Wheat harvest started

Two hours time-on-task yesterday

Tilling. Hand weeding. Nothing glamorous. The basic blocking-and-tackling of gardening.

Lame duck

Our biggest duck was lame when I put them in jail last night. I was later than usual. I wonder if she had an encounter with a young predator that was learning to hunt?

On the way back to the house I turned off my head-lamp. Turning it off is a multi-stage process. Pressing the button the first time turns it on to BRIGHT. The second press of the button is DIM. The third press of the button is STROBE. The final press of the button is OFF.

After turning it off, I noticed about a million fireflies strobing. I read that they do that to inform the other fireflies that they are sexually available. That is, they are flirting. It is also a communal activity. When one firefly starts doing it, then the other, nearby fireflies start flirting.

I wondered if the strobing function on my headlamp had triggered a frenzy of firefly flirting.

I repeated the process. Another avalanche of firefly strobing resulted. 

Technology is a wonderful thing. It can make an old man an alpha-male, even if it only impresses the insects.

I will not let the ducks out this morning until it is fully light, just in case "Junior" is waiting around for another crack at Lucky Ducky. 

Today's work-tickets

Lift at the gym. 

Get my helper started with burning limbs and woody-trash in the upper orchard. Yes, I have a volunteer. Happy days are here again.

Spread ground limestone, potash and white clover seed over 5000 square-feet of the Hill Orchard that was not mowed last year and has no clover growing in it...yet.

I think "Ladino" clover is a bit of a scam. It sucks in the deer hunters who are trying to concoct the most awesome food-plot.

In my limited experience, Ladino clover, which is a giant form of white clover, doesn't self-seed as aggressively as the medium leaf forms of white clover and the stand quickly reverts back to the mean.

If you plant any locally-adapted strain of medium-leaf white clover and if you mow the grass when it gets taller than six-inches tall...you will have a significant percentage of the sward in clover. Certain caveats apply. Grass out-competes clover for potassium and phosphorous, so you need to make sure those are available. Clover struggles with low pH soils, so limestone is a good move.Clover is shallow-rooted, so you will rarely see much of it in dry areas or in sandy soils. Clover is not very tolerant of shade, so it is difficult to establish in a forest or under an over-grown orchard.

But if you can honor her restraints, you can plant it once and count on it being there forever. It even self-seeds with "time activated" seeds that can outlast a five-year drought and re-establish when the rains come back. 

Wheat harvest

One of my local farmers started harvesting yesterday.

One thing the "survival" and the "homesteading" communities often gloss over is the time-lag between planting and the harvest of any significant number of calories.

The history books tell us that the American Indians called late winter "The Hungry Time" but I think they miss the point that unless you live near water where large numbers of fatty fish spawn shortly after ice-out, The Hungry Time lasts much longer than the last month of winter. 

An early sweet corn hybrid might provide you with decent ears 65 days after the soil temperature hits 60 degrees F.

The earliest strains of potatoes can beat that because you can trick the tubers by holding them in a warm cellar for a few weeks before planting them.

Winter wheat and rye might even be a bit before that.

The point is that if you haven't been paying attention and are guided by "I feel like...", then you probably assume that food, calories, become available when things turn green in the spring. Around here, that might be April 15.

The reality is that in a subsistence environment (like Ukraine) unless you want to graze vast volumes of high-fiber greens, then you better have a safety net of redundant food sources:

• Stored grain, oils and fats
• Milk from a cow, goat, sheep other ruminant 
• Winter grains planted in late-Autumn the previous year
• Early potatoes and (maybe) turnips
• Some roots stored in a cellar, clamp or heavily mulched and left in the garden row. 

 In Eaton County, Michigan, the food situation starts to flip right-side up the second week of July. That is almost three months after the landscape turns green.