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[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

As usual, the big heat waves wait until autumn.  It's been 86 deg. for 
3  days in a row.  It's a good day for typing, and drying laundry on the 
line, since even dishwashing will heat the house.

Finally a few pimentos are ripening, so I made machaca from them.  I 
gave up on beans long ago; it was amazing.  I did get to do a little 
preserving between heat waves.  I froze parsnips and green beans; 
pickled beans, beets and cucumbers; and froze several batches of 
tomatoes and strawberries.  There's no choice but to deal with squash, 
so I made a giant pot of Italian-style zucchini in tomato sauce and 
canned 14 pints of it.  Months ago we also harvested memorable 
quantities of sugar snap peas.

The filberts bore a quantity of nuts for the first time, and for some 
reason the squirrels are incompetent this year, so I cured several dozen 
of them.  Best of all, the seedling (non-grafted, so pot luck) walnut 
had 8 nuts, despite being still small.  That virtually guarantees good 
harvests in years to come.  And my two little cherries, along with the 
larger one by the shed, whose fruits were mostly unreachable, yielded 
about 5 gallons of cherries!  We put lots of them into the rumpot, along 
with many other early berries.  And the grape harvest is more enormous 
than ever, with 3 kinds of table grapes (Canadice, Interlaken Seedless, 
and Himrod) and 2 wine grapes (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, two of each).  
Today is about the last good day of ripening, and I had to battle yellow 
jackets just to sample them, even in the morning.  There were almost no 
Japanese plums or peaches thanks to the February freeze.  But I did dry 
lots of nice Italian prunes.

Just as I'm practically bathing in salsa, the tomato syndicate seems to 
have it all sown up, with the lowest price in supermarkets around $1.89, 
whether here or in S. California.  From the looks of them, it seems they 
might even be from last year.  I guess people are being trained to think 
of winter, the Mexican tomato season, as _the_ tomato season.  Oh well, 
the overripe red ones that I throw to the geese are probably too sweet 
to make good salsa, and those who don't know the difference might as 
well stick with the greenish-orange ones, or select a canned product, 
since tomatoes aren't worth $4 a pound.

I finally settled on the simplest possible scheme for raising well 
water.  Actually I thought of it years ago, but for some reason I didn't 
take it seriously.  If you just submerge a vertical pipe halfway in 
water, and place the end of an air tube inside the pipe near the bottom, 
and blow air into the tube, you'll see that water gushes out of the 
pipe.  That's because the foam created is much less dense than plain 
water, so it's negatively buoyant relative to the surrounding water.  
Experiment shows that the greatest efficiency is achieved when there's a 
60-40 ratio between the lengths of pipe above and below the water 
level.  So to haul water up 108 feet from my well, it would need to have 
at least 72 feet of clearance under the water line.  This is 
unrealistic, so I looked at other types of systems.  But then I realized 
that just by hanging 3 eighteen-foot long water reservoirs, made of 2" 
PVC with an end cap, at different heights in the well shaft, weighing a 
total of less than 100 pounds, I can divide that lift into 4 stages.  
Each stage dumps water into the reservoir for the next.  It takes 4 
times the rate of air flow, but the pressure required is only 1/4 as 
great.  Here's the clever part.  In order for the system to work, each 
stage must pump water very slightly slower than the one below it, so 
that the reservoirs stay full.  There are more difficult ways to try to 
do this, but the simplest is just to make every stage exactly the same, 
and connect them to the air supply starting with the bottom stage 
first.  It's guaranteed that each successive stage will run slightly 
slower, since devices with the shortest air hose supply get the air 
first.  Yesterday I brought home the 4-cylinder engine that we'll be 
converting into a compressor.

The other day I had another "bat" experience.  This time he was face 
down in the cat water, and I rescued him.  He was obviously a boy bat.  
Lee keeps warning me about rabies, and I suppose that when the bat in 
question has been found in association with water, there's greater cause 
for alarm, but I was careful not to handle him.  I placed him in a towel 
and dried him with the calves' heat lamp.  I felt that rush which only 
comes from bringing creatures back from the verge of death, like the 
calves last spring.  When he was about dry I tried to take him outside 
to a nice bush with lots of sticks to hang from, but he started flying 
on the enclosed porch.  He seemed fine.  For a few moments I was in awe 
of what appeared to be a giant black butterfly.  He did not seem the 
least bit disoriented, but nevertheless dropped to the ground when he 
"heard" that there was no way out.  I scooped him up again, and this 
time he made it to the bush.  A few minutes later I checked and he was 
gone, apparently no worse for wear, just like the brave little swimmer I 
found in the bathroom sink one summer morning years ago.  That little 
guy needed the whole day to sleep and recuperate before flying.  Ain't I 
silly?  I guess I can't help but think of myself lying there in that 
pool of water.

We didn't finish any new garden beds this summer.  I think I'm switching 
to a new type of in-ground protected bed.  My existing raised beds take 
an enormous amount of water.  The time we saved was poured into fencing 
another half-acre of property.  This area isn't even cleared yet, 
although I've been working on it, but animals will help.  Next year I 
plan to keep the calves in there when they get too big, and make a steer 
excluder that only allows small sheep and goats to come and go into the 
main pasture.  I'll have to feed them, but I did so last year too.  The 
one thing that one cannot abide, with growing calves, is walking down 
with them to where they'll be eating while holding the feed.  One could 
easily be trampled.

I discovered that the chittem trees in the woods make excellent feed for 
lambs.  It's easy to break down small saplings of the "cascara sagrada" 
as forage.  They carefully avoid the laxative bark.  This is actually a 
real find, considering how barren and dry it is for the most part.  It's 
better than grape prunings, which lambs really love.

Speaking of dry weather, it rained about a half-inch over about one 
week's time.  That brings our total for the rain year to 71.42", which 
will probably be the final total, since no more is expected until after 
October 1.

I'm happy to have finished Step 0 (deciding what it is you need/want) on 
several building projects.  In the front yard we're converting the old 
lamp tower to an obelisk, and building a trapezoidal arch to walk under, 
for an Incan theme.  To discourage people from going around the archway, 
there'll be a low trapezoidal sundial to the side.  It's design will be 
truly unique.  The gnomon will be a smaller replica of the obelisk, 
standing apart from the trapezoidal face.  An ordinary sundial makes a 
great calendar in winter and fall, but in spring and summer the shadow 
is so short that you can't easily resolve what date it is.  So I had a 
great idea to position things so that the shadow falls in the normal way 
onto the flat face only in fall and winter.  In spring and summer the 
shadow will fall onto the side of the trapezoidal block.  Conveniently, 
the side pattern will resemble a plant stem, to go with the flower motif 
that will appear on the top (actually the mathematical curves for each 
hour of the day that resemble flower petals).

We also agreed that the logical place for an outdoor kitchen is east of 
the existing kitchen, between the proposed deck and existing driveway.  
I'm planning a winter sweat lodge (a "lly^s-lle^", if Welsh spelling may 
be used for writing the local language of the upper Coquille; sounds 
appropriately like "sleaze sleigh") that will only measure 12' x 10', to 
escape Draconian building restrictions, where the cast-iron cook stove 
is going.  And we decided on the size and location of a pond for storing 
summer water.  But my favorite of all is the summer bathing facility 
(for calves, of course, should an inspector inquire). ;) I wracked my 
brain trying to see how to fit an outdoor solar-heated shower for summer 
use on the south side of the shed, and also accommodate terraria for 
insect-eating plants.  Then I realized that if I make the shower 
enclosure quite magnificent, from tall, graceful, clear polycarbonate 
panels that I already have, it will only require buying enough lumber 
for the framework, and a door, since the roof and one side are already 
provided by the building overhang.  Then Nepenthes vines can amble about 
the cathedral ceiling, small plants like Venus' fly-trap can be 
displayed prominently on a shelf, and giant sundews and pitcher plants 
can grow up from pots on the floor.  I'll be able to open the barn 
window and let flies into the chamber at night, then close it in time 
for bathing.  Now I don't have to make any terraria at all from old 
glass, except maybe one for the front porch.  This will accommodate all 
insectivores except the cool-loving indigenous Darlingtonia, the cobra 
lily or California pitcher, which will loom dramatically from an island 
in a koi pond tucked inside the L-shape formed by the shed, and some 
tropicals which may have to be moved to the (sunnier) front porch for 
winter.

The reputation of Dr. Jones, Medicine Man, continues to grow.  Again my 
Biodynamic buddy Orlando had a calf with scours (diarrhea, for the 
uninitiated), and once again ___I___ cured it (or so I'd like to 
think).  I had him make the usual mix of dextrose, salt, and homemade 
potassium citrate, but this time we added a little yogurt whey.  Then, 
of course, it's vital to give lots of yogurt (with live cultures) along 
with the formula once regular feeding resumes.  And voila!  You'll have 
calves that are tough as nails.

Back in June, we traveled all the way to S. California to pick up the 
Prias, which was finally repaired.  On the way back we went to San 
Francisco, to turn in our paperwork at the Secretary of State's office.  
Can you believe I actually stood in the Governor's office?  But he 
wasn't in.  It took almost one full week (for the whole trip, not just 
to be searched at the state office building).  When we returned we were 
exhausted.  I managed to ruin my bad knee by walking too fast, and it 
took another week to get back to normal.  It really set us back for the 
summer.  I've got half a mind to just call some concrete contractors and 
have them put in 1000 sq. ft. of new beds, to make up for it.

I'm really eager to begin work on the roller coaster software.  We 
decided to go ahead and do the red/blue 3-D.  This requires placing two 
pictures, a red one and a blue one, on the screen at the same time.  So 
you can't just plot a blue dot; you have to make it purple if it's 
already colored red.  Unfortunately the existing line drawing commands 
don't support that, so the program will have to draw lines dot by dot.  
Still, there are comparatively few dots that need to be plotted for each 
frame of motion, since it will draw only the track and the stars, along 
with their reflections off the "water", so I expect it will still be 
fast enough.

The landscape project at the extension building has turned into a total 
mess.  Two years ago, we were told that no one was interested in the 
project, so several of us volunteered.  It turned out that our great 
leader had her own ideas, so she decided to replace the plans of others 
by her own.  She packed areas that other people had spent a lot of time 
planning with leftover, winter-disappearing plants from the plant sale; 
not just a couple, but in an obviously territorial way, since the whole 
place still needs plants everywhere.  Just as she had showed us all 
who's boss, by spending $2000 of our money on an ugly greenhouse, the de 
facto boss of the extension service threw her and her entire 
unauthorized work party off the property when their tractor broke the 
cement walk ("work parties" had replaced "meetings" as it became clear 
that only grunt labor, not creative input, would be required from the 
rank-and-file), and told her to stuff the greenhouse.  I even heard that 
the government employee in charge of the program has been threatened 
with dismissal over her loss of control over the situation.  All of this 
happened with no influence from me whatsoever.  And now, what was to be 
someone's herbal shrine to herself is but an ugly pile of boulders, 
rather resembling dirty asphalt, in front of a government office 
building; they won't be allowed to build the windbreak that would have 
kept the proposed herb garden warm (assuming any of the rank-and-file 
will ever want to volunteer there again).  I think that people with this 
level of control freak tendencies should seek professional help, because 
maybe just like kleptomania, it's a situation where they don't even 
realize what their doing.

Viva el 27 de septiembre!  Today I'm having baked --yes baked, not 
fried, thanks to a special technique-- rolled tacos with guacamole, 
carne asada burritos, and strawberry spongecake with whipped cream.

Have a great autumn and a joyous Columbus Day!

Bill