Rejoice with me! I found the keys*

And so I torture you with a story

One of our tasks as parents and bosses is to train our replacements. If the children/employee is willing, then we attempt to pass on the knowledge and tricks that we learned so they don't have to remake every mistake humans have made since the beginning of time.

So there I was, standing behind Southern Belle as she started slamming in the first corner post in the next paddock for her goats.

The plan was to build the second enclosure next to the current enclosure (2 feedlot panels in one direction and 5 feedlot panels in the other direction). We planned to reuse one of the long sides of the current paddock. We would crowd the goats into a temporary cell made from four feedlot panels and recycle the ones that were freed up.

Like most people getting into livestock, Southern Belle is expanding as budget becomes available. She recently purchased used T posts and the next paycheck will buy three additional feedlot panels.

Since she had the posts, it made sense to put them in so we were ready to hit the ground running after she purchased the additional feedlot panels.

Happy Tools (named after the cheap toys found in value meals)

I tapped two nails into a work-surface. The nails were 8' minus 1/4" apart.

I tied a loop in the starting end and wrapped around the nails 9 times.

Then I marked the Start end with some paint.

Viola! A tool to show us exactly where to drive the T posts so they would be in alignment with the length of the feedlot panels.

Untangling the cord

The first five minutes at Southern Belle's was spent untangling the cord and stretching it down the two-track that runs beside the paddock.

Then we dropped the loop on one end of the cord over the corner T post of the current paddock and pulled the cord to stretch it. Then we stuck another T post 32' away (two feedlot panel lengths) for the corner post of the new paddock.

I stood behind Southern Belle (west of her) as she started slamming in the post with her driver.

Unknown to us, precisely 24 inches eastsoutheast of where she was driving the post was a yellowjacket (Vespula maculifrons) nest. It took SB about three whacks of with the driver before they were boiling around her and sharing their misery with her.

"Oh SHIT! I am getting stung by bees!!!!" she said, dropping the post driver and sprinting toward the house.

At which point I also vamoosed.

Time to make a plan

After dosing Southern Belle with 50mg of diphenhydramine (which I carry in a ziplock baggie in my pocket)** I drove home to get the materials I needed to deal with the yellowjackets.

I cleaned the remnants of herbicide out of my sprayer and mixed up 1/2 gallon of permethrin insecticide.

I found my fishing hat with the mosquito netting.

And then I walked out into the breezeway between our house and garage and pulled my quilted coveralls off of the hook where it hangs year-round.

And it was slightly heavier than I expected. Because it had a set of keys in the pocket. 

It had my keys in the pocket because that is where I put them after locking the door to the house when I am going for a run. Mrs ERJ had unlocked the door and I must have been distracted when I came back from my last run (maybe ten days ago) and not picked them up. Then I didn't have a need for them for a bit and forgot that is where I had left them.

So do I tell Southern Belle that St Anthony of Padua may have sent those yellowjackets? Without those yellowjackets, it would have been months before I would have worn those insulated coveralls. On one hand I am sad that she got stung three times. On the other hand I am filled with joy that I found my keys before hunting season started and I needed to open the safe.

*Apologies to Luke 15:9

“Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it?

And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’

**I hung out for 20 minutes after she got stung to see if she had a reaction to the stings.

Presented without comment

 

First-World "root-causes" based Justice

Pawpaw recently posted an essay titled Root Causes.

We look at teen violence and try to ascribe root causes to try to rationalize behavior.  Most of that rationalization is bullshit. 

The sociologists try to put people in groups to explain societal problems and that is not always predictive.  There are always outliers.

The best thing that a society can do to establish tranquility it to set rules and enforce them. A rule that is not enforced is useless.

As a cop, I learned that the rules change from time to time. It was not my job to try to understand why someone would choose to break the law.  It was simply my job to enforce it. 

Sergio Yanes Preciado pictured above

An example of First-World "justice" involves Sergio Yanes Preciado who allegedly approached a family in a public park in Montreal’s Parc-Extension neighborhood and without provoction assaulted the father by spraying him with an unknown substance and then proceeded to batter him.

Now, a criminologist, who was not identified, has suggested the hot weather might have contributed to Preciado's actions that day. Temperatures reached a high of almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The criminologist had conducted a quick mental health evaluation ahead of Preciado's appearance before Quebec Court Judge Martin Chalifour inside Montreal courthouse Wednesday, according to The Montreal Gazette.

Are you following this line of reasoning? "Modern, First-World" criminologist claim that the father was assaulted because of Global Warming. Preciado was not responsible. The weather was.

The court ordered a 30 day psychiatric evaluation pending any legal action against Preciado. 

The flaw in this logic

There are approximately four-million people living in the Montreal metropolitan region. Approximately 1/3 of a million are men of Preciado's age +/- five years. If the weather is to blame, why didn't the other 333,332 men go nuts on that day?

To quote Pawpaw, "Most of that rationalization is bullshit." and it does a disservice to the people living in the communities where anti-social people are not held accountable.

The same flaw shows up in the "It's always the --gg--s!"

Granted, as a demographic they are disproportionately represented in crime statistics. But why is there a 4.5X difference in incarceration rates for Blacks (as a per-100k/per-100k white people) between New Jersey and Mississippi/Georgia/Alabama? What about all of the Black people who do NOT commit crimes but quietly go about their lives, work at their jobs, raise their children. If race is destiny, then how do you explain them?

Perhaps there is more of a culture of personal accountability in Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama. Maybe the courts don't make excuses (like "it's of climate change") for juveniles-of-color.

Rachel's Folly by Patrice Lewis (a book review)

Romance novels are not what I usually read although I will admit to having read one or two of them in my lifetime. So this review will seem odd to those who make a steady diet of them.

First, I want to lead off by saying that any book that is self-published is a masterpiece, just as any Whitetail Deer harvested with traditional archery equipment is a trophy. I am not going to point out tiny air-bubbles in the plot or events I might have written differently. Rather, I am going to point out what I think she did exceptionally well.

Homesteading is physically demanding

Mrs Lewis did not candy-coat the simple fact that homesteading requires an almost incomprehensible number of hours of physical labor every day. There are some upsides: You can eat phenomenally large amounts of food and still lose weight. You sleep like the dead. If you don't hurt yourself in the process, then you become physically much stronger.

The homesteader is at the mercy of the weather

As modern people, we benefit from a transportation system that smooths-out local variation in weather. You can live in Phoenix or Fairbanks and there are fresh fruits and vegetables in the grocery stores every week of the year.

Not so for the homesteader. Not only do they eat seasonally, but a severe weather event will impact their ability to feed themselves.

Mrs Lewis seamlessly worked those concepts into the story as part of the canvas that was the background for the couple's emerging relationship.

Recreation was productive

The couple went fishing: Even though it was "downtime", it was still an activity that had the potential to put protein into the diet.

They visited a neighbor: Even though it was "recreational", they still swapped things they had excesses of. The neighbor was good at sewing (for instance) while Sam did chores that were easier for a man to do.

Nothing was wasted

Right off the bat, Sam is singing the praises of pine-needles to Rachel. A bit of a rabbit-hole but that was probably Mrs Lewis's intention; to demonstrate that even commodities as common and boring as pine-needles or a match were not to be wasted.

Predators must be respected

Elk, deer, rabbits and mice want to eat the trees. Sam has a 10' tall fence around the garden.

Coyotes, wolves, bears, cougars, hawks, eagles and owls want to eat your livestock. This is not Disneyland. The livestock is shut in the barn every night. Any lapse in vigilance can be very costly.

Homesteaders think about time in a different way

Somebody who works in an office often works from a daily To-Do list. Somebody who works on "projects" often has a guide-book that outlines the specific order things must be done in.

Mrs Lewis doesn't preach about it, but she accurately describes how young fruit trees need time before they are productive. She describes how they must flower in the spring if they are to bear fruit in the autumn. Later in the book, she describes how a fallen tree must be cut and split and dried for a year before it will be dry enough to burn. 

She describes (in painfully funny detail) the steps that must happen to build a fire and cook eggs and bacon...it being clear that you cannot cook bacon if you cannot first build a fire.

These are all things that happen as cycles within cycles, like the drum cadence, melodies and themes that build and recur within a symphony. 

Diversity of tasks

A homestead is actually a conglomeration of a multitude of related enterprises. Keeping the cats marching in formation is a juggling act. Paradoxically, we fail at perfection but succeed at good-enough.

Every day is different. Even with in the day the tasks can bounce around from hour-to-hour.

Except for weeding the garden. That never goes away. 

Celibacy

Sam and Rachel did not become "physically intimate" during the four months they were together. Many readers will find that impossible to believe.

Mrs Lewis makes the point that physical intimacy early in a relationship stunts the incentive to get to know more about the other person. Not her words, but "Hey, I am getting my immediate needs met. There is no point in 'wasting' time getting to know more details about this person" 

Aging

Mrs Lewis makes the point that some power tools can make a huge difference in how long we can stay-in-the-game with a chainsaw being a prime example. As we get older we become more vulnerable to repetitive motion injuries and we take longer to heal. An hour with a chainsaw can do as much heavy cutting as one man can do in four days.

Summary

Mrs Lewis writes as somebody who has been-there-done-that. The plot (researching for a Reality TV show) carries exceptionally well. Some readers will zone-out during the information deep-dives, but that is OK. It is just like when I skim over gratuitous sex sequences in other books. Just because the words are there doesn't mean you have to read every one of them.

The background for Mrs Lewis's book presents "homesteading" with great fidelity as it carries the love story of two lonely (and wounded) people. 

Third-World behaviors on cruise ships

Unruly behaviors are destroying the appeal of cruises in the Caribbean. Most of the intolerable behaviors occur while the cruise is underway and are perpetrated by economy-class passengers.

I don't know much about maritime law, but I bet most of the passengers would prethink their choices if they knew that they would be handed over to "local" law enforcement authorities rather than simply banned from the cruise-line or, at worst, face US charges.

My gut-feel is that most of the countries in the Caribbean would be more than happy to house the miscreants and to set a very high bail to be able to exit the jail. They would probably not even have a "do not flee" order in place. 

If economy passengers insist on Third-World behaviors while on a cruise in non-US waters, I think they should enjoy non-US jail time.

Taking it easy

 

Solanum carolinensis a.k.a. Horse Nettle. All parts are toxic, especially its tomato-like berries. Be sure to visit our gift shop.

Solanum carolinensis flowers

Physalis virginiana, Virginia Ground Cherry. Many look-alike species. Berries, although small are edible (even delicious) when fully ripe. It is a perennial in my climate.

I visited the Upper Orchard today.

I took it easy. I only watered the twenty new apple trees. I walked slowly, wore work-boots and the compression-brace and avoided known woodchuck holes.

I probably could have watered more trees, but they are on the Hill Orchard and I didn't want to push my luck. 

Hello fodder, hello mudder

I write you here, from Camp Grenada...

I cut some weeds. Mostly Setaria faberi  and Ambrosia trifida.

The goats liked the Giant Foxtail (Sataria faberi). I don't know what they will think of the Giant Ragweed (Ambrosia trifida).

I get the weeds off my property before they drop their seeds. Southern Belle gets free fodder for her goats. Win-win.

The curse of being old and busy

I put my keys down somewhere and now I cannot find them. I have my vehicle keys on their own rings to keep them petite, but I cannot find the big ring of keys for all of the things that are locked up that I don't visit on a regular basis. 

St. Anthony of Padua is the patron saint of lost items. I suspect that as I get older that I will be having more conversations with him. 

Let no good deed go unpunished

An enterprising youth started a business.

The county zoning commission shut him down and threatens him with daily fines if he doesn't stop selling worms to fishermen.

The energy and industry of this 15-year-old kid is astounding. He is working three part-time jobs this summer and started this business.

What is notable is that the zoning commission does not demand that he remove this building. Typically, that is what "zoning" is about, improper structures that are dangerous or reduce the value of neighboring properties. They just told him he had to stop running a business.

It stinks of envy: Parasitic leaches who cannot stand to see somebody take a risk and succeed. They are another species of Gimmedats in polyester and Reeboks.

Source of image

At their core, businesses create value. In the case of a bait shop, the value comes from turning manure into worms and then supplying those worms to fishermen who are too time-stressed to dig their own. It also comes from buying warm soda-pop in 24 can cases at the local Wally-world, putting them into a cooler with ice and then transporting the cooler to a location where it is quick-and-convenient for fishermen to access.

So a couple hours of a 15-year-old kid and a few miles driven in a beater pickup saves multiples of those hours wasted by working adults with limited vacation hours.

For the record, Ron Haas, a very high-end GM executive, was very fond of taking his family fishing for walleyes in Wisconsin.  I assume that many of the kid's potential customers have similar demands on their time .AND. will be mighty pissed off at the Karens who carve into their precious vacation time because they are on a power-trip or simply to spite an enterprising, young farmer who makes them (and their slacker larva) look bad.

Hat-tip to CoyoteKen