Grab bag

Quote of the day

"Pain is proof that we are still alive.

I have never felt so alive!"

The lifting is going OK. I think I completed my third of fourth session yesterday. I felt strong enough to add 10 pounds for the last set of six reps.

AND...I am more than just a little bit and pleasantly sore.

Sourdough

Does anybody have any opinions? King Arthur Flour has very precise instructions in how to create your starter.

Is there any benefit in helping it along with a yeast and/or a lactic bacteria culture? The picture in my head is to "help" the culture along with a yeast like SafAle T-58 and low temperature lactic bacteria culture like kefir or skyr.

CB 22 Shorts

Unfortunately, they have a much lower point-of-impact than the .22LR that I usually use. I plan to count the clicks to get it where I want it and then tape a card to the stock so I can "recover" the .22LR setting if/when I switch back to that ammo.

The .22 CB Shorts are no louder than a pellet gun and (supposedly) send a 29 grain, round-nosed, lead bullet down-range at 710 feet-per-second. That compares with a .177 "springer" tossing an 8 grain pellet between 850-and-1000 feet-per-second.

The .22 CB Shorts are not energetic enough to cycle a semi-automatic but they feed through a Savage Mark II bolt-action just fine. 

Rabbits are not hard to kill nor are squirrels. I just have to be able to hit them in the head or heart-lung area.

Blackberries

I ordered my blackberry bushes for next spring. I ordered from Ison's Nursery of Brooks, Georgia. I opted for 10 Ouachita (approximately pronounced as "Wichita") and 5 "Apache".

The temperature at which 50% of the flower buds are killed. Source.

Ouachita is slightly more cold-hardy than Apache. Apache has significantly larger fruit. Both varieties are from Arkansas breeding program. Both are thornless and upright. Both have good quality and very good disease resistance.

My experience with the cold-hardiness ratings on blackberries is that most of them are optimistic. If I get a good crop 2 years out of five I will be thrilled.

Rabbit hutches

Southern Belle has some rabbits arriving next week.

The previous two are no longer with us. The first one to become deceased  was dispatched by her sister. They went from best friends to best enemies.

The second one may have died from over-eating snacks.

Raising livestock isn't something you learn from a book. Books are helpful...but not the final word.

I spent a couple of hours "winterizing" the three-apartment hutch that was built around a truck-cap. I put doors on both ends of each apartment and it is very well ventilated since I built it in August. I threw cardboard into the bottom to cover about 2/3 of the floor and threw in some bedding.

I covered the west side of the "apartment building" to block one door on each apartment to reduce cross-ventilation. 

Finally, I added a "bolt" to lock the doors shut to reduce losses to predators.