 |
| You can click on the image to embiggen it. |
Rows of trees marked by a cover-crop/food-plot of kale, turnip and radish as well as tall, annual grasses. Notable for how the tops of the rows (best seen in the middle row) show much better growth than bottoms of rows. The two tree trunks that frame the image are Black Walnut.
The bones of an old pear tree that was infected with fire blight is near the upper-right corner of the image.
At the top of the frame is the Old Orchard.
The ground looks mighty green for the middle of December.
A very good post
"How being frugal can save a Marriage"
If you only read one thing from this blog this week, jump over to Rural Revolution and read this post.
Some people deal well with change. Others do not. Life can be bumpy and filled with unexpected and unwanted changes.
Frugality is like having an exceptionally buoyant boat as you float down a rushing river. It eases you over rocks and sandbars. You can sustain water sloshing in, over the gunwales. You can even pull drowning people out-of-the-drink IF you have that extremely buoyant boat.
Lack of frugality is like having a kayak with 300 pounds of bricks stacked on the deck. It might be OK in still-water but will be a disaster if anything unexpected happens.
Good read. My wife and I have been frugal for 32 years, only option we had. But, we don't look at it as a problem. Just what we do - used cloths, used furniture, we rarely eat out (lucky for me, my wife is a wonderful cook & eating at home is better food anyway). Really, in my opinion, creates a "better" life anyway - simple.
ReplyDeleteFrugality is a mindset, unfortunately the masses are consumer driven and some people are afraid to be seen as "different".
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link, ERJ.
ReplyDeleteTo Brian's point above, our society does not reward frugality - and in some ways actively discourages it, in that as a consumer society we are highly dependent on the spending of money by others (especially in a service economy). We are seeing the fallout from that now: when people do get laid off they do not consume. Choices have to be made, so other consumption does not happen and then other people get laid off. A onward movement to automating things, be they general computer execution, robots, or AI, does not help anything.
Frugality is not "fun" unless you have your eyes on a higher prize.
Thing is, "Poor" is a lifestyle....
ReplyDeleteIt's all about choices,
Lots of people who worked for me were poor because of decisions they made///They could barely (or often just couldn't) pay this months rent...but "check out my me tattoo!"...They often barely had enough gas money to get to work, but as soon as they were paid, went on a spending spree. Often they would show up for work with an expensive coffee drink every day, or went out to lunch every day, rather than bring a sandwich or some leftovers to heat up.
I could go on, but the trend is there, Frugality is a lifestyle, as is poverty.
If you live a frugal live you don't need $2.5 million to have F-U money (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2039393/quotes/) It takes commitment and a willingness to ignore consumer media and fads. You don't need the latest iDevice the day it comes out. Wearing Michael Jordan sneakers won't help you perform like Mike, etc. It is funny that Mercedes is a premium brand in the US but a commodity brand in Germany..
ReplyDeleteWhat scares me is the number of families that live paycheck to paycheck...sigh
ReplyDeleteJust noting that embiggen is a very cromulent word.
ReplyDeleteI always perceived my vocabulary as perfectly cromulent, until I had to look up "cromulent". Hanging around here smartifies me real good,
ReplyDeleteA little East of Paris...
I am told that easily half of divorces have their roots in financial issues.
ReplyDeleteMoney, sex, family.
DeleteThose are the battlefields where couples fight about who is going to wear the pants in the family, who has the most power.
A couple who does not have an effective, mutually-agreed upon method of sorting through those kinds of issues will have a rocky marriage until they evolve an effective method or they separate.
ERJ
ReplyDeleteThe photo is interesting. I’ve noticed the exact same phenomenon on our homestead. The plants at the higher elevation produce better than those downhill. Species doesn’t seem to make a difference. Perennial berry bushes or annuals like squash and tomatoes all exhibit the same pattern. We use drip irrigation and test soil moisture so I don’t think it is a hydration issue. We’ve tested soil composition and it’s identical from lab reports.
Any ideas what causes this?
-john
Kaw River Valley
I think you are following a great process to narrow down possibilities. You are eliminating one possible cause at a time.
DeleteHow close are the closest trees? Those roots can be hyper-competitive for moisture and nutrients and it isn't as if you have a chisel-plow ripping them on a regular basis, so they can keep reaching out and stay near the surface.
The guy I hired to trench noticed how the tall/short plants changed over the course of just a couple of yards. Everything higher looked relatively good and everything lower was runted. That line was 100 feet from the trunk of a Black Walnut.
If my problem is walnut trees, then the internet suggests that most of the roots/juglone will not be much of a problem five years after killing the trees or cutting the roots.
-Joe