This is being reported in a publication that caters to farmers

Presumably, DWR (Virginia) game wardens walked onto Highlander’s property using the U.S. Supreme Court’s Open Fields doctrine. Federal and state agencies often claim the doctrine allows government officials to secretly enter private land and spy on landowners. In a nutshell, the doctrine says private land (outside home and yard) receives zero Fourth Amendment protections from warrantless intrusions.

Normally, government uses the Open Fields doctrine to search private land. But in Highlander’s case, government used the doctrine to seize property from private land.

After the DWR officers seized the camera (without a warrant or permission) from Mr. Highlander’s property, Defendant Adams (Viginia DWR game warden) physically opened the camera and removed the storage card in order to access photos on the card. On information and belief, Adams then downloaded copies of thousands of photos from Mr. Highlander’s camera, stored them on her computer, and has been reviewing the photos to see if she can find any evidence that Mr. Highlander has violated any hunting law or regulation.

Defendant (Viriginia DWR Officer) Adams obtained a search warrant directed to Reveal by Tactacam—the company that made the camera and that hosts online photo storage for its customers—for any additional photos associated with Mr. Highlander’s camera.

In other words, Defendant Adams seized Mr. Highlander’s camera without a warrant and has been effectively using that camera to retroactively spy on Mr. Highlander.

https://www.agweb.com/news/business/farmland/game-wardens-steal-private-landowners-trail-camera-lawsuit-explodes

Perhaps a caution for those who store data on "the cloud". 

Hat-tip CK up nort

The lighter side of Fine Art Tuesday

 

Farm report

Sweet cherries are ripe. Raspberries and mulberries are starting. Juneberries are tiny but they are starting to ripen, too. The Romaine and leaf-lettuce is thinking of bolting (i.e. going to seed and becoming bitter).

Local fields are dry. Most corn is about 5" high but some of the taller stuff has that waxy, rolled-up-leaf look of drought stressed corn.

Some wheat is changing color. The wheat that is changing color is on slopes, presumably where the layer of top soil is thin due to erosion.

The patches of bluegrass-white clover in my pasture are burned out.

On the up-side, are are almost no mosquitoes this year.

Using the MSU Integrated Pest Management tool, Charlotte, Michigan is recorded as having received 1.65 inches of rain since April 15, 2023 while experiencing an evaporation-potential of 10.3 inches.

It is not too hard to keep up with the garden watering because the plants are small and not transpiring that much water...except for the potatoes. That will change over the next two weeks.

Pictures

Chicken feeder. It holds 25 pounds of chicken feed.

The physical evidence suggests I lost a chick last night. I put the trail cam up to see if I can figure out how it happened.

Sprite has Brome Grass in her pasture. She graciously let me run my cows onto it.

I added about 5' to the end of each flour-corn row to plant some Hickory King. That is why the corn plants on the right are shorter. They were planted later.

Planting carrots

It is sometimes whispered in the quiet, dusty halls of academia that it is not difficult to create life in the laboratory as long as a few, basic requirements are addressed.

Specifically, that your lab assistant be beautiful, willing and having reached the age of her majority.

If the professor is old or a woman, there is a fourth requirement; that she be be liberal enough to participate in a three-some.

Carrots

Carrots have been a difficult crop for me. Almost analogous to creating life in the laboratory. 

Knowing the requirements, I asked the beautiful, willing and (a few months over 18 years-old) Mrs ERJ to help me plant the carrots.

Carrot seeds

Carrot seeds are puny things and don't have a lot of git-up and go. Guys with fat fingers have difficulty planting the seeds at anything approaching the appropriate density.

Mrs ERJ and I converged on the following technique that (so far) looks like a winner.

Dilute the seed with a filler. I used 4 ounces by volume (about 120ml) of cornmeal. I also used 5mg of carrot seeds although 2mg would have been enough.

My custom 1.5CC measuring tool.

A small volume of diluted seed mix was removed from the container and sprinkled into a disposable, aluminum lasagna pan.

If you look at the side of the pan you can see scallops. These scallops are 1.5" apart and because of the color contrast between the seeds and the cornmeal it was relatively easy to evenly distribute the seeds and to stop after each scallop had at least two seeds.

Mrs ERJ proposed that we use a Parmesan Cheese shaker next year.

Once each scallop is loaded, the pan is lowered to the ground and the edge is rotated to dump the seed+corn meal in the furrow.

BAM! 12 inches of row planted. Lather, rinse, repeat.

THen the seeds were covered with a thin layer of sand.

Sand does not form a crust if it gets wet and then dries out. It is also sterile.

And then paper over the top to keep the soil damp.

And the paper was weighted down at intervals to keep the wind from blowing it away.

One row with paper over it.

Not only did the sixty feet of row go in very quickly, but I had the pleasure of Mrs ERJ's company.

The "Market" and High Value men and women

Youtube's algorithm keeps popping up Jedediah Bila videos assuming that she says things that I might find interesting.

One of her recurring themes involves "How to be a 'High-Value' woman" and her advice is at odds with the current culture.

She contends that popular culture goads women into having zero empathy for men (the customer?). Women who have no ability to walk in their customer's target-market's shoes become grotesque, one-dimensional caricatures of what men value. Usually, they become invisible to men after we reach an age where we can sometimes think with the higher-elevation head.

But I'm unique!

Cold comfort after you disparage men and then packaged yourself as the oldest of commodities, peeth-a-poothy.

Commodities are by definition interchangeable units. Any gallon of 87 octane gasoline is interchangeable with any other gallon of 87 octane gasoline.

A seldom considered fact

The price of an item sold at auction is determined by the last bidder to drop out of bidding and not the last bidder.

While you might be the soul-mate and pearl-beyond-price to one person on the planet, is that person in the crowd that is bidding? Is there a second bidder in the immediate audience?

Learn to forgive

One of the things that men and women who have been force-fed popular culture need to learn how to do is to learn to forgive and to let the past stay in the past.

We all make mistakes. We all remember things differently, emphasizing some parts of the story and forgetting other parts.

Pop culture values drama. Pure cads and villains. Pure heroes and victims. Forget the drama. The curtain never closes in real life. You will have to deal with the acrimony and wreckage of those relationships in the future.

Refusing to forgive somebody does not make you a higher-class person. It makes you a person most people will avoid interacting with.

Don't throw people under the bus

If there is one lesson from Trump that Conservatives and Progressives can probably agree on is that throwing people under the bus, especially people who worked with you in good-faith, can leave you friendless in your time of dire need.

I suppose the same lesson applies to the Harry-formerly-known-as-Prince. The Harry/Markle brand seems to be imploding before our eyes.

I am a chick magnate!

Not my best work but certainly not my worst.

The window had broken and I covered it with a feedlot panel covered with chicken-wire.

 

The ladies seem happy. They went from six-square-feet to sixty (thirty in the run and thirty beneath the truck-cap.

The first night is always a little scary. I locked them into the cap which I have on 16" concrete squares to make it harder for predators to tunnel beneath.

I bet those little dudes will be hungry and thirsty by morning.

There is still some tweaking I need to do but it should be good enough for one night.

St Vitus' Dance

St Vitus' Dance was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected adults and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries. 

Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork.

The outbreaks of dancing mania varied, and several characteristics of it have been recorded. Generally occurring in times of hardship,^[2]: 136 up to tens of thousands of people would appear to dance for hours,^{[2]: 133 [10]} days, weeks, and even months.^{[2]: 132 [5]}

They hardly stopped,^[10] and some danced until they broke their ribs and subsequently died.^[6]: 32 Throughout, dancers screamed, laughed, or cried,^[2]: 132 and some sang.^[11]: 60 Bartholomew also notes that observers of dancing mania were sometimes treated violently if they refused to join in.^[2]: 139 Participants demonstrated odd reactions to the color red... 

It is certain that many participants of dancing mania were psychologically disturbed,^[2]: 136 but it is also likely that some took part out of fear,^[10] or simply wished to copy everyone else.^[6]: 43 

 -Wikipedia