This Deep-State tool must be stopped

 

Headlines

 

I am getting ever-more frustrated with the media.

What, pray tell, do they think "the government" should be doing?

The line of reasoning is that people think of the government as an insurance company or a bank. The government auto-deducts tax money and people think it is sitting there for emergencies like this.

News flash: That money is GONE. To be more accurate, like a shopping junkie is living on new credit-cards granted by gullible lenders.

The government does not restore power. Linemen hired by utilities do. There are a finite number of them and there is a boat-load of issues to sort out.

Food? Water? Meds? Fuel? You are better off calling a friend outside of the most severely damaged areas and asking them to make a 400 mile round-trip mercy run.

Another headline

Southwest/Southeast: What is the difference?

Mainstream Media is riddled with factual and grammatical errors. The lack of care is painful to read.

Yes, I know that I also make errors but I do not get a paycheck and I try to acknowledge when I am presenting speculative material. Heck, it is a blog. You EXPECT opinions.

Bat-house, Mark-one

 

Looking at the loose-assembled bat-house from the bottom

The baffles are loosely laid in to check for fit. Each baffle has a 0.75'-by-0.75" ski on each side. The bottom baffle is 2" longer than the others to give the flying bats a "landing-pad".

Two-inch diameter holes are drilled through each baffle centered 5" from the top and the holes are staggered left-right-left-right. The holes are port-holes for bat travel and to spill heat (and ventilation) from cavity-to-cavity. My current plan is to vent out the back panel.

I still have to staple mesh to the sides of the baffles and make some decisions about how I am going pin the baffles into place. I am leaning toward drilling a 1/2" through-hole and simply pinning them. 

I also have to make a decision about what to do with the 1/2" air-space between the front of the house (not installed in the picture) and the top baffle. The options are to leave it open as a duct to generate and move warm air or to fill it with insulation. I am leaning toward "duct" or just open air-space. That will provided the most rapid heating during the morning.

The current plan is to coat the exterior with dark, solid deck-stain and then a coat of Thompson's WaterSeal. The roof will be corrugated metal with an air-space between the top of the bat-house and the bottom of the metal. I expect to have the metal extend 4" or 6" beyond the top of the bat-house. I intend to mount two of them back-to-back.

As you can see, this house is much smaller than the one shown in the earlier post. I don't think we get bat-colonies NEARLY as large as southern states. I will be thrilled if I get a dozen bats at each location: Eaton Rapids and The Property. Since bats have a slow rate of reproduction, that might take several years.

Comfort food and comfort books

I am eating a pulled-pork sandwich and rereading The Heretics of St. Possenti by Rolf Nelson for the nth+1 time.

Does anybody else have any guilty-pleasures?

When ERJ goes to a social event

The lovely Mrs ERJ and I went to a wedding yesterday.

It was not my favorite activity.

Too much loud noise. Too many bright, blinking lights. Too many people and too much chaos.

And that was just on the drive to the venue. There was a very large emergency-response on the corner of Canal Road and Windsor Highway on our way in.

The rest of the evening was a string of pearls: Short interludes of relative peace-and-quiet interspersed with noise, blinking lights and chaos. No gunshots were exchanged, so the event had that going for it.

A big tip-of-the-hat to Mrs ERJ. She had a pair of hearing protection in her purse that she let me use. Bless you, dear. Bless you!

The Groom's Party looked like they could have been cast members of the show Peaky Blinders. They had a definite "vibe".

I am very, very happy that young people have the desire and means to get married.

Bat pole

 

One nice thing about having a wood-lot is that when I get a yen to take on a project, I can walk out the door and harvest a 20' long pole.

This one is Black Locust and is 7" in diameter at the butt and 5" diameter at the top. Some back of envelope calcs suggest that it has a green-weight of about 250 pounds.

I muscled it to the fence that separate the wood-lot and the pasture and got the butt end of it a few feet into the pasture. Mrs ERJ lifted up the bottom of the fence while I tied the tow-strap to it and then dragged it with the truck.

It is not the straightest pole, but being Black Locust it should be durable. And the price was right.

My current plan is to make the bat-boxes based on interior dimensions of the storage boxes discussed HERE. They will be mounted with the long dimension vertical so the interior cavities will be 15-1/2" tall by 9" wide by 3/4".

I should be able to fit 4 cavities into it using either pallet wood or commercial 1-by for dividers. My target is to have the opening slots 0.75" or 19mm in Canadian even if the internal cavities are a bit larger. Narrow slots exclude more predators. I will not have safety netting below the box for the same reason, predators can perch on the netting.

There was an abandoned iron mine in northern Michigan that had been sealed off with hurricane fencing. The mine was used by thousands of bats and it was one of the prime places for them to hibernate during the winter.

The fencing was replaced after one of the biologists who was visiting observed multiple raccoons sitting on the fence and grabbing bats that flew to the fence and had to "walk through the holes" before resuming flight on the other side. The raccoons were grabbing the bats by the wings and biting off their heads-thorax and then discarding. The 2" mesh hurricane fence was replaced by welded concrete re-bar with openings large enough that the bats could fly through it.

Yes, I will put a metal collar around the pole but red squirrels are great jumpers and this will be in an orchard where trees might encroach on the pole and grow close enough to the pole for squirrels to make the jump. 

If I put the pole in the center of the Eaton Rapids orchard, there are ponds 1340' and 1400' away and a cattail marsh 1000' away. At The Property, if I put a pole in the middle of that orchard there is open water 700' away.

I wouldn't be surprised if bats find suitable cavities via echo-location.

General hints  (Source)

Virtually all kinds of bat houses were at least occasionally successful. But the best-used houses were:

• tightly constructed, caulked, and painted
• mounted 10 to 25 feet above ground on buildings or poles
• positioned to receive sun appropriate to local climates
• roosting chamber widths of ¾ to 1 inch
• sited within a quarter-mile of a stream, river, or lake
• located in areas where bats were already attempting to roost on or in buildings

Except in areas of extreme day-to-night changes, pairs of houses mounted back-to-back on poles in full sun, one facing southeast, the other northwest, are increasingly favored by America’s most experienced bat house users. Testing can pay big dividends.

In Florida, Ernie Stevens hung a bat house from a tree limb and attracted a nursery colony of 124 apparently desperate evening bats. When I convinced him to try mounting a pair of houses back-to-back on a pole in full sun, his original colony moved to the house facing northwest and expanded to over 300. These were joined by free-tailed bats in the warmer southeast-facing house. His resulting mixed colony included 800 bats!

In Louisiana, Bill Halloway began by mounting two houses on pine trees. No bats were attracted, so he moved them to a pole, mounted back-to-back. Bats promptly began moving in. Encouraged, he added another pair of larger houses on a pole, one black and one white, and ended up with a mixed nursery colony of 800 free-tailed and big brown bats, apparently due to a greater range of temperature options.

When kids have to go to work (Shaun the Sheep episode)

Our usual routine for when Quicksilver shows up at Oh-dark-thirty is for her to sit in my lap for four episodes of Shaun the Sheep while she wakes up. Each episode is six-minutes long. Most of the episodes are repeats but today we saw a new one that I thought was accurate.

What happens when a kid who is addicted to their smartphone works on a farm?

View video HERE 5:30 run-time

The behaviors shown in the video seem to peak when kids are 15. It takes them a while to figure out that when somebody pays them for their time, the other person OWNS that time and you are expected to do what they tell you to do.

 

Eleven "Keepers" is now the Limit

My oldest brother went fishing today on one of the small, local lakes.

He wanted to catch a bunch of bluegills (bream). September is HIS month for fishing. The barometer was dropping and  he knew he would do well.

His wife usually goes with him, but she has the flu and declined.

My brother was getting ready to slip the 12th slab-side into the mesh fish-basket when a gust of wind caught a corner of the stern and flipped the boat over. 

It was touch and go for a bit. He wasn't wearing his PFD. He got tangled up in the anchor rope. But big-bro is a steady guy. He sorted it out by untying the anchor and letting the rope slither around-and-through while he clung to the keel of the boat.

Then he got into his PFD and swam-towed the turn-turtled boat to shore but was unable to flip it back over.

His phone was soaked and in-op. He walked 0.8 miles to the closest neighbor and called his wife. She almost didn't answer because she did not recognize the number.

She called me. I might have fudged a little bit on the speed-limit on the way out there.

Big-bro was mostly dried off by the time I got there. He was frustrated because there were signs that he shouldn't have stayed on the water as long as he did. He was seeing waves breaking and the wind was about 15mph with gusts to twice that.

He lost his fishing pole and tackle-box and anchor and the 11 keepers that were in the basket.

Characteristic of my brother, he unhooked the fish that he was getting ready to put in the fish basket and let the fish go.

We are all very glad that it wasn't worse.

As humans, we like nice, tidy morals-to-the-story. I am not sure this story has that kind of message.

More than anything, mission-creep bit him, but so did the fact that so many atypical factors pushed him outside of his normal operating envelope. His bride was not there to counterbalance the boat and provide ballast. The wind increased in speed steadily through the day. Due to the wind-direction his normal fishing-hole was on the downwind side of the lake and out of the wind-break effect of the trees. Taken one-at-a-time they are not a big deal but today they were multiplicative.

And today, God was kind to my brother.

Bat habitats

The very large increase in codling moth damage in the Eaton Rapids orchard seems like an anomaly because we have rarely had much.

At two o'clock this morning, I had an "Ah-ha!" moment. Early this spring I removed the old, decrepit, seemingly un-used bat nesting habitat from our orchard. It was a skirt of black, roll-roofing around an abandoned-in-place utility pole. Some fence had been stapled to the pole...the pole which had rotted off at the base and was teetering and held up solely by that fencing. It looked like a widow-maker to me so I finished the job.

Since codling moths fly at night and are most active in the warmer, early evening it seems probable that newly emerging bats would mop-up the flying insects closest to their home first. Hence bat habitats (or boxes or homes) in the orchard makes a lot of sense.

The attraction of the skirting-type habitat is that it closely mimics the natural habitat found under the loose bark of a dead tree. The bats can clock around the center of the habitat to find the temperatures they prefer. That is a big deal as the sun can turn a habitat into an oven.

A quick review of the literature suggests that having multiple habitats in the orchard will be to my advantage. The bats are likely to shift their preferences from mid-spring when it is cool and the dog-days of summer. Something as simple as painting the east side of the box a dark color and the west side of the box a light color (or covering with white corrugated metal with an small air-gap between the wall and the metal) can help reduce wild temperature swings.

Image from HERE.  This is a good picture of the bottom of a bat-box showing the dividers that create "crevices" within the box.

Some research suggests that offering a portfolio of boxes with different width openings or "crevice" dimensions will support the widest range of bat species. This is definitely NOT a one-size-fits-all proposition.

In general, larger bat-boxes provide more internal micro-climates which allows the individual bats to move around to find the conditions they prefer. A can of Crisco or lard might be a viable thermal-battery to buffer internal house temperatures. A wax that melts at 90F would be even better but accommodations must be made for the large change in volume.

The literature also suggests that maternal nesting requirements are more specific than general nesting boxes. That may be because the families are less mobile and cannot quickly shift to another house if a sunny day makes a box uninhabitable.

I expect I will be building and installing some bat-boxes within the next nine months.

Prior planning prevents pzz poor performance

Given the Democrats' need for more revenue and their history of quietly adopting some of Trump's platform when it is expedient, it seems likely that regardless of who wins the next election there will be stiff tariffs for Chinese and other manufactures goods.

Things like batteries for hand-tools, LED flashlights, chain, nails-and-deckscrews, trail-cams, WIFI driveway motion alarms, handheld radios, electric blankets, solar panels, generators.... might get a lot more expensive in the foreseeable future.

P^6.

A few miles north of Strange

I visited my nephew who wants to go hunting. I walked his property while he was driving home from work, and then I walked it again after he got home.

A persimmon tree. In the north. Very strange. This tree was a girl and she had some fruit on her. There was another tree a hundred yards to the west.

A deer trail running parallel to the edge of the field just inside the brush-line.

A scrape

A freakishly large hoof-print. I wear a size 11 shoe.

Rubus strigosus? Small fruit that had small seeds and they tasted fine. Notable for fruiting on primo-canes and for its extreme vigor. It was the dominant edge vegetation and seemed to be everywhere.

I showed him deer trails coming onto his property and crossing the soybean field. I showed him a scrape. I showed him a very, very large footprint. I pointed out a few unusual type of vegetation.

The current plan is for him to erect his elevated stand about 40 yards east of the eastern-most deer-trail into his property on his south property line. That puts 3 deer-trails within 110 yards up-wind of him and one deer-trail within slightly-optimistic cross-bow range.

A few Scot's Pine with branches brushing the ground. This is a GREAT place to bust a deer or six on a blustery, snowy day.

This nephew has a hard time sitting still. I suggested that he plan on two nights of hunting a week and to get on his stand at 4:30 PM and leave at 6:00 PM. With an ear-bud and his favorite music, maybe he won't fidget TOO much.

Doom Spending

According to psychologists, doom spending is when a person mindlessly shops to self-soothe because they feel pessimistic about the economy and their future.  The practice is apparently a growing habit among younger generations in today's stagflationary climate.    Zerohedge

I am looking at magnetic compasses based on the many comments on a recent post about Martial Law.

Golly, a person can spend a lot of money on a compass! The Lensatic feature is pretty cool.

We painlessly taught our oldest kids to use a compass and a basic "fieldcraft" comms method. It involved clipping a rolled-up dollar bill to the base of a shrub with a old (dark) clothes pin at a height of about 12". The shrub was about 100 yards from the starting point. The dollar bill and clothes pin were virtually invisible unless you were looking for it.

This can even be done days before the game.

Then our kid was given a compass and two azimuth-and-range  readings. It was their job to navigate to the dollar bill which was the prize.

Note that the readings were "magnetic" and not declination-adjusted. I was proud when Southern Belle found three-in-a-row. The break-through was training her to make a 24" pace. I think that she also noodled out that the first azimuth-range reading was always at a prominent feature like a tree or a rock or a basketball hoop.

She was eight-years-old at the time.

I think it is time to invest in some more compasses.

Does anybody have any experience or opinions about this one or this one?

Also, has anybody ever considered inserting an Air Tag or something similar into their toddler's cuddle-toy? Is there any other place to put one that makes sense? I could see gluing it to the bottom of their water-bottle when they are older, but there also "smart wristwatches" that are even more likely to not be left behind.

Applesauce, apples and trail cams

Another load of applesauce running through the system. It is about 2/3 Goldrush and 1/3 Melrose.

It looks like I have a codling moth issue. Maybe that is why I had so much drop on my oldest GoldRush tree. Steps will be taken. There are many actions that can reduce the pest pressure. Sanitation (picking up all the fruit drops), spraying "dormant oil" on the trunk, spraying insecticides during peak activity (codling moths have several generations per year), "trapping-and-burning" using bands of corrugated cardboard wrapped around the trunk.

If the internet can be trusted, the second generation does 40 times as much damage as the first generation. If I can kick the snot out of the first generation then the second generation will be a faint-echo of what it could have been. Said another way, the plan is to shoot the race-horse before he leaves the starting box.

Deer enclosure

 

Wire mesh was hung on the fence posts.

Trail cams

I moved one of the cameras to a place where two trails come together. I installed a third camera in the southeast corner of my property where there is a lot of deer traffic. Maybe I will see something besides Skinny Girl and her two fawns.

The technology in trail cams has been evolving rapidly. It is now possible to purchase $40 trail cams that use 4, AA batteries and a 32G SD card and can record a year's worth of game movement.

There are also trail cams that use infrared technology that is totally invisible to the human eye. The older technology had a dull-red flash since the LEDs used near-IR wavelengths. That was plenty good enough to be invisible to deer (which can barely see red light).

Why is that a big deal?

You can place an older, obsolete camera where a poacher or trespasser will see and destroy it. You use the newer, invisible camera to record the event. Not only did the moron trespass, he destroyed evidence of committing a crime (a de facto admission that he knew he was breaking the law). The law enforcement community's response to casual trespassers is often tepid because the trespasser can claim "I didn't know I had crossed the property line." Why break into a sweat when a person can claim stupidity.

That changes a bunch when the trespasser not only trespasses but destroys property and simultaneously his "I didn't know..." defense. Cops and prosecutors get understandably shitty when thugs destroy evidence. It chops away at their ability to discharge their sworn duties.

When the Left tries to meme

 

Funny, that doesn't look like a Mouser C-96

 

Maybe an HSc?

Psalm 109

Psalm 109 

Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.

And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

 

Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

 

But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.

For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust. 

My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.

I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:

That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.

Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.

Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.   -KJT

Commentary

Most of the evil people of today don't have children. It is too much of an inconvenience and an economic drag.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Pablo Picasso born in Spain in 1881, died in 1973.

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of those who inherited wealth."

Slings and things

My nephew, the soon to be new deer hunter, asked if there were any slings that had a feature for clipping a carabiner to. The subject came up when we were talking about the intricacies of tying a rope to the unloaded gun to hoist it up, into the blind.

Hoisting the rifle separately serves at least three purposes:

1. It gives the hunter the use of both hands while climbing into or down from the stand, reducing the risk of falling
2. It reduces the risk of "muzzling" other hunters.
3. It reduces the risk of dropping the weapon and damaging it.
   

He expressed the opinion that he was confident that he could tie a knot to a carabiner that would not come loose but wasn't so sure he could do the same on a cold, wet morning...and then be able to untie it after he had it hoisted into the blind.

For those who never experienced moving a firearm into an elevated blind, the first order of business is to unload the weapon and make sure the chamber is cleared. Then to tie the weapon to the hoist rope and NOT drop the muzzle into the mud or snow. Then climb the ladder. Then lift the weapon without smashing the scope against the tree or ladder or legs of the stand. Then to untie the weapon without dropping it. Finally, to reload the weapon.

The idea of a carabiner on the end of the rope reduces the chances of the muzzle falling into the snow-or-mud and vastly reduces the risk of the weapon slipping out of the knot.

Can any of my readers suggest a commercially available sling with a ring or other feature that a carabiner can be positively clipped to? I suppose he could clip it to the sling but then the weapon can shift from muzzle-down to muzzle-up in transit. A simple, synthetic material without padding is preferred.

Harris-Oprah Town-hall

Grab-bag

Pear-sauce

I netted 7.7 quarts of pear-sauce from 1 qt of apple cider and 22 pounds of Asian pears. The sauce was much thinner and runnier than apple-sauce. That shouldn't have surprised me. Asian pears have a texture that resembles watermelon.

1.5 ounces of freshly grated ginger was too much for my tastes but Quicksilver thought it was "yummy-treat", perhaps because she didn't have any expectations.

Trail-cams

I found the stash of trail-cams my deceased brother left me. They were in plain sight in a clear, plastic bag. I was looking for a box. Duh!

More pictures of Skinny Girl and her two fawns last night and several raccoons foraging beneath a chestnut tree. So far nothing with head-gear (antlers).

New deer hunters

One of my nephews is about to take up deer-hunting. His buddy runs a food-bank in Mulliken, Michigan and Hanna-Davis Meats will process deer that are donated for a suggested $50 donation.

My nephew has property and is geeked about collecting "meat" on his own land. Looking at overhead imagery, he has a cottonwood tree in a fence-line 70 yards downwind of where deer travel from point-to-point of cover. And the cottonwood tree is about 150 yards upwind of his house. Easy-peasy hunting, change into orange when he comes home from work, walk out to the tree and settle into a tree stand 8' above ground.

Deer hoists

My plan is to mount a manual winch in the roof-truss of the pole barn on the property I am managing. The winch is a Reese boat-trailer winch with a 1500lb rating. It uses a synthetic strap rather than a steel cable. 

I don't know if God will smile upon us and we will harvest any deer off of the property, but God favors the prepared. It will be pretty slick to back the truck into the barn, do a little bit of rigging and be able to lift the critter up into the air. It will be even better if we can do the golf-ball-dead-weight skinning trick. Yanking the hide off the critter really helps them cool down quickly.

Deer exclusion experiment

I drove fence posts to create a 12'-by-24' deer exclusion area. The long axis runs north-south. Based on conversations I had with Lucas I sprayed half of the area with herbicide to knock-back what little vegetation was there but left the other half as a control. The half I sprayed was a 6'-by-24' long strip on the east side of the enclosure.

Species that I saw included Blackberries, Black Locust, Poison Ivy, Goldenrod, Violet, Smooth Brome and Orchard Grass.

The reason for the Herbicide/not-Herbicide is that the vegetation that has a head-start is biased toward deer-resistant and it unintentionally penalizes the less deer-resistant. This experiment mimics in a very small way what might happen to the forest floor if Chronic Wasting Disease wipes out 85% of Michigan's deer population.

As a tiny bit of background, I had a small colony of Dogtooth Violet and Bloodroot on my property but it extinguished. I am fond of both of those species and would like to have them come back but doubt that that can happen at existing deer densities.

One thing I don't plan on doing is to add any outside seeds. This is purely an experiment in seeing what the native seed-bank can accomplish. My expectation is that I will have lots of bird-borne seeds (from various berries) and some wind-blown seeds (which tend to be sun-loving pioneer species). There may also be a few stray seeds that walked in between the cloven-hooves of deer.

Chainsaws on a pole

Based on the overwhelming response in comments, I bowed to the inevitable and purchased a DeWalt Pole Saw.

The pole comes in three sections. It seems unwieldy with all three section but I am pretty sure I will be able to do a lot with just two sections.

Wedding Showers

Mrs ERJ came home with five pounds of desserts (brownies, cookies and caramel fruit-dip). She brought home sandwiches and kabobs and vegetables.

Man, I just can't eat like I used to. That stuff is going to kill me. Fortunately, Mrs ERJ agreed to make the desserts disappear.

When the cannon fodder DOESN'T follow the script

 

 Three minute run-time

Yes, I know it is fiction, but we can all use a boost to our moral every now and then.

These guys were all supposed to be dead-meat. The fix was in. The guy (dude in the red beanie) who purchased the guys who were supposed to lose probably bet against them.

The masks worn by the home-team partially blinded them. They could not see threats coming at them from oblique angles.  The masks were intimidating but they came with a cost. There might be a lesson there.

You aren't tough enough for Texas!

I have a shirttail relative who was born in Michigan but grew up in Texas. He now lives in an un-named, deep-blue nanny-state.

He confidently informed me that "You aren't tough enough to live in Texas."

That statement struck me as odd.

Is it really a matter of being "tough"?

I want to think that I am "respectful" enough and "courteous" enough to find a place in Texas should the need arise.

Perhaps "toughness" comes into play when things aren't exactly what you expect and you have to bite-your-tongue. But that can just as easily fall under being a good house-guest or courtesy.

I say "Howdy".

I say "Sir" and "Ma'am".

I say "Please", "Yes" and "Thank-you".

I say "Grace", "God-bless you" and "Adios".

I mean every word. None of them are forced.

So far, there are not a lot of places I cannot go back to.

Apple cider and canning pears

I paid $6.99 for a gallon of apple cider at the local Quality Dairy.

The lady behind the counter assured me it was a bargain because it was made from Golden Delicious apples.

A canner load of 7 quarts is about 20 pounds of fruit-in-the-skin.

I am using it to steam pear-quarters. The apple-crop got away from me and I am fiddling with using Chojuro and Korean Giant for "pear-sauce". I would rather use apple juice than water in the bottom of the kettle.

Pears have a different flavor profile than apples. I am going to use more ginger than cinnamon (I use ZERO ginger for apples) and might add some citric acid or Fruit Fresh to add some zip. There is even an off-chance I might add some cardamon which is another "warm" spice. The zany, left-field part of my mind is even thinking of using some star anise...but that will be later.

I quartered the pears, something I don't bother doing with apples. I don't know how much grit will make it to the final product.

I also have four kabobs of pork cubes in the broiler while Mrs ERJ is off at a Bridal Shower (not for her). 

Waiting in the wings, I have a branch of Kieffer pears earmarked for a friend who craves the Pear Preserves he remembers from his youth. While there are many recipies on the internet (with surprisingly little difference between them), I reached out to ensure that my efforts came close to his memories.

This is an evolving process.

A few trail-cam pictures

 

While walking about the property Zeus found an enormous "woodchuck" hole. The hole is to the right of the tree trunk in the picture. I was curious to see what animals were using it.

Looking at time-stamps I think this photo and the one above it are just two raccoons but it could be three in total.

This one showed up fifteen minutes later.

Yesterday

The night before all I had on camera were deer. Based on the size of the ears relative to their heads, these are probably fawns.

Based on the plumbing, My guess is that this is mama. She is still producing milk and her ribs are showing through her coat even though "flash" tends to wash-out subtle details. She is a very skinny girl!

Another view of Skinny Girl. Her hocks really stick out and skew inward.

From the comments

Glen Filthie commented:

Well I dunno, Joe. You're probably right as far as ya go. My fear is as the wanks are putting it on Blab: "if you don't stand up today against the evil taking root... your kids won't be able to tomorrow..."

There's a lot of "cuck christianity" going on out there where they flap off a few verses of scripture that proves God approves of their craven natures, they sit on their hands and they get carried off with the world, spouting scripture all the way.

What are the odds that at least a few of the "wanks...on Blab" work for TLAs (Three Letter Agencies) and are fishing for idiots? My guess is that it is a number larger than "zero".

I can sense your frustration and/but nuance is very, very important when discussing these kinds of things in a public forum. Above all, as the people with above-room-temperature IQs, we have a responsibility toward the morons living in Hawaii who might be tempted to fly 4862 miles and try to shoot somebody on the eastern seaboard.

With regards to not acting before the situation is dire; there are reasons.

For example, two enablers that are not in-place are lack of actionable-intelligence which almost always comes from "inside", and a lack of appreciation among the general population that snitches-get-funerals.

For the first enabler to happen, people inside of organizations (NGOs importing job-lots of difficult to assimilate people, nameless-cogs toiling inside of the machine to elect "The Right People", stooges in the revolving-door justice departments) need to have a lightning-bolt on the way to Damascus moment and realize they have been betrayed. That is when they go to the bar, have a few too-many and start naming names, addresses and schedules. We are not there, yet.

The thing about snitches is that when Cletus, Vernon and Billy-Bob take care of business...they will be ratted out. Snitches are sure that they are being virtuous. A certain amount of Darwinian selection needs to happen before C,V&BB throw a long enough of a shadow such that formerly-anonymous bureaucratic cog must seriously consider the cost-benefit ratio of mindlessly performing their assigned duties.

Given our current trajectory, we will get there. And I am sure there are other "enablers" that I didn't mention. Maybe one worth mentioning is the willingness of the general population to "shield and support" persona non grata.

Give us time. We WILL become Mexico or Sicily.

Troubles

 

But what sort of shepherds are they who for fear of giving offense not only fail to prepare the sheep for the temptations that threaten, but even promise them worldly happiness? God himself made no such promise to this world. On the contrary, God foretold hardship upon hardship in this world until the end of time. And you want the Christian to be exempt from these troubles? Precisely because he is a Christian, he is destined to suffer more in this world.

For the Apostle says, All who desire to live a holy life in Christ will suffer persecution. But you, shepherd, seek what is yours and not what is Christ’s, you disregard what the Apostle says: All who want to live a holy life in Christ will suffer persecution. You say instead: “If you live a holy life in Christ, all good things will be yours in abundance. If you do not have children, you will embrace and nourish all men, and none of them shall die.” Is this the way you build up the believer? Take note of what you are doing and where you are placing him. You have built him on sand. The rains will come, the river will overflow and rush in, the winds will blow, and the elements will dash against that house of yours. It will fall, and its ruin will be great.  Source revealed beneath the break

Except for the slightly off-kilter sentence structure and the long paragraphs that don't cater to the attention-deficit, this piece could have been written last week.

As leaders, as people who have lived long enough to have seen the tumult and vicissitudes of time, it is up to us to point at the river-bed and read to the landscape.

"That sand-bar is just barely above the water-level during the dry months of summer", "The barren rocky shore on the outside of the curve was scrubbed to the bedrock by logs carried in the floods", The branches wedged between the forks in the trees were put there by high-waters", "The corrugations in the ground are ox-bows and channels cut when the water over-flowed the banks" and on, and on, and on.

The river is not a puzzle that can be twisted into submission with logic or with clever words. It is a history lesson waiting to be read by the humble.

Don't go looking for trouble. Those who do usually find it in much larger quantities than they are prepared for.

Deflect trouble when possible. The reed bends and survives the storm while the oak topples.

If trouble knocks on your door and refuses to go away. Be prepared to make trouble suffer but also be prepared for the aftermath of standing up to trouble.

Hat-tip to Coyote Ken for calling my attention to this sermon.

Martial Law as it might be applied by the Progressives

In spite of conservative's fears of blue-helmeted thugs going door-to-door to collect tools needed for self-sufficiency and for self-defense, I DON'T think that is what the Progressive's most common implementation of Martial Law will look like.

May I humbly submit that we saw Progressive, Martial Law in the recent past. One definition of Martial Law reads: 

The law imposed on an occupied territory by occupying military forces. 

The Antifa camps in Portland and other cities and the pro-Palestinian occupations of college campuses this past year were arguably Martial-Law administered by Progressive proxies.

Not convinced? Military and law enforcement personnel are allowed a great deal of latitude and vastly diminished accountability during Martial-Law. Civil rights like freedom of passage and freedom from search-and-seizure are suspended. There are very few checks-and-balances on their actions and they can act with near-impunity. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

From the Progressive perspective, those adventures worked great and had very little blow-back and I would expect them to double-down.

What might a by-city Martial Law implementation look like?

Disclaimer: I have no military or law-enforcement experience so I am undoubtedly getting a bunch of things wrong. Read this for ENTERTAINMENT value only.

Just for shits-and-giggles, I want to rough-out a "mission" whereby Orange-Force implements Martial Law on a city with roughly 80k population and a core-area of 20 square-miles. It COULD be Springfield, Ohio but it applies equally to Kalamazoo, Michigan and maybe fifty other cities in the US.

The objective of the imposition of Martial Law is to identify and capture key Purple-Force players for later processing.

Springfield, Ohio

The first objective would be to secure the southern and then the eastern boundary because I-70 is one of the United States MAJOR east-west arteries for over-the-road logistics. Quite by coincidence, the city of Kalamazoo has I-94 along its southern boundary and it is THE major artery between Chicago and Canada. Lots of small-to-medium size cities with large influxes of immigrants are bounded by a major interstate.

Since Springfield is a scant sixty miles from The Ohio State University (and Kalamazoo is home of Western Michigan University) the smart money would run the operation between Christmas-and-New Year, or during Spring Break or two weeks after the University(ies) break for the summer to minimize collateral damages and to reduce the risk of useful idiots reinforcing Team Purple.

After securing the southern flank, the second wave of movement would be to secure the major inbound/outbound roads marked with red score-marks in the image shown above. Simultaneously, "Spotters" would be positioned 30 miles outbound on the interstate to identify inbound busses that might be transporting allies of the Purple-force. Vehicles with radios would tail the busses to ensure they did not exit the limited access roads to avoid road-blocks. Once inside the area where Martial Law has been declared, many of the Constitutional Rights of the riders are diluted and they can be detained.

In weeks before the operation, Artificial Intelligence would be monitoring cellphone vocal traffic and tagging numbers that trafficked in Creole, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese and other languages-of-interest. GPS locations would also be harvested prior to the operation to gain insight into the travel and association patterns of those groups of people. Intelligence would also download the "translation apps" resident on phones.

That information would be harvested ostensibly to "push" text messages to the various groups in their native language but would have obvious tactical advantages to Team Orange.

Food deliveries to retailers inside of the Martial Law zone would be delayed but food would be available at the check-points. The caveat was that the entire household must report to the check-point to ensure the proper amount of food was distributed. 

When residents showed up at the check-points, they would be offered a deal they can't refuse, an all-paid, all-inclusive stay at a resort in sunny Cleveland. There would be sniper over-watch and violent refusals would get a kinetic response. Refugees (why mince words) would be sorted into sheep and goats and dealt with accordingly.

In five days, the population would be reduced by 50%. In ten days the population would be reduced by 90%.

Then the door-to-door sweeps start. If done at New Year or Spring Break, IR will identify inhabited houses and Purple-force movement. If the op is run during the summer, seismic sensors must be "sprinkled" and drone coverage must be continuous.

Take-aways:

Never consent to becoming a refugee.

Beat the rush, panic early and ALWAYS have multiple options of places to land. Even better, have a change of clothes and a few other necessities stashed there.

It is always good to have a friend or family member who works in the mail-room of the local LEO office. Since mail-rooms are extinct, the closest relative is knowing somebody in IT.

There will be a pulse or a tempo to operations. No sane general would attack Russia in December. Likewise, there are "good" and "poor" times to run Martial Law ops in the US.

A few pictures

 

A Szego hybrid chestnut tree. It is time to start knocking the chestnuts down so I can beat the deer to them.

Schlarbaum hybrid chestnut

The bees that are squatting in my trap hive

Forest floor degraded by extreme deer pressure. The trees along the right side of the frame are apple trees and the one in the background, slightly left-of-center is an oak.

I am tempted to install a deer-exclusion fence for a bit of this area just to see how much change happens. I saw some deer exclusion enclosures at the Crockery Creek Nature Area in Ottawa County and the differences were striking. The enclosed areas were not very large, maybe 15' by 30'.

This image is from Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The area was fenced for 4 years and growth is from the native seed-bank or from plants that were smoldering-in-place being released from deer pressure.

Martial Law: Not "IF", but when, where and why

With the escalating passions over the up-coming elections, both sides are envisioning circumstances where "the other side" would be likely to declare Martial Law.

Examples:

The progressives envision Trump starting to deport illegal aliens and the aliens resist, killing ICE deputies. Trump declares Martial Law on a city-by-city basis and the hot-spots get cleared out.

The conservatives envision Harris going house-to-house confiscating weapons and the owners of the weapons resist....

What both of these scenarios share is that the declarations will be local and will be shifting. There are not enough resources to administer and enforce Martial Law nationwide.

How to prepare?

Here is a fairly comprehensive but lopsided article. In my opinion, vigorously advocating for "your rights" will make you a lightning rod. Another issue is that their Gold-Standard news sources lean left.

Lock-downs and curfews are likely. Communication black-outs are almost a certainty.

Note to self: Work on alternative comms plan including nodes outside of likely Martial Law foot-prints. That plan MIGHT be as simple as riding a bicycle ten miles in a given direction with an SD card in my shoe.

It is a little bit dry out there

We have had 0.6" of rain in the last month vs. 3.3" of evaporation potential. The top layers of soil are getting pretty dry.

We are sitting at 2850 Growing Degree Days b50 vs a median value of about 2700 GDDb50 for this date.

Our median growing season (assuming net photosynthesis stops on October 15) is about 2900 GDDb50. 2021 was the outlier at 3300 GDDb50 on October 15 but the rest of the data is fairly tightly clustered.

Is "Morality" subjective

It is popular to contend that morality is subjective and that in an absolute sense that all moral-systems are equal. It is unpopular to argue that some moral-systems are inherently superior to others.

I guess today is the day I am meant to disappoint others and to be unpopular.

When morality does depend on circumstances

It is always possible to find extreme situations around the edges of the "map" where the margins read "Thar be Dragons".

For example, the Donner Party or UAF Flight 571 where survivors resorted to cannibalized deceased members of the party.

Finding an exception in Thar be Dragons does not invalidate a general statement.

The case that some moral systems are superior to others

Consider two moral systems that self-extinguished: Jim Jones's cult and the Shakers. Both are now extinct. Can anybody make a credible case that either of those cults are the equal of moral-codes that still exist? How can they be equal when they don't exist in any measurable way and can no longer provide guidance on day-to-day issues?

I suppose the contrary will argue that they were BETTER than existing moral-codes. An environmental zealot might make that argument, for instance. That is fine, but you just proved my point; that some moral-systems are "better" than others.

How to rank them?

In the dry language of engineers, "extinction" is a high entropy event. "Irreversibility" is another way to describe entropy. If you put an ice cube into a hot cup of coffee and stir it for five minutes it is almost impossible to recover the undiluted, hot coffee and the ice cube without increasing entropy (irreversibility or disorder) outside the system.

From a practical standpoint, systems that are pathologically high-entropy almost always lose wars when they wage them against systems that are significantly lower-entropy. That is due to lower-entropy systems generally having more population and higher technology.

Sparta, who murdered their weakest sons lost to Athens. The American-Indians who were bedeviled by enormous infant and child mortality lost to Europeans.

A moral system that encourage rape of the landscape is a high-entropy system. A moral system that fosters stewardship of the landscape is a low-entropy system.

As a side-note, here are two verses from Deut Chapter 20:

When you are at war with a city and have to lay siege to it for a long time before you capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human beings, that they should be included in your siege?

However, those trees which you know are not fruit trees you may destroy. You may cut them down to build siegeworks against the city that is waging war with you, until it falls.

Viewed through the lens of entropy, that language looks like a very strong commitment to stewardship and long-term viability for humans.

Did the spread of Islam create the Sahara Desert?

Some blamed the growth of the Sahara Desert on the growth of Islam. The contention was "The Arabs were not the sons of the desert, but the fathers of it."

The style of warfare preferred by Jihadist during its rapid assent favored open plains and was hampered by trees and cover. The argument is that Islam destroyed trees on principle.

Even though the Quran (Surah Hashr Ayat 5) has language prohibits the cutting of date-palms it has been accepted as "OK" during Jihad since Jihad is Allah's will. All other trees could be cut at at-will.

It seems doubtful that cutting all of those trees CAUSED the Sahara Desert but it probably accelerated its spread.

Also on the topic of stewardship

Communism is the abolition of private property. In general, most people take much better care of their own property than they do of "community" property.

"Beat it like a rented mule" is a saying that comes to mind.

"Tragedy of the Commons" is another saying that comes to mind.

Ipso facto, Communism is an inferior moral system than a system that favors private property.

For the same reasons, the hook-up culture is inferior to dating and marriage.

The idea of mixing

Entropy is often introduced as "mixing". A spoonful of sugar mixed with a glass of water cannot be recovered without applying outside energy to evaporate the water. One key point is high-entropy requiring outside resources to return to its starting state.

Consider a classroom with two pupils. John is a whiz at math and shop. Sebastian is a dreamy poet who likes to draw pictures.

A high-entropy system would demand equal outcomes and pour enormous amounts of energy teaching John to write poetry and to draw pictures as well as Sebastian while pouring equally large amounts of resources trying to pound math and shop into Sebastian's brain. Because outcomes are most important, John is starved for math and shop instruction and Sebastian is starved for poetry and art instruction.

A low-entropy system would give John MORE math and shop classes and fewer poetry and art classes while giving Sebastian MORE poetry and art classes and fewer math and shop. The NET learning would be much higher for the low-entropy system. If the concept was extended across the society, there would be higher net-carrying capacity and greater capacity to fight wars.

Suppose, on the other hand, a moral system randomly decided that half of the population could receive absolutely zero formal instruction. Random in the sense that it was totally disconnected from the (potential) student's ability to learn. That would be a failure of stewardship and is a special case of the high-entropy moral system. There are some moral systems in the world today that forbid educating women and "unbelievers".

IS THERE ANYBODY I HAVEN'T PISSED OFF TODAY. LEMME KNOW. I AM ON A ROLL!!!

Moral reasoning and accountability

For whatever reason, it is easier to behave in a morally proper way when you know that there is a chance that you will be held accountable for your actions.

Cotton and civilization

In an unexpected and quirky way, cotton was a keystone resource in the development of "civilization" as we know it.

In the medieval and early-Renaissance period, a book cost about the equivalent of one day's un-skilled labor  per-page. Since hand-written script was much less compact than the mechanical typeset pages we are used to today, a five-hundred page book (like Fifty Shades of Grey) might be 1500 pages of vellum. And, if the vellum was particularly fine, it was almost transparent and was only marked on one side. So the 1500 page book was printed on 1500 separate sheets of vellum and would cost the equivalent of three year's wages for the average Joe. I suspect Fifty Shades would not have sold as many copies, had it cost that much today.

Even into the middle of the Renaissance, paper was made from beaten linen rags. Linen is not very productive and the paper-makers were competing with other trades like candle-wick makers and the like. Also, because fabric was so precious, clothing was worn to mere tatters and there wasn't that much substance when they were sold to the rag-pickers. Despite all of that, a "University" textbook on cheaper paper might sell for the equivalent of $200 or $300 and a third of that was the cost of the paper it was printed on. It was a bargain compared to the meticulously tanned and scraped hides that became vellum and parchment.

But something incredible happened between 1500 and 1800 AD. Cotton started being grown in the American deep-South and India became a major exporter of cotton. The price of paper dropped from the equivalent of $0.30 a page to the equivalent of $2.50 for a ream of 500 sheets. That is 1/60th the price. The daily wage of an unskilled laborer in 1800 was about $0.70, enough to purchase 140 sheets of paper. That was a huge leap from the single page in a book that a day's labor could purchase in the late-Medieval times**.

Paper was cheap enough to publish newspapers which were passed from one person to the next and were then recycled. That was absolutely unheard of when a single sheet of material to write upon was a working man's daily pay*. Broad-sheets could be printed and tacked to trees and fence-posts. Political tracts that expressed radical, political ideas were written, published and tacked up on trees, fence posts and the sides of buildings (and to church doors). Hymns were written. Plays were captured for eternity. Laws were codified and became accessible to a broad swath of humanity.

Key to that was the nature of cotton. Linen fibers are trapped in the stem and bundles of stems must be submerged in water for the stems to partially decay. Then the stems are beaten to dislodge the semi-rotten flesh and leave the fibers, which are then combed, dried, bleached in the sun. The yield of usable fiber per acre of ground is not very impressive. 

Bundles of flax in a "retting" pond.

That limits linen production to places like Holland and Belgium and certain areas in France and Britain, places where many shallow ponds dot the landscape where bundles of flax can be submerged.

In modern times, an acre of flax yields about 400 pounds of processed linen. Before fertilizer, insecticides and improved varieties were developed, one third of that was probably an outstanding yield.

Cotton, on the other hand, yields about 800 pounds per acre. 

Cotton which is not trapped in stems and the lack of shallow ponds and autumn springs are not a limiting factor in the production of cotton. Even the "waste", the dust from the outsides of the seed (the linters) can be used for paper.

The explosive embrace in the growing cotton resulted in a quantum leap in the affordability of "paper", which in turn resulted in a quantum leap in the quality and amount of thinking and the ability to share ideas and to integrate other people's insights into one's own thinking.

I appreciate African-American's visceral reaction to "cotton" and the plantation system. But that cultural empathy should not totally obscure the fact that if cotton did not exist, it is likely that we would still be living in a pre-scientific world...say, the equivalent of 1550 AD technology.

*Comparing the cost of an object to the price of a day's labor from an unskilled worker is misleading. The nature of the economy was such that a day's pay was only sufficient to keep the worker and his family alive for one-more-day. In fact, it was less than that because his wife and kids were out there hustling for calories and barterable goods. An unskilled worker NEVER had excess money to pay for anything beyond the barest of necessities.

The only point of referring to an unskilled person's daily wage is that it is one of the few commodities that seems ageless. The point is that if a wealthy person wanted to buy a book then he had to be willing to forego the kilometer of irrigation ditch he could have paid to have dug with the same amount of money

** I am guilty of conflating blank pages of paper with pages in books covered with hand-written script. So sue me.

---A huge note of thanks to Alma Boykin and Lucas Machias, both of whom cheerfully sent me reference materials. All errors are mine.---