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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Pumps, NAFEX and NNGA memebers

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  • From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Pumps, NAFEX and NNGA memebers
  • Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 10:49:51 -0500

I want to thank those of you who gave advice on pumping water. That so many of you not only knew what a ram pump is, but actually knew a good bit about them or had even used them just proves once again what I have been saying all along, "There are no normal people in NAFEX." Sometimes I think I meet a normal NAFEX member, only to discover he keeps buffalo or such like. My husband and I have noted that the more we do things our ancestors would understand, the weirder we are by modern standards.
A friend got a puppy recently and has been telling me about how she was going to have a fence built before going on vacation. Now she says she'll have to board the puppy as the fence hasn't even been started. So the fence that was already built in my mind on her property isn't doing her much good. A great deal of what passes for normal these days is like the fence I imagined. Friends in Permaculture once asked me to come speak about fruit trees at a meeting, they were really disgusted with the members who spent all their time indoors planning lovely Permaculture plans. They said most members didn't really know anything about plants.
I read somewhere that the difference between hunters and most other "nature lovers" is that hunters have to have somewhere to hunt, and have been historically willing to spend money to ensure that suitable land remains available. By contrast, the armchair naturalist can sit and watch films of a beautiful rainforest that no longer exists. There are many many Bambi lovers who know nothing about the real world, as we NAFEXers well know. Though we don't need as big a space to work as the hunters, NAFEXers need some dirt and some plants to do our stuff, and after that we encounter the real world of plant disease, bugs, and varmints. Consider our basic premise, fruit growing, and then all those technical drawings of how to graft and bud. We are action oriented people, though we apparently have some patience (which is constantly being tried!) I think to myself how hard it must be for today's kids to deal with the real world. Imagine a house or any other project being built on TV. It just happens, there is no sweat, no long delays, no tedium. But in the real world, there is the cussedness of material nature. And the delights too. The real world can have events occur in the twinkling of an eye, but for the most part real things happen much more slowly than on TV. Have you all watched any old programs on TV lately? Notice how slowly people move and talk, how there is time to think and reflect? Like used to be like that. We don't see much TV so it is always a shock how quickly it moves and how the camera angles change constantly. I think the American brain must be equally suffering from some kind of mass ADHD problem. Donna

P.S. Oh, about the water. The ram pump is working, but can only do about 1/3 the head. The 12V pump we had, made by the Little Worthless Peice of, oh I forget the name of the company, but anyway it didn't work. We have a 12V Shurflo pump coming that is supposed to do 200 ft of vertical head, so surely it can do the last 90 ft. Guess I should have asked you all before ordering it, but we have 30 days to return it if it doesn't do the job.




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