Digging potatoes and visiting a farm-stand and a playground

I dug 100 feet of row in 73 minutes. That is substantially faster than the foot-per-minute I had been averaging. The difference is that I used the electric hedge-trimmer to clear the tall weeds off of the plot before digging.

My rate-of-digging was limited by heat and lots of bending over to move potatoes to the side so the next shovel full of dirt would not cover them up.

My lower back aches this morning but it is the kind of ache that goes away after moving and stretching.

I think I am running a little bit less than a pound of potatoes per foot of row. That is an estimate. When all goes well, I expect to get three times that amount.

Mrs ERJ tells me that we will have more than enough potatoes for our personal use.

Denny's Farm Stand

Yesterday, Quicksilver and I took a field trip to Denny's Farm Stand in Saranac, Michigan. No pictures were taken.

We purchased three pies and some donuts. Denise, the woman behind the counter was charming and gracious.

I had eaten a slice of their mixed-berry pie at a family event and it was awesome.

After visiting the farm stand we went to a playground just south of the Lake Odessa Fairgrounds. The equipment was squeaky-clean and there was a towel draped across the chainlink fence to dry the dew off of the slides and swings! The "gravel" was ground up tires so it was springy.

Quicksilver gave the donuts and the playground two-thumbs-up. 

They grow up so fast

Quicksilver marched into our house when she was dropped off this morning. She bee-lined to the book-shelf next to Mrs ERJ's reading chair and grabbed her phone. Then she came over to my recliner and hopped up into my lap.

She immediately started calling friends and having conversations with them, almost totally ignoring me. The conversations were animated and complete with hand an wrist motions. I was only able to understand every fourth word but the other party didn't seem to have any problem understanding what she was saying.

I took a picture of her after she put it into speaker mode. 

Random fungi pictures

Maybe some kind of bolete?

I am an absolute coward when it comes to eating wild mushrooms.

Bottom of the cap. Much wider than the width of my hand.

 

The stem

Mistakes were made

Yesterday, when the mechanic called to tell me that my truck needed two front-wheel bearings, he also mentioned that I needed to think about replacing the pads on the front brakes.

This morning, when I got dropped off to pay for the work and pick up the vehicle I said I wanted to schedule having the front brakes done.

Mike, the other mechanic in the shop said "I got time. I can gitter-done today."

I agreed that it made sense, while thinking it would have made more sense to have told them to do the work while the wheels were off for the bearing change.

I called my ride but didn't get an answer, so I started walking home. I was well hydrated, the temperature was mild, I was wearing trail-running shoes and I walk almost that distance every day.

I was off of M-50 in less than 20 minutes. Ten minutes later I crested a hill and was out-of-sight of houses. Fifteen minutes after that I was stepping off the gravel road to cut across a farm field. That is where things didn't work out as planned.

My memory was that the field I planned to walk across was planted to soybeans. The field I had access to was planted to corn. No problem. I will just follow the edge of the corn field northeast until I hit the soybean field.

Except when I got to the hunting blind in the corner of the field, the next field was also planted to corn. Whatever. I checked the compass on my phone (which is not all that accurate), took a bearing on a tree on the far side of the 1/2 mile long field and plunged into the corn. I immediately lost sight of the tree but at least I knew the rows were running North/South.

For those who aren't from farm country, corn is planted in rows that usually run the long dimension of the field with the exception of the ends which have rows that run parallel to the short dimension. It is much easier to walk in the direction of the rows which are typically 30 inches apart than it is to push across the rows which have corn plants every six-to-eight inches.

Palmer Amaranth and Waterhemp are very similar and they hybridize. Both of them are showing resistance to glyphosate herbicide.

This corn field was infested with Palmer Amaranth or Water-Hemp (a similar species of amaranth). And it was five-to-seven feet tall and it was pollinating. Batting a stem of it left a cloud of pollen at the same level as my face.

Side note here: If the weed is pollinating then it doesn't have seeds. Late August, future infestation  of some kinds of weeds can be controlled by cutting the stalks of some species of weeds even this late in the season.

I didn't have my eye-drops (Opcon-A) or any antihistamines on my person. I didn't have tissues or a handkerchief. I looked around and saw that the rows a scant 20' from me had corn that was much taller and far fewer weeds. I moved over seven rows and struck out for the far side.

In one way, the pollen that I am allergic to creates a quick reaction in my body. Primarily my eyes swelling and secondarily skin dermatitis. Even though I had been walking through that crap for a few minutes, I had no signs of an issue.

I looked at my watch. A half-mile is 10 minutes if I hustle. When I encountered a flowering head of amaranth, I didn't bat it out of the way, I gently moved it with my forearm.

After about eight minutes of walking in the corn, the corners of my eyes started getting itch. Close to the 10 minute mark, the direction of the rows changed 90 degrees. Then 40 seconds later I was out of the field.

Another aside: The soybean field was only fifty feet to the side of where I was walking. It turns out that the soybean field does not extend the entire distance.

Overhead image of the location. Green area is planted to corn. Yellow area planted to soybeans. Black spot that is circled is the deer-stand where I made the decision to strike cross-country

From there, the rest of the walk was uncomfortable. My eyes were both itchy and sensitive to light.

I had nothing clean to wipe my eyes. My shirt had also been bathed in amaranth pollen. I had been carrying Quick Silver's toy giraffe and blanket from the truck. Those were also both contaminated.

No issues with throat closing up. No hives. Just eye discomfort and my nose starting to run. I was about 3/4 mile from home.

Upon entering the house I grabbed the bottle of diphenhydramine and the Op-con A eye-drops and headed to the shower.

Lessons from the story

If you are subject to allergies then always carry meds with you that work well in YOUR body. Even when it is not "allergy season". For instance, I am very allergic to Orchard Grass pollen and for about one week at the end of May or early June, I have to be very careful. I got lazy and stopped carrying meds by mid-summer.

Your body changes and can become sensitized to different kinds of pollen or fungi after enough exposure. Challenges that were not a problem in the past can become a big problem in the future.

You might THINK you know the intimate details of your neighborhood but things change. Lots can get sold-off, blocking access to shortcuts. Farm fields can be resurveyed and the shape of it changes.

Compasses, even the crappy one on your smartphone are useful.

It is good to know how farmers plant fields. There are cases of children who became lost in fields and walked to the end of the row and then changed direction (within feet of a road) because the direction of the row changed. They were lost in those fields for MUCH longer than they needed to be.

Even if you have an X and a Y gene, it is possible to back-track and change your planned route. You don't have to tell anybody. Nobody is going to steal your man-card.

I did some things right (footwear, clothing, being hydrated, carrying a smartphone, choosing a low-traffic route). I also had the situational awareness to realize that the Palmer Amaranth infestation was more severe where the corn was not growing as well and shifted my path to the less-infested rows.

I did some things wrong...wandering into a field infested with Palmer Amaranth that is pollinating, being unaware of the subtle wrap-around nature of the corn field. I expect to be taken to task by Michael and Dan in comments for not turning around when I realized the P.A. was throwing clouds of pollen into the air when I vigorously batted them out of my way.

One point of discussion is that I had already been exposed to significant amounts of pollen before the fact clicked into place. If I had an anaphylactic reaction to it I would be toast without an epi-pen, even if I dialed 9-1-1. Walking back to the road would have just made it easier for the undertaker to collect my remains.

Human bodies are resilient. There was ot drama, no good-guy, no bad-guy. It was just "Shit happens and adults deal with it". I share the store for entertainment purposes and maybe you can be smarter than I am. I made the trip in about eighty minutes. Of course, after taking 50mg of diphenhydramine I had no ambition to do any work this afternoon.

Olive burgers: A mid-Michigan culinary treasure?

I was watching a video of a couple of guys from the United Kingdom who heard about Michigan and lake-effect snow and they called "BS".

Then they came here in the winter and toured the state.

Then they came back in the summer.

Near the middle of the video they mentioned iconic, Michigan cuisine. One of the items they mentioned was "Olive burgers", that is, hamburgers smothered with olives and then topped with melted Swiss cheese, and they pinned that culinary treasure to Lansing, Michigan.

Granted, many of our Greek and Balkan immigrants started restaurants, especially near the auto facories. 

I thought "Doesn't every place serve those?" I never saw what the fuss was about. I am more of a Club Sandwich kind of guy. If a restaurant can ruin a Club Sandwich then it is not worth eating there.

If all goes well, I will be dining with my siblings at Harry's Place on Lansing's west-side some time in the next week. I guess I will have to order an olive-burger. My sense of taste evolved over time. As a kid I found cantaloupe repulsive. Now I enjoy them.

Fine Art Tuesday

Berndt Lindholm was born in Finland in 1841. He died in 1914.

His painting depict scenes where life is spread very thinly: Stony beaches, rocks covered with moss, cows foraging in forests devoid of grass, clear water.

It is a world of hard-scrabble living and a society that does not tolerate slackers or conmen. 

Wheel-bearings and potatoes

The good news is that I turned around before I got on the freeway.

The great news is that when I called the mechanic and told him "My truck is howling. The right-front hub is warm" he said "Bring it in. I can fit it in."

I got a call a little bit later and my mechanic said "Both front wheel bearings are shot. We are waiting for parts. It will be ready by mid-morning tomorrow." And then he quoted a price.

I had the chance to talk over various scenarios with him when I dropped it off. I had already pre-approved replacing the bearings on both sides if one of them was trashed, operating on the assumption that both left and right side had traveled the same number of miles. 

Work tickets

I spent a half-hour cleaning off a concrete pad beneath an overhang.

I spent an hour pushing a lawn mower.

I tasted a seedling apple that I had grafted onto a tree in the Eaton Rapids orchard. It will be culled as will all of the seedling's sisters.

I delivered "samples" of Lehigh potatoes to two of my nephews who expressed an interest in them. If they enjoy them, then I shall supply them with more than a sample. If they say "Not my favorite", I will not supply them with Lehigh potatoes.

One of the nephews who expressed an interest in the potatoes is also a home-brewer. I might have some hops for him. Harvest season is accelerating. 

"Seven cities that will run out of food first"

There's another layer to New York that doesn't get enough attention. The city's restaurant infrastructure, which feeds a massive percentage of the population on any given day. Millions of New Yorkers don't cook. Their food supply is the Thai place downstairs, the deli on the corner, the pizza shop across the street. When those businesses lose power, those people don't just lose a convenience, they lose their primary food source. They may not even own a working set of pots and pans. The assumption that everyone has a functioning kitchen stocked with raw ingredients is a suburban assumption that has almost no bearing on how a huge chunk of New York (City) actually eats.  Source

 

Imagine somebody giving you 12 Ramen noodle packages or three boxes of "minute rice" or five pounds of potatoes and you have no way to cook them.

 

There are some efficiencies to cooking multiple meals in the same oven because the cost of heating it up is spread over more meals. But there are some fragilities when people lose the ability to prepare their own food. 

Harley Smith, Plant Researcher

About a year ago I noticed a gentleman who worked out at the same gym where Mrs ERJ and I walk and where I lift weights.

He would use some of the machines and then walk as a cool-down.

One day he was wearing a nerdy, chemistry tee-shirt and I made some kind of nerdy, off-the-wall comment about it.

It turns out that he is a semi-retired research scientist who specializes in formulating fertilizers for niche markets. Suppose you want to market potted mums that are more vividly red than any of your competitors or grow the most massive pumpkins imaginable. Harley is the man.

The last time we crossed paths he shared that he was even more specialized than I thought. He is a whiz-bang at hydroponics. Some of the reasons that is tricky is because soil automatically buffers pH and resident bacteria and fungi can make insoluble nutrients available to roots. You can't just mix random sources of various nutrients and expect them to stay soluble in the water. Some of them will want to combine into insoluble molecules and drop out of the water as sludge.

Furthermore, it turns out that he is a neighbor AND he produces a podcast. He was chuckling because his partner in many of the productions is an organic grower in Idaho while he is a wing-of-bat, eye-of-newt guy. And they both bring valuable insights to the party and both respect what the other can do.

With no further ado, here are Harley Smith's Youtube videos. There may be one-or-two random videos that leak into the mix because "Smith" is a common name...but most of them are his. If I was to recommend one video that is most likely to appeal to the broadest range of my readers, it is Microbial Inoculants and Compost Tea.