Running notes
3.2 miles in 42 minutes.
Some pictures
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| Dinner. Frozen pizza embellished with home-grown onions and sweet pepper slices. |
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| First egg from our new Khaki Campbells. |
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| "Charlotte, is that you?" |
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| It is a big year for puffball mushrooms. Deer trail running from bottom of photo to top slightly to the left of center. |
Satellite Orchards
A million years ago, I attended a weekend seminar on Project Management. The instructor was a professor from
He elaborated on each point, of course, but the one I want to write about is the last one.
He told a story from his own past. He was the head of a team designing and building a working model of an alternate energy propulsion vehicle. Seeing this as a way to demonstrate their engineering skills, the team embarked on an ambitious project involving a custom-built, carbon-fiber body, solar panel covered electric vehicle with custom high-pressure-low-rolling-resistance motorcycle tires.
The winner of the competition, which was held at a Big-Three proving grounds was a five-year-old, carburated, Ford Pinto pulling a trailer that carried a 100 pound LP pig.
Bottomline: Your backup plan must be dirt-simple, quick-to-execute and extremely robust. That almost always means grabbing off-the-shelf solutions (when they exist) even when they are overkill or "wrong" or grossly inelegant. One of those kinds of plans is worth more than 100 complex, slow-to-execute "elegant" plans.
Dacha orchards
The property that the Upper and Hill Orchards is located on is also managed for field crops (which takes care of itself) and conservation.
The portion that is being managed for conservation could, conceivably, be broken into parcels for "dachas" or economic lifeboats.
Ukraine and Russia have already been there and done that. Their economies were in a steep, downward glide-path through the mid-1970s until about ten years after the break-up of the USSR. Now they are struggling again due to the Uke-Rus war.
The dacha, their gardens and orchards are prime infrastructure keeping millions of them alive. So are the "commons" where they can graze farm animals and gather firewood, mushrooms, wild fruit and game.
If I were forced to parachute into an undeveloped property with the clothes-on-my-back, finding a small, producing orchard and berry patch already there could be a life-saver. Even if the varieties were not ones I would choose.
Given that the implosion of the US economy at the magnitude of the Great Depression or the dissolution of the USSR is probably a low probability event*, I don't want to throw money at these orchards.
However, I have a small nursery that I can move trees from and suckers from existing berry bushes. It is not that these are the BEST choices. It is that these choices are the ones that are off-the-shelf.
At this snap-shot-in-time
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| Three rows of five trees planted 16' within the rows and 24' between rows. Trees on semi-dwarf type roots. 15 trees. Seven species. Four genus. |
I am not saying this is a great plan. I am saying this is a functional orchard that I can execute with a minimal outlay of additional money. I can buy peach and cherry rootstocks (about $6 each). I can purchase plum and cherry scionwood (I have sources of peach scion/budwood)
---Added after posting: Apparently St Julien plum rootstock is also compatible with peaches. That will save me a few dollars---
Ripening sequence
Mulberry: Late-June-through-mid-August
Cherries: Late-June-through-mid-July (Danube and WhiteGold cv)
Peaches: August (Contender or Cresthaven)
Plum: Late-August...Brooks European plum for canning and drying
Pear: HS, early-mid Sept. KG October
Apples: October. Tolman Sweet, Golden Russet, King David
Obviously, if somebody had the skills they could graft the trees over to the varieties they wanted. If they pruned judiciously, the trees would keep producing modest amounts of fruit as they switched the trees over.
The next step
Pound "T" posts into the ground to mark where each tree goes. Then spray 8' diameter patches of herbicide to kill the current vegetation.
*The real reason I do this kind of thing is because I enjoy it. Do I think it will happen? I hope not. For the time being, planting trees is a more productive and cheaper way to spend my time than drinking beer and chasing floozies in bars. I might never eat a single apple or cherry from these orchards but I find it is a great way to reduce my stress levels.
Your time for the run is impressive! Last time I ran a 5k was about 30 years ago and I did it in 40 minutes. And, I had prepared longer than you. I’m about your age.
ReplyDeleteERJ, simple almost always beats out complex. Part of that is that with complexity more things can go wrong, but it is also fair to say that simple is often quicker to execute - the whole "the less moving parts, the better the things is likely to work" idea.
ReplyDeleteDoing something useful, even if not of immediate use, is always better than doing something that is not useful. Or as Miyamoto Musashi would say, "Do nothing that is of no use".
So dry here this year in southern Kansas we aren't growing anything.
ReplyDeleteAnd always remember no plan survives first contact... sigh
ReplyDeleteAllow me to correct that: "No plan survives first contact as-written"
DeleteThe planning process is useful. Having all of the people needed to make a plan in the right places is more than useful. Having the skeleton of a plan to modify is priceless.
A decent plan implemented in a timely fashion will always beat a perfect plan that never gets used....
ReplyDeleteI cut and split a lot of wood for a guy without a wood burner. I do enjoy a bonfire though. The mucho extra wood gives me options if needed in the future, exercise now, and self satisfaction.
ReplyDelete