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One would presume that the abolition of all rules and the enforcement thereof would eliminate all jobs for librarians.
Just put the books on any shelf, assuming anybody brings them back.
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Subsistence Gardening
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| A cover crop of turnips. An easy place to get massive amounts of turnip seeds is in seed packages for Deer Food Plots. |
Subsistence gardening is different than quality-of-life gardening.
A gardener in the city might grow a 30 square-foot garden with herbs, chili peppers and a cherry tomato plant and be perfectly happy as a quality-of-life gardener.
Under current conditions, it makes no sense for them to expand their garden or to grow crops like potatoes or corn. Their point is "Why should I plant half of my garden to potatoes (three plants, maybe) to harvest a dollars worth of potatoes?"
To their way of thinking, the size of their garden and the current prices are Constants, not Variables. The subsistence gardener's thinking is inverted. "Everything is a variable except for the fact that every person in my household needs 3000 Calories a day.
From the subsistence gardener's viewpoint, foods like corn and potatoes and cabbage are awesome because they are cheap. The cost of those foods is a consequence of their ease-of-production and their inherent productivity. It is much easier to produce 3000 Calories of potatoes than it is 3000 Calories of Shitake mushrooms, for instance.
This guy gets it right
I will just add a few comments.
He misses out on Brassicas. That would be cabbage, turnips and the like. Diets that lean heavily on easy-to-store and transport, starchy foods are often light on vitamins. Sure, you can devote energy into turning grain into sprouts but why not just scatter a bunch of turnip seeds on a bare part of your garden and harvest greens all winter long?
Gardening is a very local enterprise. Varieties that do well for me might not do well for you.
Sun
Light is energy. Calories are a measure of energy. No light. No Calories.
Moisture
Some constants are universal. Crops need moisture. Some are more drought tolerant that others.
Fertility
To produce well, crops need fertility. Most commercial farmers use about 200 pounds of Nitrogen per acre for corn, potatoes and cabbage.
That is the equivalent of one pound of urea per 100 square-feet. If you have difficulty visualizing 100 square feet, then visualize three, 4X8 sheets of plywood.
Weed control
Weeds are likely to outgrow your crops because they are not genetically hardwired to divert much of their photosynthetic output toward fruit, tubers or succulent, edible greens.
The weeds will get the sun, moisture and fertility intended for your food crops.
Insects
This is not a child's story. You must control insects in some way.
Birds, rabbits, woodchucks, deer, squirrels....
Fences are your friend but if that doesn't work...they are edible.
Humans
Some crops are magnets for vandals and theft. Orange pumpkins are a prime example.
While the classic, orange pumpkin seems to beckon the worst elements of humanity from half a mile away the same cannot be said for a green or blue Hubbard squash or a tan, bottle-shaped Butternut squash.
Final note
Time becomes different when you are subsistence gardening. You don't schedule tasks in the garden. The garden does.
It doesn't work to say "I will pull those weeds next Wednesday between 5:00 PM and 7. Ground needs to be worked when IT is ready. Seeds planted when the ground is ready. Weeds pulled or hoed when they are young. Soil watered when the rains don't come. Insects controlled when they show up. Food harvested when it is ready not when you are hungry.
Bonus link: If you can only buy one book on subsistence gardening, buy Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
Comments are encouraged. I know I have readers (Looking at you Milton, M.R. and Howard) who run circles around me in gardening know-how and execution. Do you have any cautions, tips or advice you want to share with the larger readership?
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Wednesday fishing update
The Kid's Grandma is now negative for Covid and the Kid is cleared for action.
After a two week hiatus, which coincided exactly with deer season, we are now back to our weekly fishing date.
We went to Eaton Rapids.
We started out at the railroad trestle at the Old Athletic Field.
Then we went to where Spring Brook dumps into the Grand River.
Then we went to a third, secret location and stumbled into Old-Tom.
Old-Tom is a Navy vet. Born in Pennsylvania from Lithuanian-Polish stock he has a Swedish last name. Fishing is a very important part of his life.
He was delighted to see a young fisherman and he cheerfully shared the secret to catching the 22" walleyes he had been limiting out on.
"You are fishing way too early in the evening. You need to wait until at least redacted before they start biting.
You can't cast too far out. Fifteen feet is plenty far because there is a redacted that will catch your lure if you cast any farther.
You want a jerk-bait with small lips. Tie it on with a redacted knot; never use a swivel. The walleye have been tearing up these redacted inch, silver jerk baits with redacted colored back and redacted lines on along their sides.
Let the current drag the lure downstream while you jerk it like this (demonstrating), then retrieve in fast when it is parallel with the redacted."
Not ones to waste advice from a proven expert, we splurged on McDonald McFlurries and then drove over to Charlotte and bought out their stock of small lipped.... redacted inch, silver jerk baits with redacted colored backs and redacted lines on along their sides.
Then we spent a half an hour freezing in the dark pitching them into the water. The Kid was sure he had a hit.
The Kid magnanimously allows that we can fish again in Eaton Rapids.
Pelosi does not want a Civil War
George Soros might want a Civil War because he makes money speculating on currency swings.
Nancy Pelosi (and Clinton and Biden) does NOT want a Civil War because most of her assets are tied up in vehicles that are based on US Dollars.
If the Ukraine conflict is a guideline, the UAH-to
-USD dropped from 0.125-to-1.0 to 0.035-to-one. Said another way, every dollar of assets denominated in Ukrainian currency (bonds, savings accounts) quickly dropped to twenty-eight cents of buying power.
The Gross Domestic Product dropped by 50% during the Civil War. It bears repeating that the area that wanted to separate from the Ukraine was about 12% of the area of the Ukraine.
Absent the convulsions of the Civil War, the GDP would most likely have been 220 instead of 153 in 2019. That is a 43% increase vis-a-vis the official GDP.
As an investor, I was interested in which "sectors" led the Ukrainian economy out of the nose-dive of 2014-2016.
Three sectors that did well were Agriculture, Heavy Machinery and...."Coding", as in computers.
Agriculture and heavy machinery are commodities and the depreciation of the UAH lowered production costs.
Computer coding can be sold internationally (for hard currency) and the variable cost of production consumes virtually no imported goods. It is doubtful that Americans could do as well. Good coders are not baffled by high school level algebra or the complexities of grammar and punctuation.
There was a fourth sector that did well in the post-Civil War period. Four percent of the working age population left the Ukraine for brighter prospects. They have little intention of returning but do send money back home.
While Pelosi does not want a Civil War...
The younger Marxists probably do. They see the immolation of Wealth as a feature, not a bug.
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
A very SAD story
Kevin lived in California and was a lifelong environmentalist. He was sick of the world; of Covid-19, Brexit, Russian belligerence, global warming, racial tensions, and the rest of the disturbing stories that occupy media headlines.
Kevin drove his car into his garage and then sealed every doorway and window as best he could. He got back into his car and wound down all the windows, selected his favorite radio station, started the car and revved it to a slow idle.
Four days later, a worried neighbor peered through his garage window and saw him in the car. She notified the emergency services and they broke in, pulling Brad from the car.
A little sip of water and, surprisingly, he was in perfect condition, but his Tesla had a dead battery.
This is to be expected from a California Democrat.
Borrowed from TB2000
Berezno, Ukraine
Berezno, Ukraine is in the western Ukraine. The Ukraine was generally considered a First World country when it was part of the USSR.
More recently, it has been torn by civil strife and tensions with Russia, the Ukraine's largest trade partner.
See where I am going with this?
Berezno is credited with about 13,000 citizens or about three times the population of Eaton Rapids or about 15% the size of Lansing, Michigan (city proper).
If you look at the outlying, populated areas you will notice something unusual, at least by North American standards.
Look at the back yards.
Gardens. Every one. 700 square-meter (6000 square-foot) gardens.
The land-use outside of town is also strange by North American standards.
Those narrow strips are approximately 6 meters (20 feet) and they appear to be in different rotations or perhaps different stages of the same rotation.
The down-town area of Berezno is much more congested than the outlying areas.
Still, they squeezed in gardens in the flood plains. The houses in the image above had yards behind them leading to the perimeter of the flood plains, defined by an ox-bow that had been cut-off from the main channel of the Sluch River.
A close-up of the actual flood plain shows it is all in vegetable gardens with rows approximately 100 meters long. The width between rows varies, probably based on the vegetables being gown; carrots and radishes can be grown closer together than tomatoes and potatoes.
Berezno is 800 km (500 miles) from the most intense fighting of the Ukrainian Civil War but the tremors in the economic system were felt there. Gardening is hard work. Most people don't do it unless they have a compelling reason.
My assumption is that I could have looked at a hundred different, small, Ukrainian cities and seen much the same thing.
Perhaps the most notable thing about these images is that either the Ukraine is a very high-trust society or the punishment for stealing food (and vandalism) are severe. I suspect the second is the case. The police probably look the other way when a known, petty-thief gets his face rearranged by a garden shovel.
Fine Art Tuesday
Katherine served in the Army National Guard and Army Reserves for thirty-seven years and retired at the rank of lieutenant colonel. She feels it is important to serve her nation and her contribution to the nation’s defense keeps her grounded. -From her website
Katherine is painting a series that captures military equipment, most specifically uniforms.
If you want to recognize Katherine for her work or purchase a high-quality print of one of her works she is best reached HERE
A uniform is more than a random pile of clothing
The words "Investment", "Investiture", "Vestment" and "Vest" share the same root-word.
"Investiture" is a ceremony where the inductee dons the robes of office and is authorized to officially discharge the duties of that office. The act of putting on the "vestments of office" is to formally assume the authorities and duties of that office.
In the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son, after greeting the lost son the father commands servants to bring "the finest robe, a ring and sandals"
The "ring" was the equivalent of the power to enter into contracts and commit family resources.
The "robe" was to identify him as a son-of-the-family.
Professions
Suppose you had a row of people who were dressed in their "work clothes"
One was a mountain climber, another was a fighter pilot, the third was a farmer, the fourth a policeman. A football player, a bowler, a surgeon, a cowboy, somebody who worked in a foundry....
Would you have any difficulty sorting them out?
Uniforms
Uniform translates literally as "one shape". Those who voluntarily choose to wear a uniform trade the freedom of individual expression. The uniform suggests that they believe that there is a good that is greater than self.
The military uniform is more than an idea. It is a tangible reminder of one-for-many.
What I like about these paintings
I like the calm, implied readiness in these paintings.
When I look at any image, I look for the "implied verb". The implied verb in this series of pictures is a honed readiness without being edgy. Worn boots imply been-there, done-that. Clothing with a bit of wear gives me confidence that the person wearing those clothes will not be flighty when things "get real".
These uniforms could be the uniforms of the millions of currently serving in the Armed Forces. What makes these paintings special is that they are not special or heroic in the singular sense. They represent every Soldier, Marine, Sailor, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard or Reservist.
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