I love animal farms as one of the greatest sedative experiences I still am moved by is any farm where I can go and play with the babies.Critters fascinate me whether they are song birds, snakes, insects to the larger horses, elk or cattle. They all talk and they are all talking to you if you just listen on the frenquency they are communicating on.
I talk to animals like Dr. Doolittle does. One of the most interesting histories Francis Parkman the acclaimed best historian ever in America was his real life experience in the Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota region with the Sioux or Lakota in that dialect is pronounced for the 'throat slitters'.
The Indian tribe he had spent the summer with were in need of meat and were having an impossible time in Wyoming finding buffalo to kill.
Parkman was part of a ceremony then in which the chief, medicine man and elders all sat down, I believe smoked the pipe and then upon gently capturing a western cricket asked it to please inform them as to where the buffalo were.
The Indians sat the cricket down and it started to go in circles and within moments it went in a specific direction. Upon that the Indians recaptured the western cricket, thanked it and set it on it's way.The Indians with Parkman were soon galloping in the direction the cricket told them, and soon enough they had made a heap plenty kill of buffalo.
While I have never spoken to a western cricket, I find that historical event fascinating as the Indians had scouted for days and found not one buffalo and within hours of talking to the cricket they had found buffalo.
As those days of Indian rapine of killing buffs by the bushel has vanished and in these 300 million American days, there is not enough game to survive on, I have been studying and formulating data for the past 10 years concerning the genetics and applications of just what works in fail safe methods of human survival.
See anyone can grow a garden or raise animals when you have a garden hose and the locals have the predators thinned out, but it is a bit different in the real world when growing a crop is the diference between starvation and eating.
The majority of people, who are Obama voters have no idea that even in the lawns which surround their homes that the soil will vary immensely. I can walk 50 feet from my front door and find heavy clay, sour soil, sweet soil (acidic and base) to light sands.
That might not sound of importance, but unless one knows that clay soils are impossible to dig in, are impossible for little plants to break through when they sprout and crack to huge fissures in a dry spell, then you might end up starving or eating feces.
That same clay though will hold moisture in droughts longer than the sand which will dry out quickly, but plants sprout and grow nicely in that medium, providing of course it rains or you like paying a huge water bill.
I have experiment with everything from raised beds to turned tractor tires to grow plants in, and in the end, they all dry out too quickly and take too much water. The best solution is to in certain cases like succulent vegetables of broccolli, cauliflower and melons is to put down black plastic, an irrigation hose, or allowing a trench to pool water to the roots and very good results will occur.
The heirlooms will not behave as the horrid hybirds. Heirlooms though are superior in flavor and will be niche oriented to certain regions. There are thousands of tomatoe varieties in this world and I have experimented with numbers of them. Some will need pampering, some will not, but all will need being started indoors and all need heat and moisture to produce a flavorful fruit.
I personally like acidic varieties from the green flavor of my childhood in a non hybrid Big Boy to the neo Krim from Russia which is an interesting complex flavor.
Paste tomatoes do not produce well in my locality, and yet, I was blessed to find a Roma Rio Grande last year from Texas which grows and produces like a weed.
I'm a firm believer in KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, for all plants. Cabbage, beets, carrots, Amish snap peas, pole beans, turnips, chard are the historical crops the grandparents planted, because in most cases they produced a mountain of produce which insects did not readily eat up or weather extremes destroy.
Stockade panels which cost around 20 dollars per 16 foot panel are your God send for gardening. The taller almost 5 feet high panels work wonders on pole beans and snap peas while one of the hog panel 3 feet high makes a nice gate to enter in and out of in keeping cats from deficating, dogs from digging and most rodents from bothering in coons.A mother cottontail rabbit last year decided my garden was a perfect place to have her nest of babies. I wondered about my occupant in knowing how they ate garden plants, but for a month of my checking on our babies when I weeded and their squeeking when I would lift the grass of and then quickly put it back, I never lost a plant.
The bunny worked out terms in she never ate my plants nor did her babies and I kept them safe from cats.
For most people, the mid season varieties are going to be your best result for production as short season crops in potatoes only produce a few fruit and long seaon always has the hassle of insects to too much or too little moisture.
I prefer in potatoes the heirlooms. If you can find them, the European varieties which are yellowish in flesh are the difference between the blah of store purchased tomatoes to a garden variety.
Albys Gold or Agria is a hard to find variety, but being midseason it is equal to a fantastic long season German variety called Butterball which is sweet and wonderful in a variety of ways.
The American standbys though of Red Pontiac and the wonderful North Dakota variety, Norland are that earthy, watery type which keep you alive until spring.
I have a strong affection for a River John Blue potatoe which is impossible to get. It produces better than the Canada Blue which is sold everywhere that responds to those heavy wet clay soils quite well.
Another weed of a variety is Slovenian Crescent which is not the most flavorful but it does grow very well. I was fortunate in rubbing shoulders with the Canadian government on genetics during my tenure at that phase of my life in having access to their heritage varieties for testing.
For an adventure this past week, I stopped by a local's farm to bother them. Every person reading this would be wide eyed if they saw how some people live to their content. To put it simply, the barn was in better shape than the house the people were living in.
It was a great delight though as I was dealing with an expert in goats as I have only had experiene with animals which will kill you if they get hyper. It was the most wonderful of times in this expert showing me how to trim goat hooves, dehorn them, feed them and all their little million dollar information they had from existential experience..........sort of like the above if readers were paying attention as there is nothing like someone in their trials and errors gleaning all the information you need to make your ventures more successful.
In any case, I saw kids who were bitting my hands non stop, a poor old doe so pregnant she looked like death would be welcome as if a mosquito bit her she might pop and the experience that while goats are "loud" the first time you see them, I soon enough was tone deaf to them and found it soothing.
These goats did not stink and they had like 50 of them with 3 males downwind. They did state though that goats need to be around each other, but never to run the males with the females as the goat scent will then rub off.
Goats like most animals have scent glands. Their's are by their horns. Some people will say elk stink too as they during the rut will urninate all over themselves and wallow to an intoxicating aroma, which is not so fun in skinning them.
Deer have scent glands on their hind legs, but if you leave them alone, there is no bother.
The reason in mentioning goats is goats are small and for the most part can not kill you if in a hyper mode. They take up a small space which with stockade panels one can keep them safe from lovely PETA coyotes from killing them as your family members.
They will produce almost a gallon of milk a day for 10 months and as I have been experimenting with goat milk, I find it superior to cow milk, it freezes very well and it really does not have any different flavor.
It must be Obama voters who produced the fables on goats, as goats are no more bother than cattle in smell or milk. The key to all milk production is the milk tastes exactly like what you are feeding on. Human milk will be spicey if the mother is eating Mexican and the baby will react. So if you feed barley, oats or flax screenings for a grain ration with good alfalfa or a sweet grass your milk will mirror dairy cattle operations.
Interestingly, these survivalists are relating the same things I have often in corn and soybeans produce toxic results in goats, as I have noted in pet food and people food. Indigestion occurs and the animals hooves grow like some plague.
See people, you become what you eat. If you are eating hybrids geared for fast growth, are poison to insects and thrive eating herbicides, the body reacts in deathly ill ways.
I read an amusing quote this past month on this subject in people always complain about the cost of good REAL non hybrid natural foods (I stay away from organic as that term is so overused now it has no purpose.), the quote being:
Complaining about the price of food which doesn't make you sick? Have you priced hospital care lately?
With that the sun is slowly setting in the west and I have prayers to render into God things, but chickens are wonderful little assets in 1 rooster and a half dozen hens will be loads of interesting things which do not eat a great deal either in small pens that you can move around so they eat grass, insects and a little grain.
I prefer hens which set, which are difficult to come by now as artificial sex is how most chickens are reproduced now. They can be everything from Dutch Kraienkopps to Orpingtons to the Rocks, all weighing from 5 pounds to 11 pounds as my rather uncivil Brahma rooster does.
The thing is hens which set on eggs, means you do not require electricity or an incubator to hatch them. They work while you play.
I like Muscovy ducks too which are from South America, the colored ones are prettier than the white, but they will scratch you horridly, but produce loads of ducklings to eat.
The reason I do not mention sheep is they are stupid and get sick easily, cattle are too big for most people to get injured by as they have no idea how to handle things, pigs can be dangerous and are disease carriers, geese produce too little for the amount invested, ducks will eat you out of house and home, turkeys are too big, guineas although the most delicous of foul are hard to keep unless you have a large area as most of the anal retentive Obama voters will complain about the noise and some odor they think they smell.
The same people who can breathe exhaust, reek of cat urine on their clothes, look like they are wearing cat fur from all the hair on their clothes and live by a sewer smelling human waste like it is perfume are the same people who complain about cigarette smoke and some livestock "odor".
Oh well perhaps God will thin things out in a short time, but until then if you are in the mood beyond having a couple of hundred pounds of good flour in plastic bags with a few bay leaves to keep the weavels out, some rice likewise, a little American garden, a few stock panels, some tin panels and 2 x 4's for critter shelters and maybe a few goats and chickens might make life a great deal more pleasant than the incessant propaganda of Obama saving everyone by killing millions of babies or stealing your retirement funds.
It's all in the larnin'.
nuff said.
agtG
