Steve Zoma

I mow my abutting place and for free and without acknowledgement. The last two places I lived were next churches so I mowed their lawn for them and plowed snow from the driveway.

Here my other neighbor is 87 years old and while she has family, they are busy lobstering so I will mow it for her. I have a zero turn mower so it’s not a big deal.

Most places it’s appreciated, kind of like being “zuchanied” in the summer. It’s where you go into a store and come back out and a neighbor had an abundance of veggies and thought you might want so.

Myself, I don’t see the price of food increasing by ten times in the near future. On principal, and historically, at least here in the United States, it is extremely doubtful the government would let that happen.

I say this because I am well versed in agriculture. My family has both teeny-tiny dairy farms, and yet also into big agriculture where everyone reading this has food in the pantry from a food company my Great Grandfather many times removes started. Last year that company, which own over a hundred food brands, made 4 billion in profit. Billion was not a misspelling.

On the small side of things, the government tells my grandfather 6 months in advance what the price of milk will be. They cannot tell what prices will be on many things, but on some food staples they dictate the price. They historically have not cared if millions of small farmers have gone out of business because of low food prices, they will let small farms fail just to keep staple food prices low. Milk is one such commodity.

On the bigger side of agriculture, our stock has always split during a recession. Why? Because during boom years of the economy, stock prices look putrid compared to high-yield stock prices, but in recessions, when those high-yield stock prices are down, food companies stock price suddenly looks good. It is simple phycology. To investors, 8% looks putrid when high yield is making 12%, but when high-yield tanks and is making 3%, then suddenly 8% looks really good. That is when they pour money into our company and we have to split the stock price. So what I am noting is, the price of food does NOT fluctuate that much historically. It does some during high inflation periods, (1970’s/2020’s) but as we saw in eggs last year, if the price gets too high the US Gov steps immediately in to drop the price.

Ultimately, we are a country governed by supply and demand. Should the food supply get bad, and it will get REALLY bad for 3-1/2 years, but that is a longs ways out, as a country we would simply recoil back and stop feeding the world and focus on ourselves.

This too was historically done. It is why so many farmers went out of business in the 1980’s. Ronald Regan knew the USSR did not have enough food to feed itself and so it used food to cause its collapse. It had two choices, feed itself by buying US food, or pay for weapons. The America Farmers won the Cold War, but unfortunately many paid for that win by losing their farms because of flooded markets and low food prices. Many taking their own lives because of it.

Rest in Peace my fellow farmers. Its been 40 years but some of us still have not forgotten the price you paid for cheap food prices.

If you can’t beat them… feed them! 😀

Almost everyone feeds the deer on this island, but two low fences deter deer better than one tall one. They can’t jump and land over two fences.

I’ve mowed the sides of the road for years and when I saw a do not now sign I respected it.

I still had people complain but they have passed laws now that make impeding a minimal worker a major offense. Most times it was on their side of things as here the town owns 33 ft from the center of the roadway.

I do not recommend putting in steel bars because that would be considered a Fuo or Fixed unmovable Object. If the mower gets destroyed on town property YOU WILL BE PAYING for the repair.
Worse yet, if a car crashes and the occupant is impaled you are going to prison for negligence causing death.

Toothpicks work in screw holes.

I had a door latch where the screw hole had been wallowed out and would no longer hold a screw. I dipped some toothpicks in white glue and put several into the hole tapping them tight with a hammer. Then I cut off the toothpicks flush. The screw then gripped perfectly.

It works because the screw wedges the toothpicks against one another.

The toothpicks cost me $3 but having a functioning door handle on my front door is priceless

Steve Zoma wrote:I am building my wife a jewelry box out of flame birch. It was going well then I hit a few snags and so I put it aside for now but need to get back to building it again.

Here is a picture of that flame birch jewelry box

When I was logging there was hardwood for the paper mills and hardwood for firewood buyers. The firewood people were demanding but rightfully so. The trees had to be no bigger than a foot on the butt, clean and thus iterated through the mud. They had to be of the higher btu trees like yellow birch, beech or maple and not ash, basswood or popil. Tops had to be no smaller than 4 inches. And for this I got $20 more per cord.

The paper mills would take anything up to 20 inches. Anything over that was typically log anyway and went to a sawmill, but if it couldn’t it was left in the wood for it, just no market for it.

But struggling to put huge rounds of wood on a splitter is something few people do. Most people want to split their wood four ways or in half. Breaking your back to lift huge pieces of wood makes no sense, nor does whittling down a huge chunk to lots of smaller sizes.

But this is in the Northeast.

I am building my wife a jewelry box out of flame birch. It was going well then I hit a few snags and so I put it aside for now but need to get back to building it again.

Since our bodies are essentially batteries I have tried to maintain a better potassium/sodium balance since that is what generates our electrical pulses for our brain and heart.

I also hike daily 7 to 9 miles per day and whenever possible hike barefoot so I am grounded. But “whenever possible” is a pretty vague term because it was windy and raw out yesterday at 34 degrees (1 degree celcious) but while the trail was a boring, it was a mowed path so I hiked it barefoot. It was 2.86 miles.

I am okay on most forest paths, board walk paths without chicken wire, and smooth bedrock, but cannot hike on graveled paths due to sharp rocks. I typically hike at least a half mile per day barefoot so I am grounded, or stopping for lunch I might go barefoot so I am grounded while I pause for a lunch break. So I ground for 20-30 minutes per day typically.

I seem to sleep better and my joints are not so painful from it.