Jay Angler

No matter how fast light travels, the darkness always got there first.

From Reaper Man

Maybe that's why my garden has too much shade...

A school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has done a 7 year research study on the efficacy of various parking lot run-off options. The identified goal was to determine if even in their dry environment, could they plant and grow trees with *no* supplement irrigation by using curb cut/rain garden water collection only. Even in their dry environment, their efforts were successful.

This relatively inexpensive research program, collected data about how deep the water infiltrated when held just long enough to soak in. No standing water to risk mosquito issues, but also, minimizing water overflowing beyond the treatment area.



The following link is to the actual research paper for all the numbers and diagrams included.
https://www.westernplanner.org/2022/2022/10/22/green-stormwater-infrastructure-in-a-semi-arid-climate-the-influence-of-rain-gardens-on-soil-moisture-over-seven-years

This is short and sweet, but I've loved it for a long time...

People talk of Nature's Laws,
but do things have a natural cause?

Black earth becoming yellow crocus,
is undiluted hocus pocus!

Dennis Mono wrote:...To Generate 60% more energy per Year, you simply install a Dual Axis-solar Radiation Tracker (DART), that follows the Sun from as earl as 5:30AM to 8:00PM, depending on your Latitude.

I can see something like this if space is really limited. What I see in my area, is that now that panels are relatively cheap, they just put them on different angled/direction roof surfaces, so that they cover more times of the day and year.

As David B said: "Installed once and maintenance free (or virtually) operation for its life span." In our wet and occasionally windy environment, I can't imagine a tracker like that not running into maintenance issues.

My homestead has 2 very old yellow plum trees which many people love to eat out of hand, but they're so juicy, they aren't much good for anything else. ( I include ducks, geese and chickens in my "people" category.)

I bought a double grafted tree because I wanted the Italian Prune plum side, which has pretty much taken over (I've since learned that this is very common for double grafts, particularly if the owner doesn't know what they're doing.) It doesn't produce really well every year, but this year I've already taken 22 liters off just for processing, my son's taken a few of liters for fresh eating, and if I don't run out of steam, there looks to be another 10+ liters on the tree if the squirrel doesn't get them in the next 24 hours. (I caught him in the act at 7:30 tonight!)

It turns out that the other half is actually a very pleasant red eating plum. Trouble is that the deer agree and aren't exactly helping that poor branch survive. However, I have a volunteer plum, probably off the yellow tree. I ran out of light today, but tomorrow I will carefully try to dig it out of the planter it's in, transfer it to a tree pot, let it settle for a few weeks, and then I might just try and graft from the red plum. Not sure it's the best time of the year, but I don't trust the deer not to finish the poor thing off.

We have another volunteer plum in the big field. The plums are small but delicious both for eating and for jam. I think we need to shorten it a little in the hopes that it will set more fruit lower down. My orchard ladder is only 10 feet tall. I don't have the mass to safely use a taller one even if I had one.

Hugo Morvan wrote: ...Instead of being angry at the bad guys we're planning ahead and our idea is to grow Mediterranean species of oaks, have them cross with local trees and create hybrid swarms of the future to be resistant to heat and drought, but cold as well. Because as some predict, the changing gulf streams might bring cold winters back to Europe and some speak of solar activity diminishing. I guess nobody knows the future really. But we're preparing.

I have heard several reports that suggest there are more "forests" in Europe than there have been for hundreds of years. What they don't say, is are these actual "forests" or are they tree farm monocultures?

So I agree - plant for both heat and cold, and in particular plant a mixture of species as you would find in a natural forest, but don't sweat about whether they're "native" because "native" has changed radically over geological time, and I suspect, as you do, that we're heading towards a new radical shift.

However, there have also been serious forest fires in Europe this year. I would do some research for your area about which trees are fire resistant or re-sprout after being fire damaged. If there are trees which are known to help, rather than exhaust the water table, I'd lean that way as well.

I would hesitate to condemn any tree species, but choose the location with their tendencies in mind. This is just a thought. A big concern with forest fires is when they "ladder up" from being a ground fire into a crown fire. If you were to plant Black Walnut in the likely directions a fire might start and move from, they're known to not promote undergrowth, and in this instance that could be an asset.

thomas rubino wrote:Hi Jay
Good question; unfortunately, I do not have a clear answer...

In our opinion, the benefits easily cover the rising costs.
Knowing exactly what our pigs eat gives us hormone-free meat that does not affect digestion.
Raising happy animals with good food, clean water, and good dirt to root in makes all the difference in the end product...

This may sound odd if you have never had home-raised pork; the fat is not only edible, it is one of the tastiest parts!
...the old saying of "you are what you eat" applies to your food as well as your own health.

This is so true. Finding healthy fats is an incredibly valid point. Knowing you have a lot of real food on property to form the bulk of their diet is critical, because I doubt you would get as good results if they were in a barn being fed pellets. At one point Joel Salatin was offered expired food from a food charity and his pigs got sick on it.

So you may be paying a premium for the final product, but you are producing real food and your taste buds know it!

Nicole Alderman wrote:Do rats even have bones in their ears? I'm pretty sure most animals just have cartilage for their ear supports.

You are absolutely correct. Neither humans, nor rats, nor most of the common mammals I know, have anything more than cartilage in their ears and it will decompose pretty quickly.

There are people out there who make realistic replica skulls for rats and other animals. They've been making replica dinosaur skeleton parts for a long time - either to fill in missing parts, or for displays where the original pieces are too delicate to want to use them.

This picture is supposedly a genuine rat scull:


source

ETA: I am often dismayed by the things humans do to celebrate Hallowe'en, or to just scare other humans who have never actually seen a genuine skull.

You will be soooo... ready for Hallowe'en. Please find some way to put the Grim Squeaker on your front door!