Timothy Norton

I have added a new choice for "Multiple times a day".

With both people in my house having worky jobs, dishes tend to pile up before we get to them.

I may wipe out my workhorse cast irons on the daily, but the dishes tend to accumulate and we wash them in batches.

[applepoll]

While I cannot speak to musical instruments, I remember when I worked in an Operating Room that there was sutures referred to as catgut.

A bit of research indicates that some of them are in fact made of collagen sourced from ruminant intestine.

I was curious about the process and found a website that details it - https://shop.gamutmusic.com/pages/making-gut-strings?srsltid=AfmBOooy9WgB31OmH2zoflGvB7g4TtBel8gwyuO8BoIlUzfzXd7DNA_9

Do you have access to canning jars?

You are essentially water bath canning your wheat grains. If you use canning materials appropriately, the risk of exploding glass will be minimized.

A mess of greens.

I'm not going to lie, I'm not so sure how this phrase even came into being.

How did the greens become a mess? Is a mess a measurement now or are the greens disorganized?

The plot thickens.

This is going to sound a little crazy, but bear with me.

Spin the egg.

Boiled eggs spin REALLY easily because everything is solidified inside the shell.

Non-boiled eggs are sluggish and wobbly because everything is gel-like.

Spin the egg!

With the extended period of especially bitter cold, my hens have been laying less and less. I made the (painful) decision to purchase some eggs from my local grocery and was really surprised!

I got a dozen 'brown' eggs and they were beautiful. They had a reddish hue to the brown shell instead of the creamy light brown that I am usually accustomed to. For the folks who keep chickens, I think the closest I could compare it to would be similar to the color of a copper maran.

This makes me wonder if there might be more variety in breeds appearing in egg producing outfits. I still laugh when I sell eggs (when I have them) and people think I have dyed the eggs! Chickens are really incredible.

What is Lignin?

Lignin is a complex structural organic polymer found in a plant's cell walls which happens to be carbon rich. Lignin provides strength/rigidity to the plant and resists decay. Up to thirty percent of a tree's mass can be made up solely by lignin. Fun fact, the 'old book smell' found in used bookstores comes from the presence of lignin!

Examples of lignin rich materials (Average Lignin %)

Alfalfa (34%)

Softwoods (29%)

Coconut Coir (35%)

While lignin is resistant to breakdown, a few organisms have specialized to specifically target and breakdown lignin. My personal favorite lignin decomposer is white rot fungus. The fungi secretes substances such as lignin peroxidase, manganese peroxidase and laccase which breaks down the lignin and unlocks cellulose which the white rot consumes. Once lignin is broken down into simpler components, the composting process can further break down the materials into something bioavailable for plants to take advantage of. White rot fungi does not thrive in hot composting processes so it is better to utilize a 'cool' aerobic composting design.

To help encourage lignin breakdown, grinding/shredding the material can help. Increasing the surface area of the material allows more material to breakdown in the composting process. Layering lignin rich materials with moist nitrogenous materials would also help. It is recommended to maintain aerobic conditions to encourage the lignin-hungry microbes to multiply.

Source

Nancy, Your last photo made me smile seeing how green your plot is compared to the brown and tan in the background. What a statement it is about your land stewardship.