Country-girls (sorry, no pictures)

Picture, if you will, your humble scribe driving west on M-50 to the grain elevator to purchase some asparagus crowns.

I was following a truck that had a fork-truck tucked into the rear. I was impressed that the turn signals on the fork-truck were slaved to the signals of the mother-truck. It was indicating that it was going to turn left off of M-50 and into Eaton Greens subdivision.

As it turned, four, 12' long, 6x6 timbers tumbled off of the deck of the mother-truck completely blocking the eastbound lane of M-50.

Well, that was an accident waiting to happen.

I pulled over, flipped on my hazard lights and parked.

I had the second one moved off the road when a truck pulled over and an itty-bitty woman hopped out. "Need help?" she asked. She was wearing a "MOO-ville" tee shirt, jeans and sneakers.

I suggested that she could move the stringers and strapping while I moved the last two big pieces.

I looked up after dumping the third piece on the grass and she was holding up one end of that last piece. "Let's go!" she encouraged me. "I see some traffic coming".

I hustled on over and grabbed the other end and we tossed that piece beside the other three. She dusted off her hands and hopped back into her truck, all 5'-0" of her. Then she drove off.

I, on the other hand, turned around and drove into the subdivision to find the driver of the truck who lost his load.

He was a big, young guy and pretty obviously from-the-city. I explained that he had lost his load and that I had seen a itty-bitty country-girl move the pieces from the center of M-50 and toss them into somebody's yard (which was absolutely true of the stringers and strapping and partially true for the big pieces).

I can only imagine his surprise when he latched a hold of one of the 6x6s to throw it back onto the deck of his truck. Those pieces weigh about 150 pounds each. Those itty-bitty country-girls are strong!

Worms

After learning that the asparagus crowns would not be ordered until mid-April, I drove over to Southern Belle's to dig a trench. The plan was to bury the corrugated drain tile that carried rain from her gutters away from the foundation.

Quicksilver supervised while I dug.

She also collected earthworms. She had quite a handful in short order.

I suggested that if she wanted to use both hands that she could hold the worms in her mouth. She thought that I was a very funny guy.

It turned out that she had a plan. After collecting a bunch of worms, she went over to the chickens and fed them treats. The chickens and Quicksilver were both delighted.

For my part, I was able to get 50' of tile buried in 69 minutes. I did not complete the back-filling but put enough on it so it wouldn't go floating off if we get rain today. Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre can finish filling.

It also looks like I have a fishing-buddy; a country-girl who likes worms. 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Agony in the Garden I

Carl Bloch was a Danish artist who was born in 1834 and died in 1890.

He was commissioned to produce twenty-three paintings for the King's Chapel at Frederiksborg Castle which he painted between 1865 and 1879.

His wife died in 1886 leaving him with eight children to care for. He died four years later of cancer at the age of 55.

Suffer the Children come Unto Me

Agony in the Garden II

The Transfiguration

Peter's denials

The Crucifiction

The Burial of Jesus

Limping along

 

The weather is starting to look like "April"

It looks like today will be a good day to do some outdoor work but then the next week looks like inside jobs or maybe some fishing.

'Tis but a scratch. I am sure that if I pile on just a little more sail I can make it to shore...

I need a break. You guys tried to tell me but I was stubborn. My knees and elbows are complaining. Our kids were in athletics so I am familiar with R.I.C.E.

• Rest
• Ice/Ibuprofen
• Compression
• Elevate 

Cheating on the first element, rest, is counter-productive. The last three bullets control inflammation but our bodies need TIME to heal. But I am dancing in-and-out of small windows of time between weather and family responsibilities. Springtime waits for no man.

Right now, the discomfort on the inside of my left knee is the most debilitating. Torsional motion of my foot causes the most discomfort and it seems to flare up when I am dragging brush. I looked at the anatomy of the knee and it could be a lot of things complaining. The good news is that my body should be able to heal the problem if I give it time to heal. The bad news is that I am stubborn and don't want to rest, yet.

The middle ground is to hire Kubota to drag brush and to restrict myself to "light-duty" for a couple of weeks. 

Seeds started

Sweet peppers, Lovage, Broccoli and African Marigolds. The containers are repurposed empty gallon milk jugs. The caps are used to weight down the repurposed grocery bags until they get some condensate on their bottoms.

Three kinds of tomatoes 

A close-up of one of the tomato trays. The top of the soil measured 72 F this morning. I will check again after the sun rises.

Like every gardener in the history of the universe, I planted too many seeds. My plan is to germinate them in these smaller containers and then transplant to fifty-cell 10"-by-20" trays. Tomato plants make great indicators for the presence of walnut roots.

Today's tasks

Pot up the grape-cuttings that have been sitting in the hot-box for two weeks. The Vitis riparia cuttings are pushing their buds but don't show any sign of callousing or rooting on the bottom. The other cuttings show no signs of growth.

Dig a trench to bury corrugated drain-tile to carry water from a gutter down-spout away from the house. Rains are coming!

Make a trip to the grain elevator in Charlotte to buy more duck feed and to see if they have asparagus crowns in-stock. 

Children's books and Duck Eggs

Five "Children's Books" worth revisiting as adults. Ten minute run time.

• Charlotte's Web
• The Man who planted Trees
• The Wind in the Willows
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Peter and Wendy

Honorable Mention

• Stuart Little
• The Giving Tree
• Something From Nothing
• Where the Wild Things Are 

Duck vs Chicken eggs

Alas, I am not well enough informed to have opinions worth sharing.

The fact that I have a few ducks is entirely by accident. I thought Southern Belle wanted some ducks for her homestead, but I was mistaken. She had been rapidly expanding and wisely decided that she needed some time to sort out what was working and what was not-working before adding more complexity.

So, there I was with some ducks.

The person selling them was allergic to chicken eggs*. They got that sorted out after consulting with a doctor who specialized in allergies and no longer needed them. They sold them to me at a VERY attractive price.

The ducks had started molting (losing their feathers) and were not laying eggs. I decided to give them a two month vacation. On March first, I started adding two hours of supplemental light in the morning and I increased it by a half hour every four days until I started seeing eggs.

I don't eat that many eggs BUT last year my garden was hammered by snails.

One of my readers (probably Michael) quoted Bill Mollison. "You don't have a snail problem. You have a duck deficiency."

In my mind, my duck enterprise is justified by their future in controlling pests in the garden and any eggs and down and meat and baby ducklings they produce is a bonus. Chickens can also control pests but they are more likely to peck tomatoes and dig up newly-planted transplants.

Their shelter is a free (thank-you Craigslist) truck cap and a 5'x8' run made from Tee posts and 2"-by-4" welded wire fencing.

*According to the internet, which sometimes tells the truth, most of the allergens in eggs are in the whites. Sometimes, egg allergies can be avoided by only eating the eggs' yolks. The internet cautions that this might only be a temporary fix.

The internet suggests that duck eggs tend to have a higher concentration of the kinds of proteins that are most likely to cause problems but some of them are different proteins than the ones found in chicken eggs. If a person is allergic to the proteins found only in chicken eggs then they will be able to eat duck eggs...for a while. If they are allergic to the proteins shared by both kinds of eggs then they will have violent reactions to duck eggs.

If you are subject to allergies and feel adventurous, then tippy-toe your way along. Try very small portions. Know exactly where your inhaler or epi-pen is and where the bottle of diphenhydramine is. 

So far, egg production has exceeded expectation. I am feeding "Broiler mash" with 90 grams of ground limestone (calcium carbonate) per kg of feed mixed in  per day. That is 15 grams per heaping teaspoon (i.e. six heaping teaspoons per kg). That is for two Khaki Campbell girls, one Rouen girl and one Rouen boy. I am getting three eggs a day.

One surprise has been that duck eggs are slippery! They are significantly smoother and heavier than chicken eggs. You have to be minding your Ps-and-Qs to avoid dropping them. 

Bonus Picture

Shared by a friend of mine in Jackson County, Michigan. Chicken eggs on the left, goose eggs on the right.

Geese make excellent alarms against intruders and have been used to control grass in strawberries and other crops.

March 28, 2026 work report

 

A peony starting to push buds. 

Three hours time-on-task

• Cutting brush
• Dragging brush
• Digging holes
• Planting six gooseberry bushes

• Looking at dead trees

24" diameter at the butt. 30' from roots to where it is hung up in two Wild Black Cherry trees

I think my only real option is to pack 20 pounds of tannerite around the trunk of the cherry tree in the foreground and to touch it off from 100 yards away.

• Appreciating the signs of spring

Vernal Witchhazel (maybe)

A branch on a gooseberry bush

Willow catkins in the light of the rising sun

Fantasy destroys marriages

"...As of 2024, the refined divorce rate is approximately 2.4 divorces per 1,000 married women per year.."    -according to "Search Assistant"

Apparently the standard metric for measuring "divorce rates" in the United States is "number of divorced WOMEN" per 1000. 

That makes sense from one perspective. Every divorce produces two newly divorced people. So, if you are only counting the number of unions that dissolved, then you need to divide the total number of newly divorced people by two.

The focus on women is probably driven by the fact that divorced women are much more likely to demand "services" from the state than divorced men. Money makes the world turn and it is important to anticipate future demand for financial resources.

Hypothesis testing

Suppose it were possible to test the hypothesis that divorces almost always due to men oppressing women. That is, women are always the passive victims and men are always the active oppressor. That seems to be the foundational assumption by the judges and social workers who guide the divorce process in most states*.

If that is the case then the only way to "fix" the divorce rate is to improve men. 

It also suggests that marriages between two victims would have much better success rates marriages between victims and oppressors.

If only it were possible for two women to get married to each other...Hmmm...

Hey, wait a minute...they can.

Does anybody want to hazard a guess for the divorce rate for lesbian marriages? Answer below the fold....

Grab-bag and Danish Art

One of the bonuses of watching Quicksilver and seeing Southern Belle twice a day is that I have an outlet for food when I get carried away in the kitchen.

As a working woman, Southern Belle is delighted to take 2/3 of a pan of lemon bars off our hands. Ditto for a pot of beans or a pan of cornbread. That saves Mrs ERJ and I from eating cornbread and beans for seven days straight and gives her a break.

Data

I am officially throwing up my hands in disgust over "data". Politics and the fog-of-war triumphed, at least temporarily, over data-integrity.

I "get" that public figures must deliberately obfuscate their intentions during times of war. Biden screwed up when he allowed the actual time-table for the withdrawal from Afghanistan to be made public. U.S. military suffered 13 KIA in August of 2021 due to that "honesty".

Russian demographic pyramid. "Excess" males in the circled area is likely over-stated. Data from 2025.

Russian and Chinese data is always suspect. Russian data even more-so since the Ukrainian war. For instance, their demographic pyramid (Christmas tree, if you prefer) shows no indication of any casualties of young men. That is highly suspect.

With regard to the interesting comments that appeared in an earlier post, it was reported circa 2022 (and might even be true) that something on the order of 150,000 "Russian prisoners" were "recruited" and sent to the front-lines in Ukraine. It is speculated that the recidivism rate for those prisoners who volunteered will be very, very low.

A conversation with a baker

I had a conversation with a person who runs a bakery. I brought up the possibility of a spike in the price of sugar and asked if he had ever considered "options" or buying ahead.

He said they had done that several years ago but it didn't work out. Sugar storage requires temperature and humidity (especially humidity) control or the bags of sugar turn in to rocks.

Many of his products require dusting with sugar or measuring out precise amounts. Lack of precision in measuring results in runny glazes or sugar crystalizing out of the frosting. He paid more in labor and still got poor results...so he is back to 2x a week deliveries at whatever the spot prices are. 

Danish Art

I had a request from a reader to feature some Danish Art on the blog. I am happy to oblige:

 Random photos

A large chicken egg, top-center, bracketed by duck eggs. Duck eggs weigh about 80 grams vs about 55 grams for chicken eggs.

 

Every day is an Easter Egg hunt in some places