Steve Mendez

I recently read the book The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger. This well researched book makes a case for many plants to be at least conscious communicating individuals who can express joy and stress (pain?) to other plants through the air and through the soil.

In winter at our farm we would leave for up to ten days, by first informing our customers a few weeks in advance of the days that we would not be shipping. The day before leaving we would bypass the warm water straight to the drains, raise the water levels a bit, and turn the cold water down to a trickle. Before leaving town we would make sure the Bullfrogs and tadpoles were in torpor on the bottoms of their troughs.
Several times, upon returning there would be a skim of ice on the surface of the water in the troughs. Our animals suffered no morts or ill effects once they were slowly warmed back up.
In warmer weather we had a renter who was happy to spend an hour and a half a day feeding and cleaning in return for a $75.00 per day discount on his rent.  

What are your reasons for purchasing this property?  Is it in California or Nevada?

We planted Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lakes pole beans. Both varieties would have probably grown to 20 feet if our trellis was that high.

I don't know anything about feeding sheep, will rust harm them if they ingest a little?

Be careful using it on a garden.
In the summer of 1978 we bought a huge 100 year old brick church building in a small town in far north Utah. In the evenings large numbers of bats would swarm out of the eaves. We thought they were just living in the eaves and weren't too concerned.
We cut a hole in the 15 foot high ceiling to gain access to the attic and discovered an immense colony of bats living in the rafters and on the wall at one end. A bat expert from USU came out to investigate and identified them as a mother colony of Little Brown Bats. We wanted them out of there so we could expand our living space into the attic. He told us that there was no way they would move until the babies were raised.
That fall after the bats migrated we shoveled out enough guano and mummified bats to cover the 25 foot by 50 foot garden space several inches deep. We tilled it in in the spring with big expectations of a bountiful garden. Nothing grew except for a few bedraggled weeds. The stuff was so hot that it sterilized the soil. We rototilled in truck loads of rabbit dung in the fall and the next spring and for years after we had a very productive garden.
When the bats moved out we sealed up the access points and installed a large bat house under the eaves at the peak of the roof and had a bat colony for the rest of the time that we lived there.  

What a nice and informative game for kids.
Back when I was farming Bullfrogs and Tiger Salamanders I gave a lot of presentations at schools and other venues, part of my presentation involved passing around the various life stages of the animals in water-filled zip-lock bags to students sitting on the floor. It would have been wonderful to have been able to leave a game like this with the teachers to further the learning experience for the kids.
Well Done

My best snow/ice cars in order of ownership were 62 VW bug (studded tires on rear), 81 Subaru GL wagon (Studded tires on all four), 93 Toyota Camry wagon (studs on all four), and my present car 2006 Honda CRV (mud/snow tires on all four).

We've occasionally had some pansies survive the winter under the snow and bloom again the next year.

Instead of paying the farmer to teach you, what about getting a job as a farm hand for a farmer who has sheep?
I don't know anything about Southern Illinois sheep farmers, but in Southern Idaho there are lots of big outfits with many thousands of sheep. Quite often I see ads in the paper for farm hands.