Fixing fences

There is a sequence of scenes in the moving Facing the Giants where a man walks into the high school football coach's office unannounced and quotes a bit of scripture at him. The man who walked into the office works at the (Christian) high school and prayed over each student's locker, asking for God's intercession. We will call him The Chaplain even though the movie never really defines his role.

The coach thinks for a few seconds and then pursues The Chaplain and asks for clarification. Not only is the coach's team struggling, he is facing problems in his marriage.

The last 45 seconds of the clip, starting at 1:15, The Chaplain explains why praying isn't enough.

"There two farmers who desperately needed rain for their crops to grow. Although both farmers prayed for rain, only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it.  

The Chaplain asked, "Which one trusted God to send the rain?" 

The Coach responded, "The one who prepared," 

"God will send the rain when He's ready. You need to prepare your fields to receive it," says Mr. Bridges.

Fixing fences

In my case, preparing the fields means getting the fence ready to receive calves.

As an example of high-speed karma, the trailer I repaired is sometimes borrowed by a local cattle farmer to transport calves to market.  Obviously, with a hole in the floor it was not going to be much use to him.

He received word that A.) The trailer was fixed, B.) I was the guy who did it, C.) I was in the market for two calves. 

Information also flowed in the opposite direction. I was given his phone number and informed that he might have a (one) calf to sell me.

I was walking in my pasture with tools in hand when I got a text from him that started "I'm fixing to get busy so now would be the best time to call me"

We talked for a bit. Yes, he does have one calf that is not spoken for. He told me the breeding (mostly Angus), the weight and the price. I verbally committed to buy it.

The dominoes are falling in a very good way.

"El-Sayed will Protect Healthcare"

I picked up the anvil on Wednesday. That involved driving from Eaton Rapids to Mount Pleasant, Michigan. That is a drive of about 90 miles.

Interstate 27 had been carpet-bombed with el-Sayed billboards.

Because they were on a rotation of three, basic signs, I had time to read the small print as I passed each one, a few words at a time.

"El-Sayed will Protect Healthcare"

The fine print elaborated that he will, specifically, protect Medicaid.

Upon returning home, I learned that Medicaid eligibility will have some strings attached staring in 2027. The able-bodied slacker living in his mother's basement will have to work at a job (a requirement that will not impact the working-poor) -or- show up for 80 hours of volunteer work a month or be a full time student of training.

These requirements do not apply to parents of young children or a few other, narrow carve-outs.

So the implication is that he will support the people who think that they are too good or too delicate to work (or too proud to volunteer) at the expense of the guy/gal who is working his ass off, paying taxes and paying rent or making a house payment.

Implications 

The practical implication of the new Medicaid requirements for many of my readers is that starting January 1, 2027 there will be a vast increase in the number of people who will be motivated to volunteer. 

Many of you are affiliated with a church, a food-pantry or a school. Rather than be caught flat-footed when people start asking to volunteer, you can put some thought into the "problem" ahead of time and skim the cream-of-the-crop as they show up by already having your volunteer-work configured to match up to the applicants' requirements.

By my reckoning, the first people to show up will be the choicest workers. The organizations that are not prepared to use them in January will lose them to organizations that had more foresight.

Consequently, you might want to spend the next couple of months thinking about how you can productively engage a volunteer(s) for 20 hours a week*. Perhaps they can be "Reading Buddies" for young students. Perhaps they can do basic lawn-mowing and grounds maintenance. Perhaps they can team-up with an elderly driver and make food deliveries.

A couple of the details of the requirements come into play. 

One is that hours from several different organizations can be blended to hit the 80 hours-a-month requirement so several churches (for instance) can pool their needs to provide the required number of hours. 

Another consideration for the "Reading Buddies" is that the position becomes more attractive if it is year-round gig rather than just during the school year, otherwise, the volunteer must scramble to find another gig through the summer.

* Volunteers who are not engaged in productive work become behavior issues. Better to engage them for ten hours a week of always-have-something-to-do than to engage them for twenty hours with ten hours of stand-around time. 

Woodpiles and apple varieties

Woodpile report

The slab the wood is resting on is 12' wide and the stack is a freckle shorter than 48" tall.

We got about 1-1/2 face-cords of firewood split to kindling size* and stacked yesterday.

Quicksilver helped with the restacking. It was getting pretty close to her nap-time and I suggested that we could finish later.

She was adamant. She wanted to keep working until the job was done. So, we finished stacking everything that had been split. If she maintains that stick-to-it attitude then she will go places. 

I am even more impressed with using an old tire to hold the chunks to be split upright. Not only does hold them upright and keep them from scattering, it slows down the head of the maul as it approaches the bottom which reduces the wear-and-tear on the handle when I have to "reach over" other chunks to hit a piece on the interior of the bundle. 

* The fireplace insert we have is unforgiving about the size of the wood we put into it. Mrs ERJ informed me that 16" of length and 4" in the widest dimension is about the limit. It also prefers at least one edge to not be covered with bark.

Fortunately, I still have a fair amount of ash which is a wood that splits very easily. My supply will eventually run out and I will be switching to Black Locust, walnut, poplar and random softwoods.

So far, the insert has not been very fond of running 100% Black Locust. It really wants a bit of gopher-wood to help it to ignite.

"Success" will be claimed by a hundred fathers while you will own 100% of your failures

Perhaps that is why we can learn more from our failures than our successes, the cause-and-effect is not diluted.

That assumes, of course, that you do have some successes. If all you have in your life is an unending string of failures, it is difficult to learn anything.

Photo from ARS GRIN website

Consider the apple variety Reinette Simirenko. According to Grokipedia 

"The Reinette Simirenko apple underwent rapid adoption in Soviet horticulture during the early to mid-20th century, following its official inclusion in the USSR State Register of Breeding Achievements in 1947. Valued for its reliable yields, early ripening, and superior storage capabilities, the variety quickly became a staple in commercial production, with trees capable of producing up to 100 kg of fruit from 10-year-old specimens on vigorous rootstocks."

The variety's cultural prominence was further highlighted by its use in Soviet space missions, where cosmonauts consumed Reinette Simirenko apples during flights, including a notable instance in 1978 that symbolized national pride in domestic horticulture. 

The Soviets proudly claimed that Reinette Simirenko was a native variety that originated in an obscure province in the southern part of the Soviet Union (Ukraine) in 1895. That is what the politicians said, anyway.

The personal notes of the horticulturist who introduced the variety was less specific. He left the possibility open that it might have been a graft that had lost its label. Yes, Virginia, that happens to every fruit grower. I, too, have mystery varieties growing in my orchard(s).

In the west, it is now nearly-universally believed that Reinette Simirenko is identical to Wood's Greening, an apple that was first recorded as being widely grown in northern New Jersey around 1860 which predates the Soviet claim by 35 years. The speculation is that Platon Simirenko may have obtained scion from a fellow fruit growing enthusiast in the U.K. who was trialing varieties that originated in "the colonies". Not to be out-shown by the Soviets, the British also claim it as Wood's Greening say they developed it and the Italians claim it came from Italy and call it Renetta Walder.

A look at DNA is not particularly helpful. Simirenko is slightly more similar to "Alexander" apple (a Ukrainian apple) than to "Winesap" a variety from New Jersey, but neither of them is a very close match to Simirenko sharing 5-of-18 and 4-of-18 SSR data points.

Afanasy's brother Timothy is the pragmatist. If an apple variety is a "dog" in their orchard, or if it does not keep well in their root cellar or if nobody who lives there likes how it tastes, the tree gets grafted over to varieties that work better for them. The name on the tag is almost meaningless.

Bonus images

Excessive use of the word "should" is a verbal cue that somebody lives in a fantasy-world. That person is likely to be perpetually angry because the observed reality rarely conform to their fantasy. 

 

Works for sleep apnea, too. Mrs ERJ informs me that my snoring now sounds like the gentle purr of a small-displacement, two-stroke engine trolling along.

Raising children to be orphans

When a father teaches his kids

A six year-old girl picking apples

This screen-grab is from one of the "Dacha video" channels that I follow. The property is approximately 4 acres in size and food from it supports 15 people (according to what Afanasy, the narrator, said in a video when they were butchering a steer).

The dacha is approximately 30 miles northwest of Kharkiv, Ukraine and 10 miles south of the Russian/Ukraine border.

While it might seem very dark, Afanasy and his wife are raising their children to be orphans. They are very intentionally, and intensively passing on the life-skills that those children might need to survive without them.

That is a night-and-day difference from how most Americans either helicopter parent or ignore their children and allow them to feral/free-range and then toss the task of teaching their children "over the wall" to the professionals. 

For most of our history as a species, parents had very little time to pass skills on to their children due to our short life expectancy. A child might be born to a sixteen year-old and both mother and father were dead before that child was sixteen. So, our genetic coding is to be a sponge for useful knowledge in the first years of our (extended) lives, years that are now mostly-wasted scrolling on tablets and watching animated princesses and mermaids.

Link to the video at the 4:19 mark. I ported you in where he is talking about he advantages of injection molded, plastic crates for storing apples. One factor that he did not talk about is the ergonomics of the plastic crates. Because they are wider in the direction of shoulder-to-shoulder, and shallower than most wooden crates, the center-of-gravity when full is closer to your spine and they are much easier on the back to pick up and carry.

He starts training his children on how to pick apples without damaging the trees and how to grip them and put them into the buckets without bruising them.

At the 6:56 mark he is showing how to twist and lift the apples off the branch (although he is not narrating about that).

At the 8:25 mark he is working with his six year-old (my guess regarding age) daughter. First he demonstrates (while talking) then he inspects her as she works. Finally, he affirms that she is doing it to his satisfaction. We communicate our expectations by what we inspect.

At the 9:06 mark it is clear that his children crave his approval and are proud of their skills.

As modest as her harvest is at this point, it still represents two-weeks worth of apple consumption for her...and she is just getting started.

At the 13:30 mark, Afanasy is handing his youngest daughter (about 2 years-old) apples and she is transferring them to the bucket. His main purpose is not to get work out of her (frankly, she is slowing him down). It is to train her.

Afanasy described an apple-picking apron that he used in a commercial orchard. Link to a similar apron. Note: The apron is not shipped with the model wearing it.

 

Great weather for working outside

I want to get in about three hours of splitting and stacking wood today. The fly in the ointment is that I have to unstack the wood before I can split it. Then restack it.

One-hand-washes-the-other, impact velocities, splitting wood and etc.

Stock trailers

One of the roadblocks I ran into in getting livestock to graze our pasture is the lack of access to a stock trailer.

I reached out to some of the people I know who are effective at networking and one of them got back to me. They have a neighbor who has a trailer and they would consider renting it out but the last horse that it had hauled had broken one of the rotted-out floor-boards.

After learning what time the neighbor was usually home from work, I went over and introduced myself. Indeed, they thought very highly of my contact and any friend of hers was a friend of theirs. The only problem was the flooring.

I suggested that I was retired and perhaps to cement-the-deal, that I take it upon myself to repair the floor.

$86 later, I had knocked out six 2"-by-10", 5' pieces and replaced them with new. 

My investment in this trailer is quite literally a "stock option". 

Brass prep proceeds apace

A 69gr, Sierra .224" Tipped GameKing launched at 2600fps will arrive 200 yards downrange at 2100fps and it will have a mid-range apogee of 2.4" if sighted in for 200 yards.

Those velocities are very comfortably within the range of impact velocities that a modern cup-and-core bullet will A.) Expand and B.) Hold together.

Is a .223 Remington the greatest deer cartridge in the world? Nope. But with the right projectile and a patient hunter, it is far from the worst.

For future reference, a 55gr, Hornady  .224" softpoint launched at 2800fps will also arrive 200 yards downrange at 2100fps with a mid-range apogee of 2.2".

Splitting wood

I started splitting wood by hand this morning. It felt good to be doing it. That is why you didn't get a mid-day update.

Lifting notes

I went through the warm-up. Everything was fine.

I did the first set of 205 pounds. Everything was fine.

I did the first lift of the second set and something felt off. I did the second rep and something wasn't right.

I packed it up and went home. Some days are like that.

Physical conditioning at 67 years-old is more about avoiding injury and setbacks than pushing-through.

Feed conversion ratios

Catfish: 1:1

Broiler chickens: 1:1.8 (1.8 pounds of feed turns into 1.0 pounds of live chicken)

Tilapia 1:2.0

Grass Carp 1:2.0 

Turkeys 1:2.5

Swine 1:3.5 

A few thoughts

The weight of the feed is "dry weight" and the weight of the meat animal is "wet weight". The "dry weight" of the body is approximately 40% of the total weight. So our champion catfish, on a dry-weight basis, has a conversion ratio of 1:2.5 and all of the other alternatives also suffer.

Typically, much of the weight of the animal is lost to processing...hide, guts, fluids dripping on the floor, bones. I don't have a conversion ratio for eggs, but the low processing losses are in its favor. Points in favor of modern, industrial meat-processing is that almost none of the animal goes to waste; even the feathers and hair can be hydrolyzed in HCl and used to provide umami flavoring for ramen noodles!

Traditional small-holdings didn't feed animals large amounts of high-quality feed. They might have fed some grain for energy and garden-and-kitchen waste, but the animals were also expected to forage for some of their own vittles. The traditional method of raising animals used them as one more net to capture human-quality nutrients before waste was returned to the soil. 

Still alive

Busy prepping brass this morning.

I will post something mid-day. 

New Kanji for "lack of situational awareness" proposed

"Oblivious" or "Completely lacking in situational awareness"

Robert commented that the Kanji for "noisy" is archaic and obsolete.

Always wanting to help a brother, I updated the Kanji for modern times. 

Brush, pallets, turkeys and an inspiring email

Brush control

Asian bittersweet climbing up a fishing pole.

Yesterday was another day of cutting brush followed with cut-stem application of herbicide. Much of what I am cutting has been cut before and is multi-stemmed.

I don't inherently dislike multi-stemmed trees that sucker. They have a place and a function. When they are outside of their place, then they are a weed.

Today will be more of the same. 

Breaking down pallets

It takes time. My biggest concern is being mindful of nails.

One of the newer pallets must have come from Asia. One of the stringers that the slats were nailed to was extremely heavy and figured. It would make good knife handles or, maybe, cutting boards. I will get a mass density and some pictures today, God willing.

The days are getting shorter

I am noticing. I cannot get as much done.

The leaves are falling. I can see the squirrels in the walnut trees.

I saw five deer yesterday.

Heritage turkey breeds

I am contemplating adding a small number of turkeys to our operation.

My preference is toward the more natural colored breeds like Bourbon Reds, Narragansett, Bronze or Black Spanish primarily to not attract attention from predators. Much of what I end up with will be heavily influenced by what will be available in May of 2027.

Do any of you raise or know of people raising heritage turkeys? All thoughts will be appreciated.  

I got an email yesterday

One of my readers stepped up and volunteered to lead "a Project" at the local high school. The team of students planted three apple trees on the school property.

He sent me an email with some pictures.

One of the (many) things that I think he did spectacularly well is that he gave the students ownership.

A cynical thought

The mainstream media is reporting that the chances of the Republican candidates has evaporated and that they have zero chance of retaining control of the Senate and House of Representatives.

My first thought questions their basis. Polls are totally trash. Many people who plan on voting refuse to answer random phone calls.

My more cynical thought is that if the Democrats don't crush the Republicans in the midterms, they have a "set-up" for rioting just like we see in France. They can claim "The Republicans stole the elections".

Regardless of which party wins, pray for America. 

Bonus link  When somebody promises violence, take them seriously.

A thought from Seth Capehart

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with" 

If you want to improve your life, be more selective in who you spend time with on-line as well as in meat-space and watch on TV.