John Wolfram

echo minarosa wrote:I have a couple of IBC totes I was saving in hopes of taking water off of a high tunnel. The tunnel is on hold. In the meantime, I thought about building a large squared funnel about the size of the top of the IBC as a way to catch water.

A typical IBC tote has a length and width of about 45 inches. If the funnel is the size of the IBC tote, that means you'll collect 2025 cubic inches of water for every inch of rain that falls, about 8.5 gallons. That's not a lot of water, so I'd suggest focusing on getting the high tunnel up rather than building a big funnel.

Dan Boone wrote:The household member who eats deep fried frozen foods loves it for the convenience.  Just dump a pound of tater tots (or any frozen greasy potato product) or chicken nuggets or essentially anything breaded and frozen intended for deep frying) in the basket it, set it, and forget it.  (Well, maybe shake once halfway through.)  There's enough oil in most such products that they "fry" extremely well.

This past year I've gotten into deep fat frying, and I've thought about trying an air fryer instead, but it is precisely the convenience of an air fryer that concerns me. Using and cleaning a deep fryer is a complete and utter pain in the ass -- which is its main saving grace. I'm averaging using the deep fryer about once a month, but it would be tempting to make french fries, onion rings, etc. far more often with an air fryer.  

Michael Pollan said it better in his book Food Rules:

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day. The french fry did not become America's most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes -- and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they're so much work.

Assuming proper nouns are allowed:

Saab

My experience has been that persimmons are rather forgiving in terms of grafting times and techniques. Maybe not as tolerant as apples, but definitely more so than pawpaws which demand a near perfect graft.

I generally prune plums to an open center, so Spring of 2021 I'd probably make the following two cuts. Additional big branches would probably also get taken out Spring of 2022.

Chris Kott wrote:Hey folks. I have read that some people have given their houses tinfoil hats, or rather made rudimentary Faraday Cages in the plaster of their walls and ceilings. I would love to test their efficacy at blocking EMF with the aforementioned modded oscilloscope.

My old house had something like that: a metal roof and aluminum siding. Even though there was a cell tower only a block away, on more than a few occasions, I had to go outside in order to get half decent reception to make a call.

Turning down Mike's layup for that most common four letter F-word, I'll go with:

Fink

Well, the standard tires for my car are 14" tires (165/65R14) and are probably smaller than many people's spares, but I don't think that's what you were asking.

Trace Oswald wrote:The North Carolina Forest Service sells 100 persimmon trees for $60.  I don't think you will beat that price.  NC Forest Service trees
They are currently sold out, but that has been my experience buying trees from state conservation services.  You need to order first thing in the spring.  I've had very good luck with the trees I have purchased through these programs and have planted hundreds.

At least for Indiana's state nursery, things start selling out within a few days of them accepting orders. Spring 2021 orders started being accepted two weeks ago (October 1) and they are already out of Pecans, Plums, and Elderberry. On October 1st, I got busy signals for the first three hours when I was trying to phone in my order.

For pawpaws and persimmons, the state nurseries are usually going to be the best option. For example, Kentucky's state nursery sells seedling pawpaws and persimmons for about  about a dollar a tree (https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Forestry/state-nuseries-and-tree-seedlings/Pages/default.aspx).