The war on snails continues

More experimenting on snail control.

This paper states

Boric acid (BOA) is currently used as a safe alternative molluscicide to control land snails in sustainable agriculture, but the mechanisms of toxicity have not yet been investigated.

(Boric acid) was found to be lethal against T. pisana with LC₅₀ values of 24.7 and 8.05 mg g⁻¹ (2.5% and 0.8% respectively) after 3 and 7 days of exposure, respectively. BOA sublethal concentrations led to a significant reduction in food consumption and growth of snails after 14 days of exposure...lipid peroxidation level and catalase activity were elevated, whereas acetylcholinesterase activity was inhibited in the treated snails.

Note: Many insecticides are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. Essentially, it prevents nerve impulses from stopping...muscles lock-up. 

I whipped up a batch of approximately 2.5% bait and... 

They were attracted to the bait but didn't want to eat it.

I am pretty sure my problem is that I didn't use boric acid but substituted the equivalent amount of borax. Borax is a sodium salt of boric acid (commercially available and dirt-cheap). However, it has a pH of about 9 it it appears that snails are sensitive to pH.

Image of the same bait-can on the second morning. It looks like more snails to me.

Another attempt using actual boric acid powder will be attempted in the near future.

Well, alrighty!

Ammonia has a pH of 11(ish) which is 100X more alkaline than borax. Ammonia is expensive and perishable.

Sodium carbonate is cheap (ten cents an ounce) and shelf-stable. A little bit of guessing suggests that a 3% solution of sodium carbonate will have a pH of about 11.8*. So I speedy-quick mixed up 120g of sodium carbonate into 3800ml of water and found some volunteers to test it on.

Solutions with high pH are caustic. Proteins are chains of amino acids that are knit together into tissue. Exposure to high pH solutions shreds those amino-acid chains and dissolves the cell walls of animals like slugs and snails. The reaction is self-limiting. The amino acids that are released lower the pH toward neutral and the reaction fizzles.

Spray that lands on the ground is quickly buffered (neutralized) by the clay-content. Spray that lands on dead grass encounters very little buffering and the dead grass becomes a no-go zone for them until the sodium carbonate is leached out by the rains. 

They did not like the spray. They started falling to the ground about five seconds after getting sprayed.

***Follow-up: I have no evidence that this actually killed the snails. It may have maimed them...but not enough dead-bodies to make any claims. I did a re-spray this morning with a followup a minute later. Many of the snails turn-turtle at the first spray and expose their foot which is a much larger target. 

*Lye and lime have a pH of 14 which is about 200 times more alkaline than sodium carbonate solution 

The mice will play while the boss is away...

Mrs ERJ left me yesterday

She had been invited to a party at a beach. It was a hens-only party, so I was not invited.

The heat index was about 100F which is pretty warm for out part of Michigan.

She brought back pies and cakes and salads. My sweet, darling, soft-hearted wife did not want any of the other ladies to be left with the impression that their best-efforts were lacking in any way.

And since we are a team, I will manfully eat my share of the goodies and then some. My metabolism runs hotter than Mrs ERJ's and therefore I have the greater duty.

Kel-tec P-17

I had a chance to mess around with a Kel-tec P-17 while Mrs ERJ was hanging out with her girlfriends.

The Kel-tec P-17 is a .22LR handgun with a magazine capacity of 16 which is about 6 more than most .22LR handguns and is on-par with the magazine capacity of the Glock 19, 9mm handgun.

My impression is that the Kel-tec P-17 has a very nice trigger and almost cartoonishly large safety and mag-release...very useful if you are wearing gloves.

The first magazine through the firearm had two bobbles. One was a "failure to eject" and other was a "failure to extract". That may slick-up as more rounds are fired through the weapon. Time will tell.

The spent cases tumbled out of the weapon and fell just to the right of my feet. No flinging of the brass across the room with this weapon. 

All .22 semi-automatics are fussy about ammo with pistols being more sensitive than rifles. It is a matter of physics. It is a combination of the simple (and economical to manufacture) blow-back designs and the limited amount of energy that must be "budgeted" for the various functions that must be executed as the action cycles through

• Extract
• Eject
• Reset hammer 
• Strip new round out of magazine
• Seat new round in chamber
• Seat extractor over rim of round in chamber 

Furthermore, the extremely light weight of the weapon, although that makes it a joy to carry, makes it even more sensitive to "limp-wristing" or a gentle-grip on the weapon.

One quirk of this firearm is that the magazine well feels like it is very long (in the direction of the barrel). This is not a gun for people with short fingers.

I have short, stubby fingers (for a guy) and I would not have wanted the magazine well to be any longer. HOWEVER...that geometry locked in the firearm and I had exceptionally low horizontal stringing.

However, the gun shot low with the ammo we tried. That might be a matter of getting used to the sight-picture required with the fiber-optic front sight but non-fiber rear. Aligning the tops of the front and rear sights doesn't work. Maybe the designers expect shooters to align the bright-spot in the front with the tops of the rear. Something to check out. 

If a fellow were looking for a "bumming around in the woods" .22 handgun or a gun to carry on a trap-line or if he was exterminating vermin...I think he would be better served with a Heritage Rough Rider .22LR revolver with the 4.75 inch barrel. The Rough Rider will go "bang" regardless of the ammo and is easier to find a holster for.

If a fellow needed to navigate in places where volume-of fire and speed-of-reload were important, and low hand-strength made centerfire chamberings impossible, then this might be an option although the grip might make it a non-starter for some women. If you opt for this weapon, plan on running several hundred rounds through it to break it in. Also plan on trying several brands of ammo to see which it feeds most reliably.

What is it like to live hundreds of miles from a city? 

I think this is interesting because I am becoming less enchanted by trips to "the city" to get supplies.

This family lives out in the hinter-boonies of Alaska. They have been "homesteading" for fifteen years but JUST moved to Alaska a year ago. 

This is the first run they made to a Costco store from their new homestead. 

While in Anchorage, they wallowed in decadence...They bought a princess dress for one of their daughters,. They ate ice cream. They drank fou-fou lattes from a coffee shop. They ate breakfasts out of disposable take-out cardboard containers. It was a venture in cultural enrichment for their seven children.

The Holy Grail: Shelf-stable dry-goods that are "nutritionally dense"

That is, they take up relatively small volume for their mass and nutritional content.

Spaghetti vs elbow macaroni. Spaghetti wins.

Dried beans vs canned refried beans. Dried beans win.

Flour vs baked goods. Flour wins. (BTW, this guys wife likes to bake. What a treasure for this kind of life!!!)

Slab bacon or even vac-packed mystery-meat hotdogs vs pre-made, frozen breakfast sandwiches. Bacon wins.

Granulated sugar vs Kaptain Krunch breakfast cereal or cans of soda pop. Granulated sugar wins.

Dried milk powder vs liquid milk. Dried milk wins.

Don't buy water. Don't pay money for air. 

Bring a trailer

Day three(ish) on my news detox

I lost track on what day I am in my news detox.

I get irritated when ads pop-up on the video I am watching and the ad pummels me with "news" or politics.

June 10 is the day I remember my dad putting in the garden. I am the second oldest and have seven siblings. The next youngest is three-and-a-half years younger, so Dad leaned heavily on my older brother and me to help with the chores.

I still have some empty space in my garden, so I am not quite up-to-snuff, but I did get most of my garden planted before June first, so that counts for something.

The remaining space will probably be planted to Daikon radishes and California Giant zinnias and maybe some kale. 

Random meme

"It is good to have a cousin who works in the mail-room of the local police station and to have an uncle with a fast boat."   -Central American proverb

Addendum to "From the Comments" post

Victor K. Polk wrote: I put pieces of shingle (Or anything else you can find) on the moist ground. In the morning you will find slugs under the pieces. Spray them with ammonia. They instantly dissolve. Ammonia breaks down quickly and is also a fertilizer.

Mr Polk's comment specifically mentioned "slugs" while my main issues are "snails" which are similar but not identical.

Fortunately, Mr Polk's comment is a testable-hypothesis. This wasn't included in the original post because the testing was still in-progress.

Picture taken at about 9:00 a.m. after turning over board.

 

A close-up to make it easier to see the population-density of the snails.

I sprayed the areas where they were the thickest with cloudy ammonia.

The snails clearly did not like the experience.

I waited two hours before revisiting the spot. I assume that all of the survivors would make a dash for the exits.

Not exactly the same spot, but within a few feet of it.

 

A close-up of the battlefield. Not a lot of color contrast, but there are about 40 dead snails in that picture.

Thank-you for your comment Mr. Victor K. Polk. It seems to work on snails, too.

From the Comments

Terrible drought in NC this year. Do you have contingency plan for a season or two of drought?

If we have electricity, I will water the gardens. I have trickle irrigation installed in the Eaton Rapids orchard. The tree in the ER orchard are on smaller root-stock which are more vulnerable to drought.

For modest droughts, I don't practice square-foot gardening. One of the weaknesses of SFG is that each plant has very little volume of soil from which to pull nutrients and water. If either drop, then the plants are stressed very quickly. It is like flying a plane very close to the ground, there is very little time to recover from sub-optimal circumstances.

For example, commercial cabbage growers will typically allocate three square-feet per plant. I am not running a business and don't count on what I harvest to cover the payroll, mortgage and taxes and I can plant them farther apart. This year, I planted them 24" apart in the rows with the rows 40" apart. In terms of square-feet per plant, that is 6.7 square-feet per plant or less than half of the plant-density of a commercial grower. 

The Hill and Upper Orchards are in another part of Eaton County. Keeping the grass cut short (scalped) reduced water competition from the ground-cover. Most of the apple trees in the Hill and Upper Orchard are grafted on G.890, MM-106 and M-26 and MM-111. MM-111 and MM-106 have a history of good drought tolerance due to deep, plunging roots. G.890 is too new to have much data. M-26 is not known for drought tolerance. 

Frequent commentor Dan wrote: Unfortunately it's not possible to contractually negate legal risk via contracts. Courts and rogue judges routinely toss out such agreements. Contract law is now more of an informal agreement than a binding enforceable instrument. Judges have destroyed most of the legal framework this country was founded on. 

Some of that is related to WHERE the court is. Courts in large cities, the Mississippi Delta and the Rio Grande valley are notorious for seeing businesses and successful people as lambs to be fleeced.

If that were universally the case, wealthy people (who can afford very good legal counsel) would never bother with pre-nuptial agreements.

I do agree that it is common. I also deplore how that trend has made us all poorer. Not that long ago it wasn't too hard to find somebody who would loan you a trailer (for instance). Now it is a case of having to buy your own or pay high prices to rent one for a very short period of time.

Also from Dan but on the ADHD essay: It's genetic/biologic. A significant percentage of the population are incapable of seeing the future. To them next month is a haze and next year does not exist. And they live their lives accordingly.

Many are incapable of connecting actions with consequences. It's why so many low brow people are literally shocked and stunned when they willingly commit a serious crime and are then sentenced to prison. They are not capable of connecting the two.

We are divided into two species. Homo Sapiens and Homo Stupidicus. And the latter group is rapidly out breeding the first. Also they are indistinguishable by appearance. You have to wait for them to start gum flapping to see the difference.

I agree.

Where I was trying to go with the ADHD post is that even animals as stupid  as chickens, pigeons and carp can be trained to do certain things if the task is narrowly defined and the reward/punishment is immediate.

"Make people more intelligent" is not narrowly defined.

"Stopping for a second and asking yourself, "Will this get my ass kicked"." is a narrowly defined task. 

Unfortunately, the current fad in criminal justice defers punishments out of a misplaced sense of "mercy" and the pliable twig is not straightened and thence continues to grow into a warped tree. 

From Michael: Have you given thought about a (Joel Salatin) style mobile coop for (the ducks)? 

Yes, Michael, I have.

Joel Salatin developed the "Chicken Tractor" concept in a very specific context. He was fine-tuning his Management Intensive Grazing methods. He raised beef cattle in (I think) western Virginia. He was thinking very specifically about the rapid cycling of nutrients and the best ways to retain them in the most active parts of the biosphere...say from 1mm above the surface of the soil to 50mm below it. He was also thinking about labor efficiency and attempting to gain additional revenue streams.

One key point that gets glossed over is the scale which Salatin was working. He is grazing hundreds of acres.

He concluded that the ideal situation would be to configure a system where natural creatures, following their hardwired instincts and habits, did most of the work. Chickens scratch apart cow-pats and scatter them. They eat the maggots growing in them. They spread fertilizer widely but it is concentrated where they roost for the night.

So, he decided to make a mobile chicken coop that he could move behind the mob of cattle as he rotated them. It is very rainy in western Virginia. By the time he rotated his cattle back into the paddock, the cow poop scattered by the chickens would not be repugnant to the cows and they would not leave big islands of ungrazed forage.

When he followed with the chicken tractor, he deliberately put it in a different location in the paddock each time so the concentrating effect of the chicken poop at the roosting site was not additive. In fact, he would look around and make sure that he placed it on the site with the shabbiest looking grass regrowth.

The primary difference between Salatin's situation and mine are scale and objectives. 

Salatin's scale involved hundreds and hundreds of acres or in linear distances...maybe a 2000 feet. If I put the duck-jail in the center of the plot that includes my Eaton Rapids Orchard, the fenced in garden and the two potato plots (one planted, one fallow), the walk to the farthest corner is about 120 feet.

So far, my one duck who is still laying eggs reliably lays it in the corner that is opposite the corner where I have a spike-light adding supplemental lighting in the morning. Note that the shelter is a truck cap and she lays it at the end with the gate that opens-and-closes

Salatin's primary objectives were rapid nutrient cycling, fly control and broiler production. My primary objectives are snail control with egg production being secondary. So there is some overlap...but not much.

Another reason that I haven't pulled-the-trigger on making a chicken tractor is I cannot make the cost-benefit numbers work.

I look at what most people call "chicken tractors" and see running-gear (wheels and axle assemblies) that will self destruct in six months. Why not start by laying down some 2-by-4s for skids and dragging it if you are going to be consigned to that in half a year anyway?

If I want more mobility than simply being able to expose where the animals were pooping at night, then I can use "sandwich" building techniques where I have a table under a partitioned-dormitory with doors under an aluminum truck cap. Each subassembly, although awkward to move, isn't very heavy and two medium sized kids can easily move it 30 feet.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Eugene von Guerard was born in Austria (in Europe) in 1811. He emigrated to Australia (in the Southern Hemisphere) in 1852. He died in Chelsea, England, a pauper, in 1901.

There was an insatiable thirst to experience the novelties of the new colonies of Imperial Europe. Von Guerard scratched that itch.

That fascination lasted well into the 1950s as evidenced by the "Tarzan" franchise and commercial success of The African Queen movie. 

Thinking about AI

Thinking about AI

It is very clear to me that people don't know beans about what they want.

People, even very intelligent people, are rarely self-aware and are not capable of articulating an explicit hierarchy about their desires. They haven't thought about the scales (ratio-of-trade between attributes) of what they want and the relationships between those desires.

The videos on Hoe-Math and the videos where the narrator asks women what they require in a romantic partner demonstrate that.

A typical vignette of the second type of video has the narrator approaching an attractive woman, typically outside of an upscale bar, and asking her "What do you look for in a boy-friend?"

The answer typically comes back "He has to be between 25-and-30 years-old. He has to be making at least $150k per-year in finance or marketing. When we go out on a date (at least once a week), he must be happy to drop $250 for my half of the tab. He has to take me on at least four one-week, over-seas vacations a year. He must be fluent in French and have a swanky apartment. He has to be at least 6'-2" and have thick, wavy hair and have perfect teeth and manicured nails. Oh...and most importantly, whenever I call him or text him (any time of day or night), he must drop everything and call me back for a 30 minute phone-call where he pays rapt attention to events that have absolutely no interest to him."

She isn't describing a human being. She is describing a unicorn.

Guys might be slightly better, but not by much. While our needs in terms of a romantic partner might be simpler, there are other fields where our needs are more complicated.

Why this is important

AI answers questions. If you are unable to articulate a meaningful question, the responses will be equally not-useful.

How we got here

Think back to a pre-civilization village. A very large one might be 120 people. Books did not exist. Knowledge was passed down by observing your elders and your neighbor and copying what they did. Footwear is a good example. What did they make their sandals or mukluks from? How did they cut the hides or braid the straw? Fur in or fur out? How did they stitch them together? How did they care for them so they didn't rot? At what point did they start making a new pair?

Many of our behaviors are patterned on the "copy our peers" thinking. Picking a mate was a trivial exercise when there were only three available candidates and two of them were a day's walk away.

To be overly-flowery in my language, "copying our peers" is a form of "cloud-sourcing the logic" or "wisdom of the crowd".

Weaknesses of the follow-the-crowd model

First, a snarky observation: You don't need AI if you are going to rely on social media to tell you what you want.

Other weaknesses:

Computers will not make assumptions for you. If you gave that very long list that included $150k/yr to a computer, it will not automatically filter out candidates who beat women, are addicted to cocaine, have Monkey-pox and other sexually transmitted diseases, are compulsive liars, make a living denying insurance benefits to widows and orphans or are $1.2 million debt and have no assets.

Many of the things that we think "are a given" are not. Computers deliver a geeky karma of "Be careful what you ask for, because you are likely to get it."

A possible employment niche in the post-AI world

A consultant who does scenario-testing with the client to solidify specifications. Going back to our romantic-partner example because it is something nearly everybody has experienced:

"Suppose you and your new romantic-partner are dropped onto a deserted island or a remote, wilderness paradise. What attributes are you looking for?"

"Suppose that you had to relocate to a city where there was no internet or that it was so slow and unreliable that it was effectively unusable; What attributes would you value most in your new romantic-partner?" 

Both of those scenarios attempts to fire-wall off the "performing for the applause of the audience" grand-standing.

"Imagine you and your new romantic-partner together five years from now, would there be any additional requirements? Would any of your current requirements have softened or become less important? Which ones?"

"Now imagine you are together ten year from now..." 

"How about twenty and forty years from now..."

Then... trade-off studies:

"Do you prefer Jeff who makes $150k and is 6'-4" or Mike who makes $175k and is 6'-2" tall?"

"Do you prefer Sean who makes $200k a year but can only take two weeks of vacation or do you prefer Ian who makes $150k a year but is allowed four weeks of vacation a year?"

"Do you prefer Prakash who is a surgeon making $200k who cannot take phone-calls while performing surgery and must enforce strict sleep-hygiene (i.e. no phone calls during his sleep hours) or do you prefer Jimmy who makes $150k and drives a hazardous material truck and can talk you on the phone (but not text) any time?"

How porous is the barrier between "Allowable" and "Not allowed"?

"So...we found a potential romance-partner who meets all of your criteria except for one. He lives 10 minute travel-time from where you live. The closest candidate who meets all of your criteria lives 90 minutes away. The flawed candidate is 35 years old...would you date him?"

Of course she would date him. She pulled the "25-to-30 years-old" out of thin air. There was nothing magical about that range except she thought there should be an age requirement. 

This deficiency comes up over-and-over through life. Which house should you bid on? Which job should you interview for? Relocate or stay? One more kid or not?

Incredibly, most people have never given a thought to the fact that having a lot of one thing (like income and status) means that there will be much less of something else (free time and flexibility). Critical questions are "How much of each is ENOUGH". Do you value lots of time with your romance-interest and eating balony sandwiches or do you value infrequent times with your romance-interest and Instagram worthy selfies more?

All of this scenario testing is really a "Sims game" but it is exploring the client's real-life desires and expectations. Bonus thought: The person who can write a Sims-like front-end to make a game that combs out the clients real requirements (and not the generic, cloud-sourced ones) will make a lot of money.

Change of topic: Update on the last part of yesterday's work-ticket

The last part of yesterday's work was a piece of cake.

I watched Quicksilver so Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre could assemble the pool.

Then I made a parts-run to Lansing for some odds-and-ends needed for the assembly.

Then I watched Quicksilver some more.

I tapped-out at 7:30 p.m. I was tired and dehydrated. The young people were still hammering away at the project.

 

Today was a productive day, and it isn't over...

 

The cabbage plants don't look like much now. According to my records, I planted the seeds May 14 which means they are about 25 days old.

If all goes well, they will completely fill that space.

Fifty late cabbage plants put in the ground today on 24"-by-40" spacing. 2:1:1 ratio of Deadon:Typhoon:Megaton.

Twenty Happy Rich broccoli in the ground.

Eighteen Hardy Hibiscus seedlings in the ground.

Over at Southern Belle's, I planted four rows of 15 kernels of Bodacious sweet corn and I hoed the weeds in her fenced-in garden.

I also rototilled the spot where Southern Belle wants to put an above-ground swimming pool so she can level it out.

I got the potatoes sprayed for Colorado Potato Beetles.

I was invited to go to Southern Belle's later this evening. I think she wants me to help assemble the swimming pool. The current temperature is 85F with rain expected at 9 p.m. Winds out of the southeast. 

I didn't get to the mowing even though I made progress on world-hunger. 

The Hoes of Eaton County

 

Three hoes, caught in bed (a truck bed).

Not the salacious content you expected? 

The day begins, bursting with promises

An acronym that I find useful

CMAYFCC...Call me after your first cup of coffee.

I want to talk to you. I need details. It isn't urgent and I want to catch you at your best time.

Big day planned

It won't all get done. 

Modest rains predicted for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

I did a garden walk-around. The potato patch needs touch-up with a hoe but I can delay tilling for another week.

If I am going to spray insecticide on the potatoes, today is my window if I want to get ahead of the beetles and the egg-laying. 

The fenced-in garden needs tilling and the cabbage plants are large enough to transplant. Cabbage is a heavy-lifter in a subsistence garden. It produces "tonnage" rather than garnishes. It keeps well in cold storage. It can be preserved as a fermented product. It has vitamin C and can be incorporated into the menu in a vast number of ways.

Southern Belle's last four rows of sweet corn need to be planted. 

I am trying to empty out the refrigerator in terms of scion I have stored. I depleted the local walnut trees and will have to finish off my cache by harassing the trees near the Upper and Hill Orchards.

I have push-mowing to do.

An interesting essay

Into the wilderness, where did Jesus flee to for solace and safety?

There are multiple instances where Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus fled into the wilderness to avoid the Biblical equivalent of The Deep State.

Tabor wrote an essay where he makes the case that the geological feature now called Wadi el-Yabis is the most likely place where Jesus spent the winter before his Passion and death. 

The bottom of Wadi el-Yabis is wide and flat near where it flows into the Jordan.

Farther upstream, the stream-bed narrows, the limestone sides become steep, fractured and riddled with caves.
 

More raccoons .and. Potato diggers

My sister's new landscaping was getting demolished.

The landscaping consisted of a raised island of sandy-fill topped with top-soil. Her goal was to make the island well enough drained to plant Redbuds and Rose-of-Sharon. This island is a scant 50' from the edge of a lake. 

She sweet-talked her husband into putting out some game-cams to identify the culprit which visited every night.

It turns out that the culprit is a raccoon and he/she seemed very interested in the eggs the turtles were burying in that beautiful, easy-to-dig loam and sand so very close to the edge of the lake. I didn't try to convince her that euthanizing the raccoon is the preferred option. She is set on trapping it and having her husband relocate it.

Deer damage in the fenced garden

Expected but not hoped for.

A potato plow

One of these came up for sale on Craigslist

I bought it.

The gentleman volunteered, with no prompting "Being able to grow potatoes will be a good thing if the internet goes down and the trucks stop running."

Mrs ERJ (my navigator) asked for clarification.

He said "Most folks only have three days of food in their house. If the trucks stop running then you aren't going to want to be in the city." He is approximately 27 miles from the center of a metro area with a population of about 1.1 million people.

Obviously, he is a kindred spirit.

I asked why he was selling the plow.

He said that he had explored an equipment rental business that specialized in small-holding sized equipment. The dream died when his insurance company quoted the liability insurance premium.

Great business idea. It might be worth talking to a good attorney and exploring LLCs. Also having that attorney write up contracts that explicitly nullify liability if the user modifies the safety features in any way, shape or form.

I once paid a kid to mow my grass. After he was done, I went out and found that he had stripped all of the plastic "shielding" off of the mower.

When I asked why he had done that, he replied "We always do that. That shit always clogs up with grass and it slows me down when I have to stop and clean it out."

True story.

Anyway, if anybody knows of a ready-made, reverse cow-catcher for this kind of plow...I want to know about it. Potato diggers often have a weir or grating behind the foot of the plow. The weir allows the dirt to drop through and the potatoes are pushed along the length of the weir and drop on top of the dirt behind the unit where they are easy to pick up.

First day of digital news detox

Suddenly, it seems like I have three more hours of usable daylight.

And I have a wife. She seems to have a perfectly peachy personality. I am thankful for whoever arranged our marriage.  I owe them a solid favor.

Rain, ducks and a back-up plan to deal with snails

 

Looking at the weather forecast, tomorrow looks like a good day for tilling-and-planting. The soil should be dry enough to till and you cannot beat natural rain for getting seeds (both garden and weed seeds, unfortunately) off to a grand start.

My goal for tomorrow is to get the nursery emptied out and the plants in dirt, in garden rows.

Duck update

They ate very little of the feed I put out yesterday. That probably means they were gorging on slugs, snails, earthworms and centipedes that had been hunkered-down in the dirt waiting for the dry-spell to end.

This Plague of Snails has me re-thinking my cover-crop strategy. My guess is that snails and slugs thrive in the cool-damp of spring and fall and my cover-crops are super-charging their populations.

I normally plant cool-season, edible plants for my fall/winter/spring cover-crop. Sometimes I plant turnips. Sometimes rye grain. Sometimes oats. Some of my thinking is "Well, if things truly go into the septic-tank, then I still have something edible growing in the garden, even in the off-season."

The obvious answer would be to skip cover-crops for a couple of years and see if the problem self-corrects. However, cover-crops also scavenge nutrients that would otherwise be leached out by the rains and snow-melt...and they add organic matter to the soil when tilled into it.

Another possibility is to plant edible plants that have leaves that are high in oxalates. Some biologists hypothesize that retaining toxic, partially metabolized molecules like oxalic acid provide some level of protection against browsing. Those toxic compounds might impair plant growth but the protection they provide more than compensates for the penalty.

Rumex fueginus growing in a fen

It is reasonable to speculate that oxalates (insoluble salts of oxalic acid and metal ions like calcium or iron) deters snails since "dock" or "sorrel" (Rumex) are one of the few, common, broad-leafed plants in sedge-marshes.

I have no proof that this would work but calcium oxalate is highly irritating due to its sharp crystals and free oxalic acid (the "sour" in sorrel) will out-compete the carbonate ion for calcium ions, thus depriving the snail of the material it needs to grow its shell. 

In addition to Rumex, edible plants that have leaves with relatively high oxalate content include Buckwheat, Swiss Chard, Beets and Spinach. Only the last three plants tolerate frost. Oxalate content in greens can be reduced by boiling in water and then discarding the water. Oxalate can contribute to kidney stones and that is something most people would prefer to avoid.

So far, the ducks are doing a great job on the snails but I am a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy. One neighbor dog getting into the garden enclosure could kill them all in less than five minutes.  

Taking a vacation from news, work-ticket

I decided that I need a one-week vacation from news. A "fast", if you prefer.

That means that I will also be watching fewer videos because the news keeps sneaking into them.

A fellow from Switzerland purchased a combine/harvester in northern Holland and then drove it back home through Netherland, Belgium, France and Switzerland. It took him weeks since his top-speed was 11 miles per hour.

Note the castle in the background on the left side of the frame. Not scenery you will see in Michigan.

Driving through cities was harrowing, especially since the visibility from his seat wasn't all that whippy.

One thing I will say about Europe is that their near-paranoia about food-security means that they are exceptionally tolerant about machines that harvests food causing traffic jams. As recently as 1950 getting enough calories every day was a serious challenge in much of war-torn Europe.

37 minute run-time. Auto-dubbed in English. BTW, he got about 4.7 mpg.

Work-ticket

I spent an hour-and-a-half cutting green bamboo. Mrs ERJ assisted. She carried the stems and didn't allow the cut-ends to get any closer than 9 inches (2.3e+9 Angstrom in metric) to the ground lest they strike root and start growing again.

I planted two watermelons at Southern Belle's and four more in my garden. Southern Belle's green beans look better than mine. Next year I will not plant mine as early. They just stall-out and become food for pests.

Her potatoes and the first planting of sweet corn are up. 

I collected my post driver and used it to drive in T-posts in the Hill Orchard. I then used those posts to secure cages to protect trees from deer. 

Upon arriving home in Eaton Rapids I measured the distance between loops on a 160 body-grip trap springs and learned that it is 8" from outside of loop-to-outside of loop. I had some three-year-old hazelnut stems and one of them had a promising Y. I cut the Y long and used baling twine to pull it in to exactly 8". I also have the option of inserting a stick between the wraps of baling twine and twisting it to pull it even more if that is warranted.

A very small side-project was to make "medicated" wipes. Boric acid is a mild fungicide and stops bacterial growth. I made a 100 ml of saturated boric acid solution (it is a very mild "acid" with a pH of about 5) and added it to a 400 gram package of pre-moistened wipes. I make no claims about this being a great way to deal with superficial, external Candida skin infections but it isn't likely to do any harm and it is inexpensive.

Total time-on-task was just a little over two hours.

A few of the peony divisions I planted in the Upper Orchard were blooming.

The names of the varieties are unknown, but that doesn't make them any less pretty.

A squash seedling. It looks quite smug, self-assured and pleased with itself. An inch of rain will do that for a plant.

 

Raccoon population densities

According to the RainDrop website, the Upper and Hill Orchard received a little bit more than an inch of rain. Eaton Rapids got about 0.8". So, I am pretty happy right now.

Raccoon population density

According to a study done in Western Tennessee, the main variables in population density varied by season. They evaluated 26 variables that might be important.

In the summer, there were only three variables had significant signal-to-noise ratios:

Closeness to permanent water -and- presence of cover expressed as total stump area were virtually tied at 0.35 correlation coefficients with distance to road listed at 0.23 correlation coefficient.

During the winter, the researcher's data tagged six variables.

Number of food plant species led the list with a correlation coefficient of 0.49. Number of total dens and number of tree dens were both 0.38 although the number of total dens had a negative sign...which I cannot explain. Closeness to potential water had a coefficient of 0.25. Basal area of large trees had a coefficient of about 0.2 but that might be related to the fact that only old, large trees have tree dens. Basal area of small trees had a coefficient of about 0.15...presumably because brush reduces wind-speed at ground level.

Satellite image of suburbs in Maryland that are laced with raccoon travel corridors

I think it is worth noting that urban and semi-urban areas check a lot of the bases for winter survival. They have abundant buildings that can provide shelter. Landscaping and discarded food provide abundant food. The only real hazards in urban areas are traffic and diseases like distemper. Urban areas built in hilly-terrain often have green-belts in the areas that flood thus providing safe travel corridors.

Populated rural areas offer abandoned vehicles and outbuildings for shelter while gardens, orchards, livestock food and pet-food provide food. Some people consider wild raccoons "their pets" and feed them.

Urban and populated rural areas often have raccoon population densities that are 10X unpopulated rural areas. It is not unheard-of for a trapper to take twenty raccoons out of a barn owned by a hobby-farmer. Upper estimates of raccoon population densities in urban/suburban areas approach 400 animals per square-mile.

Wisdom is knowing when to settle for "It works"

 

Of course Mr Raccoon came back last night. Luckily, he didn't chew the hose to shreds.

Sometimes it is advisable to have a quiet way to euthanize an animal caught in a trap. The three-minute video linked above shows one way to do it. Trappers call it a "dispatch pole".  All it takes is a 160 body-grip trap (a.k.a. a Conibear trap) and a long, forked stick. It makes less noise than a pellet gun discharging.

 Another option. Five minute video. Link to mounting clip he used

Watering

The weather-guessers promised us 0.4" of rain. Maybe we will get it.

I watered last night anyway.

The darker brown in the background is where I was watering. Lighter dirt is not wet

Potatoes will survive in dry soil but they thrive when you pamper them by never letting the soil get crispy-dry. You cannot let the soil moisture levels fluctuate wildly if you want smooth, uniformly shaped, not-lumpy potatoes.

I saw my first Colorado Potato Beetles yesterday. NOT-yippie!

Work-ticket

Today's work-ticket was to move two brush piles that were getting in the way of cutting the grass. The total area was about 600 square-feet. That is not a lot of area in the overall scheme of things, but it disrupted the orderly management of the areas around them.

This is where the north brush-pile was.

 

This is where I dragged the brush to

It took two-and-a-half hours to yank the brush out of the tall grass and then drag the brush to the swamp and finally mow the cleared areas with a push mower.

One brush-pile as 40 yards from where I was dumping the brush. The other as about 90 yards.

I really wanted to burn the brush in-place. It irks me to have nutrients migrate away from where they can be used and end up in a swamp where they are of less direct benefit. Sometimes wisdom is knowing when to settle for "It works" rather than hold out for "Optimum".

"...all conservatives are hypocrites and frauds."

I had an interaction with a Progressive late last fall. I have been sitting on the conversation and trying to make sense of it.

The woman I was listening to had retired from her jobs at the City of Lansing. She had never worked in private industry. Incidentally, even the supervisors who work for the City of Lansing are unionized. It is an uber-incubator of progressives.

She deduced that I was a conservative. She shared, without prompting, that all conservatives are hypocrites and frauds.

Being a calm and inquiring kind of fellow, I asked how she could know that.

She replied "Every conservative I know claims to have a disability and is working for pay under-the-table."

I asked her where those conservatives worked.

Given her circle of acquaintances, it was difficult for me to envision that she knew many conservatives.

She was more than happy to throw the "proof" on the table. "I know some people who work at a combination gun store/shooting range. Everybody who works there says they have a disability and I am sure they are working for cash under-the-table. Obviously, they are all Conservatives."

Let me comb out the speculation and assumptions that are buried in her declaration.

Disabilities 

One assumption is that Disability = Unemployable and so if a person with a disability is working, they are engaging in fraud.

That might be the holy grail of somebody working for the city: Get a ruling of 100% disability and then get "free-money" for not going to work. But there are many disabilities that don't make it impossible to work.

My "A-ha!" moment was when it occurred to me that most of the people she was interacting with were probably veterans of the military. Working in gun store is a ducks-to-water occupation for many people who were in the military.

Contrary to popular opinion, the rate of veterans with disabilities (29.6%) is virtually identical to the rate for the general population (28.7%)   

The most common VA disabilities in 2025 were:

1. Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
2. Limited range of motion of knee(s)
3. Damage to sciatica nerve
4. Lumbar or cervical strain
5. Hearing loss
6. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
7. Limited range-of-motion arm
8. Limited range-of-motion ankle
9. Scars and burns
10. Migraines 

I see only one disability that makes working at a shooting range a bad-fit. That job is compatible with all of the other disabilities as long as accommodations are available in terms of chairs/stools/lifting-aids and scheduling to limit time standing.

Cash-under-the-table 

The other statement "...I am sure they are working for cash under-the-table..." is suspect. How can she be sure? What business would run the risk of hiring such a large portion of their staff off-books, especially a high-visibility business like a gun store. I cannot see any gun store risking their insurance, their business license and risking of high-profile litigation by putting a not-on-books-employee behind the gun counter. Doing that also exposes the business to risk of prosecution for Federal felonies because that "ghost" is instrumental ensuring the fidelity of 4473 form documents. 

The reason I bring this up

You might find yourself in a similar conversation in the future. I wish I had the facts lined up to undermine that woman's absolute certainty. Maybe you can do better.

Hoes, Vermin and Carrots

I have at least three hoes. By pure chance, I grabbed my least-favorite hoe for hilling the potatoes. Mrs ERJ had claimed the light-weight, hoe with the red handle. The weeding hoe was behind some shovels.

This hoe is relatively heavy and awkward. Standing on end, the end of the handle is an honest 66" above the ground. The cutting or steel end of the hoe is large and cumbersome. 

And it hills potatoes like a dream. The long handle means that I can drag dirt with the handle at an optimum angle and NOT have to bend over. The big blade means that it moves a lot of dirt in each drag. I can hill one side of 50' of potatoes in two-minutes flat. Of course the dirt was recently till so it was light-and-fluffy, but still, that is a right-smart clip for an old man doing that kind of work.

Yep, another case of different horses for different courses. 

Something raided the duck-coop last night

You can see digging to the left and right of the chunk of firewood

 

Whatever the beast was, it was able to pull out enough eggs to satisfy its hunger and didn't molest the ducks. I was lucky.

 But it will be back. Easy meals will not be passed up.

As luck would have it, I have some wire shelving from a freezer. I dug a trench, laid in the wire "fence" and refilled with packed dirt. To the right of the shelving, I buried chunks of firewood to slow down digging.

 

I also installed a dog-proof raccoon trap and will bait it with a bit of scrambled eggs. It isn't like I don't know what they are hungry for.

Carrots

I have never been successful with carrots. I attribute it to operator apathy.

Carrot seeds are tiny and germinate slowly. The seedlings need frequent, gentle weeding for at least four weeks. Tedious work!

I decided to give it another go.

Reviewing previous failures, one of them is losing-the-row. Weeding is much faster if you know where your crop is not. To mark exactly where I sowed the seed, I added some kale seeds and planted a bush-bean every 2' along the row. You can use any fast-germinating seeds instead of kale...radishes and turnips work very well but the kale seeds were the first suitable seeds that I found.

Carrot seeds are tiny and resent being planted too deeply. I used the hoe to make a furrow and sprinkled the seeds into the very bottom of it. Then I poured a stream of water in to wet the soil and to gently stir it a bit.

Then I laid some cut poke-weeds over the top to delay the soil crusting over. 

Most catalog pictures are too perfect. This one is accurately depicts what I hope to harvest if I do my part. Image from here

For the record, I planted 50 feet of Red-Cored Chantenay variety carrots. RCC is primarily a "processing" or cooking carrot. It produces stubby, tapered carrots that get girthy toward the end of the growing season. It is a carrot designed for stews and juicing and is more forgiving of rocky or clay soils than the more elegant, lady-finger shaped carrots.

A very well grown row of Chantenay carrots can yield up to a pound of carrots per foot of row.

Pottage

AI slop? Maybe.

Pottage, how Medieval families "cooked".

Carrots, potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, onions, beans, lentils, cracked grain, road-kill, fish, cabbage, greens, dumplings... It is all good.

Trump and Barrett

I see that Tom Barrett, Republican, Michigan's Seventh Congressional District was one of four Republicans who voted against extending Trump's War Powers in the Iranian conflict.

I live in Michigan's Seventh Congressional District. 

I believe that is a case of Barrett voting his conscience. Given the vast amount of money it takes to run a congressional seat campaign, that decision will likely cost Barrett his seat. He will either get primaried or will be starved for funds during the general election.

There is a very small window that Barrett and one other veteran could change their vote. I suspect that one of the conditions would be private meetings where they were given privileged information about the exit strategy. Trump has been cagey about sharing details. Some members of Congress share those details with people they shouldn't.

The signal-man with the ping-pong paddles

 

Growing up, WWII movies featuring aircraft carriers in the Pacific were a childhood staple.

There was always a scene where the signal-man guiding in the battled-battered fighters would wave one off.

The Admiral of the fleet was the above that signal-man in the chain-of-command.

The Captain of the aircraft carrier was above the signal-man in the chain-of-command.

The pilot of the aircraft was an officer and was above the signal-man in rank.

And yet, the signal-man made the call regarding the continuation of the pilot's descent based on his assessment of the probability of a successful landing. Not the Admiral. Not the Captain or the pilot. Just that lowly enlisted man. (Frequent commentor Jonathan pointed out "...the signal man was usually an officer, another pilot, so that he knew what the airplane should be doing and what it could do if needed." My apologies for the error.)

WHY?

Because he had unique information. The wishes of the Admiral and Captain didn't count for Jack-squat. They didn't have the information he had.

I am going to give Barrett the benefit of the "Signal-man" analogy. Barrett flew a Chinook Helicopter in the middle-East. He has first-hand experience with how "sticky" wars are.

Good thing I am retired...

Yesterday was a BIG day. More than four hours time-on-task. That is not something I can do every day at my current fitness level.

Dragging hose, lugging water in 5-gallon buckets, cutting, carrying and stacking wood, pushing a mower, tilling-and-hilling potatoes.

I was focused on work and didn't take many pictures

 

This is a picture of a one-year-old Liberty apple graft. I removed the baby fruit. Allowing them to grow and ripen is likely to "runt-out" the tree.

Potato patch after tilling but before hilling

I have been taking generic loratadine (Claritin) to keep my pollen allergy manageable. It worked OK until about 12:30 when it was overwhelmed by the pollen from a neighbor's mowing. The eye-drops didn't seem to work. I finally took two diphenylhydramine (Benadryl) and that provided some relief.

Today's work-ticket is pretty light. Watch Quicksilver and assemble a weed-whacker (string trimmer). Of course, part of the assembly process is the final quality control check when I run it to trim all of the tall grass around our yard. I also expect to hill more potatoes while the dirt is still light and fluffy.

Please understand that I am not bragging. I am explaining why you are not getting long, thoughtful blog posts. 

The ducks

I did not save the male duck for dinner.

I was not expecting the uproar around the upset pecking order. His best-girlfriend, the Rouen duck turned into a roaring bitch and the other 5 ducks turned against her. I figure that they will be able to sort it out without my input.

Rain, ducks and data

 

The numbers show the May rainfall at various locations in mid-Michigan. The smile-face is my approximate location. The Evaporation-Potential at those locations varied between 3.9" and 4.3" for the month of May.

Fortunately, we went into May with the soil almost saturated with water. 

Alas, that water is now depleted and I am back to lugging water for the newly planted trees in the various orchards I am caring for.

Unexpected

The adult Khaki Campbell went broody and is sitting on her eggs. She is totally dedicated, but she is giving it the old college try.

I don't know what pushed-her-button but I expect it was the chirping of the new ducklings.

Khaki Campbell ducks are generally "not-broody" by nature.

Expected

The male Rouen duck became increasingly aggressive toward the four ducklings. He was keeping them away from the food and chasing them out of the enclosure. The ducklings would squeeze out between the door and the fence when the Rouen was chasing them.

I culled him with a pellet to the head. 

Random thought

Many modern vehicles have a thermometer a short distance in front of the radiator that measures the temperature of the ambient air. They also have GPS.

Companies sell "data". It is revenue that they can harvest with very little incremental cost.

It would be interesting to collect strings of GPS data and the time and temperature associated with that data. A fellow could remove everything except the hour around sunrise and an hour in late afternoon and get an exceptionally high resolution picture of the actual temperatures. Perhaps even high enough resolution to map micro-climates.

Obviously, the data analyst would NOT consider data when the vehicle was stationary because the temperature would be polluted with recirculated air or it might be sitting in a garage.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

John James Audubon aka Jean-Jacques Rabin was born in 1785 in what is now Haiti. Due to racial tensions, his father evacuated him to France in 1788 (thus avoiding the Haitian 1791 genocide of white people).

"Audubon grew up to be a handsome and gregarious man. He played flute and violin, and learned to ride, fence, and dance^*" facts which will doubtlessly delight some of my readers.

In 1803 Audubon immigrated to the United States to simultaneously avoid the draft (Napoleon's wars) and to manage his father's properties near Philadelphia. He did not speak English at the time.

"Audubon lived with the tenants in the two-story stone house, in an area that he considered a paradise. "Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment; cares I knew not, and cared naught about them."  Studying his surroundings, Audubon quickly learned the ornithologist's rule, which he wrote down as, "The nature of the place—whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs—generally gives hint as to its inhabitants." 

Life for Audubon was not all skittles and cream. After a trip, he returned home to find that rats had destroyed all 200+ of his paintings. Later, in 1819 he was thrown in jail for being in debt.

Even today Audubon is criticized for circumstances that he had no control over. For instance, his father had owned slaves.

Audubon died in 1851.

Audubon is sometimes criticized for his "stilted" or "artificial looking" poses. Bear in mind that there were no trail-cams to capture these birds in the wild. Audubon collected his models by shooting them (with primitive firearms) and guessing at how they stood.

Audubon was blessed to have been born with the skills he had and the time period when he came-of-age. Interest in the natural world and the scientific cataloguing of species was at a fever-pitch and Audubon had an enthusiastic market for his work.

A tip of the battered fedora to 10x25mm for suggesting this artist. He is giving Tireless a run for the money. 

*All material in quotation marks are from Wikipedia