Grab bag

The REAL Woodpilereport.com can be access through the Wayback Machine website. You may have to fiddle with it to find what you are looking for. There are no new postings since Remus slipped his mortal coil.

My crystal ball informs me that sometimes-commenter Gary has skills in this area. Maybe he can direct us to a more elegant way of accessing the old postings.

One example.

Fence posts

Grab-bag of interesting vegetables and apple cultivars

Mangels (giant beets)

Daikon radishes

Black winter radishes 

Rutabagas

Lehigh potato 

Mt Brushy Limbertwig apple 

King David apple

Golden Russet apple 

Little Ice Age, the growth of cities

One unexpected outcome of the famines of 1816-1820 were the fact that rioting in cities due to bread prices caused fearful governments to subsidize the cost of bread in the cities and only in the cities. That resulted in a depopulation of the countryside as people fled to where "services" were available.

That famine was short-lived because it was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora. One has to speculate that if the root-cause resulted in a longer disruption of grain production that perhaps the rush to the cities would result in them being death-traps. 

Sirach

Sirach is one of the books that is included in the Roman Catholic Bible as "Divinely Inspired and Unerring word of God". During the Protestant Reformation, it was consigned by the reformers to an appendix called The Apocrypha which are books that the early reformers considered "Holy but not Divinely Inspired and Unerring". 

Which books that were to be tossed and which were to be kept was an intense debate. For instance, some reformers wanted to remove the Book of James but their arguments did not carry the day.

Sirach is very similar to the Books of Wisdom and Proverbs. It is filled with many short, high-impact quotes that have high signal-to-noise ratios.

Some of my favorites are:

Touch pitch and you blacken your hand; associate with scoundrels and you learn their ways.

Do not lift a weight too heavy for you, or associate with anyone wealthier than you. How can the clay pot go with the metal cauldron? When they knock together, the pot will be smashed:

The rich do wrong and boast of it, while the poor are wronged and beg forgiveness.   From Sirach 13

Those are timeless. Given social media and today's culture and its worship of celebrities, athletes, and "influencers", those words are as fresh today as the day they were first written.

If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you;
if you trust in God, you too shall live;
he has set before you fire and water
to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.
Before man are life and death, good and evil,
whichever he chooses shall be given him.   From Sirach 15

My son, be steadfast in honoring your father; do not grieve him as long as he lives.

Even if his mind fails, be considerate of him; do not revile him because you are in your prime. Kindness to a father will not be forgotten;

A stubborn heart will have many a hurt; adding sin to sin is madness.

When the proud are afflicted, there is no cure; for they are offshoots of an evil plant.

The mind of the wise appreciates proverbs, and the ear that listens to wisdom rejoices.   From Sirach 3