David Fraleigh

A couple of years ago we found that beavers had built a dam in a back area of our property in an area where a small stream flows through.   It was an amazing transformation..   It ended up making a 5 acre pond of about 3 feet deep and it killed off all the big trees that had been there. The birds and wildlife flourished...    Sadly I recently noticed that the beavers seem to have gone,..  The dam is slowly disintegrating and the water level is falling again..  A lot of thick underbrush is starting to make things impenetrable there,...  I really miss those beavers.

Coincidentally I just picked about 40 pounds of persimmons off a tree yesterday...  In my many years of trying to grow food or fruit out here in North Florida I have met with few successes...  Growing persimmons is one happy exception.  (I think that part of the reason is that it is because persimmons are native to this area and the nearby woods are full of them).  The tree that I picked the fruit from is a grafted one.  I presume that it is an oriental one grafted onto a native rootstock.  It got me thinking how much I would like to have more of them...  I love the taste of the wild ones but the fruits here are so small and usually are high up in the tree and hard to gather..  The oriental ones are so much larger and more accessible...  However to buy them already grafted is very expensive,.. around $30 apiece...   There are so many persimmon saplings coming up in the woods so that it would be easy for me to get them to use as the rootstock...  I was just wondering whether anyone has had success with grafting them...   If so I wonder whether you could give us some pointers as to how and when to do it..
(I tried a couple of times already unsuccessfully)...  One thing I know from the three or four varieties that I have is that the astringent ones do better than the non-astringent ones...  This really is only because they are less vulnerable to damage from squirrels...  I have found that I have to harvest them before they sweeten or the squirrels will get every last one..

Yesterday my brother and I were speaking of what "we would do differently" in our journey "back to the land" that started about 45 years ago..  Very high on the list was the topic of what sort of grass we would plant again..  We are in northern Florida and back then we planted a grass called Bahia on the sixty acres that we cleared..  It was an easily seeded, low priced, deep-rooted variety that grew everywhere around here..  (I even made a contraption that collected the seed from the roadsides around here so the seed was essentially free.)  But boy was it a mistake and how we have regretted it...  It grows so tall and so lushly and is so hard to mow that we have spend thousands of hours and thousands of dollars on machinery mowing it again and again over the years..  Since then we have learned how a different type of grass can make such a difference,..  Grasses have such different qualities so choose carefully and wisely..  The grasses all  vary in their height, shade and moisture tolerance, the way they spread and their ability to tolerate  pests, disease and traffic...  We have learned to really appreciate the lower-growing varieties such as centipede, zoysia and the  easy-to-mow varieties such as St. Augustine...  The fortunate thing is that often-times and wonderfully these varieties will slowly overwhelm and push out the taller Bahia...  This may seem like a small thing but mowing 60 acres twice a year is a whole lot easier than mowing it ten times a year..  So if you live in the Southeast,- don't plant Bahia,.. (unless you have cows)...

Speaking of preserving eggs,... In the past I have often enjoyed pickled hard-boiled eggs.  As a kid, I used to purchase them at a store where they came out of a non-refrigerated gallon glass jar that the store owner kept on his counter .  They  were peeled hard-boiled eggs (and were stained red).  This  topic has got me wondering whether pickling eggs can be a way of long-lasting storing of them.  It is my suspicion that they probably have to be refrigerated as well...

I have about thirty years experience of growing different bamboos here in North Florida.  It has been quite a learning experience.  We started off by getting about 15 different varieties of bamboo from various places.  What we soon learned is that there is a fair amount of difference between the different varieties,..  Mostly this had to do with things like their ultimate height, color, diameter of the culms, thickness of the side-walls, growing habit (upright or weeping, clumping or running) etc.  Also it soon became clear that some of the bamboos were just  better suited than others for our area and growing conditions.  Some can handle saturated soil, others can't.  After getting established, some of the bamboos just went into a slow decline and ultimately died away... (not sure why).   Things have ended up with about 5 of the varieties being well established and happy here..  Something to consider are that many animals like to eat the shoots that come up in the spring..  This can be a big problem especially when the plantings are just starting...
    I don't actually use the bamboo for anything other than for its visual appeal... To me a large area of running bamboo seems somewhat magical...   I do find it to be the only tall form of "shade" that I like to have within falling distance of my house..  It can grow 40' tall and provide me with visual screening and much appreciated shade without endangering the house..   Some people are scared of  "running" bamboo but it can easily be controlled by mowing the perimeters a time or two in the spring which is the only time it puts up new growth.  
     Yesterday I  planted about 30 clumps of bambusoides spectablis along a fence line to screen out a neighbor's building...  I wish I had done it years ago...

I had two different varieties of bamboo that "went to seed" and eventually died..  It is a sad but an interesting phenomenon to experience and there is nothing much that we can do about it.  I have been growing bamboo for the last thirty years and have learned a lot,..  mostly the hard way.  I have experimented with roughly twenty different varieties  and have found that it is hard to find ones that do well in my location.    Quite possibly the biggest problem is that local "critters " (mostly squirrels, but also deer, cows, rabbits, etc.) soon find that the spring-time shoots are delectable and will eat every last one of them.  This has the effect of limiting the spread of the bamboo and eventually killing it as it stops reproducing...   "Running bamboo" is more vulnerable to being eaten because it shoots earlier in the year when there is little else for animals to eat.  The "clumpers" shoot later in the summer when there apparently is other stuff that the critters can eat...  (There might be a point of "critical mass" wherein a stand of bamboo is large enough to make more shoots than the animals can eat...   In my experience none of my bamboo has reached that point and I still have to protect their shoots in the spring.   I have tried various methods to protect them (cages, repellents, firearms etc.)..  but they have been mostly ineffective or too difficult to implement.   What I finally settled on was to paint  a slurry of animal manure (cat, horse or whatever) on the shoots for a week or two after they arrive in the spring...  I mix up the mixture with water to a mayonnaise consistency  in a five-gallon bucket.  I wheel this around in a golf-bag-caddy device and I mop on the mixture on the shoots periodically until they reach a three foot height.
   People seem to either love or hate bamboo.      There are a couple of reasons that I like it.  The main one is its aesthetic appeal.
Personally I love the look and feeling of a beautiful  and peaceful bamboo grove.   Another thing I like about it is its ability to provide shade.  As I have grown older and wiser (or at least more experienced) I am more and more aware of the danger of those beautiful old trees that provide much needed shade around my house.  I recently had to cut down a giant dead oak tree about 30 feet from my house and it was not only dangerous but extremely difficult to deal with..   On the other side of my house if a large clump of  50 foot high "textilis" bamboo...  I love the shade it provides.., the sound it makes rattling in the breeze and the fact that I don't have to worry about it falling on the house in this hurricane prone area..

A friend of mine here in North Florida inherited the "family" farm from her grandmother several years ago,...  Remarkably, the only condition regarding the property listed in the will was that "she never plant Wisteria on the property"...

A friend of mine is struggling to find a material to use as mulch in her vegetable beds.  Ideally it would be inexpensive, easily available and beneficial for the garden.  What came to my mind and what I have used in the past is either the shredded-up residue from utility line clearing or old unsold rolls of hay that farmers occasionally sell cheaply around here for "mulch" purposes.  That seemed good enough except for the fact that my friend is insistent that there be no possible residue of any herbicides or pesticides in the mulch.   Because it would be impossible and ridiculously expensive to test these materials it pretty much seems to rule these materials out for her.  My initial reaction to her fear of  contamination was to say that any possible residue would be so small and inconsequential as to be of no concern..,  but then she reminded me of a local case where people were buying composted manure that was essentially killing their garden plants...
a quote from an article concerning the matter...,     "employees at the dairy farm sprayed an herbicide known as GrazonNext HL over a hay field. The herbicide contained a chemical called aminopyralid, which is used for weed control, but is particularly harmful to tomatoes, beans, potatoes and other vegetables.   Cows at the farm later ate the hay. The cows’ manure — still carrying the chemicals then composted the manure and sold it unpackaged to customers."
    So perhaps her fear is justified and there really is nothing cheap and easily available  and beneficial for the "organic" farmer to use as a mulch.   Personally I still think that old hay or shredded trees is the best answer but I am wondering what others think and use,....


   

I have had many years of working with toilets and have seen many different situations that have caused problems...  The most recent one that caused trouble involved a septic tank drain field that was failing...   The problem was intermittent because the water would slowly go down so that if the flushes were spaced far enough apart it would flush ok but if flushed soon after the previous one it would back up.   I have had tenants that blocked things by flushing toys, hand towels, plastic gloves, sanitary napkins...  etc.
   A common problem relates to the fact that modern toilets are designed to flush better and with less water than  older ones,,,,   Often times on older toilets deposits tend to build up and clog the weep holes that are located under the rim of the toilet.   This slows down the water that goes into the toilet when one flushes which in turn can disrupt the syphoning action that the flush depends on.  I usually check this function by quickly pouring a 5 gallon bucket full of water into the toilet bowl...  If all is well with the plumbing it should take the water away in one quick action...   If it passes this test then I usually assume that the toilet itself is the problem and needs replacing....
    From what you describe I personally would take the toilet out and run a stiff garden hose down the drain with or without water flowing through it  (preferably with it on and with someone within earshot manning the spigot)...   Without having to use special equipment this can flush away many blockages and also serves to more clearly define the problem,   A toilet is actually quite easy to remove and replace and things related to the plumbing are much easier to diagnose without the toilet in the way,..

Gerry I just saw that you had asked me a question regarding the use of galvanized pipe.  I do think that (at least with my water) the inside of pipes and tanks quickly gets covered with a mineral deposit which should probably lessen the danger of the zinc or whatever is in the galvanized coating....  Bear in mind too that galvanizing has been used in plumbing pipe for over a hundred years,...  And as for lacking an anode in the system bear in mind also that the water in the heater is only hot very infrequently when it is being used.  It is not hot constantly as is the case in the common type of tank water heaters.  and as for using a typical water heater thermostat switch to control this on demand heater I don't think it would be reactive quickly enough to be safe.  There is a lot of heat energy being put into very little water at any time ...  If the water stops flowing and the heat is still being applied it could quickly turn into dangerous steam and blow something,...  I do think that attaching a thermostatic switch to the side of it and using it as a backup to the flow switch would indeed be a good idea...