Friday, December 31, 2004

Winter lull

This afternoon I went to the woods archery hunting - it was more like walking in a deserted warehouse. Nothing much was moving, except a flock of noisy turkey nearby. If their survival depended on their stealth when roosting they would be extinct. They have about as much finesse as a plane crash as they pick a place to sleep.
The deer were not moving. They were probably waiting to feed in the warm winter night. It was a nice day for a walk.

There probably are homesteaders that hunt as a sport but I hunt for the same reasons as I garden - good quality food. I love being outside in reasonable nice weather in both cases. In the summer I walk the woods for mushrooms but will get to that in another post.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Energy Savers

I have been looking for a decent LED light that operates on a single AA battery. The one I ordered arrived the other day and it works great. Why this country doesn't move to energy saving LED lights is beyond me. Light Emitting Diode lights would save more energy than all the oil in several Alaskan wildlife refuges! Did I mention it would save money for consumers too? It's a win-win choice but not one this country is making.

Wouldn't it be great to have one day a year when we buy nothing at all except energy efficient items like LED lights, florescent lights, wind generators, water saving washers and solar cells?

Sunday, December 26, 2004

More Garden Planning

It seems that hybrids aren't the only way to go for disease resistance in tomatoes. The non-hybrid Legend tomato is resistant to the late blight fungus that devastated my crop last fall. The Legend tomato variety looks promising for my disease resistant tomato line-up for the 2005 gardening season.

Plant and seed catalogs are great for planning your garden, and each year I like to try something new. Of course, finding new sources is a great way to find different crops. The folks over at Fedco Seeds look like they have quite a selection - I will request a catalog from them to broaden my selection.

Prowling Predators

Took a walk in our surrounding woods today and found numerous coyote tracks. Coyotes were fairly rare until this year with past year's sightings of only a passing set of tracks about once a week. Apparently a pair of medium sized young adults have taken up residence nearby. They now venture quite near to the house despite our two large dogs. I'm not sure I welcome them either. While fox are shy and rarely bother anyone in our area coyotes are known to kill dogs and cats. Furthermore these predators can get quite big here in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Coyote kills of 60 pound plus animals indicate a formidable pack threat could be emerging. I wouldn't doubt that they would attack a human, perhaps a child, given the right circumstances.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Creatolution

Being on the technical end of things - my field is chemistry, I'm a bit bemused by the creationist vs evolutionist battle. If one believes in Biblical creation there still must be an "evolution" from a universe without man to a universe with man. Besides, a literal interpretation of the Bible yields a sort of magical creation - which is hardly divine. Actually the Bible shows us in many places and ways that it is not to be taken literally - its a document of spiritually not a legal or scientific text. I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the person who tells his maker that he or she is offended by the process that God used to create them!

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Planning the Planting

The seed catalogs are showing up in my mailbox now. Last year the tomatoes grew great but the blight virtually destroyed all the fruit. This year I will reluctantly give up the heirlooms and go with blight resistant hybrids.
Since we enjoy our homemade tomatoes sauce Classica and Victoria Supreme will be our paste tomatoes next season. Floralina is a new tomato that is supposed to be resistant to all three fusarium wilts. Because these diseases are in our soil this tomato will also be included in my seed order. Lastly, I like a few early tomatoes so Jetsetter, another disease resistant hybrid variety, will finish off my list.
Here is where I get some of my seeds.
You can get information here on growing your own plants.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Devolving in America

You would think in this world of information that a person could get a part for a vacuum cleaner, but, no. I need a belt for our Kenmore vacuum cleaner. Armed with the model number I headed off to the mall. At the Sears store no one could tell me what belt I needed from the model number. The books hanging in the sweeper department didn't even appear to list my vacuum's model. The department clerk said I would need the belt number listed on the vacuum's information plate.
I hope I don't need any other parts because only the belt, bag and bulb numbers are listed on the plate!

Throw Away World

It seems everything today is plastic and it breaks! My Corolla bumper is cracked from a low speed bump with a deer. At first I didn’t think any damage was done but a couple of week later I noticed a couple of cracks on the front air dam. I plan to repair it and did some Googling.
Here is what I learned: Plastic repairs can usually be made easier than metal repairs. The tough part, just like metal repairs, is getting the right repair technique for the material. Help is on the way. There are growing resources for repair of plastics. I found that for some plastics and applications it is better to use a glue approach and other times plastic welding is the way to go. I found links here, and here and here that were helpful. The big thing is to know the type of plastic and from there you can determine what method of repair would be best.
With all the plastic around us it's time to learn how to repair and keep those plastics in use rather than tossing them away.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Thinking of Spring

Seed catalogs are arriving and it's not too early to begin to plan a garden. I've about thrown away the tiller since reading the advice of Masanobu Fukuoka and Ruth Stout. Last year I dismantled our above-ground pool and installed a maintenance-free garden using Ruth Stout's approach. The ground was solid rock and hard clay. Layering sand, manure and lime, covered by spoiled hay yielded an acceptable garden despite a cold wet summer. The tomatoes grew over 6 feet tall! I have never spent so little time working in the garden - no tilling, hoeing or weeding beyond a couple of straggling weeds. Why work so hard when the garden grows great by itself.

Taking Care of Your World - Part I

The first concern of citizens must be the welfare of the country where they live. You won't prosper and grow in an environment where things are falling apart around you. People must be politically aware, however political awareness is not enough. Any fool can march to a popular theme. Knowledge is vital and must be tempered with wisdom and experience. Today, it is apparent most are too busy to be bothered with their own thoughts. TV, Nascar, Football, Soap Operas and talk shows consume time of the vital self-thought process. In the end we have a population that is steered by an elaborate consumer/political machine, all made possible because Americans, and people in general, are gullible creatures. How else can you explain Jim Jones convincing 400 people to drink cyanide laced Kool-Aid or P.T Barnum's famous observation, "A sucker is born every minute"? Announce there is a toilet paper shortage, and boom, there is one! I'll get to examples in later posts. So how can one get off this train of insanity?
The first step to becoming thought self-sufficient is to gather the pros and cons and make your own decision. This sounds easy. Yet, a huge pitfall of one-sidedness awaits the intrepid thinker. Huge money rich corporations with a powerful vested interest in your support have a harem of marketers, lobbyists, media consultants, and public relations staffs employed to guarantee your opinion matches their goals - a virtual opinion cattle chute for the masses really exists and it is growing worse. With the merging of news companies and sources the information becomes corpromoginized. Objectivity has been thrown out with the independent newspaper bathwater.
How can a body sort out the issues today? A good detective will follow the money and interests to see what really is fact whereas today are trained to follow the pointing finger of corporate media. Are genetic crops really better or do the profits and increased sales of herbicides drive Monsanto to push genetically modified organisms? Do you believe that that under-arm deodorant will make you popular?

Mull it over a while.




Saturday, December 18, 2004

First Blog Post

Greetings World Wide Websters! My Blog gets off the ground tonight.

Hopefuly, this will be a rural oriented source of information that will make lives easier, or at least less complicated and less costly!

This may be more like rural idiot's guide to everything - time will tell.

Anyone with a comment or suggestion should feel free to join in.