Weather, work-notes and planning ahead

I got off to a slow start today. For some reason I have a lot of sore muscles.

The big news is that starting Monday, the weather-guessers are predicting peak heat-indexes over a hundred degrees (F) for four days in a row. I know my readers in TX, OK, LA, AZ etc. are chortling. For you guys, that is a balmy day in April.

Heat indexes over 95(F) get my attention and I plan my work to avoid them.

That means that Joe is a busy-beaver this weekend.

I watered the new trees in the Upper Orchard today. They don't need it now but the models predict that the heat-dome event will suck 1.5" out of the upper soil levels. So, I gave each new tree a 4 gallon drink of water with 300 PPM of nitrogen fertilizer.

I put out some new 110 body-grip traps to let them rust and to get the squirrels used to them. I smeared some peanut butter on the posts where they are mounted. The traps were mounted but not armed. 

I will be pulling weeds in the potato patch tomorrow. I am keeping a close eye on the soil moisture and may till tomorrow afternoon.

I will be erecting a cattle panel for the cucumbers to climb on.

If I get exceptionally motivated I will cut some grass. I really need to take a break from physically demanding work to recover.

I am thinking of watering the gardens on Sunday. The heat-dome will stress the power grid and there is no point in putting it off.

On the plus side, the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, squash and cucumbers should explode in size. They all love heat.

Grafting notes

The TB hazelnut grafts are already pushing buds but the Grand Traverse are not.

The Stearn mulberries I grafted above the Upper Orchard are not pushing buds. The Silk Hope I grafted in Eaton Rapids are.

The peaches (Indian Free) grafts are not breaking bud. The scion I got from (name of nursery redacted) were puny.

Most of my walnut grafts are sulking or dead. The first successful walnut graft I ever made didn't break-bud until July, an honest six weeks after I made it. I was very surprised!.

The pear trees (and the grafts on them) on the bottom-half of the Hill Orchard died. I suspect walnut toxicity. 

The quince that were planted in the rows with the pears seem to be alive, so that warrants attention. Quince is very late blooming and avoids frosts. It is way too soon to make any generalizations, but it would be valuable to have a late-blooming fruit tree that is tolerant of walnuts and produces fruit that stores well. I read somewhere that in some places it was common to put a quince (fruit) in the closet or dresser drawers to make the clothes smell nice. Also, one thin slice of quince in an apple pie adds an interesting dimension to its aroma. 

All of the Golden Russet I grafted on Liberty for pollination have at least 8" of shoot extension. King David on Hazen has 6" of shoot extension.

Only one of the plums I grafted rootstock purchased from (name redacted) is alive. I suspect the rootstock is dead since they aren't pushing shoots from the root collar. 

  

Fake News Friday: Dallas Cowboys edition

"Come on, guys. I just need two more yards"

Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys Football team vehemently denied that they were engaged in serious negotiations with Kamala Harris as the replacement for current head coach Brian Schottenheimer.

"Lookit," Mr. Jones said "the Cowboys organization is results-oriented and we don't accept excuses. Our next coach will be a PROVEN winner and will be the kind of coach who motivates players and generates passion in our fans. He or she will have the deepest and most detailed understanding of everything related to American football."

"I mean, VP Harris is like a perfect fit but she is more of a lacrosse or soccer head-coach than a football coach." 

Polymarket is currently listing Harris as the leading contender as the next Cowboy's coach with 6:13 odds of securing the job. 

Miss Daisy report and "What is a gallon of gas worth?"

Driving Miss Daisy went fine.

I was able to negotiate the hazards of East Lansing traffic and I killed some of the time in the bagel shop next to the PT shop. I ate a chocolate-cheesecake muffin and people-watched while waiting.

Miss Daisy is very pleased with the intake session and with her PT person. The PT person was overwhelmingly positive. "Oh! You have excellent muscle tone." and "Very good baseline range-of-motion".

It is awesome when a patient goes into PT and they are not starting from 200 yards behind the starting-line.

Oil

I got to thinking about what five gallons of gasoline or diesel fuel is worth.

Back in the middle-1980s, automotive engines that had BSFC numbers of 0.40 pound of fuel consumption per horsepower-hour were as common as house-flies. Small engines are inherently less efficient because they lose more heat to heads and cylinder walls relative to engines with larger cylinders. The "adiabatic" i.e., no heat loss, expansion of the heated gasses in the cylinder are less-adiabatic.

Since I am too time-stressed to research BSFC numbers for small engines, let's assume that the best you can do is about 0.60 pounds of fuel per horse-power hour.

A gallon of gas weighs about six pounds.  Six divided by 0.60 gives you an upper-limit of 10 horsepower-hours of work. 

A gallon of diesel weights seven pounds and the engines are potentially more efficient because their greater compression ratio can squeeze more "adiabatic expansion" out of each cycle.

This is not a traditional BSFC map. It charts thermodynamic efficiency. Most efficient region is the gray plateau on the upper-right portion of the surface. Idling and partial load are the narrow strips in the lower-center portion.

Matching the load to the engine's output is a major issue. Peak efficiency is only achieved at relatively high loading. That is, near open throttle at medium-to-high RPM. 

A motor powering a generator that has little load will not give you 10 hp-hr per gallon of gas! A motor running an irrigation-pump (continuous duty) that is intelligently sized for the application will come close to giving you 10 hp-hr per gallon. Most other applications will fall somewhere in the middle.

Food/gardening

The decal on the engine that drives my rototiller claims to be a 6.5hp engine.

It rarely takes all 6.5hp to move the tines of the tiller through the soil. Consequently, I am not going to get the work of one-horse cultivating soil for ten hours out of one gallon of gas.

However, I might get the equivalent amount of work of a horse working for three hours cultivating. An added bonus of the tiller is that it takes less space to maneuver it at the ends of the rows. That is a big deal when you have to fence your garden against wildlife.

And that jibes fairly closely to what I see in terms of how often I have to fill the gas tank. I need to refill the gallon tank after every three times I use it for weed-control where it is a quick, shallow pass and the soil is not laced with mature, woody, plant roots.

Five gallons of fuel, if dedicated to running a tiller, would be more than enough to keep a very large garden mostly weed-free for the growing season. How large? 

If two gallons of gas is enough for six passes with the tiller over 6000 square feet of midwestern loam, then five gallons of gas would suffice for 15,000 square-feet or 1/3 of an acre. That should be more than enough to keep a family of six in vegetables even if the rains were not-the-best.

If the rains ARE good, there will also be a surplus that can be shared with family or traded for other items that are needed. 

Presented without comment

 

Tired. And when it happens a second time, it is called "re-tired"

 

A rare (very rare) picture of Eaton Rapids Joe in action

Yesterday's adventure was disassembling and transporting a combination swing-set and playhouse. There were several complications.

One of those complications was that a real, live princess was in the play house performing the sound-tracks of Moana and Zootopia 2  the entire time it was being disassembled. Who needs a radio when they have a four-year-old entertaining them.

Another complication was that Southern Belle, the buyer of the playhouse, struggled to find a vehicle that could pull the trailer she had borrowed.

First she was going to use her van, but then the owner of the trailer nixed that idea. Her minivan can pull 2000 pounds. The trailer, dry, weighed 2400 pounds.

Then we were going to use my truck but I couldn't get the cover off of the connector for the trailer harness.

At that point, I figured the mission was scrubbed for the day and went back home to work.

An hour later I got a call. Southern Belle had driven to Handsome Hombre's place of employment, found his truck in the parking lot and swapped vehicles.

"Persistence" is one of Southern Belle's super-powers. 

Since there are only two seats in HH's truck and since there were three of us, Southern Belle, Quicksilver and me, we took two vehicles.

Quicksilver was enchanted with the structure. Within seconds she was had climbed inside and was acting out Moana's swinging from the mast of her catamaran while belting out the song that went with that scene. She sang the entire time we were working.

"Able to entertain herself" is one of Quicksilver's super-powers. 

Disassembling the structure required a specific sequence and many awkward positions. Some of the bolts required an Allen wrench on one end and a 9/16" hex on the other. Southern Belle wanted to leave the structure in modules, so we split the two-story structure into its two, separate towers and lugged them up-grade from the back-yard to the road.

Not to belabor the point, but the yard was landscaped with pine trees and shrubberies and a red maple, all of which impeded our progress.

I am only guessing, but I suspect my end of the towers (the roof ends) was in the neighborhood of 125 pounds and SB and Justin's end was heavier. 

Justin is the son of the home owner and a recent college grad. He was awesome. He ran and found us tools we had not thought to bring...like a shovel. He helped carry the towers to the road. He even chuckled at some pretty awful "Dad jokes".

The swing-set, slide and other frippery and one tower went into the trailer.

The other tower went into the back of my truck. I had to put a flag on it because 36" stuck out of the back end of the 8' bed.

The home-owner gave us juice boxes to celebrate the sale of the structure and he gave Quicksilver a new-in-box mermaid doll!

The drive to Southern Belle's house was uneventful. We took back-roads and stayed below 50 mph.

Today's work ticket

Today's work ticket involves Driving Miss Daisy.

The family friend who had surgery last week needs to be driven to an assessment. Since the friend is not cleared for driving and since her husband needs to work...I got the job.

I can use a day of light-duty. 

When you gave the regulators EXACTLY what they asked for and nothing more

Lowell commented on the Copper Toxicity post:

"Switching to another polymer would force EPA emissions recertification of every vehicle line."

So was the problem really a lack of a material, or a government regulation? 

In the current environment, it is not enough to meet the written letter of the regulations.

In one instance, the test (which specifies that it is to be run on a dynamometer) passed with flying colors. The vehicle also proved to be suprisingly peppy and responsive on public roads in the hands of the consumers.

The customers LOVED it.

One of the calibration "coders" noticed that the powertrain control module knew if the hood was up or if it was closed and the primary latch was engaged. The calibration may have accidentally installed two sets of software, one to run when the hood is up...like when it is on a dynamometer, and another set of software to run when the hood was closed.

Some busybody within the organization ratted out the quirk to the EPA and the SHTF.

In another case, VW calibration engineers noted that the European emissions test had a rigorously defined "path" and that there were no wide-open accelerations anywhere in it. From there, it was observed that if the customer had a sudden need for speed...say while passing somebody on a twisting, two-lane road, it would be really spiffy if the exhaust-gas recirculation was shut-off and the injection volume deviated from the Euro-emissions map.

From there, it was a few short steps to the realization that there are very few labs that are certified to perform EU emissions testing and the vehicles, by that point, all had GPS. And by the letter of the law, the data validating compliance to EU emissions regulations had to be collected at the certified labs.

That clever bit of engineering and careful reading of the regulations ended up in a massive recall...even though the vehicles met the law as-written. 

Clearly, my sympathies are with the manufacturers. Regulators have to actually request what they want otherwise it becomes an endless guessing game and countless Mother-May-I requests.

Secondary containers

Mrs ERJ was taken aback by my choice of water bottles.

She suggested that I label them in case I get stopped by the local police while traveling to one of my off-site workplaces.

That seemed like a good idea. 

Making progress, Fauci, Iran and Currants

The chestnut trees are pollinating locally. 1050 b50 Growing degree days.

American Elderberries are just past peak bloom. 

I toured my potato patch this morning and could not find any CPB larva. I looked specifically at the plants where I took pictures the day before.

I fertilized Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre's potato and sweet corn patch. I saw one adult CPB and squished it.

0.4" of rain is predicted for tomorrow. That will move the fertilizer to soil around the corn and potato's roots.

I got the new engine installed on the old mower. I opted for the 5/16" Grade 5, through bolts with nuts, lock washers and regular washers. I had to drill one more hole through the deck to access a through-hole on the engine casting. Next time I will make a template using brown paper and a crayon for rubbing to more precisely locate the hole. 

Now I need to install the old blade and adaptor, add oil and gas and see if it starts.

The other big news is that I assisted my buddy in pumping out his in-ground oil tank. It was quite a learning curve. I was a minor hero when I showed him how to use a flour-and-water dough to seal leaks around the fitting on the suction side of the pump. The barbed-fitting was some weird metric diameter and the closest Imperial tubing didn't crush down with the heater-hose clamp.

It took us at least 40 minutes to suck the first five gallons out of the tank, lug it to the storage barrel and pour it in. By the time we ran out of light, we were down to less than 10 minutes per five-gallon jug.

"But why didn't you just pump it into the barrel?" you might ask?

Limited access, bumpy terrain, short hoses. Also the guy who was doing most of the work was strong, stubborn and not very bright. Definitely my kind of people.

There comes a time in every project when it is time to shoot the engineers and go into production.

Fauci

Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci for all Federal crimes he may have committed prior to January 20, 2025.

A presidential pardon carries no legal weight in state courts. State courts  try people accused of breaking state laws. Ergo, Fauci can still be tried at the state level. Reckless endangerment, anybody?

And if the plane Fauci is flying on lands in a foreign country, he can be tried in those countries. As many sailors have learned, Spanish, French and Italian Polize have no obligation to extend the presumption of innocence we take for granted in the Untied States.

Iran

If I look at no information other than a chronological stream of verifiable events, I would have to conclude that Iran no longer has a functioning government but had devolved to the level of war-lords.

The media portrays Iran as a cohesive, functioning government but the disjointed, working-at-cross-purposes cascade of chaos suggests that there is no viable chain-of-command and every imam, mullah and general is gunning for the pole position in the race to become the new leader.

That is a risk when you employ "Decapitation" tactics. There are advantages in terms of leverage and lower risk to our troops. But there are also downsides. 

Black Currant Leaves for Herbal Teas

The earliest red currants are just starting to ripen. Red currants are purdy when they are ripe.

According to Coon's Berry Farm near Midland, Michigan, this is prime time to collect and dry Black Currant leaves for use in herbal and flavored "black pekoe" based teas.

If you like herbal teas now is the best time to collect black currant leaves. The leaves are quite tender due to the abundance of rain we have had this season, with a high content of aromatic oils which gives them that distinct earthy black currant fragrance. We will be open for black currant leaf picking this week, Thursday through Sunday (June 25-28) 9 am to 3 pm. 

I wouldn't have chosen "earthy" as an adjective. To me they smell like "spruce needles" with a "fruity under-tone".

If drying Black Currant leaves sounds like too much work, Impra tea makes a yummy blend you can buy on Amazon. It might seem expensive at first glance, but you get 200 cups of tea for the price of three cups of foo-foo coffee at Stellabux.