Fish stocking After-action-Report

The trip to Grant, Michigan was uneventful.

The store is east of Grant, Michigan and is in the middle of a large expanse of muck fields. Growing and packing vegetables like celery and carrots is big business in Grant. 

I took Shotgun, my fishing buddy along.

We stayed off of the freeway except for a short stretch on US-131. I traveled through Charlotte, Woodbury, Ionia, Fenwick, Greenville, Ensley Center, Howard City, Amble, Lakeview, Six Lakes, Stanton and Sheridan, Michigan.

Shotgun rambled a great deal as a young man and gave me a running commentary on the fishing in the various lakes, streams and rivers as I drove past them.

He told a story from the dim, misty past of a troubled youth from Ensley Center who wanted to commit suicide (or so it is believed) but didn't have the courage to pull the trigger himself. So he prancing across a clearing in the woods on opening day of deer season wearing a tan coat and holding deer antlers above his head. And if his goal that day was to die, he was successful.

Large spoons were once the go-to for pike fishing. They trail a single, very large treble-hook.

I told a story of a coworker who lived near Edmore) who claimed that his brother fought in Vietnam and in one of the letters home he asked "Buckey" to buy up all of the large treble-hooks from the bait shops in Six Lakes, Edmore and Stanton and mail them to him. Buckey's brother supposedly claimed that "the gooks" shinnied up into trees near the base at night and sniped soldiers by day. The only effective way to combat them was to embed several very large treble-hooks into the trees' bark about 20' above the ground, (one hook buried in the bark the other two exposed and pointing downward)...which was about as high up as the "grunts" could reach with the pole they had jury-rigged for the task. Is the story true? Who knows, who cares. It was a story and telling stories passed the time.

The wild plums are still blooming in Montcalm County, Michigan. 

Anderson and Girls on M-66 has outstanding fruit-filled sugar cookies. They are basically sugar/butter cookies shaped like dumplings and filled with fruit preserves. Shotgun chose the black-raspberry filled ones and he gave me one to sample.

Farmers were irrigating around Howard City. I think they are still planting potatoes. It has been a dry May so far this year. 

Once we were at the target location, I changed into shorts. I waded out knee-deep into the water and released the fish. Upon being released, the fish vectored down to the bottom of the water column and then fanned out toward deeper, darker water. I think they were hungry. None of the fish went belly-up during our drive home. 

We released the fish from two different, shore-line locations.

It looks as if the bluegills are just starting to fan the beds they will use for spawning. 

I spent too many hours sitting on my butt and I ate WAY too much sugar yesterday. 

"Why not give them spoons?"

An incident which struck me at the time as quite amusing occurred not long since on North Broad street. A steam shovel at work had attracted a large number of spectators, including two Irishmen, who, judging by their appearance, were toilers temporarily out of employment.

As the big shovel at one lick scooped up a whole cartload of dirt and dumped it upon a gondola car, one of the Irishmen remarked: “What a shame, to think of them digging up dirt in that way!” “What do ye mane?” asked his companion. “Well,” said the other, “that machine is taking the bread out of the mouths of a hundred laborers who could do the work with their picks and shovels.” “Right you are, Barney,” said the other fellow.

Just then a man who had been looking on and who had overheard the conversation remarked: “See here, you fellows. If that digging would give work to a hundred men with shovels and picks, why not get a thousand men and give them teaspoons with which to dig up the dirt?” The Irishmen, to their credit, saw the force of the remark and the humor of the situation and joined heartily in the laugh that followed, and one of them added: “I guess you’re right, Captain. The scoop’s the thing after all.” —Philadelphia Public Ledger, 1901 

AI is credited with putting thousands of "information workers" out of their jobs. The wailing and gnashing-of-teeth is deafening.

One characteristic that makes those jobs vulnerable to AI is that what we now consider "knowledge work" is almost entirely visual in nature. The dominance of visual information is an artifact of the economics of printing (cheap ink on cheap paper or even cheaper pixels illuminated or not illuminated). The recursive nature of the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next repeatedly discounted what was not visual and repeatedly placed a premium on what was visual.

Over time, knowledge or information that didn't conveniently compress down to static, 2-dimensional visual reproduction became (almost) extinct. Our entire worth has been reduced to our ability to take standardized tests with multiple choices and "completely filling out the correct circle with a #2 pencil"*.

I submit that any information that could not be easily rendered as a two-dimensional visual was dismissed as "not knowledge". This continues to be reinforced by the elites who attained their power, at least in part, by their ability to prove mastery of 2-D, visual information. 

If your job is involves processing "visual" (or audio) data and sorting through a finite number of predetermined outcomes, then your extremely vulnerable to being replaced by AI. If you are a bureaucrat whose prime "deliverable" is to approve or reject requests (permits) or to push information at bored students, then you should be upgrading your skills because you are about to be replaced.

Not all knowledge is like that

I recall walking through a factory and unexpectedly feeling warmth on my right cheek. I stopped walking and held my hands up and found the specific power transfer panel that was radiating the heat. I then called an electrician on my walkie-talkie and he was able to fix the issue during the next production break.

A good auto mechanic can tell if you have a coolant leak or if your vehicle is overheating just by the way your vehicle smells.

In another case an engineer who was reviewing a crashed vehicle saw bolt threads impressed into steel chassis parts. That was enough to start an investigation into the repair history of the vehicle and the cause of the crash was ascertained to be an improperly executed repair.

I know that a couple of my readers are/were "welding engineers". They are always looking at the weld caps for signs of hard-water deposits, a sign of poor cooling. They look for wear on the paint of robots which can be a sign or robot dress rubbing against them. They look for heat-marks on the work-piece that can be a sign of unplanned current paths shunting heat away from the weld.

The point is that curious humans have the ability to incorporate unexpected information and entertain answers that are not pre-programmed. That is why people get frustrated with automated customer service phone lines. Either their problem is not pre-programmed or the path to the problem is sign-posted in jargon that is not meaningful to the customer.

Today's work-ticket

Collect 100 Channel Catfish and stock them in a pond. I will be spending a bunch of time in a vehicle today.

Quicksilver Musical Moment

Power in the Blood (requested by Quicksilver's mother). Apparently, Quicksilver likes to sing along with this song.

*OK, I realize that standardized tests are not done on the computer and many of them are interactive in the sense that the number of questions depend on where you fall in the bell-curve. If you are in the tails of the curve then you get relatively few questions. If you are between 40th percentile and 60th percentile you have to answer a LOT of questions to get the resolution needed for PASS/NOPASS decisions. 

My day in pictures

 

The main-season potatoes are starting to pop up.

Some of my grafts are showing signs of life.

Onion plants rescued from a compost pile

"You know the worth of water when the well runs dry*". The wise man knows the worth of water without having to suffer the pain of a dry well.

New York City (and LA and Seattle and Portland) are about to learn the worth of businesses.

A sunrise as seen through persimmon (left), pear (center) and bamboo (right).

Seeds planted today:

• 30 Deadon cabbage
• 10 Typhoon cabbage
• 10 Megaton cabbage
• 7 Wilson Sweet watermelon
• Replanted 50 Red Mammoth Mangels
• 100 Japanese Water Iris (Iris ensata) 

*Turk's Tavern, Nunica, Michigan. That photo was taken yesterday.

Playing with ideas

I am just playing with ideas, here.

The Progressives are against requiring picture ID to vote. They claim that it will make it impossible for many voters to successfully cast their ballot.

The Progressives claim they want fair, high-integrity elections. They claim that they want to make it very easy to vote.

So...how about biometric identification as an optional, alternative method? That is used in the Plasma Donor industry to prevent donors from donating dangerously large amounts of plasma by visiting multiple collection sites and thereby endangering their health.

If Sum Dood doesn't have an ID, he can just have his biometric data taken and used for ID.

The only issue I can see is that if somebody accidentally voted twice in different precincts there would be actionable evidence of the crime. But that shouldn't be a problem for the Progressives, right? THey say they want high-integrity elections.

Acorns and daffodils

 

Acorns in the bottom of the bucket. Those roots complicate planting them.

These are blooming in some of the local roadside ditches.

Like many white flowers, they are fragrant in a heavy, sweet way. These flowers smell like Brassavola nodosa orchids

This flower matches Narcissus poeticus. It is reputed to be one of the few daffodils that tolerates wet locations. Like all daffodils, it is fairly deer resistant.

Today's work-ticket

Today's work-ticket is to go to the west side of the state and to clean-up the grave-sites of my paternal grandfather (who died in 1936) and my paternal grandmother (1996). Then we will visit a second, more rural cemetery where many other ancestors on that side of the family are buried.

We will eat lunch at a tavern that was started in 1933 and I will eat too much.

The venture (the trip, not just the visit at the tavern) will be an all-day affair. 

Quicksilver's musical moment

 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Fishing

Nikolay Bogdanov in Smolenks, Russia (approximately 230 miles west of Moscow) in 1868 and died in 1945. His style of art was frowned upon by the Soviet dictators, so he moved to Latvia and continued to paint. He died in Berlin during a bombing raid that destroyed the clinic that he was a patient in.

 

Sometimes, "Bored to death" is not hyperbole

 

We over-prepare for the glamorous and the "sexy".

We under-prepare for the mundane and boring. Being under-prepared for the boring can kill you.

The video at the head of this essay plods along. In some places it is boring. Diarrhea is boring. Chemistry is boring. Institutional memory is boring. History is boring. Logistics are boring.

My readers

I suspect that most of my readers are in our 50s, 60s and 70s . We are more fragile than we care to admit. The issues discussed in the video killed tens of thousands men in their prime and it incapacitated millions of those men. Many of those men worked in fields or factories 60 hours a week. They were tough men. And they were absolutely hammered into the dirt by bad water and sanitation.

Shigella Dysenteriae, just one of the dozens of bacteria that can give you diarrhea

May I simply suggest that it would be a simple prep to carry a gallon (or more) of clean water in your vehicle and to have the means to filter/sanitize local water should the need arise? And don't just buy it and pitch it behind the seat of your truck. Buy TWO of them and try them out on some local water so you are not shocked by how it tastes.

Clostridioides difficile is notable for the foul stench of the "output"

And then...think about Oral Rehydration Solution for when you or a loved-one does get the Johnny-trots. Most "sports electrolyte" drinks don't have enough salt and have too much sugar.  You can get close if you take 3/4-scoop of powdered Gatorade and add 1/4 teaspoon of table salt per quart(liter) of water. You need the salt. Your body will not allow your body to retain water if it knocks your cation:anion:water equilibrium out of balance.

The case for having a response-plan for diarrhea is that there are situations when contact with raw sewage is unavoidable. Some of those situations, like flooding, can expose very large numbers of people, possibly enough to overwhelm local medical resources

I am not trying to play "doctor" here. My goal is to keep you out of the ditch long enough for you to get to the doctor. Even though dehydration and raging diarrhea is sufficient reason to call 911 and get an ambulance ride...how many of you are actually going to make that call? Right. I thought so. None of us.

You are going to try to finish what you are doing, take one final trip to the latrine, put three folded-up towels on the seat of your F-150/Silverado/RAM and then drive yourself to the E-Room.

Today's view from the office

 

Looking south. Uphill.

Looking east. Looking across a gully or small valley.

Looking north, downhill. The Autumn Olive are just starting to bloom.

Looking into a bucket. These are pecan seed-nuts, cv. "Goosepond".

Three hours time-on-task.

Shifting gears in the garden

Overflowing! I water them in our walk-in shower. I move each tray to the shower and use the hand-held shower-head.

Looking ahead at the calendar for this week I have obligations every day except today: Field trips, picking up fingerling fish, birthday parties and a trip to distant cemeteries. I might be able to wiggle out of the field trip and that will give me two days when I can work.

The heavy blue line at the bottom of the chart is 32F

I moved some of the seedling trays outside. I put them in the sun in the morning and then move under an over-hang at night where there is slight protection from the frost. We might be past the danger of frost but the ambient temperatures are not conducive to rapid plant growth. The air is cold. The soil is cold.

The Mexican Tarragon (Tagetes minuta) that I interplanted between the blackberry starts are very visible after transplanting most of the blackberries

In spite of those issues, I moved some perennials out of seedling trays into their permanent homes this weekend. I also watered various 2026 transplants (blackberries, gooseberries, asparagus, iris, lovage, rhubarb) since our total rainfall for May has been 0.0 inches. That has been great for the farmers racing to plant their fields. It isn't so good for tiny plants that have been transplanted. Tiny plants have tiny roots that can't reach deeply into the lower, wetter soil horizons.

Today, God willing, I will be planting acorns and pecan seed-nuts. I expect it to be slow going because I will be planting into unmown sod. 

Time marches onward

 

I used sand from Quicksilver's sandbox to cover the seeds. That is why many of the cells have a tan blotch in the middle of them.

Do you see that bit of bright-red slightly above the center of the frame? That is a beet seedling.

The "Merlin" beet seeds planted May 6 are starting to pop up. Five days elapsed time.

What an odd place for a woodchuck to take a nap.

We sometimes have mice in our attic. These professional mice models were compensated with peanut butter and raisins for this photo session.

Our house was built in the mid-1970s and has blown-in, cellulose (ground up newspapers) insulation. It is a pain to work around.

This is the best system I have used so far for trapping mice in the attic. The backbone is a stringer from a pallet. The traps are glued in place with yellow wood-glue.

If you ever fiddled with Designed for Assembly then you understand that rigid parts are much preferred to springy, flexible parts (like most wire harnesses).

One of the unexpected advantages of the slat that I used for the backbone is that it does not sink into the insulation.

Random factoid

The attendance at church today was about 40% higher than the norm. Today is Mother's Day and perhaps some of the mothers in the congregation suggested that accompanying them to Mass would bring them joy.

I don't think any arms were twisted and I saw no evidence that any frozen hearts were thawed. But at least 45 souls who do not regularly hear the words in the Bible attended church and heard readings from Acts, Psalms, 1 Peter and John in Charlotte, Michigan.

The words can fall like rain but if the hearts choose to remain frozen it will be to no avail. They will run off like rain on frozen soil. But the words DID fall like rain and their ears heard even if their hearts filtered it out.

I was told that Chimney Swifts (the bird) build their nests by taking a tiny gob of mud in their beaks and hurling at the place where they want their nest. Invariably, the first attempt fails. The pellet bounces off, but its impact removes some of the lichens, algae and tarnish from the brick (or wall of the cave). Perhaps fifty or a hundred or two-hundred attempts are tried and each fails. Each attempt prepares the site for eventual success, like successive passes of a plow prepares the field for the seed.

And then...a pellet of clay sticks. And then another...and another. Success builds upon success.

But is the 201st attempt any more noble or necessary than the first, the fifty-first, the hundred-and-first or the hundred-and-ninety-ninth?

No, it is not. And so the mothers and grandmothers tell the souls that have been entrusted to them "It will give me great joy if you go to church with me on Mother's Day this year." 

They do their part.

The Holy Spirit will do His part.

The lost lamb? Well, every story is different. 

Science done right

I am feeling pretty beaten up today. There is a bug going around according to Southern Belle and the maple pollen counts are high.

As I sat in the official blogging chair of the Eaton Rapids Joe blog, I dipped into the internet and stumbled across an example of "good" science.

Background

In the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, a delegation of scientists from the US surveyed the mountains of Central Asia east of the Aral Sea basin. Scientist hypothesize that these mountains are the ancestral home of modern, domestic apples. Dried fruit and seeds moved westward along the migration and trading routes and interacted with native species in Asia Minor and Europe. The small number of seeds in the original migration was seen as a genetic bottleneck.

It was speculated that there could be all kinds of useful genes in the larger population the progenitors of the original apples (called Malus sieversii), genes that could be very useful in terms of disease and insect resistance, resistance to cold (temperatures sometimes hit -40F in the mountains), drought and salt.

The first expeditions were in 1995 and 1995. There were FORESTS of wild apple trees, many of them bearing fruit of very high quality. Seeds were harvested by the hundreds, even thousands. Scion for grafting was collected from the elite specimens to be propagated in the United States. 

Magazine articles were written and illustrated with pictures of these wild orchards and bear tracks and bear poop.

TV interviews were made on PBS and BBC and Discovery channels.

It was a Very Big Deal. It was the botanical version of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

...and then...

DNA testing became an everyday tool in the lab and scientists started looking at the samples the expeditions brought back.

It seems likely that various товарищ (komrades) had moved commercial orchards into the wild forests as a way to avoid the heavy hand of the central government. Interspersing the domestic apple trees with the wild M. sieversii not only hid the production from the authorities, it resulted in hybrids between the two and those progeny were the ones that most attracted the eyes of the expedition.

Rabbit-hole details

The DNA data had enough resolution to (usually) identify the parents or grandparents of the samples tested.

In order of frequency mentioned, those varieties are

• Alexander (Ukrainian apple)
• Golden Reinette (from Denmark or England depending on where you ask)
• Charlamoff (perhaps "Charlamowsky" a Duchess of Oldenburg type apple)
• Rosmarina Bianca (an apple from northern Italy)
• Golden Pearmain (possibly from southeastern US)
• Lowland Raspberry (Russian)
• Yellow Transparent (Russian)
•  
• ....Mostly onesie-twosies after this... 
•  
• Reinette Simirenko (Ukrainian)
• Zigeunerapfel (oldest known apple cultivar from Germany)
• Gragylling (Sweden)
• Gross de Saint Clement (Belgium, maybe)
• Kuron Kitaika (Russian/Ukrainian, a hybrid of M. domestica x M. prunifolia)
• Spasovka Kvasna (Russian. Kvasna is Russian for hard cider)
• Kostlicher (Golden Delicious?  West Virginia)
• Weisser Tafelapfel (German)
• Yellow Bellflower (New Jersey or possibly Cornwall, England)

What tickles me about this information is that the scientists involved simply reported the data. They didn't point fingers. They didn't trash-talk. They simply updated the reports with addendums. They had tools that the scientists in 1995 did not have. And frankly, the scientists who were on the expedition were aware that "introgression of genes from Malus domestica" was a very real possibility. The apples they were finding were simply too good to be true.

Another perspective is that this is analogous to the post on the feral apple orchards of Ontario. Those orchards were over-represented by seedlings with Tolman Sweet and Wealthy ancestry. The wild orchards in Kzakistan were even more heavily over-represented by seedlings with Alexander, Golden Reinette and Charlamoff ancestry. 

Plant update

If you look closely, you will notice that the plants are growing in shallow water.

Walmart had these at very attractive prices and the plants arrived in good shape.

Two more packages were delivered today. One held a gooseberry plant, cv. Tixia. The "Tixia" I purchased last year turned into a currant bush. The other package held 9 Louisiana Iris plants cv. Ann Chowning. 

Gardening when it counts

 Link to video about vegetables that the Amish don't grow.

Summary

• How will this vegetable feed me in February? Is it a good-fit with my storage plan?
• How much usable food (calories) will this vegetable produce per square-foot over the season?
• How much usable food will this vegetable produce per minute of my labor? 
• Does this vegetable want to grow in my garden or am I pushing a rope? 

Editorializing

If you live outside of the belt of states with the highest Amish population, then their specific choices are of limited value but their thought process is still has value.

According to this video (AI voice-over, maybe AI content) the Amish plant potatoes, cabbage, winter squash and beans. If they want ears of corn, they roast some from the field corn.

The video also challenges us to rethink how much area we allocate to each crop. Are we dedicating nearly equal amounts of space to every vegetable?

Are we "in love" with a vegetable with a toxic personality? For example, maybe we adore Middle Eastern cuisine and want to grow every species of  vegetable that thrives in Lebanon, Tunisia or Greece. The seductive thing is that some of those vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini/summer squash, turnips) might thrive is southern Michigan while others will crash-and-burn due to lack of heat, short growing season and high humidity and insect pressure.

Repeatedly trying to grow those difficult (for you conditions) vegetables is the same as being obsessed by the exotically beautiful girl with the toxic personality while ignoring the girl next door with the beautiful personality. 

Here is a short mental exercise. Suppose you have a garden that is 100 square-feet...that is, the size of three sheets of plywood or OSB. You have four types of vegetable that you want to grow. One of them produces one pound per square-foot. The second produces 1/5 pound per square-foot. The third produces 1/12 pound per square-foot and the fourth produces 1/25 pound per square-foot. If it helps to visualize, potatoes, beets, peppers and parsley.

If you plant equal areas to each plant then you will get 25 pounds of potatoes, five pounds of beets, two pounds of peppers and one pound of parsley for a total of 33 pounds of food.

Conversely, if you had planted 60% of the garden to potatoes, 25% to beets, 10% to peppers and 5% to parsley then you would harvest 60 pounds of potatoes, 5 pounds of beets, 1.2 pounds of peppers and three ounces of parsley for a total of 66.4 pounds of food...twice as much as the other example AND the proportions are probably closer to what you will actually eat.

Morals of the story 

Don't confuse the garnish that decorates the plate with the food that will keep you alive.

Be polite to the exotic beauty with the toxic personality but invest your time and your heart in the girl-next-door.

Gardens, sweet corn and cucumbers

 

I finally got over to Southern Belle's and tilled her garden. I also planted fifteen Happy Rich broccoli.

SB informed me that her husband, Handsome Hombre, was interested in planting sweet corn. For those who aren't "into" gardening, sweet corn can be a space hog and SB's fenced-in garden is only 600 square-feet, give or take a bit.

While pondering this issue, it occurred to me that there is plenty of space that is not "lawn" between the rows of their new orchards. The trees are planted (roughly) 12' apart in rows 20' apart. I proposed that the space be planted to sweet corn and maybe potatoes and melons to SB and she will bounce it off HH. It will be necessary to run a low electric fence around the patch when it tassels to deter raccoons and for some reason HH is not fond of electric fences. I assume there is a story behind that but it has not been shared with me.

Incidentally, while tilling I moved three small pieces of OSB. The pieces were about 10" by 12". They were not-quite-horizontal. When I moved them, there were three garter/ribbon snakes lurking beneath them. I can see the attraction from the standpoint of the snakes. Since they are cold-blooded, the only way they can regulate body temperature is by finding environments where they can efficiently find the optimum temperature even as the air/sun jack around the surface temperature.

If a fellow were interested in maintaining a healthy snake population, he could do far worse than to leave some piles of sheet-metal roofing or OSB scattered about his property. He might even let it be know that he considered his property to be a nature preserve specializing in sneks.

• Texas has 68 native snake species
• Mississippi has 58
• Arizona and Nevada have 52
• Georgia and Louisiana have 48
• Florida has 44 
• Alabama has 43
• North Carolina has 40
• Michigan has 18
• Minnesota has 16
• New Hampshire has 11 
• Montana has 10 

 

Cucumbers 

Some of the cucumber seeds planted May 5 are up. They will be moved to individual pots soon.

Everybody will tell you that there is no point it planting seeds from hybrid plants because they will not come "true" from seed.

Everybody is wrong. It isn't that the second generation will be poison or inedible. The problem from the standpoint of a commercial grower is that the second generation will not be IDENTICAL. The cucumbers on the different plants will ripen at various times. They will not look identical. Some of the plants may lack disease resistance.

But, most of the cucumbers (in this case) will be delicious and most of the plants will have more disease resistance than most heirloom varieties.

One caveat is that some hybrid seeds use male-sterile lines to inexpensively guarantee that the female plant (male sterile line) is 100% certain to be pollinated by the preferred pollen plant. Many of the seeds from those kinds of hybrids are likely to carry seeds that are sterile (bad pollen, no?). However, I planted 9 seeds harvested from a VERY ripe Progress hybrid cucumber and all 9 germinated. So at least I dodged that bullet.

Incidentally, there is a cottage industry where growers plant seeds from hybrid peppers, onions and the like and keep selecting until the line stabilizes. Their thinking is that commercial hybrids have a vast portfolio of genetic disease resistance including genes from wild species/varieties. Why not use those varieties as the springboard for your open-pollinated strains. Dakota Tears onion and Stocky Red Roaster pepper (probably) were developed using this technique.
 

A few pictures

 

We already pulled in a hummingbird. The red plastic lid and the pink surveyor's tape are to make the faded feeder more visible. Hummingbirds are (supposedly) attracted to shades of red. The only species we have in Michigan are the Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds. I heard him before I saw him.

I don't know if the attractor worked, but it made me feel good to think that I had done everything in my power to let them know that the bar was open for the season.

I got a late start working today. I got 300 onion sets into the ground. The ground looks funny because I press a short length of 2X4 into the soft ground to give me a frame-of-reference for spacing.

The last two-hundred feet of potato row. The seed potatoes were "single-drops". That is, small potatoes that don't require cutting. They plant much faster than cut-seed potatoes. They are "position-agnostic" when planted and obviously don't take time to cut.

The early Red Pontiac potatoes that I planted with Quicksilver's help on April 23 are emerging. 

I looked at a boat that was for sale beside the road. 13', rattle-can painted for camo. They want $500 but will probably take $300 if it sits there a couple of weeks.

Watching the farmers work the fields

Today will be a stay-at-home day with a few errands worked in.

Mrs ERJ has appointments in both the morning and afternoon. Consequently, Quicksilver and I will be spending a lot of quality time together.

Farming 

The farmers are racing to take advantage of our current dry-spell. They are in the fields doing all of the mysterious things farmers do. Many of them are three-weeks behind.

My friend who is a Nebraska farmer told me that one of the reasons for the astronomical growth in corn yields is that the seed goes into the ground to a very tight time-table. The seeds are treated with fungicides so they can go into cold, wet soil but the fungicide is not magic, it has limits.

By planting early, the emerging corn plant will have "canopied over" before the longest day of the year. More sun captured by the leaves, the more carbohydrates it can pack into the seeds. Planting late means that your corn will be trying to pack those seeds during the shortening days of August and September...and then you end up getting docked at the elevator because your corn is low-weight or high moisture...or both.

Video of a John Deere 72 row planter 

Seeder technology has come a long way. The individual heads can float with the soil contour so each seed is planted at an optimal depth, i.e. where there is enough moisture to start germination. The new planters can accurately place 48 rows of seeds at 5.5 mph rather than grandpa's four-row planter that started chattering if you went faster than walking-speed. 

Hummingbirds

 

Hummingbird Central interactive map. Some of the local sightings were from April 23. Time to put out the feeders

This and that

Another three hours time-on-task at The Property, four-hours-by-the-clock.

Filling the trench involves skiving the edges and putting the shavings into the trench (foreground), then adding fill sand to bring it up to grade (background). Then after rain settles it, add topsoil and grass-seed.

Spraying weeds. Filling trenches. Toting fertilizer.

As I was getting ready to leave, one of the neighbors walked across the street to check his mail. He wanted to talk.

He doesn't have a lot of time left on the clock. His doctor strongly suggested that it was time for him to check into hospice/palliative care. He refused.

We shot-the-shit about the dangers of speaking poorly of others. I suggested that if nothing else, you can always admire the other fellow's dog. That got a wheezy chuckle out of him.

Last week, he got his Buick stuck and called me over. He REALLY wanted to get the car unstuck before his wife came home and gave him holy-hell for leaving the house. Between the two of us and six buckets of dry gravel, we got him unstuck although he left some outrageous ruts in his yard. As I got about the tasks I had on MY list, I looked across the road and saw him attempting to repair the damage to the grass.

The next time I was at The Property, the old-geezer's wife quizzed me. I denied all knowledge of said-geezer getting stuck (which I will have to confess). She knew I was lying but didn't seem too mad about it.

Quicksilver

Quicksilver accompanied me this morning as I prepared for today's work.

We had to buy donuts to fortify ourself for the strenuous activity. Quicksilver is fond of donuts with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. A gentleman always makes it his business to learn the lady's preferences.

Then we went to the landscape supply emporium to buy a half-yard (1200 pounds) of fill sand. Of course, she dazzled them with her charm but they still charged me full price.

Seeds

It is common knowledge that "root vegetables" do not respond well to being transplanted. The only exception(s) to this are beets and (maybe) daikon. The root of the beet is, apparently, as much a swollen stem as it is a root. So it doesn't matter if the tap-root is all folded up, it still forms a round ball of sweet goodness.

Another weird thing about beets is that each seed is usually multiple seeds, like string of firecrackers. You might think you planted one seed but five or eight plants pop up and you need to thin-out the surplus, otherwise they will all be stunted.

I have to admit that thinning the surplus seedlings from a seedling tray while sitting at a table is much more attractive than doing it while kneeling and bending over in the garden. I only planted 25 seeds (cv. "Merlin") but intend to plant another 25 in a couple of weeks.

Compared to the subsistence gardeners farming the Ukrainian dachas, I am a bumbling newbie. But maybe an old dog can learn some new tricks.

Muskellunge

Muskellunge or "Muskie" are apex predator, freshwater fish very similar to the south's Alligator Gar or the saltwater Barracuda.

While reading the Michigan DNR fishing guide, I learned that the Michigan DNR believes that monster Muskie inhabit one of the creeks near The Property. In fact, anglers are not allowed to keep Muskie from that creek that are shorter than 50 inches (1.27e+10 angstrom in metric). How close does that creek run to the property? According to Google, it comes within 729 feet of The Property.

Unfortunately, Michigan regulations do not allow "unattended lines" which means I am not legally able to set a rig and then go work on The Property and then check the line when I am done for the day. 

God is great, beer is good and people are crazy

 

Another day of phoning-in my performance.

Maybe something more profound than this song will come to my attention, but I doubt it. 

The outrage and victimhood is fake, too. They just want to get their rocks-off by inflicting pain.

 

Music, Fashion, Pictures and Murder...Who needs tabloids?

 

 Watching in full-screen mode is highly recommended

Just for fun. "Someone told me long ago, there's a calm before the storm..."

Fashion is a form of ugly so hideous it must be changed every six months

In the past, the US Forest agency fined timber companies that did not cut closely enough to the ground. The companies claimed that they had to leave higher stumps on the trees growing on steep slopes but the USF agents pointed at the specifications in the contracts and accused the companies of "wasting" wood.

The timber companies groused about all of the trees that were drowned in reservoirs when they filled. Anglers were divided on the issue. Some cover is good. Too much cover means you lose a lot of lures.

Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way. This research out of Europe proposes that the "crappy trees" that are not economical to mill into lumber be topped out at 6'-to-13' and the tall-stumps be left in place to rot and provide nesting habitat. The plan for very-high latitude sites is to leave between 2 and 4 of these stubs per-acre.

Hat-tip to Tireless. 

Random pictures

Another wheelbarrow back "on-line".

Asparagus planted April 22 starting to pop up.

They look so peaceful when you can sneak up on them while they are sleeping. This one was inside the duck/garden enclosure. The "tell" were the fresh crumbles of soil at the mouth of the den.

Technologies that were not available to consumers 20 years ago. I am still shocked when a "kid" scans a QR code, pushes a button and a service is paid for. Hat-tip to Tireless

Slow response times

I am embarrassed to report that I appear to be ghosting people due to my slow response time. Please give me the benefit of the doubt when I am slow to respond. Maybe things will slow down by June 10ish. Maybe.

One of my friends (who reads this blog) offered me some incredible batteries. They are industrial-quality lead-acid batteries that are used for critical infrastructure support and they are regularly changed out while they are well above 80% life-remaining.

I regretfully declined the offer because the assorted demands on my time (several of which I don't share on the blog) mean that I don't have time to integrate systems and dial them in. I need pre-engineered systems that are plug-and-play.

The opportunity cost of tinker-toying together a system with various parts means that I will not be controlling weeds in my orchard(s) and garden(s).

Murdersicles

I have a brother who loves motorcycles. Well, OK, I have two brothers who love motorcycles.

Link

But one of them is trying to get me excited about a Chinesium Enduro (street-legal) Commuter bike. I have to admit that the ability to commute to The Property and back (70 mile round trip) on a gallon of gas is enticing.

Given the specific power of the engine and a frame designed for dirt-biking, the bike should be able to run for 50 years as long as the cam-shaft was properly hardened and the owner changes the oil. 

Bonus video I

Bonus video eleven 

The ride that he picked out for me is a Honda clone with a 230cc, 4-stroke engine that makes 14hp and has a top speed of 65 mph. MSRP of about $1700 but cheaper if you shop around.

He candidly stated that his wife is not very keen on him buying another motorcycle, otherwise he would buy one...but she is fine if I buy one. My problem is that Mrs ERJ might not be too keen on me buying any motorcycle given my age and the slower reaction times and healing that goes with that.

As my dad once told me "There is no such thing as 'soft gravel'. There is loose gravel and there is packed gravel, but it is never soft gravel."