Phil Stevens

Jen Fulkerson wrote:Thanks Phil that was a nice way to let me know I messed up. I was on my lunch break and trying to be quick and posted pictures of an eggplant.
I fixed it. I'm sure I have light pink hollyhocks, but can't find any pictures of that one. I will be sure to post a new picture this summer.
Sorry everyone, my bad.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:I planted a flower seed mix several years ago in a bed just outside of my veggie garden. Hollyhocks grew and bloomed the first year (I think some varieties bloom in the first year, and some bloom in year two) I have had hollyhocks ever since. I love them, but they have become a kind of weed. I let them grow where I can, and pull the rest.

You have a very healthy-looking eggplant there. Keep the snails and slugs away from it and you should be well rewarded.

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:I've been debating about sheep. Parasites are such a problem here that, in spite of regular worming with the recommended wormers for our area, I've had high losses in my goats. There are several breeds of sheep that are highly parasite-resistant; most of them are hair sheep, but the Gulf Coast Native/Florida Cracker do have fleeces. I'd like to get away from having to use chemical wormers, so I'm considering switching out the few goats I have left for one of these sheep breeds. Personally, I'm inclined towards the hair sheep for my situation, but the Gulf Coast Native/Florida Cracker sheep would be worth considering if you want wool.

Rotational grazing is essential, as Thekla pointed out. Also biochar has shown to be a great way to reduce or even eliminate intestinal parasites in sheep. Drench resistance is a massive problem in this country, especially in sheep, and it's pushing a lot of farmers to the brink.

We've run trials here in the North Island feeding cattle and sheep biochar at rates typically around 1-2% of dry matter intake, and done fecal egg counts. After 60 days of feeding, the egg counts dropped to near zero in the undrenched test mobs. The weight gain increase was as much as 25%, which is probably a result of better feed conversion efficiency as well as not "feeding the worms."

I feed it to my sheep on a regular basis, adding a little salt and molasses for palatability. They prefer small chunks, up to about 1 cm max, and dusty material makes them sneeze so I screen out the fines.

Sarah - Nearly all pallets these days are made from heat-treated wood. This is the least expensive means of making a moderately durable unit that won't have bugs or pathogens onboard to cause biosecurity issues in another country. You will usually see an imprint or brand somewhere on one of the crosspieces...look for HT.

Very occasionally you might come across a pallet that has been fumigated or (even more rarely) made from chemically-treated timber. The former is hard to spot, but the latter would have a different mark and no HT brand. Fumigation would be used if goods are imported from a quarantined region and could be a trigger for asthma.

I've got a little percolator that goes on camping trips, and I use the eyeball method. When the liquid sloshing through the glass thingie on top looks like proper coffee, it's ready.

My guess is that even though your weather has been abnormally warm and dry, the feedstock moisture content was higher than optimal. I've had lots of TLUD burns fail or go smoky because of this. Once it was a bag of wood pellets that had been rained on and the person who loaded the barrel had poured them in anyway, then poured a nice dry bag on top. The burn started off great, but as soon as the combustion front reached the ever so slightly damp layer it was game over.

If you can fix it with a bit of paper or cardboard then it's not too bad. What is probably behind it is that extra load of water vapour in the flue gas is condensing and stalling the flow up the stack, so getting the extra push solves the symptoms enough to keep going.

It's happened in many places. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a result of sodbusting. In China, the Loess Plateau was stripped of its grassland and cultivated for grain, and the same thing followed. If I head to the beaches west of my place, I pass through a large area of low dunes and you can see lots of blowouts in spots where road scars or overgrazing have "skinned" a dune. Once the root network is gone, the topsoil follows and after that the sand just gets up and goes.

I'm not sure I know of anything that fits all of those criteria, but one thing you do see a lot in temperate deciduous woodlands are bulbs, like bluebells and wild alliums. They take advantage of the early spring sun before the trees are fully leafed out, do their thing, and then go dormant when it gets shady. They're not nitrogen fixers but all that decaying foliage must contribute a bit right around the time the trees can use it.

My vote would be for a skyline or a funicular railway. Either one could have two cars so that the weight of the downhill one provides most of the pull needed to get the other one up. You could get really clever by incorporating a water tank in the cars and a way to adjust water levels remotely.

I've got to hand it to the World In Maps crew for placing NZ in the South Australian Bight. That's a new one. Usually we just get left off world maps (along with the rest of the Pacific Islands).

The dark skies one is a bit sobering.