David Fraleigh

I have a couple of family members who regularly buy the rotisserie chickens from Walmart.  When they do they give me the "remains" which is the gristle, bones, fat etc.  that is left over.  I put it all through a hand powered meat grinder which grinds it up -- bones and all...  This I spoon into ice cube trays and freeze...  I end up with about twenty ice cube shaped chunks that I store in a bag in the freezer...  I microwave them for 1 minute to defrost them and add them one at a time to Yogi's meal...  He invariably eats the whole meal and licks the bowl...  He never used to do that ..

For fifty or so years I have taken care of the three wells on the property,..  They are typical (for this area)-- 100' deep, 4" diameter wells with 1 hp submersible pumps,  Every few years one or another of them gives me trouble.  It is often times the pressure switch (ants like to commit suicide on them) or else is a problem with the above-ground control box,...  bad capacitor or relay switch.   Anyway I generally have a spare control box on hand and replacing it usually fixes things.  Yesterday I had to do just that and thank God it fixed it...    I just went online to order a replacement control box to have on hand and was shocked at the prices ... the ones I would gett used to be around $50 for a control box but is now $150...   Then I saw that there actually is quite a range of different prices for different brand ones...  I saw that there is actually a Chinese made one for around $50 and it left me wondering whether it is an inferior product...   So my question is,..  what do other people do about these 1hp submersible control boxes... Has anyone had any success with the cheaper ones?  How different can a capacitor and a relay switch be?  or am I just wasting my money on them...  Thanks

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,....