Mark Reed

We are interested, not so much in the work for hire offer, although it seems, on a temporary basis to fit nicely with our hobby of cultural exchange. Importantly however before we can commit, does your location offer docking facilities for a small craft? Specifically, a circular area by your measure of approximately ten square miles and that can tolerate full suspension of planetary gravity for the duration of our visit. Objects and entities not firmly attached including atmosphere may drift unpredictably and at extreme velocity or even, if an upward force is applied, ejected into space. It is strongly advised that entities of any sort not enter the area without proper tethering, which we will provide on request and free of commercial contract.  Alternately it is possible to reduce the suspension of gravity to intervals of .000000008772 of your minutes but just on arrival and departure.  In this second option a smaller area of 1.00082 of your miles square will be significantly heated and compressed with all life extinguished. Some entities we visit prefer the second option, despite its setbacks, because and if the proper chemical components exist the area is converted on departure to solid diamond which they seem to regard as pretty. We plan to be sightseeing in your area for a while longer. If you would like to discuss further and if we have moved out of range of your communication devise, just give us a holler with your magic thumb.

Here, in the 1960s and I guess before, everybody had lots of chickens. They were not penned up at all. They were not fed much at all except in winter when they got some cracked corn in the morning and maybe a little more as they came back to the coop at night. Coyotes, foxes and bobcats were almost totally absent back then because they were shot or trapped to near regional extinction.  If one was spotted, every boy much over 8 years old was handed a rifle and put on patrol. Owls and hawks were very rare for the same reason and more so because of DDT. The coop was closed up at night against minks and weasels, which I guess were harder to eliminate.

I do mean lots of chickens. Baked chicken, fried chicken, stewed chicken was on the table at least once a week, all year along with the occasional turkey or goose. When mom said, you kids go get me a chicken for supper she did not mean, go the store.  Eggs were on the menu one way or another almost every day. I don't remember what happened to excess eggs, maybe some were sold or given away or traded.

I don't remember much worry over breeds, but I do remember some breed names.  Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds and bantams just lived together.  They were just identified by body type. A big fat chicken to bake, a skinny one or an extra rooster to fry, an old fat one to stew.  Roosters were commonly traded between families or farms. Broody hens were identified each spring and locked in their own little coops with a bunch of eggs, she and her brood were fed until they were big enough to be turned loose with the others, but I don't remember what. I think the type of chicken that dominated a flock was controlled by what roosters were chosen to keep living but there was always a big variety.

I think what I remember was about the last of it. DDT was banned and by the 1970s many farms were abandoned and especially in more hilly areas land was left to begin reforestation. I guess people didn't need their chickens anymore or their vegetable gardens, it was easier and more stylish to work in a factory. All the predators began to rebound.  Now, if you tried to keep chickens that way, you would soon have no chickens.

A couple of years ago it dropped from 65 degrees in early afternoon to - 14 degrees the next morning. Freaked me out. The last one a couple days ago was from about 50 degrees to zero in about the same time. Similar but less extreme things have been happening over the last several years, its spooky.  

The explanation for that is very simple and a long time ago such thigs were taught in high school chemistry and physics classes, actually I think we did that experiment in grade school.  Diet coke of course is mostly water. The scientific principles that apply are that liquid water will change to solid water (ice) if it gets cold enough, and it expands as it does so.  If the liquid water is sealed in a container and if that container is strong enough to withstand the increasing pressure without fracturing or stretching, the water will remain liquid even though its temperature is below freezing. When the pressure is released by removing the cap the water solidifies into ice, pretty much instantly. It's a bit distressing to me that a college professor of any discipline did not know such an elementary thing.

The opposite also applies. When water in a sealed container is heated above the boiling point, and if the container cannot handle the pressure, it will eventually explode. That's why you should give an overheated radiator time to cool it before opening it. I remember one time at a party we put a sealed beer can in the fire expecting it to rupture and squirt out beer, it didn't. Hours later after many other beer cans had been opened and their contents consumed we had completely forgotten about the full beer can laying there in coals nearly hot enough to melt empty ones.  Fortunately, we had mostly moved away from the fire, on the way to our tents when the stronger than expected beer can finally reached its limit. A little mushroom cloud of steam and ash reached twenty feet or more. Hot coals rained down, melting holes in tents and scorching little spots on cars.  The fire was completely extinguished. Injuries while fairly numerous were not serious. We looked the next day for the remains of the can but never found it.

I'm still a bit confused, what is a batchbox?

I just toss mine in a kettle with maybe a bit of bacon and onion and cook them until desired tenderness which isn't as long as many people seem to think at least not as I'm concerned, although different ones cook at different rates. I only use pole types for dry beans, they mature over a long period, and I check each day's harvest making sure nothing nasty gets put up with the beans, so I don't check that when cooking. I don't use poisons or anything, so I don't wash them either. If you're growing, down in the dirt bush beans where they get splashed by mud, get moldy as they dry and so on, you might want to check them.

I doubt if matters much at all. As long as the stuff never leaves your garden it eventually ends up back in the soil anyway. I just do whatever I take a notion too. Maybe I'd pull it all up and bury it a bit in compost or leaves with a little compost or dirt on top, or maybe I'd just leave it there and worry about it in spring. I leave thigs like cornstalks or sorghum sometimes because I just like the way they look in the snow and wind. I've also grown early planted peas on last year's stalks, or radishes or something between them.

Mine is one of those preformed plastic things, it's less than three feet deep. Our weather now is such is that thick ice rarely forms but on occasion the ice can get six inches thick. A few Endlers and Japanese rice fish have survived that, and I thought I was on the way to breeding for even more cold tolerance, but someone decided they could drop in some bluegills to net out to clean and eat the next day, and that was the end of my little fish.

Every time a thread about playing with water/plants/fish comes up it fires up my want to about building a bigger pond. I may actually tackle it this spring; I have plenty of space and a piece of liner doesn't cost all that much. Just have to decide what I really want, to raise aquarium fish to sell, to raise a bit of fish, clams or whatever to eat, or just to have fun.

Some of your description and logic seems pretty sound, and interesting. Actually, the whole part about your own set up sounds pretty interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing such a contraption in person. Maybe the parts that I'm still not sold on would fall in line. I still would not want one myself, at least not in our current house. Here, the little free standing Vermont Castings does fine.

I guess I do cheat a bit.
The house is small, well insulated and partially underground with big south windows. As mentioned before the bricks around and under as well as the chimney itself serve as heat sinks.  They absorb heat from the stove and the windows both. It was all built that way on purpose. The stove has a double wall and a lever to close the chimney forcing smoke out through the coals at the bottom. *That only works while the chimney is hot, but I'm fine with that. Once the chimney is hot, the draft continues until all coals are fully cooled.  A little smoke comes out of the chimney when I start a fire but almost nothing visible comes out once that lever is set. I just load it up based on, do I want it to roar for 1/2 an hour or do I want it roar for two hours. I also have an abundant free source of seasoned black locust firewood, basically in the yard. That was also by design. I guess by volume I burn about fifty cubic feet of actual firewood in a season.  Black locust as a bonus drops a lot of sticks which we use for small quick fires when it isn't cold enough outside for a real fire.