Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

I've finally decided on the ideal situation for guinea pigs.  I've
decided to use the new _enclosed_ greenhouse for the bred females, and
put the males into a heated house inside the upper greenhouse, allowing
them to come and go.  It sounds chauvinistic, but if you consider the
opposite alternative, it's the only way.  See, some GPs have already
escaped, of both sexes.  If the females are allowed to roam free,
eventually they'll all run into that roaming male.  OTOH, all roamers
will find their way to the heater once the weather gets cold, with other
GPs who already know about the heat source to guide them.  If it's
mostly males, I can remove the females to where they can have their
litters in peace (I'll be able to plug the door opening and remove the
top of their "cage"), and there's no harm done.  If it's the other way
around, then sure I can remove males that I find, but what good will it
do?  It still means a whole batch of new pregnant females breeding
indiscriminately.  Anyway, for a heater I can use a seed mat inside
their cage.  To come and go, GPs will pass through lengths of pipe that
will exclude cats and raccoons from the greenhouse.  I've been asked
what stops rats and mice from enjoying the cage.  First, no food will
ever be served there, but only on the greenhouse floor, subject to the
15 minute rule (only as much as they clean up in 15 min.).  Second, it
would sure make a dandy mousetrap, since I could just place a board over
the doorway.  I don't think rats will allow themselves to become trapped
with guinea pigs in a dead end space, just to enjoy the warmth.  If I 
have trouble moving the males that are presently down there, maybe we 
can just get them to walk up if I scare them out of the greenhouse and 
lead them up with food.

Tonight I had an interesting idea.  Apparently in the tropics things
like fir needles decompose much more quickly as mulch, and so the
polyphenols do not cause inhibition of plant growth as they do here, I
learned today.  Years ago I remember a conversation with a fellow on a
list who was growing tomatoes in S. Spain.  His soil was chalky, and he
was applying a mulch of pine boughs as their only fertilizer, with great
success.  So maybe it's worth trying that in the greenhouse, where the
weather is much more like that of the tropics.  I might use a sprinkle
of wood ash on each layer; in the greenhouse lime goes a lot farther
because it never washes out of the soil.  In fact, repeated watering
alone will cause an alkaline deposit to form, I've noticed, so maybe
conifer mulch and greenhouses are the perfect marriage.

The other day the calves escaped.  It was funny to see the neighbor up
on his porch fleeing.  They're so harmless, but they could easily ruin
my bad knees just by stumbling into me.  The first one, the runt, was
easy to get back, because he loves me so, but the big guy has a mind of
his own.  His buddy was already back home and he didn't know where he
was.  It was funny to hear those enormous hooves on the asphalt.  I've
learned that only a proper sounding food dish really turns their heads,
when you need them to come running.  My lunch of defrosting smoked
sausage ended up being microwaved instead of broiled thanks to the
fiasco, since I neglected to turn it off before I rushed outside when
the neighbor called.

Today I finished the 22nd bed, to be planted tomorrow morning in 
turnips.  Bed 23 has hit a snag, since I've found the water line again,  
but it's really no problem if I fill it back in some.  It should grow 
great lettuce under a cloche, since these virgin beds tend to be 
slug-free, especially when covered.  Bed 24 was to be radishes and corn 
salad, but I've found a better idea.

I've decided to tithe a couple of beds this fall, one new and one old, 
to a new process developed in Quebec.  Crushed, dormant deciduous twigs 
are inoculated with mycelium from underneath a maple grove, or such, and 
incorporated into the top 2" of soil during the fall.  After that white 
clover or alfalfa grow for two years.  As the argument goes, stable 
humic compounds are created only by the action of mushroom mycelium on 
deciduous wood (the lignin in particular).  I have a good idea for a 
twig crusher using steel rollers and leveraged body weight, like a giant 
nutcracker that you sit in.  This would work for the maintenance 
applications of only one gallon per bed per year, and I can use the 
shredder to do the initial applications of 10 gallons per bed.  We'll be 
clearing an acre of forest land in a couple of years, and there's a 
solid patch of stunted cascara (locally known as "chittem").  It's just 
a weed tree and this patch will yield all the twigs we need.  I had 
found this years ago, and yesterday I looked it up again to show the 
people working on the Extension landscape the research on the 
phytotoxicity of conifer products, but when I saw that they've evolved a 
whole program of cover cropping in conjunction with this, and realized 
that the maintenance chip applications would be very small, I decided to 
give it a try.

I've decided to try making haggis, or 4 of them to be exact.  It's 
basically a sausage.  I'll avoid the details of how the lungs are 
cooked, for the sensitive.  Already I've thought of an innovation.  When 
the paunch is closed up, the novice haggis maker will not know how much 
room to leave for the swelling of the oats.  So it's probably a good 
idea to clamp the alimentary canal shut at one end, so that it can be 
loosened if the haggis is threatening to burst.  Otherwise, tight makes 
right, so that the haggis doesn't just spill forth from its bag like 
loose hash.

My broccoli plants are already blooming, with spindly stalks.  I don't 
think we let them dry out.  Maybe Lilly-Miller's "Hybrid Broccoli Blend" 
has really early broccoli that was meant to grow fast with chemical 
fertilizers.  Maybe I shouldn't even try to transplant broccoli plants 
twice.  I've got a mind to rip it all out and put in the lettuce, since 
time is running out.  Then we can do the bed of radishes in bed 23 once 
it's finished.

The main local feed store has closed.  I neglected to order enough straw 
before the Fair, so now I'm reduced to throwing hay into guinea pig 
cages as bedding.  Maybe I can talk my buddy into getting some in his truck.

We made only tiny progress on my algebra helper software this summer.  
It turns out that I need to draw line segments that may begin or end off 
the screen, in order to be able to scroll around through a tree 
structure.  But if you just send those points to the line drawing 
procedure, it will bomb, so you have to find where the line intersects 
with the screen edge.  That's no problem, but then the logic of it all 
can be complex, with four screen edges to deal with.  When I first did 
this 25 years ago, my brute-force method with lots of "if...then" 
statements took me all afternoon one day at work to debug.  Now, with 
the benefit of a Master's degree in applied mathematics, and years of 
experience, it's much easier.  Back then I hadn't had multivariate 
calculus, so I didn't even know about parametrized lines.  Basically you 
number the points on the line.  Then it's just a matter of finding the 
intersection of three intervals in the set of parameters.  I haven't 
even typed the code in yet, but I know it will run the first time.

Today we're favored by clouds, so I'll be glad to thin kohlrabi, beets, 
parsley, and carrots for their second and final thinning.  I've really 
got to do something with cucumbers.  This first ones I picked were very 
bitter.  Maybe I can make a canner load each of dill spears and B&B 
pickles, and by soaking them with salt remove the bitterness.

Someone I know had a great idea today.  Why not siphon the well water 
downhill to a holding tank before pumping it back up?  Then two pumping 
mechanisms don't have to occupy the same well shaft, and I'm free to do 
my mechanical water pumping experiments in a little tank (just a pit 
lined with greenhouse plastic will do).  I think that _one_ hose can be 
adapted, with appropriate valves, to siphon water down in the morning, 
pump water back up during the daytime when the sun shines and the wind 
blows, and then gravity-feed it to the garden beds from the upper 
holding tank in the evening.  But if the springs down in the woods 
refill as quickly as I suspect they might, we won't need the main well 
at all.

I think I've finally threaded the needle with regard to homemade wind 
power devices.  Today it occurred to me, that when high-RPM devices 
became the only choice in people's minds, we lost the ability of the 
common man to ever produce such a thing at home.  They have to be 
perfectly made to be balanced, and withstand high centrifugal forces 
too.  But it's also possible to have high-torque, low-RPM machines that 
can be quite primitive and cheap.  My latest design puts the force of 
the wind directly on a bellows for compressing air, through a roller-cam 
system, but the rotary motion means that it doesn't waste much energy 
through reciprocation.  I think I can make one for one-quarter the cost 
per watt of a typical fan-blade windmill with air compressor.  
Compressed air from several devices can also be cheaply pooled in a way 
that other kinds of mechanical energy cannot, so I can just build 
several of the cheaper models and get the same output as from an 
expensive commercial windmill.

Harnessing even low-pressure compressed air is quite easy with a 
buoyancy engine.  Air fills an underwater bladder attached to a lever, 
and when there's enough buoyant force, the lever rises and pulls on a 
well pump handle.  I think the neatest part is the way it saves every 
bit of energy fed to it until there's enough force to tip the lever.

We were really dismayed to see some of the latest trends this summer.  
For the entire summer the local Safeway had no domestic Valencia 
oranges, but only Australian navels for $1.77 a pound.  How much palm 
greasing does it take to lock out the competition?  I see it as the next 
natural step after NAFTA and GATT, when politicians and foreign 
corporations will work together to crush our industry.

Say, does it do any of you any good to be on the "no-call" list?  Was 
that the signal for them to call?  Now that I can no longer answer the 
phone, computers call my answering machine posing as real people who 
aren't sure whether they're reached the right number.  And of course 
when "Brad" realizes that we're not home, he cautiously decides to go 
ahead and leave a message about how I can consolidate all my bills into 
one easy payment...

I see that both houses in Oregon have passed a law banning property 
seizures without a conviction.  The people passed that law, through the 
initiative process, 5 years ago, and now it's ready to sunset.  I 
haven't heard yet that our governor has signed the replacement law.  I 
like to think positive thoughts, but I remember another "liberal" 
politician who sat idly by for 8 years of these unconstitutional 
confiscations, and didn't utter a peep.  Since there's clearly no 
political risk in signing it, and it's obviously the right thing to do, 
I can only conclude that _maybe_ what politicians really want from this 
is a cut of the plunder.  Dum spiro, spero ("While I breathe, I hope").

I opened up one of the nicest grazing areas to cattle today.  For some 
reason it just got overlooked, and now it's overgrown.  I just 
rearranged old fence materials.  I must have the most berry vine-lovin' 
cattle in the whole world.  Tomorrow I'm making a protector for the 
raspberries from two ag panels.  I'm planning on tilting them outward, 
so cattle can graze next to the row and keep excess raspberries and 
grass at a minimum, but not reach the canes.  There's also a nice little 
bay tree to protect, and a clump of chives that needs to be moved.  The 
rest of the plants are just too "berried" to worry about, at least until 
I can see them again.

I'm thinking I should keep two sheep because there's no other animals to 
eat the grass among the beds.  We're blessed with ground water, so it 
even grows in summer.  I think with a little protection for tall plants, 
these miniature sheep could be allowed to roam among the garden beds for 
a time in spring and fall, when they're most needed, without doing much 
damage.  But if I just get rid of them, I'll never know.  Besides, maybe 
4 haggis are a wee bit too many, even with a freezer.

An odd thing happened.  My name happens to be the same as that of 
another local resident, unrelated to me.  His brother's ex-wife called 
here from a hospital in Missouri with an emergency.  She has cancer.  
They're not listed in the phone book, but I figure it couldn't hurt to 
ask around to see if anyone knows them.  Of course, I would not give out 
someone's number unless they wanted me to.  I've been playing with the 
Intelius people search.  They have a 24 hour unlimited people search for 
$19.95.  I've lost contact with my cousins in Maryland, so I could use 
it to find them.  Maybe I can do Glenda's names and a bunch of others of 
people I used to know.  If anyone needs to search for a name, let me 
know and I'll add it to the list.

I wish I could talk all about my brilliant exploits in fine cuisine, but 
I can barely cook fast enough to provide myself 3 square meals a day.  I 
should lower my standards, I guess.  But I really need some sponge 
cake.  I made a zucchini ratatouille with celery and Indian seeds like 
nigella and mustard, and that was good.  I'm going to try making breaded 
zucchini with parmesan, by broiling it instead of frying.  It worked 
great with some thin breaded beef cutlets I tried recently.

Let's all keep the people of the Gulf Coast in our thoughts this week.

Happy Labor Day!

Bill