Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

A belated happy Memorial Day weekend!

Lee's already on the way and will be here this afternoon (last
Saturday).  It's quite a stormy day for a drive over the Siskiyous.
Last night the thunder went on all night, and the dog hid with her nose
under the bed all night long.  It's rained over half and inch, with more
on the way.  May was extraordinary overall, with over half a foot of
rain.  Then we had a strange heat wave for two days, starting last Tuesday.

The garden is just beautiful.  Some of the January-sown carrots
flowered, but most are fine and all are free of the rust fly larva.  The
sugar snap peas are huge, and the small fall planting of Alaska pea has
already set seed.  I have a plan to allow the sugar snap peas to
pollinate some Alaska peas, but not vice versa (which is possible
because the Alaska peas are almost finished, and the others are just
starting), but not vice versa, just by eating one set of peas and
keeping the other on the plants.  I've never seen such huge garlic, and
it wasn't over fertilized.  The strawberry crowns are back to normal and
thriving.  I poured another cement round on Wednesday morning, so it
dried instantly in the heat, and it's ready to become the 17th round
raised bed (tomatoes, this first time, with a little PVC dew house).

I had a great idea for housing guinea pigs.  You have to realize a
couple of things first.  First, no matter how I put sides on my
partially completed new greenhouse, it's going to cost something, so
aluminum flashing around the bottom to keep guinea pigs in and other
rodents out is not unreasonable.  Second, I've already accepted the fact
that vole favorites like sweet potatoes have to be grown in a raised bed
anyway, so it's no loss if the greenhouse floor itself is limited to
growing olive trees (with a collar), elaeagnus, and herbs like lavender.
 In the wet corner there will be some other plants that no rodent will
eat, like the devil's tongue (Amorphophallus sp.) and rau ram (Polygonum
odoratum).  So the end result will be a greenhouse not much different
from what I had already envisioned, but with guinea pigs to eat the
grass weeds that grow thickly among gardens of herbs.  Their droppings
will fertilize the plants, and it will only require a twice daily
tending to feed them and open or close windows.  Right now I'm stuffing
various types of feed into their cages four times a day.  I think it's
better to try this with just the males, and that would immediately free
up 2 cages.  One thing that has inspired me is that there is already a
couple of guinea pigs living outside; apparently they're not as prone to
pneumonia as long as they can run around.  I need to design a burrow
that will protect guinea pigs from weather and intruders, but that comes
apart easily for cleaning.  I can get started with this as soon as I
have the aluminum flashing in place, because during summer it doesn't
even need to be closed up.  With guinea pigs there's no concern that 
they could escape and become naturalized, like rabbits, and they don't 
hop or tunnel.

Lee arrived safely and we've already been busy with fan hitters.
Yesterday we carted many old bags of paper trash to the burn pile and
had a bonfire last night.  We also repotted ullucos.  We really need to
get a metal collar on the newest concrete and wire frame, so that I can
start filling a bed for tomatoes.  Lee brought 4 beautiful tomato
plants, and they really need to go in.  There's always some urgent
thing, of course, and as usual the Japanese plums need thinning.  They
seem to be much farther along than is normally the case on June 1, and
the weight of all those little plums is threatening to break down the trees.

I'm putting in a new compost bin again this year, and after seeing how
the kiwi vine reacted to having a compost bin nearby, I've really been
inspired.  This time the bin's going in at the back edge of the upper
garden, where the high ground ends, and the more fertile old streambed
begins.  It's downhill to the north, so the bin will shade the land on
the drainage side.  I've decided to place a standard 'Frost' peach tree
on the shady side of the bin, and I expect to have the best, most
plentiful peaches ever.

  Lee also created a shell program for my algebra tutor software, a
little program which just waits for a keypress or mouse click.  Later
I'll be writing the specific routines for editing and displaying trees.
 We decided that the mouse is the best device for moving around in the
display, and the arrow keys are the best way to actually edit binary
trees, since each jump up or down in a tree is a discrete change,
whereas the mouse is better for making fine distinctions.  I wanted the
user to be able to create tree nodes and move around the tree
indiscriminately, without having to go back and forth between edit mode
and display mode, and Lee's shell program does just that.  It's the
first time I've seen much to praise about this Microsoft BASIC compiler.
 What would normally be accomplished by polling the keyboard and the
mouse button, in an infinite loop, is accomplished by "events" whose
event handlers are activated in parallel.  The user cannot tell whether
it's happening through interrupts or through polling, which is odd, but
 I suppose it would all be a lot easier for the programmer if there
were many devices all calling for the microprocessor's attention.

I'm really excited about having a new shed built.  We're having a water
line buried so that there can be water faucets at the old greenhouse,
the shed, and the new greenhouse, and electricity too.

Last night we finally made it to 50" of rain since October 1.  The hills 
are still green everywhere.  There's a forecast of more significant rain 
by Monday.

The bull calves have had no problems since the banding.  They've 
acquired a taste for the black plastic that I used in gardening 
projects, so today we need to go around and collect it off the ground. 
The runt calf will be hard to deal with, since it has taken a liking to 
people, and may just become a pet (or it will at least take an extra 
year to become annoying).  But the big one is indifferent to humans, so 
it will make great steaks.

We really have to build a new chicken coop, although I'm beginning to 
think that the only reason for having one is to keep the rooster from 
waking you at dawn's first light.  These chickens breed effortlessly 
outside, and stay safe from raccoons by climbing into a tall redwood 
tree.  And now Lee seems to have mastered the art of finding the most 
fashionable laying spots, so we're getting more eggs than ever, despite 
a complete lack of any chicken coop.  I've taken to squirting them with 
the hose every time they hang around the feed storage units, so now they 
don't even bother us!  But thank God the rooster is cooped up in a 
makeshift coop with one hen down in the new greenhouse, because 
otherwise I'd have gone to a motel by now.

I've sent a few pictures.  In one picture you can see the sheep's 
preference for ivy.  This line of ivy shows how far they can stick their 
heads out of the fence.  The ivy problem on the back steps is no longer 
a problem.

Have a great summer!

Bill