been called a lot of names maybe so called isn't so bad.

So What Does it Take to be a So Called Farmer Today?

And do I really want to be one?

Part One

     I was recently accused of being a so called farmer and it kind of got me thinking, and I came to some conclusions that if I was supposed to be a farmer today that depended wholly on farm income to exist , would I want to be that person? I would say most assuredly not. With most professions, things change as technology improves and given enough years the profession of your choice barely resembles the same practice years before, when my great grandfather and my grandpa were farming. This is no different for farming than any other profession.

     My great grandfather was a road tender and farmer and a sawyer to make ends meet in Monroe County in southern Ohio. He had the first steam engine tractor in Monroe County and would travel from farm to farm threshing wheat. Back then one neighbor would help the other on major jobs like the threshing of wheat. Usually the owner of the power plant would be paid for his services and after the wheat was threshed, the thresher would hook his thresher to the steam engine and move to the next farm and start again. You knew who your neighbors were as you worked with them daily in the summer during threshing times and ate dinner at their tables and told stories till dark, then took team of horses, whatever family you had brought along to help with threshing and wagon and went home , did some chores and was in bed early to get up early the next day and be back  in the field throwing shocks of wheat that were heaped in piles drying in the sun on to wagons to be taken to the thresher.  The thresher would separate the wheat from the chaff or straw and pile the straw in a huge mound while the wheat would be bagged for seed next year or to be ground and used to make bread for the table or to be fed to livestock. This also worked for oats and other cereal grains.

these pics were taken at algonquin mill , petersburg landing.

    When the threshing was done then they would be milling lumber for building houses, barns , covered bridges , or stores, as wood was the most commonly used building material and readily available in the hills down there in Monroe county where money was tight and jobs even harder to find. Grandpa used to take a team of horses out into the woods and cut down a tree and haul it up out of the woods and back to the mill where the steam engine would now be parked on the hill above the old farmstead  at a sawmill it would power.  After a pile accumulated they would spend a day sawing them into lumber for sale to neighbors or the county for different projects going on.

covered bridge at lanternman's mill 

    All the while every farm had a couple of cows, a team of horses, chickens , pigs, and  a couple of cats and a lot of kids to help with all that needed done to keep a family going in those days just before the depression. The only major difference the depression had on those back then, was that you traded more labor for those things you didn’t have, money was tight an little to go around , instead labor was plenty as most were out of luck and in a hard place , so bartering allowed them to get by.  An old friend recently told me that he never knew they were poor back then as he said everyone was in the same shape so being poor was normal.

    My great grandpa also tended roads back then for the state of Ohio. There were very little paved roads and the automobiles were different and rugged, used to the hard dirt roads that would jar them till they would squeak and squeal as they went down a road bouncing from rut to rut with fenders a flapping. Today’s cars would hardly last if faced with driving on some of those roads back then. It was nothing to climb down in a creek and cross it as opposed to driving over a bridge, in some places down there in Monroe county, you can still find crossings like these people still use. High water would make the crossing obsolete and forcing you to return to where you came from, or forcing you to detour.

      Mud holes were a common place feature of roads back then and my great Uncle Dewey told me a story about how him and a friend of his thought they would play a trick on this old guy who would sit by a mud hole waiting for cars to pass by charging them a quarter to hook up to his team of horses before crossing the mud hole , or if you felt lucky you could venture on your own with your car into the mud hole and hopefully you could make it to the other side with your old tin Lizzy and pay nothing. But if he had to hook on to you in the middle the charge was a 1 dollar, a lot of money back then.  

      Folks kinda thought he was slow, including my uncle who thought he would play a trick on the old guy by asking him if he was going to be around later that night when he came back through. My uncle and his buddy had planned on doing some celebrating, and they were going over into the other county because Monroe had been a dry county for years. They really had no intention driving drunk, even back then, and had planned on spending the night in the town they were visiting. My uncle asked if he would be there at the mud hole to pull them on through.  

     The old farmer looked at him and spit a wad of backy juice on the ground and asked suspiciously how long it would be before they came back through as he was hooking their vehicle up to pull them through the mud hole.

    My uncle said “Maybe somewhere between 10 and 12 at the latest.”

   The old farmer took his quarter from my uncle and eyed it suspiciously as if he had just made it and after assuring it was real said; yes for sure he would be around. The old farmer at that said “Get up there Sadie.” And at that the horses took up the slack in the chain and the horses and car started slogging through the mud to the other side.

       As my uncle sat there comfortably in the seat of his car, he started wondering, just what it was that this old guy was going to do till midnight to keep himself busy.  After reaching the other side of the mud hole and as the old farmer was unhooking the chain and just before my uncle pulled away, he asked the old farmer just what he was going to do between now and later on tonight to keep himself busy till they supposedly returned to the mud hole to be pulled through again. The old farmer looked at them, and leaned his dirty sweaty body up against the fender of his car and smiled a backy juice toothless grin and said.

     “Haul water.”

      This joke was a time capsule of what the roads were like back then, and it was my great grandpa’s job to drag the roads with wooden drags smoothing out the humps and making it so that cars could pass as well as horses and carriages or the old farm wagon. The roads were still your main system of transportation in areas like this. It was the way to town. How the doctor came to your house when you were sick. Or how the neighbors would come to help at threshing time and keeping them passable even in the winter was still a very important job, as it is today.

     Even back then to be a farmer meant you had to do a lot of things to just make a go of life and have anything. Course back then almost everybody was a farmer to an extent as very few people lived in the city and even those that id still had a chicken coop or a pig sty in the back yard. What one farmer didn’t grow like hogs or cattle, another did and traded him for eggs or corn his family didn’t. Stores only sold the staples of flour, lard , sugar and items like that you needed,  or those things you couldn’t grow on your own , or tools and seed to grow them with.

    Farmers worked from the time they could walk till the day they died, and many times it wasn’t that long as compared to today. Farmers would come down with pneumonia or other diseases for which there was no cure then and soon the whole family structure was in peril. Many times kids were parceled out to other family members to finish raising them after the head of the family or the mother was wiped out from disease.

this pic and one above is of lanterman's mill youngstown , oh. 

      It wasn’t easy being a farmer back then any more than it is now. Only now it is whole lot different. Technology has allowed us to live longer and to plant smarter with machines costing hundreds of thousands of dollars planting seeds that are also of a smart technology. Tomorrow I will go into more of what it takes to be a so called farmer of today. In fact this will be part one of three part series I intend on writing , with the last part exploring why I could care less if I am a so called farmer.

myodb

Response to Comment

    Yesterday I received a comment regarding my treatment or lack of treatment of my animals . I believe the commenter needs a response because for sure they are understandably agitated by my decisions to have and care for a cat. The commenter said :

Anonymous said...

I sure hope your going to be a responsible pet owner and get those kittens fixed.Nothing pisses me off more than a so called farmer that has cats running around fighting, breeding,and spreading disease. It's very sad.

August 16, 2015 at 5:26 PM 

I take offense to so called in the first place, being a fourth generation farmer and having grown up on a farm and at times milking cows and spraying milk into the mouths of our cats as a youth, to living and working on different farms where cats have always been around, and the fact that I have forgotten more about farming than this person has ever done in his/ or her life. I believe I deserve a little more respect than being referred to as so called .

      Nothing pisses me off more than someone who can’t wait for the rest of the story to come out or who has evidence that I in fact am responsible for the negligence I am accused of. I do in fact have Lily right now at a veterinary clinic in Minerva being spayed. When I brought Lily home I wasn’t prepared to have her spayed but nature being what it was , soon she was in heat and then pregnant. Don’t know about you but for me it is hard to have a cat spayed when I know she is pregnant. She had the kittens and I have faithfully been there to help her through the delivery of the first one and subsequent delivery of all six, and have helped provide clean beds and have fed the kittens 3-4 x daily since they have been eating on their own. They have never wanted for food, and although they have pushed me to my limits at times, I find them to be a source of great amusement at others.

     Regardless of who you are my cats will grow and each will be spayed or neutered as the case may be until all six are fixed. I thought about adopting them out but didn’t want to take the chance that someone would get them and end up a fertile stray somewhere. I will take care of the sterilization of them prior to adopting any out.

     Besides being good company, I also expect my cats will keep field mice and rats at bay. I am tired of chipmunks. Field mice coming into my house, and I have seen rats in the barns before having the cats around. They were taking over, and finding mouse feces in my drawers is more than I can take. So it is a choice, have cats or deal with mice and other small vermin. Personally I would rather have cats around. Lily is a good hunter and tries to provide, now more for sport than necessity. I think she understands I will provide for her. Hopefully she will teach her young when the opportunity arises. If I have to keep all six plus lily till they die, it is of no consequence to anyone else but me and is my problem. Well-meaning individuals who feel it is there moral duty to admonish me can basically shove it up their ass, because they have no idea about me or what I have in mind besides what I share on my blog. It is all a work in progress much like my life. I care about all animals and not just cats. And maybe I am a so called farmer only to the extent I do care about animals and don’t eat them or abuse them, I feed, care, and respect and enjoy their company, all of them but at the same time let nature do its thing in the process of natural selection. Now humans are a different story. 

timeless treasures for the taking

Just When I Thought Knew Everything

     I had the occasion to slip out yesterday and put behind me a project way past due and that was a haircut and trim. I doubt that being able to present myself in the most favorable way will be of any consequence to anyone but me and my mirror , but still I have no intentions of disappointing either  as a consequence of inaction.  So I hopped into my car and made an appointment to have both done at a place in New Philadelphia, Ohio I know of.

      On my way there in the town of New Philly as locals have been known to call it and coming upon the courthouse on the left as I drove in town, I was stopped by traffic as is usually the case. I think the town of New Philly likes to have you sit in front of their courthouse, as it seems this is always the case when travelling through town. Streetlights out of sync so that one cannot just fly past the county square without taking the time to drink in the beauty of small town life.

    At times you could swear it was ripped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting of small town life. in the winter the courthouse is adorned with white twinkling lights sparkling in the clear night air lighting up the majestic dome adding flavor to the season,  and on the front steps leading up to the main entrance from the square , a display is set up on the now vacant steps to symbolize the number of domestic abuse complaints, drawing attention to the plight of families as they go through the Christmas season when tensions are the highest as families let their tempers boil as they try to make ends meet.

     Not far from that a veteran took his life in the front lawn where a Vietnam veteran memorial now stands. He was looking for help but couldn’t seem to find it that day as he took his life. I glanced at the memorial and something caught my eye from across the street where a mural takes up a whole wall with symbols of Tuscarwas county history, I noticed and old man and woman waiting on the corner for the light to change before they cross the street.

       When I speak of old I am merely suggesting with more years than I , but at this point I can’t really tell someone’s years. I am finding some friends I went to school with age faster than others and some look as if they are caught in a freeze frame, not having aged much since youth. This man because of his appearance and being bent with time, and as well his companion, or I assume his wife , who was dressed in a slightly unkempt manner herself as she fidgeted and pointed to this and that until the light changed and she grabbed his hand as if to help or tug the older man across the intersection to the other side. At times brushing up and almost leaning on each other to struggle their way across.

     I was sitting at the light and had the window open in a midday sun. A warm to hot breeze blew through the car, but not nearly as hot and dry as it was out where this couple was crossing the square under the shadow of a courthouse dome. I watched them intently at times feeling sorry but glad they had each other to lean on as they get older.

     As they neared the other side I could see the older woman’s enthusiasm seem to ratchet it up a notch as something most assuredly had caught her attention as she tugged on the old man’s sleeve and dragged him toward a planter at the end of a park bench. At one point she dropped her grasp of him and begins to bend over and then I could see what she was going after. A rose so perfect its red beauty showed itself to me sitting across the square. I watched as she bent even closer and cupped the whole flower between her two hands and stuck her whole face down and inhaled the beauty of that rose. Drawing the essence of the moment along with its aroma deep into her lungs and holding it as long as she could drinking in the euphoria of simple life , and simple rewards to living a full life.

    I then watched as her husband, boyfriend or whatever he may have been to her at the time and most assuredly her partner in crime appreciate the moment and force a crooked smile to his lips that suddenly bloomed into near laughter at the sight of his woman. Not laughing at her but instead with her, as he also drank in the moment regardless of whether he had smelled the same thing. Instead he was drunk on her reaction to such a sweet gesture by the woman who was undoubtedly reliving a moment of life .

      One would not smell a rose so deeply as her if you didn’t know what a rose smelled like , she had been there before and was going back again. As she let that sweet aroma linger on her lips and past the tip of her tongue on the way out of her body, her wrinkled face made a smile that smoothed out even the deepest furrows in her face, so that her youth shown all over in place of what had been there before.

      I sat in the car and noticed their smiles were so infectious as I too was smiling inside as I watched them interact in such an impish way. I suddenly realized I was handicapped as I sat there in the car being denied that chance, of a moment of happiness they were experiencing as that couple together in the big little city. Also my initial reaction to them was one of pity, feeling sorry for them as they leaned on each other to just cross the street. But oh the rewards for instant youth they had gathered in their smiles as they stopped and smelled the roses, and here was I now being denied that chance and I was envious of them. Knowing full well my experience would not be so welcomed if I were to exit my vehicle leaving it sit in traffic where it sat till the light turned green.

     It may be ok till the light turned green as assuredly people would just gawk when I left my vehicle , but for sure they would be bitching and yelling when I stopped to smell that rose for myself after crossing the square on foot. I know what a rose smells like, and I also know what those guys in the black uniforms are for. They like to write out tickets for such stunts with enthusiasm as great as the old woman’s to the smell of a rose. Any words I could use to try and express my desire to be there with them and enjoy that moment would be lost on deaf ears.

      The light turned green and I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the anxious look on the driver behind me and I wondered if he too had witnessed this miracle of human life. If he did it was lost on him as it seemed I could see his relief as my car passed the old couple on the right now and everything sped up as I now had to concentrate on my driving. Still I was left with an emptiness and filled with envy of those folks back there withering in the distance where all that is left of them is my memory of that moment.

    My biggest envy of the moment was not having someone so simple as to be able to stop and smell the roses , but instead having that person in my life to lean on to get there, and then to have the time in this busy world to actually be able to do it. Lest we not forget the memories of times before to make it want to happen again.

    So in the end I will never look at a rose again without some thought to how beautiful life can be when you take time to bloom with someone you care about. And I must remember to stop and smell the roses along the way, if for no one, but for myself.

starting to fill in

Vertical Wall in the Greenhouse

Or Are You Vertically challenged- Part 2.

 this was taken on 8-7 -2015 and is even more green now and the lace vine is blooming will update pics in a later blog 

         Well the vertical wall in the greenhouse is finally coming along and filling in quite nicely.  Also today, I will be drawing some attention to my rhubarb I planted earlier this year giving you an update of where I am going to go with that also. In fact I will be giving you updates also on my berries and how it is going with transplanting of them.

       Let’s talk about the vertical wall around the swimming pool and it is going great. The lace and trumpet vine I planted in these huge pots are performing quite well after a major cut back on the lace vine as I trimmed it hard to transplant it into the pots I had. This was done in an effort to get the vine where I wanted it, which was around the pool. There used to be two vines and they just went wild shooting roots in the pea gravel clean across the greenhouse. Then when I trimmed them I had to cut 10- 15 ft. of a root system going wild completely off the original vine. I did this on both of them. One made it the other didn’t. So instead I planted trumpet vine instead to fill in the lattice I erected. The lace vine is just now starting to bloom. The idea was to separate the pool from the rest of the greenhouse. It looks as though this is going to happen. It is starting to shape up. I will include some pics of how it is coming along. All this is done in pots and could easily be done on your patio or anywhere you want an instant green wall. Lace vine usually takes about a year or two to establish so if you want results now then the trumpet vine would be better. I had the lace vine I have about 3 years in a pot to let you know how long it takes to get a good start on them.  Also one must remember they are considered to be a noxious plant if allowed to be planted outside. Inside the greenhouse it can be contained. Outside it would spread and could easily crowd out other beneficial plants if not trimmed on a regular basis. The combination of lace vine flowers and trumpet flowers should make for an interesting green wall. I expect the wall to be even better next year as I doubt that the trumpet will be established enough to have flowers this year.

     Next up is the rhubarb. And this I will plant in a bed and will have about 25 rhubarb plants going into the bed. I could have forced these into better plants, but at times was lucky to get them watered. Some I repotted and they are doing great and are almost a foot taller than the former pot size. I know these pots are root bound and hope when I plant into a bed they will be able to snap out of it and store some food for the winter yet. Some plants look like I could start harvesting off of as soon as next spring. These were started from seed and grown in small pots. Except about 12 I have transplanted into larger pots. So far I have about a 75 percent survival rate, which is pretty good. The rhubarb is fairly hearty plant and this rate of survival reflects the nature of the plant. It seems to have customer appeal and is in limited quantities when harvest time comes around making it a popular pick of the season. I am starting a bed of them for pick your own. This bed and the bed for the berries will be in our old pasture along the upper side of the lane. Water can be accessed from across the lane and a storage tank I have will be located up the hill and filled with well water by a hose and then be able to gravity feed back down the hill to the berry and rhubarb beds and drip lines will be established to allow the new plant to have plenty of moisture when needed.

     Mowing will be accomplished by a finish mower allowing a smooth surface and wide rows to accommodate foot traffic from consumers on a pick your own basis. So far it will be berries, rhubarb, and berries, the berry varieties will be black berry, dew berry, black raspberry, and red raspberry. All these can be grown naturally and organically requiring no chemical fertilizers and will be grown in hay mulch that has been composted. The rhubarb will be grown in heavy straw mulch in an effort to prevent weeds and reduce labor. Asparagus may also be added depending on how much I can accomplish.  It also depends on the quantity of mulch or compost I will have available. So today I am going to mow this area off and prepare by discing in the area of the beds to eliminate weeds an break up sod. Considered plowing but doubt it will sink in ground due to dry conditions. and try and lay out these beds so I have an idea of how much compost I will need. Over the hill I have taken the hay from the first cutting and just piled it up to compost it where it sits. Need to let it compost down some so I can move it over the hill to the berry beds where I will need it.

that is a quarter laying there

     Being located next to the lane will bring back some memories of when I as a kid had to take pruners and go out and clear brush and can remember working in that same area cutting vines so huge that they hung into the drive and would scratch the cars as you went in and out. It has been a pasture field for a long time, and at times it was plowed. I made hay on it this year once, but now it will be converted back to berries and rhubarb due to its location, being located along the lane. I can harvest the hay early and park cars in the field directly across from it. I will just need a stand at the y where the lane splits and someone to collect money during picking time. I have berries I just potted up to transplant from behind the house. Also I plan on going through our red raspberry patch and thinning out the plants and re mulch those also. It is a well-established patch that would be much better and yields huge berries if well taken care of. I have been slacking the last couple of years. There is just so much to do. But I finally came to the realization that berries have yielded the best for us for absolutely no investment but our time to pick them over the years. Traditionally they have also been seen to do better when mulch and organics are applied to them to help hold the moisture and have it available in springtime when its needed to make huge berries.

      I looked at my resources and figured as I did years ago when I was starting to chainsaw carve. What can I do with what I have and make something more out of it, to be able to utilize my resources to my best advantage. Back then I had artistic talent wood and chainsaws and still have that but also now I have hay I can’t sell that can be easily converted to mulch, berry vines all over the place. I have berry bushes that were bought. But I believe if I was to transplant wild varieties also and if given the right conditions I believe they will produce as heavily as store bought varieties. With the wild ones I know they are winter hardy for my area as compared to the store bought. They say they are but you never know.

     Anyhow I have all the perfect storm components of a pick your own farm outlet for berries and rhubarb. Just need to get it done now. 

let take some simple steps to energy conservation

Can we turn off the lights?

most efficient carbon dioxide storage device on earth, locking up centuries of carbon dioxide only to be perishing presently in California redwood forests due to climate change= hypocrisy at its finest courtesy of man 

     Recently I read a report about the U.S.  effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from various sources on an overall basis according to government EPA guidelines. The article praises President Obama’s efforts while at the same time it mentions that the effort will further paralyze the state of Kentucky’s economy while slowing coal use on an overall basis throughout the nation, as we leave the dirty technology of yesteryear, with its belching smokestacks behind. We are no entering an era of hybrid technology where we employ wind, solar, and other technologies to produce electricity in a more renewable green way.

      My discussion today will center on conservation of any electricity delivered to our home, and how we can more efficiently use it and other technologies to improve our security in our homes. At the top of the list of home improvement and electricity waste reducers would be motion sensitive sensors hooked up in a circuit with your household lights. Those same motion sensitive lights that come one when you approach a house at night could also be used inside your house to turn off the lights in a room when it is not being used. When walking from room to room lights would light up and turn off after a few minutes of your passing through to save electricity and will ease your effort at conservation of electricity.

      Employed outside at the perimeter of your property or in locations where you feel  you may vulnerable to a trespasser a solar security light with battery backup could be available for as cheap as 25 dollars , and would serve you well to inform you of an unwanted visitor at night. Lights flashing or possibly an audible alarm could sound alerting you to the presence of an intruder.  These could be motion sensitive or infra-red sensitive and alerting after a warm blooded animal is in the proximity of the detector.

     How about the new battery pack from tesla available for home use that can be recharged with power from your local utility on off peak hours , or from a variety of sources , including hydropower , solar, and wind , or whatever power generation source you want to use as a primary source of recharging? For power generation companies this would seem to me to be a no brainer. As you could generate power in off peak hours to charge these batteries to be used by the homeowner when the power generation needs are the greatest. This would help to eliminate power plants from adding on another dirty coal unit to meet high demand of power generation, and in the end this will result in a reduction of CO2 levels across the nation.

     Now if on your own  you had solar cells or say a wind generator to supplement the charging capacity of the battery pack you would further save , and by being conservative with our use of electricity, by turning off anything we don’t use that is plugged into electrical outlet when not in use.  For you see we have ourselves hooked up to a multitude of things in any electrical outlets we are using and are draining electricity off when we are not using them. The charger for your I-pad, the coffee pot, the alarm clock , your computer , all and more contribute to a loss of electricity at any given time during the day.

    Have you ever been sleeping and had the power go off and when it comes back on listen to all the stuff rebooting and coming back on. Well this is all the stuff you have on at a given time. I refer to it as the refrigerator light syndrome. You don’t know if the light is on or off when you close the door. You assume it is off, but do you know for sure, and really does it affect your worry capacity in the long run. Not hardly, in the end you still go about your day whether the light is on and off. If you knew it was on inside your refrigerator it would kind of  bug you because you know anytime you have a hold of a light bulb that is  being used it is hot and impossible to hold. Now really, when you are trying to cool down your refrigerator, do you really want a heat source? It would bug you if you knew it, but since you don’t, you ignore it. It is the same with all the stuff you have hooked up.

    It would be nice to have a central switch you could turn on and off as needed, and again you may be able to use a motion switch for this purpose to kill all power outlets in a room when not in use for more than a minute. Your computer if shut down requires you to log in again. As well some other things like a coffee pot would shut off if you are not in the room for any period of time. Maybe a touch sensor you could tap somewhat like the clapper that would allow certain individual appliances to remain on for a specified time. a simple touch to a pad would indicate ten minutes two touches would equal 20 minutes of time. Specific outlets could be wired for continuous use like those needed for an alarm clock.

      Still you would think they could come up with a reliable alarm clock that would charge all day and at night switch over to a battery backup assuring that even with a loss of power you will still receive your alarm to arise and not be alarmed in the AM when you wake up from oversleeping. An alarm clock is plugged in 24 hrs. day and doesn’t use much electric , still when you multiply the amount they do use times millions and billions you see something that by itself is responsible for a major portion of trees since the 1800’s and along with it loss of habitat for several species , and is directly responsible an increase in co 2 levels in our environment. How about a hybrid alarm with a combination of solar and electric where the electric is only used to finish charging batteries, at which point it completely shuts off and runs on battery.

      I believe in the future as energy costs rise, we see more technologies put to use in our household requiring little or no energy or in fact renewable type energies. Even air conditioning during this summer weather will also see a re-thinking of how we can achieve a level of comfort we need or desire without using costly electric from a power supplier. Again the Tesla home energy battery could help here, as cooling during the daytime contributes to causing peak energy usage at our power generating facilities. If we could store electric at off peak hours and use it during peak hours, we would be able to soften the impact for power generation. Solar and wind would help offset those cooling costs more.

     We could still have the entire feature of electricity usage today with more reliability and at a greener rate than we have had previously. I am sorry for the coal industry, but they have not kept pace with technology, and have contributed to the global warming and change of weather patterns we observe today. This will only get worse if we do nothing, and unfortunately it has taken years for humans to get to this point of global warming. And now the sad part is, if we never created anymore carbon dioxide, it will take just as long to go back to pre-1800 levels of carbon dioxide, and longer if we keep burning fuels we know are causing it. So we are talking 100 – 150 years or more of global warming changes we have no clue how to reverse except try to change Earth back to the way it was. All the while our population is increasing, trees are being destroyed daily at rates higher than what they are being planted. I think coal has had its day much like the steamboats on the Mississippi river, as well other businesses that have had to change with the rising tide of technology. There are cleaner sources of fuel, and we as a people need to start utilizing them.

Now who left the light's on again? 

     We need to start with turning the lights off, not just in our home but also in the cities, streetlights in particular.  If we just look at a NASA photo showing the east coast of the United States and you could clearly pick out all the urban areas of major metropolitan centers as they glowed white as seen from space photos. Do we need all those lights out there? When you go to sleep at night how many lights do you see? How many street lights existed before the 1800’s?

       Very few if any existed and if they did it was only in large cities. And if you are asleep you have this phenomenon known as refrigerator light syndrome, you don’t know if the lights are on or off, as the door to reality is closed. So why is it necessary to have security lights and the countryside lit up like it is daytime. Because we feel more secure that way? We really don’t know the difference if we are asleep. A light doesn’t guarantee security. Oh yeah, it may help keep the monsters under the bed but not out of your mailbox as monthly your power company will send you a bill and with this  you get a notice to pay for that lights electrical usage lights or they will unleash terror on you by turning off your electric.  Guess what you would be going green and that isn’t all bad.  A little inconvenient, I am sure, still not the end of the world. The end of the world will come when it is too hot outside and no one cares about anything, including having the power on, or wanting to eat, or living for that matter.

     We believe electricity to be a necessity for life and so we allow nuclear power plants, that we have no idea where we are going to safely store waste, or coal plants that produce enormous amounts of greenhouse gas that is building up in our atmosphere and ash ponds with millions of gallons of waste that are just sitting close to power plants, looking for a purpose, when there is none due to the high accumulation of toxic metals. Or natural gas electrical generating plants touted as new technology plants that depend on enormous amounts of fracing fluid to efficiently produce the gas that is used and that still is contributing to the greenhouse gas problem while depleting our fresh water reserves. Still even solar has its drawbacks as it depends on metals mined in huge open pit mines generating their own special mix of dangerous chemicals to purify and manufacture the elements needed to create solar panels.  Solar does have a reuse cycle that is more repetitive and less costly to the environment than other one time limited use methods of generating electricity.

     Power companies and our safety services would like you to believe that lighting is necessary element in reducing crime, but for the power companies who are always willing to let you leave the light on their motive is purely profit.  Actually I think crime would go down if the criminals couldn’t see what they are getting into. Tripping over a tricycle in an unlit backyard and breaking a leg, or if they were suddenly surprised by a motion detector streaming a white light into their light deprived eyes virtually blinding them in pitch dark scenarios. Also when a light would come on you would know someone was out snooping around. Now if a light comes on at night no one pays attention because we have so many lights on. One more would not make a difference.

     Our safety services like police and fire could have technology that would turn on and off a local array of streetlights as necessary to provide services to those affected by their need. We could use the same technology we use to turn lights green and red when fire trucks or ambulances are travelling on roads now. A radio frequency would light up one area after another to pursue criminals or to help with fire protection. We have a multitude of lighting devices that are portable and could be used in emergencies. Perhaps a drone equipped with light would flood an area where concentration, teamed up with a camera would be far more efficient than present technology in hot pursuit chases. As well most emergency vehicles have lights. Street lights after 10 pm would be turned off. Allowing people time to return home for a restful night of relaxing in the comfort of their home without light pollution from outside streaming through their windows affecting their chances to get to sleep. We have no need to make this world a 24 hr. business center without affecting our climate problems. We have to generate power to make this happen and most of night time power is wasted by streetlights that are not used or never seen by anyone. Even motion technology could be used on city streetlights turning lights on and off as needed as we drive up a street. Still we have headlights on a car that are more than sufficient in the country but suddenly upon entering a city have to be subsidized with street lighting. It makes no sense. And I think studies need to be done to justify all these lights we have out there at night and if they are necessary.

     Again we if we are talking security and fear of third world countries launching an attack. If they can’t tell the difference of the White House from Joe’s Bar , then what effect will that have on terror when it comes to raids on public facilities at night. During World War 2 it was against the law to let light be seen for fear someone could distinguish from the air where certain landmarks were.

      And another national treasure we have is the flag we proudly wave at night on many of our municipal and governmental offices. A requirement that says if a flag is flown at night it has to be lit with a light sufficient to display the flag in its revelry. But what does that cost us? Maybe a requirement to lower the flag or just leave it flying at night regardless may be better. There are a multitude of things we can do at home and in our everyday life that would go a long way to conserving energy. As a leader of nations we need to also be a leader in conservation and not a major contributor to our global warming problems. 

     Agreeably I have used four electrical devices to bring this article to you. Two were energy efficient light bulbs utilizing 25 watts of electric, along with my lap top plus the screen would add another 400 watts of electric usage. Still what I am coming to is that despite you may be reading this on a computer, I hope I have planted some thought as to how we can change our personal life and still save a few dollars on an electric bill in the future. A savings of electric usage relates to conservation and also to reduced carbon dioxide levels or at least raise our awareness and allow us to come up with solutions that will reduce our dependence on electricity as well all carbon producing instruments of earth terror we may utilize in the name of a rational society we claim to exist in.  Even if you walked round the house unplugging appliances you are not using, this will all help. And of course if you are the last one out of a room turn off that light till you get that motion sensor hooked up.

mr. coon and me had a moment the other night.

Update on farm status

8-06-2015

 Mr. Coon Likes Chickens Better Than I Do

 whitey and old red showing off some of their survival skills -debating why to cross the road.

      Only Mr. Coon likes to eat my chickens, having dwindled my population of 8 chickens down to 3 and requiring other options to protect the remaining chickens, Mr.  Coon has found himself in the position of having the upper hand for now. But I am working on other options to protect the 3 that is left, including adding more wire. I couldn’t believe a coon could carry a chicken up over the side of a chicken wire fence after having apparently killed it in the pen. Never leaving anything more than a pile of feathers, it almost had me believing, someone was coming into the pen and stealing them.

     One by one, Mr. Coon would take his bounty and carry them off without even a sign of where they have went. I did find one of my female ducks with her neck thrashed and lying dead by the my rotting hay bales where Mama Duck and her daughter had set up shop, setting on separate piles of eggs in nests nestled in the hay, and standing watch day in and day out until apparently Mr. Coon came happenstance on their nests, and the younger female duck who no doubt tried to protect her nest came to an end, only to be treated as a dinner treat. Mama Duck I believe had a little more instinct about her as her nest was overrun by Mr. Coon obliterating the eggs, only Mama Duck may have also protested, but only long enough to save herself  because she knew she could have another nest and she did eventually.

     In fact it was Mama Duck who showed her other daughter a safe place by my door where she could have a nest, while herself  sought out another spot to be only consumed by Mr.Coon I suppose eventually, as I never was able to find anything of her either. It is kind of sad and frustrating to watch animals go one by one, but this is as nature predicts it should be. Coons need to eat, but why so damn much? Anyhow it did give me cause to reflect on what steps I could take to improve the safety of my chickens at least. The ducks are a hearty breed and one could hardly train or protect them better than they can themselves.

     The ducks have taken to swimming in the pond all night, constantly staying out of reach of Mr. Coon hopefully. Their main vulnerable time is when they are sitting on their nest. The main reason I know it is a coon doing all the damage is that I have seen him. I don’t own a gun but would have shot the asshole as he perched himself above my head 40 feet in the air on a dark night a few nights ago,  after hearing a commotion on the pond and after seeking the tree limbs out with a flashlight , finally caught sight of him in the tree tops. Knowing he can climb quite well it was evident that my chicken house had flaws. He was scared and for good reason he has been found out and his presence has required me to take other steps to prevent any more drain from my livestock quantity.

      Still don’t know what to do about the ducks, they won’t stay in a house, and you can’t corral them at night as they don’t really roost. But the chickens I took preventative action with. Old Whitey I have had for quite a while and she is battle hardened, knowing and seeing some of her own kind being dispatched with before, she knew the best places to roost and when Mr. Coon came a calling before she left the roost and decided to hang around in the Magnolia tree right outside my front living room. This protected her in the middle of winter despite being cold as heck till the threat passed.

    She had shown resolve to be able to survive, so I thought it was best to move the last three chickens to the garage and for a couple of nights.  I would wait till they roosted, and I gathered them up and moved them to the garage to try and protect them by letting Whitey show them the ropes. With Whitey I still have 4 chickens and just the other day I found a blue egg which is Whitey’s trademark. I had heard cackling and thought it was one of my new chickens starting to lay, instead I believe it was Whitey who at her advanced age , still tries her best to produce.

     Anyhow I am revamping and coon proofing my security at the chicken house so I can get these guys into production. It always seems to be a struggle to try and figure out what to do about a pest problem in an advanced non –killing way. Knowing that nature has to have balance, but although the coon eats my chickens , I have no desire for coon meat , so I instead must devise ways to prevent Mr. Coon or deter him from coming around in the first place. I have left Babe, my dog out the last couple of nights by her own choice, and last night I could hear her barking all night long it seemed, and at times out by the chicken house . Hopefully she was able to protect the ducks and chickens, but I have yet to make it outside to check for sure. Still I had heard the ducks earlier, and so I know for sure some of them are all right.

mama duck on left , mr gooser , two of mama ducks boys. only one is left now thanks to mr. coon

     If coon proofing and Babe doesn’t work, I am going to buy a have –a-hart trap and try and bait the coon to the trap, and if that doesn’t work, will see if I can find someone to do some coon hunting against my will. But when it comes down to a wild animal taking the food out of my mouth and wasting my labor , I feel it is justified to take drastic steps to prevent Mr. Coon from sitting around licking his little chicken soaked fingers.

     Yesterday while starting the coon proofing I found that my chicken house is also a safe harbor for a collection of bats numbering at least four or more. To me this is a good thing and reason to build bat houses and hang them around the chicken house as I would rather have the bats there, than setting up residence in Mom or my house. Bats are part of an insect control solution at times devouring up to twice their body weight in bugs nightly. This would mean thousands of bugs. I have seen numerous bats at darkness flying around and not knowing where exactly they are coming from, this find gives me a better idea as to where they are staying. Bat houses would encourage them to stay outside the chicken house instead of within.  Beneficial aspects of nature are the how checks and balances, seem to exist in almost every corner of our world. Bees help pollinate. Bats seek out insect populations and control them. Almost everything has a purpose as I suppose the grasshopper has in life. We are a long way from understanding how Mr. Coon affects the whole scheme of life.  At this point I could hardly care.

don't care how it runs, just that it does.

Update on farm 8-5-2015

Or

Shoot Happens

i would have to say i did an amazing job of carving out mr. or ms. gooser(?) wouldnt you say? 

he loves to hop up on things for photo ops. strange goose.

      Well this week started off much the same as two weeks ago with my fair share of tractor problems.  I had just bought 2 new front steering tires at a cost of 400 for the 2 an had one mounted up after blowing one out , undoubtedly on a stick or tree stubble that had penetrated the boot I had in the tire from the first time of having a flat or puncture. That puncture was a result of mowing to close to an old fence line down the lane. The posts are rotting off and before you know it, if you crowd too close to the fence you will run up over top the iron fence post and push right through the tire, thus leaving a fairly large hole.

     It took me a couple of flat repairs and some searching to determine what was going on as it always happened at the same spot. This unfortunately is the way to learn things farming. A lot of it is by trial and error. And steel fence posts contribute a lot to the demise of tires if not made sure they are picked up after using them. I have most of mine picked up as well on the electric fence but still have some to go. But this tire puncture most assuredly came from a stubble from a young tree being cut off and the tires are getting old as the rubber is getting brittle and is not nearly as resilient as it used to be.

     So after finally hooking back up to haybine and dropping a pretty good size swath of hay of first cutting I couldn’t touch all of June, i was finally able to get back into the swing of things with minimal trouble. I switched to the rake and started raking the hay into huge windrows I could push up with the bucket and mulch the hay out for compost I need for raspberries. I was doing great with tractor but darkness forced me to come back to the house and parked the tractor outside the house, instead of the garage as the weather looked great and figured I would finish in the morning.  I really didn’t think I needed to barn the tractor.

      Guess what not so quick, I am still waiting to finish as I went out the next morning to start the tractor and it wouldn’t turn over. I checked the battery cables and connections and by chance popped the dipstick out to see oily fuel come spurting out the dipstick hole and this shouldn’t be. Doing some checking and talking to my brother in law Mike for supporting advice, it was determined the fuel pump diaphragm had a hole in it and it drained the contents of the fuel tank into the crankcase of the tractor polluting the oil in the crankcase as well requiring replacement of the oil filter and the oil in crankcase and replacement of fuel pump. This fuel pump is only four months old and has barely more than 40 hrs. on it.

this is what happens when i move my feet around here, i lose my seat. 

still have 6 available crazy cat lady starter kits available. 

      Well trouble doesn’t stop there. The last time I bought the fuel pump I bought it from tractor joe’s and was impressed I had it here in 2 days but it only lasted 4 months. So  I thought I would seek another supplier, and tried another tractor company , not realizing they were sending orders to Korea  where the tractor is produced and then they drop ship the order to the parts dealer and then to me . I am supposed to get it by Friday. I still have a couple of days to wait. In the meantime I have acquired all the other necessary items I need to replace the engine oil and have everything ready to slap the new fuel pump back into the tractor and be able to get it going again. So it will be over 500 dollars in the last month not counting loss of new oil and fuel that happened as a result of the fuel pump and tires problem with the tractor. Money I assuredly could have spent elsewhere to a greater benefit.

     Well I added a fuel conditioner to the fuel in the quantity it suggested, I don’t know if that is the reason for the premature demise of the diaphragm of the pump. It was said that the new fuel manufacturing requirements from the refineries are creating a fuel that strips the rubber parts and seals in the tractor as they try to meet EPA regulated levels of sulfur output. So adding the fuel conditioner was supposed to maintain the integrity of the fuel pump not destroy it. Still don’t know if this is part of the problem but since it happened directly after adding the conditioner I will make sure I I don’t add anymore to the new pump when it arrives.  

      But in researching a new supplier, for the fuel pump , I noticed they discontinued one fuel pump part number and wanted everyone to purchase a new part number to replace that fuel pump. This suggests to me a problem in the design of the fuel pump. Also I wonder how long or what part Tractor Joe sent to me and if it wasn’t the old stock, and how long it had been sitting on a shelf waiting on me to buy it. These are things you never know and buying it locally may make it easier to get but you pay a hefty price for the same part.

      Whether it is a Kioti dk45 tractor or a zero turn mower , or a car, or truck, parts manufacturers have you by the nads anytime you have a part that needs replaced. Aftermarket parts are a better choice and better engineered sometimes than original equipment parts and are more easily obtainable If you can get them for the vehicle you need the parts for. Or like me, sometimes you have to wait. It will be two weeks on Friday and I could have had the part expedited for another 30 dollars more and had it in a week. That is like adding insult to injury, and rubbing salt in the wounds.

    The hay was going to rot anyhow and is of no use for baling. I have other uses for the tractor but they also will have to wait. In the meantime I am moving raspberry plants outside my door and getting ready to rip out the rest of the flower bed I put in a couple of years ago, to prepare for building my addition . It has also given me time to catch up on greenhouse duties. Trying to take advantage of the downtime and still keep moving on with my plans. Just making do the best I can.