Lots of little pieces

Yesterday's work-tickets

At the gym

I went to the gym twice. Once to walk with Mrs ERJ. The other time to lift. The walking went fine. The lifting...well, it just wasn't my day.

My maintenance routine is to warm-up with six reps of 135 (no straps), six reps of 185 (no straps), then four sets of six reps of 205 (with straps).

Even at the first rep of 135 I thought "This feels heavy!" By the second rep I was pretty sure that I was not going to be able to do my full routine.

When I got to the 205 set I compressed the rest of the work-out to 1 X 205, 1 x 210, 1 X 215 and then 1 X 220. I simple kept adding five pounds to each lift until I was pretty sure that I would not be able to do the next.

Then I bailed out. Better to show up, have a shortened session and go home unhurt than to try to push-through and end up injured.

I voted in the primary

I suspect that the legacy Democrats are in a panic. The more radical Senate candidate won the primary even though the legacy Dems endorsed the slightly less crazy candidate. Their creation is eating them.

I picked tomatoes (2.5 kg or about 5.5 pounds. That makes about 2.7kg for the season)

I culled tomato vines and tied up shoots.

I ran water to the trickle irrigation in the Eaton Rapids orchard

I finished cutting, splitting and stacking the Honey Locust.

I started disassembling pallets for their lumber. 

I ran errands with Mrs ERJ. It isn't that she NEEDS me to run those errands, but it is a good time to connect. For one thing, I cannot be playing on my laptop or running a chainsaw while driving. She is jolly good company.

What did not happen

I did not drive out to the Upper and Hill Orchards and do any maintenance.

I did not bring back any spruce firewood (great for getting fires going)

I did not scatter any turnip seeds. 

Wildlife

I am astonished by how quickly the local wildlife figured out that Zeus is no longer on duty. Our yard is flooded with woodchucks and deer. I never realized how intimidating the look, smell and sound of a dog was.

It is difficult to overstate how attractive tall zinnias like California Giant are to butterflies. They appear to favor the red ones but that might be my imagination.

Today's work-tickets

Finish breaking down the last pallet for wood. Remove nails.

Split some ash and start replenishing the woodpile in the breezeway.

Locally, ground-chuck is selling for about $6 a pound

Empty and reset woodchuck traps as required.

Weed garden 

Declutter horizontal surfaces 

Inefficient markets can cut both ways

I was watching a video from an extended family in Ukraine.

They have a tree of Prunus cerasifera which is the Eurasian equivalent of American Wild Plum except that the fruit is less aromatic. That tree has a bumper crop of plums.

They advertised on a local bulletin board and got orders for four buckets of plums. Each bucket probably weighed 5 kilograms. At 7% sugar (typical for this species) a bucket of plums might have 350 grams of digestible carbs. After deducting for the cost of gasoline to deliver the plums, they are barely breaking even.

They end up giving one bucket and one partial bucket away to charity cases.

The person who ordered the last bucket of plums was not home and they didn't answer the phone calls or texts when they delivered the plums. The patriarch jumped over the fence and poured the plums into a container he found in the yard.

They had started for home when the purchaser of the last bucket called them on the phone. The driver turned around and went to collect payment.

Not only did the buyer pay them with cash, the buyer insisted that they accept 100kg of flour, 10kg of pearled barley, approximately fifteen loaves of bread and  an undisclosed amount of dried peas.

From a caloric standpoint, their rate-of-return on the last transaction was +30,000%. They traded 350 grams of carbs in the fruit for more than 110,000 grams of carbs in the flour and grain and bread.

Irrational transactions like this drive economists to insanity. It mocks the dry calculations of the academics when people do things like the family and like the final buyer of the plums.

Bag of flour one

Bag of flour two

Peas and barley

Box of baked bread

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Sergey Vasilkovsky was born in Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine in 1854 and he died in 1917. 

 

Fake rocks, work tickets, Primaries

Yesterday's work-tickets

Yesterday was another light day

I drove to the local big-box store and bought a grout bag, sand and Portland cement powder. 

Then I used scrap wood to make a fixture to hold tennis balls. It was 36" long (because that was the length of the scrap) and it can hold 12 balls. I cut 1" long slits into the tennis balls. The two sides of the fixture are 1-3/4" apart. By squeezing the balls and pressing them into fixture with the slit perpendicular to the sides of the fixture, the slit opened up like a coin-purse.

I mixed up the sand:cement 2:1 with enough water to make it a little soupier than gravy.  It is essentially concrete without coarse aggregate in it. Unlike mortar (which is Portland cement, slaked lime and sand)  it is not very caustic, should be a little bit stronger than mortar and should harden even if deprived of atmospheric CO2.

Then I filled those tennis balls using the grout-bag. The open "coin purse" slits closed up after prying them out of the fixture. Removing them from the fixture was the most difficult part of the production run.

I will have 24 artificial rocks to practice throwing after they harden. They are 2-3/4" in diameter and weight 7-1/2 ounces. That compares to a baseball at 2-7/8" diameter and 5 ounces of weight.

The rocks are bright yellow and should be easy to find for reuse. The picture in my head is to take ten of them to the field and pitch them downrange. Then collect them and throw them back toward the starting point. That will be 100 throws if I do that five times.

The other two items on the work ticket list were to walk with Mrs ERJ and to continue processing the wood from the Honey Locust branch. That added 40 minutes and 60 minutes respectively.

Today's work-tickets

I am up to eleven items on the list. That is what happens this time of year. Lots of work. Taking a break the last few days didn't help matters.

Two items of note: I am going to cull some tomato vines. The seeds I bought from a seller on Etsy germinated but are clearly a lot of mongrel seeds. I will be removing the vines that have zero or very light fruit-set. That will make more room for the vines that are pulling their weight.

The weather look-ahead implies that we (Eaton County, MI) are entering a week when we might get rain. This is a good time to broadcast turnip and radish seeds into squash patches and in other places.
 

Primary day

Michigan Primaries are today. There are two millage renewals on the ballot. One is for 9-1-1. The other is to fund "justice involved youth programs".

A trip to the cemetery

Mrs ERJ and I drove to her home-town yesterday and visited her parent's graves.

The site is covered with majestic, 200 year-old White Oaks

We scrubbed the algae off of the stone and scraped the moss and algae out of the lettering.

I left Mrs ERJ after a bit and wandered around.

Power mowers are rough on grave-stones. These were knocked off of their concrete bases

Not perfect, but it was the best I could do without stretching a line and using edging equipment to find concrete bases.

These graves are right next to the road and in the center-foreground of the overview picture.

The cemetery is hilly by Michigan standards. Family lore has it that my wife's father used to snow-ski through the cemetery after dark as a young man. He hid the skis in a hedge and then late in the evening he would take a shortcut through the cemetery on the way home from downtown. He could build up enough speed to coast into the backyard of his father's house.

Bonus image

A bird had flown into our living room window and left an imprint.

"Ghetto Culture" and A re-post from July 6, 2020

Cultures do not evolve in a vacuum. Their characteristics evolve as solutions to environmental challenges and to scarce resources.

"Ghetto Culture" did not evolve in a vacuum. The environment is one that has a shortage of "net primary producers" and is heavily invested in the predator economy.

The reason I bring this up is that the environment Xavier tells us about is one that is no longer just an inner-city thing. It is in the stands of the high schools your grandkids attend. It is in the grocery stores and parking lots. It is walking down the street in front of your house. It is delivering the Amazon packages.

So you can stick your nose in the air and pretend that "all of those people are trash". Or you can study what they are doing, why they are doing it and decide how you can do it even better. Because at some time in the near future, if you cannot deliver loud, convincing performative outrage at the drop of the hat then you will be volunteering to be a victim.

From a practical standpoint, if you have to escalate to the kinetic level, you want lots of noise to indicate that you attempted to escalate with words before you had to employ a kinetic solution. 

The following is the 2020 post, in its entirety:

 

***START***

A classic post (2006) from Xavier Thoughts

Xavier was a traveling nurse who provided hospice care to cancer patients in inner-cities. He carried potent narcotics and was exposed to criminals who wanted to steal what they knew he was carrying.

That forced him to be a keen observer of human nature and to learn to deal with the criminals.

Unfortunately, I cannot direct you to a link that shows just that post. Rather, it is embedded within a month of posts so you have to dig to get to it. Xavier, please forgive me if I violate "fair use".

Xavier Thoughts, March 2006, Recognizing Threats, Selection

The criminal, once he has observed a potential victim, will send out some test runs to determine if the person is indeed prey, or predator. These tests may be asking for a match, the time, or change. The initial tests all have one thing in common. They violate boundaries, and determine if the selected person will allow their space and generosity to be violated.

This is the single best time to opt-out of the victim-selection process. Sometimes a Big Noise and a Big Show are appropriate. Predators do not want attention. A very loud "Fnck OFF!" and a vigorous shove are called for. It sends the message "I will not go passively to the fate you choose for me. YOU will get hurt."

One great thing about being intelligent is that we can learn from idiots. We can even learn from Whoopie Goldberg. The over-the-top reactions that are inappropriate in civilized settings where people attend to nuance can be very appropriate on the city streets where subtlety and nuance are washed away but the bustle and noise.

The predator is mimicking a common panhandler to get in close, test the waters and position himself for attack. All of these persons are easily recognized by their inappropriate behavior and boundary violations. Like the fish who fails to recognize the moray eel on the reef, the person who fumbles for change with a predator has sealed their fate. The ruses are many and varied. I have seen crackheads target tourists and ask to get their pictures taken. I have seen balloon ladies that had accomplices working in the shadows. I have seen young women toss out lewd comments as their male accomplices tried to blend into the landscape. I have seen kids sitting on trash cans in housing projects while older gang members waited around the corner. I have even seen one teen lay on the side of the road in the projects waiting for a good Samaritan as his accomplices hid behind a dumpster. Like the anglerfish, these predators actively dangle lures to allow them to catch prey. To be seen as a potentially superior predator, one must simply recognize the threat, refuse to engage, and continue without alarm.

Does this process sound anything like Seattle's CHAZ experiment and Mayor Jenny Durkin's non-response? Durkin failed the victim selection tests.

If the predator is engaged, a request for change quickly becomes a demand for a dollar, then a twenty, then a blow to the head as soon as the victim refuses. This kind of escalation is common with young gangs who quickly befuddle their prey with unrelated questions and demands from all directions. As the victim struggles with the insistent demands and questions, the gang will begin positioning itself for attack. These criminals work like sharks, first brushing their victim, then bumping it, and finally going after the victim is a swirl of blood and gore as others also jump in.

Somebody is in the background running the theater. It is not the guy unlocking the gate into the gated community. It is not the young men at the front of the mob throwing rocks. The hand-in-the-puppet is in the middle of, or near the back of the mob. He is directing probes and watching responses.

It would be instructive to watch drone footage to see if the HITP can be identified the way Mazer Rackham identified the mother-ship in Ender's Game.

The most feared predator is the one who uses the silent selection process. This criminal watches the parade of people passing by, while trying to blend into the scenery. He wants to be neither seen or remembered. Once he recognizes and selects a victim, he knows he needs the right time and place to launch his attack. He may follow his selected victim to a more promising location. If he follows his victim, he knows that he must go unrecognized as a predator. He is the tiger in the jungle, relying on stealth to get close enough to quickly subdue his prey. Like the tiger, he leaves his lair to hunt. He may stalk his victim for long periods of time. He may lose interest in a selected victim that never knew he was there. He may follow the victim until the victim enters an area where an attack can be successful. If the time and place are already in his favor when the victim is selected, however, the victim will be like the fly who fails to recognize the chameleon among the leaves. Thankfully, these predators who use the silent selection process are not as common as other predators. They are, however, highly effective, giving the victim very little warning. The key to recognizing them is the last chance of conflict avoidance.

 ***END***

 

A red-headed teen-ager in the orchard. What could go wrong?

Yesterday's work-tickets

The great news is that my volunteer-help yesterday was able to fix the lawn tractor that was in the pole barn at the Upper and Hill Orchards.

I asked him what he did to fix it and he shrugged his shoulders. He had done a handful of things and wasn't sure which one(s) had resolved the issue. He did caution me that there were likely to be mice nests in the shroud that directed cooling air from the fan and I needed to clean those out or I could warp the cylinders if I ran it for extended periods.

We spent the next two hours moving wood from piles in the orchard to the property line where the neighbor would claim it for firewood.

Near the end of the two hours, the generous neighbor lady (not the wood burner) who has been letting me use her hose brought over her niece and asked for a tour of the orchard.

I can be awkward around people until I "calibrate". It takes me longer to calibrate around women then around men. It takes me longer to calibrate around teenagers than around adults or children. It takes me longer to calibrate around red-heads than around brunettes.

Yes, her niece was a gangly, red-headed teen-ager. She looked like a colt whose body parts were at different stages of a violent growth-spurt. For all that, she comported herself with poise and grace. Gymnastics is a wonderful activity, I am thinking. 

Her parents had tried to grow fruit trees but their site was too shady, had too many squirrels and too much deer pressure. It was a bust.

The home-run was when I learned she was from Illinois "Born and bred...", I took her to an Illinois Everbearing Mulberry. She was impressed. She ate a handful and picked a handful for her aunt who had elected to drop out of the tour early.

From the comments

Anon @ 8:51 PM yesterday asked "Would you mind posting some of the sources for your knowledge?" 

The most concise answer I can give is that I used to be a member of an email list called NAFEX-L. NAFEX stands for North American Fruit EXplorers.

Very early in the days of the internet, it was a "thing" for people interested in arcane topics to join email lists where people discussed various problems and opportunities. At one time I was a member of SHEEP-L, GRAZE-L and NAFEX-L.

The members of NAFEX-L included giants in the field like Ed Fackler (Southern Indiana), Lon Rombaugh (Western Oregon), Lucky Pittman (Western Kentucky), Bob Purvis (Alaska, Minnesota, Idaho), Bernie Nikolia (Alberta) and hosts of others from Maine to Florida to Alaska to California.

NAFEX still exists and publishes four magazines (called Pomona) a year. It is organized around interest groups. Each interest group has a leader and members are encouraged to join various interest groups.

The common denominator in these groups are that most of the members are interested in growing fruit in areas that are not currently centers of commercial production. They are home fruit growers and holders of small orchards. They are people who push the boundaries.

Back to LIST format

I think the LIST format was one of the high-points of the internet. Most of the questions were well posed and the answers were well thought out and presented. The format encouraged dialogue. Threads were durable and could be referenced later on. The readership was large enough to have a wide range of expertise but small enough that trolls were rare. The topics tended to be quite focused. Most of the contributors were genuinely motivated by a desire to help their fellow man.

By contrast, today's social media is "open" to the general public. Any idiot can comment. Trolls abound. Forums get flooded with random, tangential off-topic threads. In many cases, contributors are instant-experts and mindlessly parrot the summary from the first line of a Google search as deep-truth.

Presented without comment

 

Things might not be what they first appear

 

One minute run-time.

My original reaction to this short video was the predictable one: How could she not know the card was "empty". My original impression was that the customer was trying to scam Walmart by bluffing/intimidating her way through.

A bit later it occurred to me that the woman working the cash register didn't say "the balance was zero" but that "the transaction was declined" which really means that there are insufficient funds to cover the amount requested.

So what if this was the last week before her balance is refreshed and she is trying to buy the same items in the same amounts that she has for the last two years? What if she has done this 24 times (24 months) before and there has always been enough money to make it to the next month? 

She doesn't have to do math because she solved this math problem two years ago. She "knows" there is plenty of money in the balance because she has 104 pieces of data (104 weeks in two years) that what is in her shopping cart SHOULD be covered.

If she was knowingly trying to scam the store, she would have used self-checkout. Nobody would have challenged her if she mis-scanned some items.  

What happens when the food prices go up but the deposits made in her SNAP account don't? 

You can tell by the reactions of the woman working the cash register and the manager that this event is not rare. Neither of them batted an eye and the woman's lack-of-funds.

So maybe this video is not about "ghetto culture" but about rising food prices surprising everybody.

Finally, a bit of background info: The annual inflation in food prices in Ukraine has been running between 20% and 25% a year since 2022. At 25%, because of the compounding effect, the price of food doubles every three years. 

Fertilizing fruit trees (in the North) and plum pollination woes

Random thought

The stone from plucked from the bottom of the wadi and used by David to kill Goliath is still out there, somewhere in the Valley of Elah. It may be entombed in concrete or in a road-bed...but it is probably still be out there.

While I have never read of it occurring, I assumed that hundreds of crusaders were sold "the stone that killed Goliath" by enterprising locals. Those crusaders carted off stones and random bones by the bushel-basket to take back home and to be displayed as Holy Relics. There have been mystery stories published that used the market for Medieval Relics as a backdrop.

Rain

The inch of rain that was promised has been down-graded to 0.25 inches. I will be lugging more water today.

Fertilizer and trees

Winter hardiness is a factor in northern climates. That would be USDA Zone 5 and lower. I am right on the edge between 5 and 6.

Bud on the tree that are richly endowed with carbohydrates (various types of sugar) are cold-hardy. Buds that are poorly endowed with carbohydrates are NOT cold-hardy.

It is usually not an issue of the leaves not photosynthesizing enough carbs although that can happen if insects or a wandering moose eat the leaves or if the tree is defoliated by disease. It is more often a consequence of how trees budget where the carbs go.

Developing seeds and fruit get first dibs on carbs. That is one reason why letting your tree over-bear is bad for the tree.

Actively growing shoots get second dibs. 

Last on the list are roots and buds.

In a perfect world, the tree would get a dose of nutrients and water early in the season. That would quickly fill the canopy with enough leaves to capture all of the sunlight that hits the tree. Additionally, it would be enough nutrients (primarily nitrogen) to hit the management's targets for shoot-extension. 

After the shoots had extended to the desired length, the nutrients would be shifted from high N to low-N and high-K to encourage the formation of a terminal bud on the shoot. The growing tips would no longer be "sinks" for carbohydrates and they could start accumulating in the buds. Additionally, the higher carb level helps the buds to "decide" to be fruiting buds rather than vegetative buds.

Since I don't have the power to instantly switch-off the nitrogen levels in the soil, that means I need to lead-the-duck and stop applying nitrogen before I want the shoots to stop growing. My best guess is that August 1 should be that date. That is when the supplemental water I am giving the newest trees should stop being supplemented with 300 PPM of nitrogen. I will use the last of the water I have premixed today and then will just water with simple well water.

The trees should coast through August and have set terminal buds by Labor Day. At least, that is the plan.

Hydroponics and organic fertilizers

Growers who use hydroponics do have almost absolute control over the nutrients available to their plants. I don't know of any hydroponics orchards but trees on sand (like stabilized dunes) are pretty darned close.

The downside of hydroponics is that if you screw up there is no forgiveness. If you don't put it in the irrigation water, Mother Nature isn't going to help you out.

Organic growers have a different problem. Most organic fertilizers like composted manure have a long, slow release. The traditional wisdom is to apply your compost early in the spring but then to not add any more. It isn't that a flush of growth is bad in July. The problem is that a flush of growth at the end of August can be catastrophic.

Plum pollination

Plums can present a lot of issues with pollination.

For one thing, there are two very different types of plums and they don't cross-pollinate.

European plums are hexaploids (six sets of chromosomes) and will not pollinate Japanese or wild American type plums.

Within the European plums there is a range of bloom times with the earliest ones having little overlap with the latest ones. 

Some European plums are at least partially self-fertile. Identifying and finding them is where the internet can be your friend.

The Japanese type plums are diploid (two sets of chromosomes). Burbank created the modern Japanese plum by crossing it with other species of diploid plums. Neils Hansen and breeders in the upper mid-west and in Canada crossed Japanese plums with the American plum and the Canadian Black plum to create hybrids that can resist the winter cold.

That ended up creating a dogs-breakfast of genetics all swept into one pile.

Unfortunately, most of the hardy hybrids (Waneta, Superior, Toka, Underwood) produce flowers that are not attractive to bees AND have very little viable pollen. HOWEVER, wild plums in the mid-west and Canada (P. americana and P. nigra) have large amounts of viable pollen. The challenge is getting the bees to fly the distance between the wild trees/bushes and the hybrid trees in your orchard; remember, bees are not attracted to the hybrid blossoms.

The textbook answer, if they are not already growing in the fence-row beside you orchard, is to plant a wild tree in your orchard or use them for rootstock and to allow one root-sucker to grown into a mini-tree large enough to produce blossoms. Problem solved.

A more labor intensive solution is to graft a branch from a wild tree into each hybrid tree. A word of caution is in order here. It is a near certainty that you will prune out that odd looking branch unless you mark it in some permanent and visually arresting way. 

Limping along .and. good-faith proposal in the event of a failed-harvest

Imagine my surprise! I got in two hours time-on-task today.

It wasn't pulling weeds, though. It was lugging water (38 minutes) with the remainder being cutting wood, loading it into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it to the pile that goes to the guy whose property adjoins the Upper Orchard and who heats with wood. The orchard floor is still a mess and clearing it will make it easier to maintain.

While some of the chunks were substantial, the dead-lifting I have been doing made the physical handling of the wood not-that-bad.

Drought and the price of food

The price that a farmer gets for the amount of wheat that goes into a loaf of bread is less than the cost of the printed, plastic bag that the baker packages the loaf of bread in. 

And bread is not typically thought of as a highly processed food. What that means from a practical standpoint is that the price of wheat could double and if nobody in the value-chain took advantage of the excuse, the price of a loaf of bread might increase by five or ten cents.

On the other hand, eggs, beef, pork and chicken are very sensitive to the price of grain because grain is a larger percentage of the cost-per-pound.

Hogs are efficient converters of feed. The last 200 pounds of gain for a 240 pound hog is about 650 pounds of "concentrate", i.e. grain, soymeal, brewer's waste and pedophiles. That 650 pounds of concentrate coverts to about 120 pounds of boneless meat.

The retail price of that concentrate at a "farm store" is about $45/100 pounds or about $2.40 per pound of meat.

Of course, the commercial producers don't pay that much per 100 pounds of feed. They don't by the fancy bags with the pretty pictures on them. But as a home producer, you can get a feel for how sensitive the price of meat is to the price of grain.

Yes, I know that somebody is ALWAYS crying out doom-and-gloom regarding food prices. This year is no exception. Some parts of the corn-belt are in drought status right now. That is a big deal because the soil moisture levels shortly after the corn "tassels" determines how many kernels on each ear are pollinated and that sets an upper limit on the amount of corn that will be harvested, even if abundant rains come afterward.

What if Congress could increase the corn crop by 50%?

Sounds like a stupid question, right? Keep an open mind.

Approximately 35% of the United States corn crop is diverted to ethanol production which is used to adulterate gasoline. Federal law allows gasoline to contain up to 10% ethanol. Various reasons have been given for the practice but in real-politiks it is a backdoor price support for corn producers and it increases the profit margins for the gas-wholesalers. The net increase in energy is virtually nill.

In a rational world, Congress (or the POTUS) would be watching the food market-basket like a hawk and have a series of trigger-points. When the cost of the market-basket punched upward through a trigger-point, the amount of ethanol allowed in motor-fuel would be reduced by some amount...perhaps two percent. Then if it punched through the next trigger-point, reduced by another two percent.

If such a plan was devised (and shared with the industry ahead of time), they could make rational plans regarding the economically rational way to moth-ball marginal ethanol plants with minimal collateral damages.

From the standpoint of the corn producer, if prices are extremely high, then the need for price-supports is not a strong argument. 

For the hair-splitters

If 65% of the corn crop is currently used for food, then increasing the amount to 100% is a net increase of 100%/65%. The basis (denominator) should not be the total but the fraction of the total that is currently employed for that purpose.

That is not a 35% increase over current levels. It is a 50% increase. 

...a cup of ambition...

My anatomy is dragging this morning. Pulling weeds is hard work and uses muscles that I don't normally exercise.

The weather-guessers are promising an inch of rain tomorrow. We will see.

This is prime-time to control yellow jacket populations. Their numbers explode through August and September. There are countless videos on streaming platforms regarding various traps that involve bait (fish guts, canned cat-food, ham, hotdogs...) and soapy water. It is easiest to spot the ground nests in the late evening when the light backlights the beasts and they circle in for landings. It is a great excuse for sitting on the east end of your lawn drinking a beverage or savoring a cigar. They generally nest in sandy soils that are slightly elevated above the surrounding lawn.

I should pull some more weeds today and cut some wood but I think I need another cup of coffee first. This is the kind of morning when I would walk the property with Zeus and we would discuss the important things in life.

Can do, will do

One of my brothers was grousing about his in-laws.

They were staunch union members and their conversations were as predictable as the tunes you can play on a piano with one unbroken string.

"Everybody in the United States could be in the middle-class if they just joined a union."

Because this particular brother is a peace-maker, he kept his mouth shut.

An interesting thing about keeping your mouth shut is that your brain works twice as fast as when your gums are flopping. The following is what he could have said but chose not to.

Lines of demarcation

One of the hallmarks of unions (and professional associations) are strict lines of demarcation regarding the qualifications required to do any kind of work.

In a union factory, an equipment break-down will require an electrician to address any electrical items. It requires a pipe-fitter to address any issues that arise during the repair that involve tubing or pipe that moves air, gas, water, oil or waste. It requires a tool-maker to address any issues involving bearings or tooling that touches the parts. It requires a millwright for any issues that involve conveyor parts and the portions of the equipment that does not directly touch the parts. It requires a building-repair-general tradesman for any issues that might involve the concrete in the floors or footings. 

The work stops whenever another trade must be called. They stand around until the Fluzenbech Calibrater tradesman shows up if the Fluzenbech got bumped while the building-repair-general was jackhammering a hole in the floor.

My brother's in-laws would greet this information with glee. "Look!!! Five families are now in the ranks of the middle-class" as if this was a good thing.

The reality is that the production line that could be producing hot-dogs or Cameros or other consumer items is silent until all of the tradesmen show up. It could be as simple as splicing a broken hose but under the rigid lines-of-demarcation can only be fixed by a journeyman pipe-fitter. Even though the issue announces itself and any reasonably able-bodied 6th grader (boy or girl) can fix the problem.

My brother's in-laws think that unions magically create wealth when, in fact, they redistribute it and...in the long run...reduce the creation of it.

There are some "union plants" that have a "can-do, will-do" policy. During a breakdown during regular production hours, an electrician or a tool-maker can splice a broken water or air hose BUT...it comes at the cost. The pipe-fitter is scheduled to work over-time (time-and-a-half) to replace the spliced hose(s) during the next non-production day. The line keeps running. The pipe-fitter gets more $$$ in his pocket.

Crack, weeds and lottery tickets

If you look closely at the fourth thread from the end, you will see a crack. When under pressure the crack opened up and the spray flew 6' to 8'.

 

I keep hose repair parts in-stock. I replaced a male 3/4" hose fitting. I firmly believe that the impulse sprinkler was throwing the water an extra 3' in every direction after the repair due to the improved pressure at the business end.

In all honesty, I misdiagnosed the problem at first. I replaced the rubber washer under the assumption that the original had "crept" under the compressive load. 

Work-ticket report

I over-achieved on the weeding at 223 minutes time-on-task but under-achieved on the mowing at 0 minutes. I weeded potatoes and cabbage.

In addition to the hose-repair, I also harvested broccoli, sprayed the cabbage for cabbage loopers and tilled the patch where the spinach trials will be held.

While weeding the cabbage before spraying them, I deduced that deer had jumped into the fenced garden. The leaves were stripped off of the grafted mulberry trees and 3/4 of the broccoli had been eaten. 

I was able to give a half dozen cucumbers to a nephew whose daughter ADORES cucumbers. He has a blended family and I take every opportunity to let the newer members know that "dad" is looking out for them.

There is probably another 5 hours of weeding to do in the gardens to get them presentable but I have a volunteer who offered to help in the Upper Orchard tomorrow, so that is where I will be. I will be lugging water and my volunteer will be trouble-shooting equipment with electrical issues.

Random observations

I picked up some Black Friar plums at the local Walmart. Maybe not nectar-of-the-gods quality, but still very, very nice. I may be looking for scion next winter. Shiro and Methley are the two "toughest" Japanese plums for the northeastern US but the quality is...well, OK at best. Cummins Nursery (run by no BS people) say "Fortune" is the highest quality cultivar of Japanese plum in their part of the world.

Mrs ERJ graciously saves the pits from the plums. She would rather have me planting seeds than buying lottery tickets, even though the are the same thing when you get right down to it. 

Contractors A-A-R, work-tickets and Farmer's Carry

The contractors came-and-went yesterday.

One of the members of the crew lives north of Sparta, Michigan and commutes every working day to the south side of Brighton, Michigan. It is 140 miles, one-way and an honest two hours time when the weather is good and there are no accidents or construction.

Today's first job (mine) took him half-way back toward home. The next job will take him into the city of Detroit. From there he had to return to the south side of Brighton to drop off his equipment and then drive back home. He has ten grandchildren and likes to play golf. He carries a 9mm handgun.

Another member of the crew has a young child of about 6 months. His child is colicky and not eating well. The doctor finally sorted out the issues and surgery is required. That member of the crew is sleep-deprived.

A third member of the crew only works for "the boss" three days a week. He has his own business. Most bosses would not put up with that situation but this guy is an absolute artist with heavy equipment and they schedule jobs around his availability.

MOSTLY, I didn't try to help them. MOSTLY, I was successful.

The boss sets the tone. He was still in-transit when the first two guys showed up. I went out and greeted them. The first guy who I described was on the phone with the boss.

They started the job (i.e. working) before he showed up, which I considered pretty amazing. That is evidence of a level of trust that can develop when the same people work together over a period of time.

Other than NOT HELPING, I didn't do anything productive all day.

Today's work-tickets

I am not going to lift at the gym today. I am woefully behind in pulling weeds.

I intend to get in three hours pulling/cutting weeds.

I intend to cut the grass and move brush for an additional hour.

Core Strength

This video is long and boring and mentions a number of exercises that I never heard of. 

The link should pop you into the video at their #1 choice for improving core strength and it was something I understood.

Farmer's Carry is their #1 choice. Also known as "Lugging buckets of water in the orchard".  

 

A little bit of older music

Whether you liked the music or not, there were certain songs and movies that were iconic and captured some of the zaniness of the age. Contrary to what today's SJW kill-joys would have you believe, we were supported body-positivity even back then.

We could even poke a little bit of fun at ourselves. 

 The Bertha Butt Boogie (long)

Fat Bottomed Girls (make the rocking world go round)

And we celebrated other cultures

King Tut
 

Walk like an Egyptian

Construction update

Contractors will be on the property today. We might have to drop the power for an extended period. If so, posting will be light.

The main item on today's work-tickets is to stay out of their way while remaining available. 

Chainsaws, UPS, lost knives and arcane hardware (pop-quiz)

Somebody wanted to borrow my chainsaw

I asked "Why?" 

They replied "My friend had a couple of trees come down in his yard during the recent storms."

I told him "If I loan you my chainsaw I come with it."

Handing a random person a tool that can whack off an arm in less than one second is not prudent.

Consequently, part of my morning was spent cutting up a downed Wild Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) and Box Elder (Acer negundo). Both of those species are considered "invasive aliens" in Europe. Of the two, P. serotina is the more attractive tree.

Shipping something via UPS

A person in another state wanted a few pieces of bud-wood from one of my trees.

He shipped me a box, an expanded, polystyrene cooler and two ice-packs. He also included a return label to put on the box for the return trip.

About an hour-and-a-half of my morning was spent preparing the bud-wood, boxing it up and transporting it to a UPS Store.

Time-on-task/Clock-time

According to my stop-watch, I spent 4:38 on the two separate tasks. By my reckoning, maybe 90 minutes of it was actual time-on-task.

That is not a great ratio, only about 30% of the time was actually spent running the chainsaw or cutting scion. Time in the truck doesn't put food in the pantry.

Pop-quiz

This story start with a lost paring knife.

Mrs ERJ is quite fond of our Old Hickory paring knife. We have had it for decades. And then, earlier this week, it disappeared.

While looking through my inventory of cutting tools for a replacement, I happened across two items made of steel that I had been looking for because of other reasons. 

On two different occasions I had a need to add a degree-of-separation between these artifacts and their "mothers" thereby rendering their mother inop whilst still being able to restore their capability in a timely manner.

Timely, that is, if I had remembered the "safe place" I had stored these items. 

Bonus points for any readers who can identify the mothers of these artifacts. More photos can be provided if needed.

Closure on the paring knife

I ordered another paring knife. It now costs $23 rather than the $5 they cost in 2010. By my calculus, it is a bargain if you can make your wife happy for the cost of three cups of foo-foo coffee.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Roman Kochanowski was born in Krakow, Poland in 1857 and died in 1945. He spent most of his professional life in Munich.

 

Weight-lifting slippers, Big Two-Hearted River and random pictures

 

Shamelessly stolen borrowed from Midwest Chick.

I recently learned that elite weight-lifters like TB wear special weight-lifter slippers while working out.

Say no more. I was on it like a duck-on-a-Junebug or like flies-on-'tater-salad. 

I was undoubtedly the envy of every other weight-lifter at the gym.

It was a LOT faster to get changed into my gym-togs. I slipped out of my sandals and slid my feet into these fox-fur (faux-fur) lined bad-boys. Camo shorts and a torn tee-shirt completed my redneck-chic ensemble...which coincidentally is the same redneck chic I sport outside of the gym.

I may have a future as a fashion "influencer". 

Sadly, I was unable to find the Tahini at the local grocery store so I had to make do without it.

Count me as a skeptic regarding most "ethnic" cooking. Folks made-do with what was in-season and what was abundant. It was an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of flavors that changed week-by-week...sometimes day-by-day.

I have to confess that I really like the way even a few plants of dill make the garden smell. 

A fun video

It amazes some people that places like this still exist in the United States east of the Mississippi River. The Big Two-Hearted River was the title of an Ernest Hemingway short-story. It is a real river in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It is not big.

This is reader CoyoteKen's stomping grounds. 

Bonus images

Chinese Cabbage seedlings cv. "Citrus". Surprisingly, unmolested by the ducks.

A cucumber in a wheelbarrow. I ran out of hands and parked the cuke in the wheelbarrow. Then, I realized it was photogenic, returned and snapped the photo. 

The tomatoes on the right side of the frame were sold to me as Rose de Bern. RdB is an 80 day tomato that is very large, round an pink. I was deceived! That cannot be RdB.

On the other hand, the seeds I saved from a winter squash I purchased last fall is over-performing.

Speaking of over-performing...

It is an article of faith in the prepper community that "you never want to become a refugee".

The backstory is that this man, a software engineer from San Francisco, Ca, convinced himself that he was in mortal danger in "Trump's America". Because emigrating in the ordinary fashion requires paperwork and takes many months to execute, he opted to emigrate to the Netherlands (a bastion of Progressive ideals) as a political refugee because it was expedient.

He was distressed to find himself interred with hundreds of other undocumented refugees who had also chosen the most expeditious path. Many of his fellow refugees were from Islamic countries where the norm is to stone LGBT+ people, throw them off of buildings or to glue random body orifices shut with super-glue.

The fine Progressive of the Netherlands understand this and he is safe as long as he stays within his room but he cannot safely venture outside of the building to buy groceries or travel to the US embassy. 

In retrospect, he determined that he was poorly calibrated when he decided that he was oppressed when he lived in San Francisco, California (a notoriously conservative metro region) making +$150k per year and he wants to come back to the United States.

Preview of the day

Today's work-tickets

• Pick up the yard. We have contractors scheduled to come over on Wednesday
• Run impulse sprinkler on west end of potato patch until 1:30
• Tidy up front porch
• Pick tomatoes
• Pick cucumbers 
• Pick broccoli 
• Tie up tomato vines
• Go to the gym
• Walk with Mrs ERJ 
• Buy whole-wheat pita bread, hummas, tahini and a bottle of red wine
• Sharpen the chain on the chainsaw (small job tomorrow) 
• Pull some weeds
• Throw bottles of water into freezer to make ice
• Cut bud-wood from a pear tree 

Last night, the weather-guessers were saying 0.8" of rain today. Now they are down to 0.5" 

A warning to my readers in the mid-West, be sure to lock your vehicle doors when you leave it unattended. It is zucchini season.

 

Organized Religion

From the comments, Old Grump wrote:

Wish I could be as comfortable with organized religion as most of you here that share Joe's acceptance. I, unfortunately have many bad experiences with the individuals and organizations that purport to serve God. Every thing from demanding people living in abject poverty to give a significant portion of any income to them while living in lavish homes, committing adultery with vulnerable members and just being accepted as Gods messenger a-la Jim Jones and the Bakers. I can't say I am totally comfortable in my stance but that's where the preponderance of evidence leads me.

It is undeniable that many horrible things have been done by people flying the banner of organized religion. Is that a failing of the people who did the horrible things, organized religion or do they share in the culpability?

The first time something happens the perpetrator is the only one who is culpable.

After the first time, or if members of the religion/church learn about the sin while it is happening and don't address it...then the church is also culpable.

God has imperfect tools to work with. He once called Peter "Satan" (literally, stumbling-block). He betrayed by Judas, one of his apostles. He was abandoned and denied by ten others and the only apostle who is recorded to have stuck with him through the crucifixion is John. 

Then, prior to Pentecost, the apostles huddled like scared rabbits trying to figure out what to do next.

I scratch my head at people who reject organized religion solely because of imperfect people when the imperfect apostles were good enough for Jesus. 

The church has always been made of, and for, broken and sinful people. And yes, I consider myself to be in that group.

Only slightly related

The church exists to serve people's needs. Different people have different needs for "connection".

Foxes and leopards hunt alone. Wolves and lions hunt in groups. There is nothing wrong with foxes or leopards or wolves or lions. They are what they are.

Before interrupting a church service in Minnesota, Don Lemon was going to disrupt a church service in the deep south. That was before he learned that every man wearing a suit-coat and every woman carrying a handbag was "packing heat".

Some people are most at peace and can talk-to-Jesus best when they are alone or with just a few like-minded people. Other people feel out-of-place when they are not in a crowd. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with either type of person. The fishers of men take us all.

Fire in the orchard, fire in hell

Typhoid Mary

Yesterday's helper showed up and worked for five hours with 10 minute breaks on-the-hour.

His job was to make the branches that were on the ground in the weeds beneath the trees disappear. They are a slip-trip hazard and make it more difficult to maintain the orchard.

He kept two burn barrels going

 

The yellow barrel was retired. The black barrel has venting cut in the side rather than holes in the bottom and proved superior.

I dragged hose and humped water for the first three hours, coasted the fourth hour doing random chores and then sat in a chair and watched the fires burn down the fifth hour. Then we dowsed the fires with copious amounts of water.

This is the second time I hired this young man to burn orchard trash. We are done for the season until we get some rain and the grass greens up.

Char from the burn we did two weeks ago, dumped out and scattered

There were some branches in a couple of the trees that had died, probably from some form of canker. I cut the dead branches out of the tree and added them to one of the piles he had staged.

Then I asked my helper if had ever heard of "Typhoid Mary".

He had not. I was overjoyed at the chance to enhance his education. He had never even heard of "Typhoid". Public schools do a poor job of teaching public health.

Cutting diseased wood out of the canopy of an apple tree is a concrete lesson in public health. 

Gospel reading cycle

The Catholic Church follows a prescribed cycle of scriptural readings that cycles through three years. The intent is to ensure that the priests don't selectively skip material that they are uncomfortable "preaching". 

July and August are harvest season for wheat in the Northern Hemisphere and we get to hear parables about harvests during those months.

I want to present three concepts from those readings:

• Fidelity of interpreting Sacred Scripture is paramount. Nothing shall be added. Nothing shall be deleted.
• Hell exists. Many souls will go there. 
• And here is the hardest one, some of our beloved family members will go to Hell.

How many people our age have become "comfortable" with LGBT relationships or out-of-marriage babies or abortion because their child(ren) or close friends are fully immersed in those choices?

 

The distorting effect of "Feelz" criteria results in words like "brave" and "heroic" coming out of their mouths when discussing those kids and they become incredibly hostile if you dare to suggest that maybe those choices are sub-optimal. If you think calling somebody's baby "ugly" gets a reaction, wait until you suggest their baby might go to hell!

 

The most pernicious effect of the "Feelz" criteria is that it results in our replacing God and God's word with our own, fleeting emotional reactions to a "narrative". And may I be so bold as to point out that when we do that we are violating the very FIRST Commandment "Thou shall have no other gods before me".

 

The great falling-away

It is no secret that people have been leaving formal Christianity in large numbers for decades. 

I think that is largely because most people figure "I don't need God because I can handle whatever the future will throw my way."

 

This argument is sensitive to the question "Can you write down a list everything the future might hold?"

 

Of course, they have to answer "No" if only because they cannot live long enough to compile such a list.

 

But then they will weasel and say, "I can handle the things that are likely to happen."

 

The counterpoint is "How can you have any confidence that your sketchy knowledge of history is a solid basis for calculating future probabilities?"

 

The kill-shot is to ask them about "combinations" like "You decided that the risk of flash-floods or wild-fires is zero but have you considered the possibility that business or pleasure might take you to Texas, Utah, California, Greece or Spain?"

 

The goal is not to paralyze them with anxiety but to help them see that they need a little bit of room for God in their life so He can carry part of their load. 

Another tangent

"I will get religion when I really need it." 

 

That statement is the equivalent of saying "I will only buy gas after my call stalls out while driving somewhere" or "I will only buy new tires after I have to pay a wrecker to come and pull my car out of a ditch".

 

Why subject yourself to the pain of having to hit "rock bottom" when you know how to avoid that pain? Is the pain of having to admit that you, personally, are not all-powerful and not all-knowing (facts that are readily apparent to everybody around you) more painful than the pain of hitting rock-bottom?

Presented without comment

 

Moving forward, sometimes slowly but moving nevertheless

I underperformed on work-tickets yesterday

The trip to the gym went well but left me wrung out. When I was in PT after an auto accident, the PT people informed me that the number of repetitions is less important than the time-under-tension.

Taking that into the weight room, I slowly float the weight off the floor, hold it for two or three breaths at lock-out and then I slowly float it down to gently kiss the floor before floating it back up. I figure about ten seconds per rep.

I was rushing a little bit through my last set because I could feel myself running out of gas.

Then we had a visitor who, it turned out, was camping at our house waiting for somebody to call them back.

I got the cabbage planted.

I got one hour of weeding done. And then I nicked my finger. I went into the house and scrubbed the cut and stopped the bleeding. By then, my behind had grown roots and I could not pull myself out of the recliner.

End result: Only half the goal for weeding and no wood cut and split.

Some days are like that.

Today's work-tickets

I have a volunteer to work in the Upper Orchard burning brush. That means I will be doing other things there.

I will lug water to the baby trees, move bigger wood to the side of the orchard where a neighbor will collect it for firewood. I might even get to mulching some of the trees and broadcasting turnip seeds beneath the trees.

If I am feeling peppy when I get home I will do some more weeding in the potato patch.