The pipe-fitter is scheduled to work over-time (time-and-a-half) to replace the spliced hose(s) during the next non-production day. The line keeps running. The pipe-fitter gets more $$$ in his pocket.