My take on McCain's VP

The more I look at Palin's credentials, the more I begin to like her. She's not just better than Obama/Biden, she's better than McCain!

She's avoided business entanglements in oil-rich Alaska, cut government spending in her home state by eliminating graft projects (bridge to nowhere) and selling the government jet for a profit. Her husband quit his 17 year job when BP entered into negotiations with his wife for the natural gas pipeline in Alaska. Michelle Obama got a 160% raise within months of her husband's election to the Illinois Senate.

She fired the entire Board of Agriculture and Conservation due to conflicts of interest. She's pro-life, even giving birth to a Down's Syndrome baby that she knew was Down's Syndrome prior to birth. And (top this Biden) ... she's a lifetime member of the NRA and enjoys moose-hunting but believes in cleaning her own kills.

She's better than all of them. Palin for President!

Throwing in the towel

I participate in a couple of internet forums, but I'm giving them all up. I'm sick and tired of trying to debate freely and having it turned into an argument with people who can't punctuate, capitalize, spell, or think. I'm tired of blind obedience to ideologies. I'm tired of adherence to unproven theories presented by amateur scientists with no evidence.

I'm tired of it all. I don't know why I even do it. Nobody asked me to do it. It's not a chosen calling. It's not a necessary thing. If I took all the words I'd squandered on public internet forums I could have written fifteen books by now.

Mister Toad's Wild Ride

While tilling up a (former) row of fingerling potatoes in preparation for planting the winter crop of carrots, a large fat garden toad hopped out of a patch of weeds and right in front of my tiller. I saw him and stopped but unfortunately did not disengage the blades before he sought the dubious safety of the underside of the tiller. Dirt and grass shot out from around the sides as I moved the tiller forward, mentally calculating what churned-up toad parts would do to help benefit the soil, when out shot the toad. He was forcefully ejected by the dirt the blades were throwing and went flying out to land on his back in between the rows where he laid there covered in dirt and stunned. I checked him out and he was apparently unhurt. After a moment he rolled over, blinked a few times in warty fashion, and hoped back off into the patch of weeds where (assumably) he now has a great story to tell Badger and Mole.

Making a Mockery of Faith

Watching the DNC tonight again on C-SPAN. From the "nun" with the gaudy earrings who came out to deliver the benediction and then just said, "Let us" instead of "Let us pray" to the lady at the end who hastily added a "God Bless" when she dismissed the group, all their trappings of faith seem to not come easily to these people.

They're really struggling this year to appeal to religious voters. I'm sorry, but their policies are so staunchly anti-Christian that they shouldn't appeal to any of us. Nor should McCain's. This is the same crap the Democrats bashed Bush for (and I could find plenty to bash Bush on) early in his term ... about his constant expressions of faith. They claimed it violated the separation between church and state. By the way, that so called separation has never been written down anywhere. It's not a law.

There's no reason we couldn't have a true man of faith as our leader. It just isn't Obama.

Coming Times

Last night I watched the Democratic National Convention on C-SPAN. Well, just enough of it to see Hillary Clinton's speech and the two clowns preceeding her. As usual, she didn't say much of import but the other two guys did. Essentially the way the Democrats like to do it is that the main candidates say nothing but that they support the platform and then the supporting cast proselytizes about what the platform actually is.

I heard a whole lot about children and how all of America has a stake in tomorrow's kids. I heard a whole lot about how it "takes a village" to do various things. I heard a lot about each individual's responsibilities to the community and nation.

Folks, let me tell you ... this is the heart of fascism. At its core, fascism is nothing more than the state unifying all citizens to work towards the goals of the state. Forget what you think you know about fascism; what we were taught in school that all fascists look like Hitler was wrong. Hitler had his own ideology and only claimed fascism to get the fascists to join him.

These people do not stop. They started when fascism became popular in Europe and FDR came and brought some of it to America. They were happily calling it fascism then until the death camps were revealed, then they began calling it something else. They called it liberalism. Unfortunately, just as many Republicans as Democrats are fascist these days, having been brought up to believe that big government can and should control all elements of our lives.

They never stop working to forward this agenda, and last night I heard it on television with thousands of people applauding. Obama is fascism's new prophet. Dark days are ahead for the Americans who still believe in the rights of individuals and freedom. Whether McCain wins, or Obama wins ... America loses.

The Bees Knees

Since we're at the end of the honey season I thought I'd go out there and check on things.

This year I turned two hives into five. I expected a little less honey in the long run, having split my hives, but as it turned out I'm getting about enough honey to fill a jar or two. Not much at all. Unless the bees ramp up production rapidly, I think it's going to be a wash this year.

Of the 3 new hives, one died (never really took off) and the other one is on my friend's farm and it'll be his honey. I just did the split for him. So I'm closing out the year with three hives.

One hive (the Italians) has never produced any honey at all. I'm thinking those bees are just for pollination and next year I may move them down to the garden area. They don't draw on the plastic or wax frames and just don't seem to build up a population very well. Lazy bees. The split that died came from that hive. Same problem. Low population and eventually the hive fell apart.

The German hive has always produced honey, though this year they only gave me FOUR frames worth. By comparison, last year I got 10. That's enough for a little honey, but not much. It's hardly worth dragging out the extractor for. However, they did give me a brand new hive that I didn't pay for, and I'm positioned well for next year so I'm pleased.

Cartoon Roundup

Praise God and Pass the Taters

I just dug up one of the smaller rows of fingerling potatoes. It filled a 5 gallon bucket. I've got 6 more rows that length, and then 3 rows of winter potatoes twice that length.

God has blessed us surely.

The Legal Drinking Age as Government Tyranny

Imagine the nightmare scenario which happened in California last year. An elderly man behind the wheel of a large automobile became confused and disoriented and when approaching a crowd of pedestrians at a street market, he inadvertently hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, plowing into the crowd. Several were killed and many more hurt.

Only imagine how it could have also proceeded. An outraged public, armed with the statistic that a significant number of traffic incidents are caused by senior citizens, then pressure Congress in an election year restricting the ability to drive an automobile to citizens under the age of sixty. Except for the powerful lobbying might of the AARP, this could happen in any state.

Armed with the statistic that a significant number of alcohol related traffic deaths were caused by teenagers, the powerful mommy lobby (MADD) successfully convinced the government to pass legislation which essentially bribes states to raise their legal drinking age to 21, thus curtailing the liberties of LEGAL ADULTS from the age of 18-20. These are legal adults who are required to pay taxes, eligible to vote, subject to military conscription, and in the majority of cases live outside the supervision and means of other adults (their parents).

This is a clearcut case of legalized age discrimination. If young adults could manage to rally into a voting bloc the same as senior citizens do then they'd be a powerful force and this would no doubt be overturned. After all, this is one of the prime demographics for advertisers and corporations and Barack Obama's candidacy has shown now that it's also a potentially prime demographic for politicians.

It's time this law was challenged. I say remove the incentives for states to raise their drinking ages past otherwise legal adulthood and right this wrong. It should not even be put to a vote, for would you want to enforce the tyranny of the majority will on any aspect of YOUR adult life? Would you want any more of your legal freedoms challenged and put to a vote, subject to a majority rule?

Got You in the End

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine in a small town. His father-in-law owned a small laundry there for a number of years and then wanted to sell it and do something else. He couldn’t find anyone to buy it but a man approached him and said he wanted to rent it and run a laundry. The father-in-law thought that was a great idea for him but a bad idea for the guy. “Wouldn’t you rather buy it outright and not pay rent every month? Own your own business instead of renting?” The man assured him that he would not. So every month the father-in-law collected rent and lease on the property and equipment. He made a good portion of what he’d made running the laundry, and for doing nothing. It was a great deal. He couldn’t imagine the stupidity of the other man in making this foolish business decision.

Except last year the man renting the laundry sent in notice that he was finished, paid off his lease and left town. Quickly. No problem, thought the father-in-law. He still owned the property and all the equipment and could liquidate that and make even more money. Except shortly afterwards the city and state showed up and presented him with a bill and fines for the environmental pollution that had been done due to running the laundry there for almost fifteen years and not following proper city codes. The former operator, who had disappeared into the wilderness and left the state, was out of the jurisdiction of the pursuers but the father-in-law, as owner of the property was not. The cleanup bills and fines are looking to be more than three times the money the father-in-law had collected in rent, combined with the price of both the laundry property AND his nice home. He’s probably going to lose all three.

I don’t know that there’s a moral of the story here, other than perhaps figuring out exactly what you are responsible for in life and making sure it’s being taken care of.

Why Flock Dynamics Matter

On a forum I participate in, an oft-discussed topic has to do with chicken social behavior. People want to keep 7 or 8 roosters for 10 tens because “they look nice” or some other reason. Sadly, this isn’t the way it works.

Chickens don’t pair up. They don’t mate for life. The order of business for a flock of chickens is about one rooster for every 10 or so hens. A good rooster should protect the flock, watch for danger, help the hens to find food, and provide an anchor point for social order. You don’t need to teach a good rooster these things. They just do it. Almost everything a chicken does is hardwired. There’s very little “onboard memory”, to use some geek terminology there.

We’ve had our share of bad roosters, and each of them is dead and gone. The rooster we have now does an excellent rooster job. He should. He eats our food and enjoys our protection and provides no eggs or meat in return. So he’d best provide some serious flock management! And Stonewall delivers. He keeps the hens together, for the most part, and finds them food. Unfortunately sometimes he finds them food where we’d prefer they not be eating (such as our tomato garden.) He gives the warning call when he sees danger and overall does his best to manage the hens, though sometimes the older biddies are downright unmanageable. I don’t blame him … I can’t manage them either.

If you don’t have a good rooster, or run with too many roosters, then you’re disrupting the normal way of chicken life. You are not practicing good animal husbandry. Trust me on this one. It will make your life much simpler if you try to let your livestock exist as close to the natural method as possible. It reduces your management problems, increases production, and makes for happier chickens.

Deciding What to Raise

So in the past two years, all I’ve raised and grown has been centered mostly around eggs and vegetables. There’s been no grain production and minimal animal protein production. (We ate a couple of roosters, but that’s it.)

In planning for this coming year though, we’re looking at expanding somewhat. In addition to the dairy from Heidi, we’ll be having meat from the ducks and possibly some more young goats. However there is still the question of space. We have 5 acres, but that’s not much in the grand scheme of things. How many calories can you pull off of 5 acres?

First off, grain crops are out. With gluten and corn allergies, there’s few grains we can really make use of and for the most part they either require a lot of time and effort to harvest or expensive machinery. I will, however, put in some production for animal feed. I want to become more self-sustaining in that regard. Feed corn is good. You can plant a large patch of that and then just pull the ears off and let them dry. An entire ear can be thrown to the goats or chickens, or you can grind the whole thing up once it’s dried. Chickens convert grain-to-meat at 2-1 ratios, while cattle convert grain-to-meat at 7-1. Weirdly enough, carp have the best conversion ratio at 1.5-1, but we run into the whole pond thing again. Carp are hard to free-range.

A pig is completely out. Kat is afraid of them, which I’m afraid may be mostly my fault from telling pig horror stories. I’m a little leery of a pig too, since I have small children around who could get hurt. (Pigs have been known to eat toddlers and babies.) Plus there’s the whole food thing. While we could feed a pig easily enough on garden waste and table scraps, we can also feed those same things to chickens and goats. A pig eats what people eat, so it’s a very inefficient system. I prefer eating animals who convert non-food to food. It seems to me to be more sustainable, and biblical.

I might try to find a steer or two in the spring and put them out on pasture. I’ve certainly got the space and the grass for them. In the half-acre I’ve had Heidi and the 5 goats grazing, they’ve barely managed to make a dent in the grass availability since we got them. There’s still a whole series of other pastures I could turn them out to if I needed that one to recharge.

All in all, I think I’m going to plow up a portion of that back field and plant about an acre of potatoes. We’ve done very well with potatoes this year and I think that they’re probably one of the easier plants to take care of. Plus the deer and other varmints tend to stay out of them. Aside from that, I don’t know what else to plant yet.

Some Strange Things I Know About

This has been a weird year. A sheriff in DeWitt county (where I have a whole lot of relatives still) filmed a chupacabra running down a road. Some unknown sea monster washed up in Montauk and then the remains were inexplicably lost or stolen. UFO sightings are being reported by air traffic controllers at O’Hare International. And now two good old boys from Georgia have shown television crews photos of a dead Sasquatch stuffed in their freezer.

People seem reluctant to believe anything unless they have evidence, and then when they do have evidence they still like to disbelieve. Take the air traffic control sightings of the UFO at O’Hare. Four controllers saw it, and about a half-dozen ground crew. Nobody knows what it was but yet the public scoffs at this. I don’t think people are going to believe in UFO’s until one lands on the White House lawn and holds a press conference.

The Sasquatch in the freezer may turn out to be a hoax. It certainly sounds like a hoax. However, there are still many weird accounts of the Sasquatch that can’t be dismissed so easily. There’s been DNA evidence taken from reported Sasquatch hairs that can’t be matched to any known animal but yet are distinctly primate in origin. Ancient Indian tribes along the Columbian river basin (the ancient stomping grounds of Bigfoot) have carved stone heads and ancient artifacts dating back to 1800 BC which show a distinctly Sasquatch character. Experts who have analyzed the famous Patterson film have testified that if it really was a man in a suit, it was a suit designed by someone whose ability far surpassed that of the day in which it was took, and even now would take a crew of puppeteers almost a year to build and film. Biologists watching the same film have stated that the musculature and skeleton movements indicate that of a real creature and not a man in a suit. There may actually be a population of Sasquatch out there in the wild somewhere. I don’t blame them for not wanting to be seen by people. Humans are dangerous. Run, Bigfoot, run!

On friezes in a temple in Thailand dating back over a thousand years there are stone carvings of dinosaurs. Not mythical representations, but actual carvings that any eight year old boy today could point out by name. Native tribes in Africa have indicated that there may be some dinosaur remnants still living in the dark jungles and swamps. Why not? We pulled an extinct Paleozoic fish out of the depths of the ocean. Giant squid have washed up on beaches and been filmed at depths. Are we so sure that we’ve covered all the land masses thoroughly?

There are ancient cities miles off the coast of India that have just been discovered. Scientists tell us that the last time those cities would have been above the sea level was previous to the last Ice Age. This throws into confusion all we know about human history and would seem to indicate that civilization is not linear. In other words, we didn’t start at cavemen and work upwards to rocket ships. There may have been a rise and fall, or any number of them. The ancient pyramids in Egypt … they actually become LESS technologically and mathematically advanced as they get newer. Shouldn’t pyramid builders actually learn more as they go, not less? Unless of course they were an advanced civilization in decline.

The world is weirder than we know. Humans were not given all knowledge, in God’s plan. He left us plenty of mysteries to figure out. While I continue to be a skeptic, I do find myself willing to consider the possibilities.

“The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.”

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26231181/

 

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you

 

(My apologies to Sting)

Books I want to read ...

… by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Are they any good?

Federal Hate Crimes

http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/

 

This 19 year old kid, who is seriously misguided, is going to jail for 4 months under some Federal hate crimes legislation. I don’t recall all the hoopla, but I do remember that there was some sort of nonsense in Jena last year. Apparently this kid hung a noose on the tailgate of his truck and drove past some protestors who were there exercising their free speech. So now he’s in prison and a felon for exercising HIS free speech. He didn’t threaten any individual. True, the sentiment I believe he was trying to suggest is a disturbing one, but there should be freedom of speech in any and all cases.

Federal hate crimes should not exist under the Constitution. A crime is a crime. The thought or motive behind it is irrelevant.

Winter is Coming

All the old heads keep talking about this approaching winter being one of those 100 year killing winters. They point to mysterious signs that ought to make it very clear … thick down on geese, or thick fur on field mice. For that matter, the mice moving into the house earlier in the year from the fields. A few days ago I saw a flock of geese headed south. In August.

I’m having a hard time getting the fireplace set up and ready to go. We’re supposed to meet with a brickmason on Tuesday of next week. That’s not going to work out though, I’m betting. I’m going to have to reschedule. Which pushes that project even further behind. By winter I want to either have a woodstove or a fireplace in this house, at any cost. It could be a matter of survival.

Additional winter projects include building a new chicken coop much close to the house. Walking halfway across the property to take care of the birds last year was problematic. This year I want a coop closer to the house (in the backyard) and more insulated to protect them from the cold. I also need to get the electrical socket out on the light pole looked at to see why it’s stopped working. Everything around my place seems to be in a state of “stopped working”. I’d also like to get the ground cleared so that I can close the front barn door properly. With 2 goats and a cow inside it ought to be a lot warmer inside there, probably even as warm as it is inside the house. Maybe I can even get an electrician to fix the lights out there in the barn while we’re at it. Expenses expenses.

Tomato Pile

Every day I go down the tomato rows and see what’s ripened or near ripened. I’ve confined the chickens to keep them out of there, after they ate about 5 pounds of green tomatoes but there’s still the usual problem with bugs. This year I’ve got a new issue as well. The weeds grew up so thick around the tomato plants that it’s difficult to get in there and find the ripe ones. Plus, I never got the plants put up properly so they just sprawl out everywhere on the ground. And we all know what happens to a ripe tomato that sits on the ground … it rots and bugs eat it. Fast. So I’ve been picking and harvesting the two rows, each one about 100’ and fifty plants or so. I haul all the edible tomatoes up to the head of the rows where they sit on a straw bale to finish ripening in the sun. The rotted ones get tossed out into a bare patch where I’m going to plow up some rows for some Alaskan peas soon. Today I got Jared to go collect all the rotted ones drying in the sun and put them in a big bucket to haul out to the chickens, who languish in their confinement unhappily. Except for the four escapees who make a break over the wire every day, only to return about suppertime.

We’ve got more tomatoes than I know what to do with. Big round ones and then the fat, cylindrical Romas. They are all extremely delicious, but we can only eat so many tomatoes. That’s when we set about making sauce. It takes an enormous amount of tomatoes to make a big pot of sauce, since the majority of a tomato is water and in sauce-making you want most of the water to boil away. It’s also easy to store and freezes well for use later on this winter. I can take some of the frozen sauce and make salsa out of it, or a very tasty homemade tomato sauce. It’s a very good way to make use of your tomatoes.

Mouse Attack!

Our house is still infested with mice. Only now they seem like dark, sinister mice. (Not the sweet and tasty kiwi-mouse you see in the photo.)

Earlier today in my basement office I caught a mouse in a trap. He died instantly but was still twitching so I left him alone, not wanting to pick up a twitching mouse in its death throes. He was a tiny one, not very old. I forgot about him for awhile until sitting here at my desk I heard something rattling the trap. It was obviously another mouse. I thought, "How sad. Another mouse has come along and is trying to free its child/sibling/friend/mate."

How wrong I was. When I went over there I found the trap had been dragged behind a box and the small mouse who had been caught and killed was partially devoured. Cannibal mice! I shall be sleeping with the light on from now on.

Pinhead the Turkey

Our sole remaining turkey has yet to put on his full feathers. I’ve lost track of how old it actually is but there’s still quite a bit of feathering that hasn’t occurred under the wings and across the back. While the body has transitioned to distinctly turkey, it’s still a pretty small bird. He’s kind of tattered looking still from the earlier problems when he got wet. Poor little guy. I’m keeping him in the brooder box for a bit longer to see how it goes.

Heidi the Cow

I just took a break and went out into the back pasture with some grain. Heidi is still not very interested in grain of any sort, even if you put molasses on it. She’d rather have grass, thank you very much. She’s walking around with a full belly these days, all from grazing since we weaned her. She’s adjusted very well and is putting on weight.

She’s a very gentle creature and with a prize personality. When I go out near her she comes to stand beside me and waits patiently for me to scratch her neck and ears. She loves to have the spot under her chin rubbed and thinks hands are wondrous things made just for scratching itchy spots. She’s beautiful and sweet-natured and I couldn’t be happier with her.

Thinning is Important

Kohlrabi I planted earlier in the season have not sized up, primarily because of overcrowding. I just broadcast the seeds widely, which maybe wasn’t so good of an idea. I’m going through there now and thinning and hoping it’s not too late for the plants to put on size. It’s hard, back-breaking work on your hands and knees out in the garden. I can accomplish maybe a half-row before I’ve got to take a break. And I’ve got maybe 4 rows left to do. Ugh. Next time I’ll get to it earlier.

India's Going Down First

http://cumberlandbooks.com/blog/?p=1419

 

Here’s what Dry Creek Chronicles blog has to say about the Green Revolution in India. By using “modern” agricultural methods they’ve overshot their population carrying capacity by roughly 850 million people. That’s way worse than us. At best we’re only about 250 million in the hole. (I base this on the 1860-pre-oil-agriculture population of 31 million versus the 2000 census which recorded 280 million). Who is going to feed India in the years to come? I’ve got a lot of tomatoes this year, but not enough for 850 million people.

Settling Down for the Night

Around this time every night I’m finishing up my outside chores. The chickens are all locked inside their fortress/coop, even the ones who did not wish to be and had to be caught and manhandled. The gates to the barn pasture are closed to confine the animals close to safety, the ducks are locked inside their duck house-brooder and everyone is fed. Inside the kids are brushing their teeth and getting ready for bed.  Sometimes the littlest one has fallen asleep already, worn out from an exhausting day of trying to be a big kid. In the summer, fireflies dance out on the lawn and past the fence to the garden. The whole world is winding down as we settle in for the night. It’s a beautiful time.

Thinning Day

I’ve been working at some backbreaking labor today … thinning a row of kohlrabi. It’s supposed to be one plant every 6” but I cheat a little on that. I just try and spread them out and I don’t worry if it’s 4” or 6”. Hopefully the soil fertility will make up the difference. Something I’d never tried before but I’d recently read was that the broad green leaves of the kohlrabi plant are edible. They don’t store very well, but if you pick them and then take them in straight to wash and eat them it works out quite well. I like them easily as much as I like kohlrabi itself. They have a little stronger flavor than iceberg lettuce (more bitter) but less of a strong flavor than some of the other greens. A good Italian salad dressing masks it very well. It can also be boiled up in a soup like spinach. I’m thinking I may freeze a whole bunch of that and use it as pot greens throughout the winter.

A Developing Crisis

Over the winter, four goats generated about 7 wheelbarrow loads of poop and straw. The chickens generated another five. That gives me 12 loads of poop total, plus assorted compost.

Today I spread the poop out in the garden plot. It takes two loads of poop to cover one 100' row. It's organic, free of chemicals and other nasty things which could get in our food supply and damage our health, and it's the best thing going for young plants. However, there's a problem. The garden is approximately 25 individual 100' rows. I would need about 50 wheelbarrow loads of poop per year to keep up the fertility the way I want it!

My farm has reached 'peak poop'. Our consumption of peak exceeds our output which will leave us with no poop for the next year.

I am going to have to find an outside source for poop.

A Better Way

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/08/pot.eradication/index.html

 

These Mexican cartels are setting up huge pot farms inside our national forests. They kill anyone who might stumble accidentally across their sites, although you’d have to be a pretty serious hiker to accidentally stumble across one 4 hours hike from the nearest road. I also wouldn’t want to try and hike back out for four hours watching my back trail to see if the pot growers had discovered my presence. I’m always very careful when I’m out in public woods, not just watching for poachers to make sure I don’t get shot accidentally, but watching for pot growers or portable meth-labs to make sure I don’t get shot on purpose.

The government could make all this problem go away overnight if they’d just legalize marijuana. Why would you grow pot 4 hours into the wilderness from the nearest road if you could grow it in your own backyard or sell a big patch of it from a roadside stand? Can you imagine pulling up at the farmer’s market on Thursdays with a couple of bushels of premium grass? Of course they won’t legalize it, but not because of any health problems or moral issues. I don’t believe smoking pot is any worse than drinking alcohol or eating Dunkin Donuts, both of which can be bad for you if not taken in moderation. They won’t legalize it because they make a lot of money off of the war on drugs and it gives jackasses like the cop in the accompanying photo a chance to run around with guns and get paid out of the taxpayer’s wallet.

The Candidate for Change

Obama likes to run around talking about how he represents change. We’re going to change the face of America, he tells us. However I can’t find anywhere, not even on his website, where he presents a coherent plan of what this change is going to be. Change to a socialist state? Maybe. Change to a fascist state? Probably. I guess change without disclosure beforehand is the best message he could come up with. It’s certainly likely to win him the election.

Would you buy a car on that principle though? The dealer says, “It’s new.” You ask, “What kind of car is it?” The dealer says, “It’s new.” You ask, “Two door? Four Door?” The dealer repeats, “This is a break from conventional cars. It’s new.” Are you going to pay cash without ever seeing the car, finding out any info on the car, or even taking it for a test drive? Doubtful. Yet that’s exactly what Obama and his fanatical supporters are pitching to America. The guy is a political nobody with no voting record to speak of (because he hasn’t bothered to show up). So we haven’t even gotten our test drive.

And before any of you go on about how McCain isn’t any better, I’ll state up front that I agree with you in principle. McCain is a gun-grabbing scumbag who won’t get my vote. I’m writing in Dr. Ron Paul, whether he likes it or not. I can’t vote for McCain on principle, but I can’t vote for Obama because everything I’ve seen and heard of him today sounds very familiar to me … in the speeches of Mussolini and the early days of fascism. America is ripe to be taken over from within by the fascists. This may be the year.

Farm Woes

I’ve been having a rough time of it lately. First I’ve been working too much away from home and not being able to take care of things. I’ve lost control of the garden. The weeds and bugs are in control now. It will take a crew of about 30 illegal aliens to come through and return everything to proper order. Or I can just ride out the season and see what I can salvage, focusing my efforts on that which has NOT been overrun. Make of that a fortress, if I can. We’re starting to get harvest though, in peppers and tomatoes and potatoes, not to mention delicious onions. My carrots failed to size appropriately, as they do every single year. I spend an awful lot of effort for one-bite carrots, it seems.

The bird situation is also losing ground. After they got wet (poor outside brooder design) many of them got chilled and died. Of the ones I’ve hatched myself this year, we’ve lost two due to chilling and two came up missing. Of the 15 we purchased we have exactly one left. Of the four turkeys we have one left. Of the 15 ducks we have 9 left. Something seems to be snatching a duck a day, or perhaps they’re wandering off and never finding their way home. I’ve placed an order for FIFTY more chickens which will be here on August 25^th. No more playing around. We’re ramping up production for next year.

Heidi the calf is now being weaned, much to her dismay. She’s dropped a little bit of weight since we stopped giving her the calf replacer but not a lot. She won’t touch grain, even with molasses on it, but she does graze a lot and there’s plenty of grass for her. She’s a sweetheart. A loud sweetheart. The goats, on the other hand, have been singled out for replacement. Goats are the devil’s livestock. I know this now. My whole purpose with the goats was to have smaller animals around to get Kathy and the boys used to milking. I didn’t know much about goats (I’m from a cow and sheep background) and I’ve now learned that they are indeed more trouble than they are worth. We’re going to eat the three males and sell the two females. With Heidi coming along next year for breeding (around October) then the following spring we’ll have more milk than we could ever want. Right now the only decision is whether to sell the two females now or to milk them next year and eat their offspring. I really don’t want to carry them through the winter and they are taking up space and energy that would be better utilized with sheep, which will provide wool and meat.

On the bright side, we’re getting plenty of rain (a lot of rain). I’ve decided to buy another tiller so that I have TWO on hand at all time. Right now, with the away work I do, I cannot afford to ever get behind on the garden due to mechanical problems with a tiller. I also can’t take the time and energy to get out there and till two acres with a hoe. I’m one man trying to do a whole lot of work, so if I need to get gasoline-driven labor devices to get me through that then so be it. For now.

In addition, I’ve now found a potential market for my farm products. A local health food store has offered to buy what I can produce here. Next year I’m going to expand the garden area and take them up on that. In addition, we’ll have a lot of chickens coming online next year (I hope) so that’ll cover eggs. We’re still in growth for the bees as the two hives I split this year seemed to have taken. No word yet on if they’re going to have enough food to get them through the winter, but I can feed them if not. Hopefully they’ll have enough mass to keep themselves alive. With God’s grace, we keep trying.

Something Sinister on Sesame Street

I have to try hard not to see government conspiracies popping up all over, but sometimes I can’t help but connect the dots.

The same government that tried to grant millions of unassimilated illegal aliens citizenship in an under-the-covers immigration package is the same government that funded “No Child Left Behind”, which is responsible for the insane amount of Spanish-language television on PBS right now. From Dora the Explorer to Latino characters popping up in every child’s show and sprinkling their young vocabularies with Spanish words, now it’s almost a full frontal assault on the English language. I think it’s somewhat useful to speak two languages, but I see sinister plots in their works here.

What exactly are they planning? Are they trying to set our children up as the industrial overlords, prepared to speak Spanish to a newly-nationalized population of laborers? Or are they simply laying the groundwork for when they do ultimately manage to back-door their immigration legislation and give away our country? Make no mistake. That’s what it will be if you suddenly grant voting rights to an unknown number of foreign immigrants. They haven’t assimilated yet. They haven’t even tried to. They set up civil rights movements that cover themselves and only themselves before they are even citizens. Mark my words: our government is planning something along these lines.

Death is never very far away

I returned home from this last trip to find that the young chickens we had put in the outside brooder pen had gotten thoroughly soaked in a rainstorm. Couple that with the 60 degree nights we've been having and it equals dead chicks. We've now lost the majority of them to chilling and pneumonia, including three of the four turkeys we had ordered. The ducks seem to have managed, being hardier and waterproof.

This has killed most of the replacements we bought and bred for this year. Tonight I'm going to get out there and take a headcount to see what we have left, but I believe I'm going to be forced to place another order. We've just had too high of losses so far. I think we've got about 15 or so left, male and female both. That's going to leave us in a bad way.

The garden is overgrown and tangled. It's been rainy, super hot, and I've been traveling too much. The weeds have about consumed it at this point. It's almost beyond salvation. I'm wondering if I just need to harvest what makes it through and just try again next year.

Some days I just get tired of it all. Too much work and it's all so fragile. Doing this and maintaining a job that keeps me away from the farm for days on end isn't working out very well this year.