The following was posted as a comment on the blog yesterday, and I am sharing it here with permission. I was tickled by the way the author, who goes by the pen name Meandering Myrmidon, wove hours of my dry content into a charmingly cutting analysis of what is unfolding before our eyes as the…
The Once and Future Thing: A Poem Featuring Camelot, Labyrinths, Alice, and Unanswered Questions about CHD’s Funding — Wrench in the Gears
Wonderful work! So cleverly creative!!
I’m so happy with the flowers this year I couldn’t resist sharing a few more happy snaps!
Plus, the second addition to my new ‘Herbal Explorations’ pages, Spiderwort.
This grows all around us for the better part of the year. I knew the name, but didn’t realize it was edible until recently. I was so pleased to learn that, considering how plentiful it is around here, that I had to dedicate a ‘weed’ page to Spiderwort.
In the garden the poppies have been so gorgeous, I just can’t get enough of them. They’ve been so prolific I feared they would completely crowd-out the nigella, which has such a tasty seed, but blooms a bit later. Luckily, I found a little patch still making room for itself.
The poppies contrasted with the calendula are simply gorgeous, the pictures don’t do them justice!
Thanks for stopping by!
Do you have a favorite flower?
Not pollen, not simply dust or pollution. We’re breathing this, it’s saturating our soils, it’s poisoning our waters and all of life.
A very short video demonstration.
Need some cute today?
Lots of life around here, so much so, it’s just about killing me! 😂
Exhausting but exhilarating.
Our bottle baby lamb, Scrappy, is still doing very well. The only lamb I’ve ever seen running towards man, instead of away. Shadow, our recent addition, has completely settled in, even the bees haven’t bugged him in a couple weeks, so that’s a relief.
The bees love the poppies at dawn, the cilantro flowers at mid-morning, and the clover after that, as digestif I figure.
The kittens have gotten so comfortable they are now happily playing on the dog bed and lining up with their mama and the dogs at feeding time. A friend recently commented it’s like we’ve got a petting zoo. Yes, indeed, it seems we do!
The garden is looking great, the best year so far for flowers, which makes me so very happy.
Already making delicious ferments from the garden produce and the onions are already getting close to harvest. Stay tuned for that excitement.
Shadow’s favorite thing to do in the morning, sit on my lap as I try to drink coffee and read the news. Not enough hands!
Thanks for stopping by!
(FYI, it took me 2 hours to post this, WP seems to have LOTS of issues, deleting paragraphs, deleting photos, not accepting edits. Super annoying. I looked for somewhere else to park this blog, and found no other platform of greater value. I do believe we are witnessing the Walmarting of the blogosphere.)
How do I know
I don’t know
How do I feel
More than I show
Tell, Shell
The colors denied me
A red-green dysymetry
Dependency serving you
And me
Last laughs denied
Colors revived
Deep seas contrived
Spotted
And released
Passions deceased
Une femme qui plus rien
Derange
Un amour
Set
A game
Unmatched
So far long
From afield
A fealty
You and me
A higher order
Heart
The last emergent
Art
Lost then found
Then lost again
And then again
The pulse
The finger
The finger on the pulse
The heart on the sleeve
The hat in the hand
Bowing
To universal
Blindness
Willingly
No longer
You and me
Mostly happy snaps today, plus one wee tale of woe. Life is flourishing around here, but for two middle-aged folk, it’s getting harder to keep up!
We’ve got kittens and lambs and chicks and some rain and decent temps for a change, that’s keeping the critters and crops and me very happy.
I think the old cliche about when life is giving you lemons should be updated for the modern era. Lemons are already a luxury, after all.
I think it should reflect the shitshow the modern era has become and read: When life gives you shit, make more compost.
And we have LOADS of it at the moment, the good kind that makes fantastic strawberries, not the useless kind, that populates DC.
Do you care to know how much shit it takes to make carrots and strawberries so good? 😆
Guess what else loves loads of shit?!
And while some homesteading results are obvious— like more shit equals better produce— others remain a mystery.
After three perfect sets of twins, we have a reject. It’s one of those very odd occurrences we have yet to experience and it’s confusing because it’s halfway between cute and sad.
One bad mama has rejected one of its offspring. He’s a sweet, spunky little survivor we’ve come to call ‘Scrappy’ because he’s fighting so hard and it’s wonderful to witness. And also sad, like I said.
Hubby found Scrappy at the fenceline in the morning not long after birth, already abandoned. But, the sibling lamb and mama were fine and healthy and not too far away.
It’s a mystery because one, he was not just alive, but cleaned off, and very vigorous. And two, because had she cleaned him off, she’d surely recognize him as her other offspring. So, who cleaned him off?
Because she pushes him off immediately at any attempt to nurse. Even still, after 4 days and every attempt we’ve tried. We’ve resorted to holding her down 3 times a day, he at the front end, me at the back end, while poor Scrappy voraciously sucks down whatever he can manage before she out-maneuvers the 3 of us!
Then Hubby goes back to bottle-feed him 3 more times a day.
Of course, he’s not the first critter here to obediently follow Hubby everywhere!
Scrappy’s getting fed with a combination of powdered milk specially formulated and goat’s milk, thanks to Summer, who I’m still milking from her last freshening, last spring.
Skittles (below left), looking tough as always, but her kittens are already getting accustomed to an easier life, from the barn to under the porch.
Careful kitties, domestication has its costs, which is probably why Skittles keeps hissing at the hands who feed her. 😆
Thanks for stopping by!
Tis the season to be growing!
I just wanted to share some resources I’m frequenting, more often due to mood, rather than necessity. There is so much of the ‘how to’ out there in cyberland, and that’s great, but even better are the sites out there that inspire, motivate, explore, or feel like an afternoon paseo—like taking a walk around your neighborhood.
Sometimes, I look to YouTube, of course.
Sometimes I need the high energy, no-nonsense, look at me, you can do it too attitude of James Pergioni. Little he does applies to our garden—he’s urban and in a completely different climate, but, no matter, because he does what he does so well, and that gets me goin’!
Other times it’s the Zen, graceful, deeply practical, and peaceful even in the city type of gardener, with a simply lovely channel I’d be prone to emulate if I ever made a gardening channel of my own. She lets the plants do the most of the talking and I can sense how she loves them.
Sometimes I need that super practical advice on something specific, so it’s MI Gardener, mostly because he wastes minimal time on chit-chat, my biggest pet-peeve in how-to sites.
As for the paseo I like to hang out right here on WP, 3 gardeners in particular I follow regularly, and I’d probably frequent more, if I knew of more. I don’t like the big box sites, too much noise. I think of these ladies as cyber-neighbors, while I do sometimes get gardening tips from them, I visit mostly just to see what they’re up to lately.
There’s Empty Nest Homesteading, who offers her keen sense of esthetics to the homesteading scene. Here’s her latest adventure in decorating.
And there’s the Re-farmer, who’s got to be the most ambitious homesteader, especially climate-wise, I’ve ever seen. She offers up daily posts with regular garden reports, which that alone is more than I’ll ever do! She’s got mad gumption!
And there’s Eden Unlocked, a young suburban mother who offers Biblical contemplation with some of her posts, quite a foreign foray for me, which I’ve come to appreciate, mostly because I find her to be a quite a unique lady. She and I share a powerful budding interest in learning herbalism, which brings me to my latest offering.
I have posted the first of my Herbal Explorations, Calendula, which you can find by going to the Main Page of Kensho Homestead, in the menu. Each time I’ve posted on another plant, I’ll link it here in the blog, but it will remain on the main page for easier locating. For those who don’t know already, there’s also pages there on Geoengineering Resources and Garden-to-Table Resources.
Thanks for visiting and hope you enjoy!
I’m not sure what to make of it, but I’m sharing this quickie just the same.
A gorgeous day of new life, new moves, and what feels like genuinely natural weather for a change.
First rose, first poppy, first lamb and the kittens come out to play. 🤗
And, I expect Geoengineering/weather modification has hit the popular charts, at last, yay!
I will admit I thought this very popular channel must be shills of some sort, because they seemed to be completely avoiding the obvious weather warfare for years now.
Be that as it may, they’ve been clueing in more and more lately, and now, I consider their cherry popped. It’s about time! I don’t know what to make of it exactly, but I do believe in the gaming world it means we’ve just leveled up.
I wish I knew how many people have questioned the existence of viruses. Certainly in the last few years that number has jumped significantly thanks to the work of ‘Team No Virus’ and the mountain range of material they have contributed to the debate.
Still, most folks have no idea there is a debate happening at all, unfortunately. I hope I’m wrong! But, even among anti-vaxxers I get the impression that the viral delusion has not yet crossed their radar in any serious way. I get the sense they’ve heard of it, but then dismissed it automatically, because the belief in the existence of deadly pathogenic viruses is so deeply engrained in our culture.
It is a belief so penetrating that folks have even stopped looking for any logic to support it.
“Our own Jake Wynn argues that it wasn’t until the death of President Garfield in 1881 that the American public and physicians began to turn toward germ theory. His slow and painful descent from an assassination attempt was well documented and publicized at the time. Americans read in their daily papers about the lingering and avoidable pain that Garfield suffered from infection. For more than two months the public got continuous updates about the President’s condition, and countervailing voices advocating antiseptic practices grew louder. Garfield, himself a veteran, was (in the words of Jake Wynn) the last victim of Civil War medicine.
The lessons for today are pretty clear, and thankfully the world’s medical community has learned from it. Two-thirds of all deaths in the Civil War came as a result of disease. Knowledge of germ theory now enables organizations like the World Health Organization, or WHO established in 1948, to prevent the hundreds of thousands of deaths from disease seen in the Civil War. Other entities like our own Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, works to prevent the spread of disease both at home and abroad by encouraging international learning and cooperation. The National Institute of Health shares scientific research from around the globe with our own American medical professionals. We here at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine are proud to facilitate this dialogue, and we look forward to continuing it with you when you visit.”
Pretty clear where they stand in this debate. Logical? Hardly.
But, what about the other positions?
The popular freedom-loving crowd backs Team RFK, Jr. His take is that germ-theory is still the go-to theory because, well, basically because that’s what his fan club believes. Logic and real science be damned.
Team No Virus has just published a statement that has my full respect and support.
https://drsambailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Why-Are-We-Doing-This_-Final.pdf
There are some amazing researchers on Team No Virus, here are a few: Dr. Andrew Kaufman, Dr. Tom Cowan, Drs. Samantha & Mark Bailey, Mike Stone of Viroliegy, Christine Massey.
The deconstruction of the entire field of virology is in process. And I say good riddance, as it is a pseudoscience. I say this with confidence after reading and listening to now hundreds of hours of material provided by these researchers and available at our fingertips. I stand firmly with Team No Virus until the popularity contest is finally over and logic and reason win over half-truthers and opportunists.
I agree wholeheartedly with the Doctors’ statement:
“It seems obvious to us and, in fact, has been a guiding principle throughout our entire lives that a life based in freedom and integrity must have a solid, factual foundation. In other words, if the foundation is not based on the truth, as best we can see it, our entire lives are based on mistruths and are in danger of collapse at any moment. Imagine building a relationship, a family, a homestead based on love between two people when the reality is that, rather than love, there is distrust, suspicion and even ill will. Sooner or later, that life will collapse into ruins. This is the same with a financial system based on fiat currency, an agricultural system based on inattention to the health of the soil, or a medical system based on anti-scientific medical hypotheses. After careers of examining medical research and theories, and three years of intensive investigation into the question of whether particles or, perhaps better said, entities known as viruses actually exist, it is our clear conclusion that no such particle has ever been shown to exist, let alone cause any disease in plants, animals or people. For us, this conclusion stands as a clear fact.
It is also clear that the dramatic events of the past three years, events that have devastated the lives of many people all over the world, are based on this very misconception that so-called pathogenic viruses exist. This misconception has been around for a very long time, and it has led to damaging public health measures, the most notorious being vaccines, which have themselves harmed and killed millions of animals and people during their long and sordid history.
—This carnage needs to stop.”
The way I see it is, to look the other way now, because it’s inconvenient, or difficult, or unpopular is to spin our wheels on the pavement of evil.
“Over the past few years, this is exactly what happened to many of us. Powerful forces in society unilaterally decided that many of our highest priorities — feeding ourselves and our families, experiencing social connection, exercising, worshiping and connecting with nature — many of these things vital to our health and even survival — suddenly didn’t matter anymore.
There was no negotiation. There was no attempt to figure out how we could all get what we wanted — creative solutions, like the Great Barrington Declaration, were sabotaged and vilified. We were simply told: your priorities are worth sacrificing. And all this over a virus that doesn’t even threaten most people’s lives.”
What virus, Mary?
Another big week on the wee homestead! A real treat this time because we have rare video clips of a swarm moving into one of our bait hives. So cool! We really had lucky timing with that one, after another near miss.
Plus, one little piggy already off to market, more to follow soon. And a much better incubator hatching success.
In other news, not so lucky, with the timing all wrong, another tree falls. And still other news, we continue to wait for rain, annoyed and impatient.
Best to start with the bad news first. The New Normal manufactured weather continues to rob us of rain while pouring chaos on regions nearby.
It’s not only only ugly, toxic and altering the entire hydrological cycle of the region and beyond, it’s weather warfare! I could spend a lot more posts bitching about it, but I ain’t got time for that.
A friendly young couple and their son came by for one of our piglets and we spent a nice time chatting and it was surprising—as in both unusual and pleasant —to have so much in common with folks who superficially were very different from us — much younger, still working, four children, active church members —yet we could hardly stop yammering on about homesteading life after an hour. And then a good bit more after that!
Each attempt at continuing on with our many chores of the day interrupted by some new spontaneous and urgent topic—and all my favorite ones—bees, goats, gardens, kombucha, even cheese.
And, the young woman looked at me knowingly when I pointed to the disgusting sky and repeated for the thousandth time: ‘Weather warfare!’
She knew! Or at least, she knew I wasn’t crazy for suggesting that. That gives me a lot of hope, because it means we’ve come a long way in the many years I’ve been ranting on about it. She also dared say the not-so-secret buzzword of the decade: “Conspiracy theory.”
So refreshing to listen to these courageous young folks who, when they see the degenerate state of the world around them they don’t send their kids into the state schooling system and cross their fingers hoping for the best, they homeschool knowing, they can do better.
They don’t just whine about inflation, they grow a garden and raise some livestock. They don’t just wait for Jesus to come save them, they become the kind of folks who can save others. Very refreshing indeed—as in—in actual deed.
In the story of poor timing, one of the trees killed during the tornado nearly three years ago and still hung up on a neighboring tree, which the goat kids loved to include in their playtime, finally came down in one of the New Normal ‘storms’ where we get everything in the weather chaos of wind, lightening, extreme temperature shifts, but little to no rain.
Of course, it came down right on Hubby’s fence, freeing the brand new ram to have premature access to the young sheep. We fear unwanted teen pregnancies in our future. ☹️
Before and after:
And our brand new ram, expressly kept separate from our too young for breeding girls has sudden free access. Not good.
During our visit with the young couple we pointed out the open-air bee colony, which I still thought was an open-air colony at the time. It was there for well over a week—we checked on it every day.
I had no idea a swarm would stay that long in search of a new home. But then, within just a couple of hours, big things started to happen.
That huge swarm, which I wrote about last week, disappeared, along with the smaller one on the same tree. I actually thought I heard it while watering in the garden, but I never saw anything.
And then, the swarm we’d just caught earlier (pictured above) that morning and tenderly transferred into a Langstroth hive and put in a location far from the swarm and originating hive, then started to swarm again. *(Why would you prefer your bees to swarm?! See below!)*
I was just frustrated, I saw it happening! Hubby had put on his veil to come help re-situate the frames on the Langstroth but they were already in air. It was an amazing sight to behold, but I didn’t think for a second they’d stop again so nearby.
I yelled to Hubby not to bother to put on his suit, but to bring the tablet instead. The swarm stalled above the garden and Hubby said, between my sighs of disappointment, “Try to follow them!”
I thought it sounded crazy at first, but then thought, why not. And to my absolute astonishment, they stopped at the bait hive that Hubby built for populating our top-bar hives!
That is the second time a swarm has refused my attempts at populating this store-bought conventional beekeeping hive, the Langstroth. But why?
We captured a couple of short clips of the capture—it all happened in about 10 minutes, tops.
It’s so amazing to watch them pile into the entrance, until finally, all are ensconced and occupied with repopulation.
It is so fascinating to me to imagine all the social dynamics that went into the decision of that swarm in that short time to move from my preferred space, to their preferred space 150 feet away, communicating in ways far beyond the powers of man.
Luckily, our efforts are all not for nothing! The bees traveled right over the garden where I hope they’ll be spending a lot of time very soon. The garlic is flowering too soon, no surprise in the Yo-Yo weather. The onions are starting to bulb already, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still get a good crop.
Our new dog, Shadow, continues to bring smiles and joy as he gets ever more comfortable in his surroundings.
Thanks for stopping by, Bye!
*Bee swarms, more info for the interested*
For those embarking on treatment-free beekeeping, we are the ‘anti-vaxxers’ of the beekeeping community. Swarming is a natural and healthy process of established bee colonies. Interrupting this process by taking ‘splits’ on hives in spring is the preferred industrial/commercial method. However, for the hobbyist, conservationist and connoisseur it is known that it is better to trust the bees and to limit synthetic intrusion on their natural processes. The bees have chosen their swarm companions, not me, as in a typical split. They have chosen their queen, not me, as is the case in typical industrial methods. The swarming process is not only genetic, but also hygienic. When honey production is not the primary aim, it is amazing what we can learn about natural bee behavior. 😊
Feel free to ask questions or share comments on the bees, or any of the other things!
