Another one from the deep archives, 9 years ago this month. In reflection what I wish is that I’d had more time to elaborate and get better photos. Noted, but probably not improving much in all these years. Maybe that’s why it had zero likes besides my own?! Room for improvement.
I know in these old posts formats and links are screwy. Sorry about that, but hope it’s still of value to someone, somewhere, sometime, besides me.
3.20.2017
Some iconic lines in films imprint on the psyche collectively and I know you could think of one right now that instantly crosses several generations and continental divides.
“You can’t handle the truth!” Name that film, name that actor. Could you even name his co-star in that blockbuster?
Somehow, somewhere, as a collective, we’ve given ourselves over to worship and celebrity and fantasy and distraction in the most destructive ways. I am not resolved from that influence and never will be. I watched TV constantly for years in high school, only to give it up for years later in exchange for an exhaustive social life, only to give that up more years later for work I found most of all, exhausting.
I had/have this secret fantasy I’m going to share right now (again). After hurricane Katrina, right after, when I heard on the news the city was more or less safe, and me many hours away in a quaint bed and breakfast drinking wine with lunch, the hurricane widely reported as much less dangerous than anticipated, but that residents would need to stay away for a few days at least for safety precautions, I was glad. Nearly giddy, and not from the wine.
I had just started a new position at Tulane university and already I didn’t really want to go back. It took a day or so more before all hell broke out and select areas of the city flooded terribly and all residents had to stay out indefinitely. In our case, we were allowed to go back after two months. For some, it was never. We lived in a trendy and relatively upscale area right on Audubon Park. It was a beautiful spot, both before and after the hurricane. Some were far from so lucky and they’d been there many generations, not just two weeks, like us.
I do hold shame for this secret fantasy, because I still feel it. When I dwell, necessarily, in the dark places of my life and the world, I know there is much sickness, far too much. Far too much destruction, voluntary and deliberate and needless. Still, I have dwelt in destruction.
And there is too much wind, dammit, all around me lately seeming to get worse every year. It’s bloody annoying! We had no winter and now no spring. The plants and animals struggle with it far less than I, but still, I know, they do.
Wind is really stressful! This makes me smile, because there was a time I lived in Chicago and worked downtown and yes, the wind was legendary, but it was mostly something I peered at from the window and got annoyed at how it affected my hairdo.
But the wind is far more powerful and penetrating than I had, and I think most, ever realize. Is that not what blew down the house of each of the three little pigs?
They are blowing, those wolves, our weather right now is as manipulated as the currency market. And in my secret fantasy I sometimes can’t help but wonder—would we all be better off in the long run if they would just blow it all down? Roses blooming at the same time as the dogwood?! It just ain’t right.
This week’s breadcrumb, I’ve got so many I’d love to share this week, but this one is so essential it needs to stand alone.
Unslaved podcast, exploring the self in the work of Ayn Rand and others.
As the world reboots, this is where the rubber will meet the road.
After I got over the shock of hearing the squeals of a drift of wild hogs crashing through the forest, and the fear that I’d lost our dearest Tori, I was amazed to see her come through the trees clearly proud of herself. Still a fav, La Duchesse de Brabant, unfortunately with a bad case of ‘black spot’ but which I’ve been treating with whey, banana peels and chicken poop. Tori’s ‘Illuminati’ pose, hehehehehe!
A combo post–a bit of Homestead Happenings with a bit of my favorite conspiracy theory.
We are having our New Normal weather whiplash where 1/4 of the population pretends the weather has always been like this; another 1/4 couldn’t care less about it, normal or otherwise; 1/4 who think it’s all manmade, but not by tech, by carbon pollution; 1/8th who LOVE the idea of man controlling the weather; and the final 1/8th who believe one of the following: it’s NAZIS controlling the weather, aliens are controlling the climate, a global ice age is coming, too many paranoid plebs are actually causing climate change through their malignant minds, or, the world’s militaries have been using weather tampering against the public for many decades.
23 February 2026 | ZEROGeoengineering.com | Report below published in 2021 by the Land Forces Academy Review evaluates the use of weather influencing technologies and their impact on global security. The authors discuss potential damage resulting from weaponized weather changing activities: “artificially increasing the level of precipitation in order to cause floods and paralyze the enemy’s transport communications; artificially reducing the level of precipitation, in order to cause drought in enemy territories and difficulties in the supply of fresh water; the creation of unfavorable weather conditions that impede the conduct of hostilities (increased wind speed, deterioration of visibility); violation of radar and radio communication by direct impact on the Earth’s ionosphere. The use of technologies for changing the weather for military purposes leads to the destruction of infrastructure, paralysis of the economy, losses in agriculture, disruption of the work of state and commercial structures, mass casualties, large financial losses and demoralization of the local population.” Olena Shevchenko and Kira Horiacheva, Impact of Weather Change Technologies on Global Security, Land Forces Academy Review, Vol. X XVI, No. 4(104), 2021, DOI: 10.2478/raft-2021-0042
“increased wind speed?” check “unfavorable weather conditions?” check “artificially reducing the level of precipitation, in order to cause drought?” check “demoralization of the local population” check, check and check! Well they can certainly count me in! It’s indeed demoralizing to see the bumblebees out because it’s over 80 degrees for a week and all is blooming, only to then frost and kill all the buds. Including the fruit trees. Or to be told by a young gardener that ‘winter is our dry season’. What? Since when?! So I guess all seasons now are our ‘dry season’. Except for when it suddenly floods in one county while the neighboring county stays bone dry. Or the crazy winds that make these sudden and highly unnatural shifts with storm-level gusts that continue for days making any outdoor activity really unpleasant, if not impossible. Soon every five mile radius will have its own climate, and the technocrats will cheer, even if it makes vast swaths of the world uninhabitable by all but the scorpions and robots and data centers.
Can you see the honeybees on the henbit? The henbit does really well as a groundcover even through our last ‘wintery mix’ (used to be called snow). They also like the other early bloomers and I LOVE to see them. But, for bee sustainability it’s not a good thing, necessarily. If they build up their colonies too quickly too early there will be a lot of starvation of the young brood if (when) the temperatures plunge again killing off the buds.
Until that time I guess we’re stuck here counting our blessings.
We did get that frost, and now we’re going right back up to the 80s.
A few garden blessings doing well, one box under protection with lettuces, radishes, the last of the crucifers, some parsley and cilantro
Crucifers, like many veggies, do not like weather whiplash
Atleast if we can share some credible and valuable information while it’s available to us, the next generation might know more what they are in for when they move to the country thinking they’ll start a farm or homestead in order to escape the rat race. Newsflash, you might want to research underground gardening, because between the inclement weather and the cost of energy you won’t be able to garden, indoors or out!
It really helps to start seed indoors, an extra protection from weather whiplash season, but it’s not exactly economical these days. Growing here are lots of tomatillos, my garden mission this year, and more broccoli, flowers, squash and lettuce.
Everybody’s doing it, nowhere to escape!
Oldfield, J. D., & Poberezhskaya, M. (2023). Soviet and Russian perspectives on geoengineering and climate management. WIREs Climate Change, 14(4), e829. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.829
“Soviet science contributed significantly to our understanding of anthropogenic climate change and, as part of this, played a central role in the emerging science underpinning climate modification and geoengineering initiatives. A key focus of discussion was the use of stratospheric aerosols linked to the innovative ideas of Mikhail Budyko and colleagues. This work had its origins in what has been termed the theory of aerosol climatic catastrophe, which gained prominence in the Soviet context during the early 1970s.”
Onions also don’t like weather whiplash, but we usually get a decent crop I finally got most of the strawberries replanted. They multiplied like rabbits last summer and I gave wheelbarrows full to the neighbors and still plenty went into the compost. It’s taken quite a lot of effort to get the strawberries to multiply during our summers, but I think I finally figured it out. We’ll have to wait and see how well they produce in a couple of months. I’ll keep y’all posted!
Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to watch your skies!
You don’t know, because it was taken long before you were born. Your father, your grandfather, ditto. Your child will know less, her child lesser still, what’s been lost.
Someday she might try to dig it up, maybe because life no longer makes sense to her.
So hideously ugly, there’s got to be a better way!
In confusion and rejection of the dystopian present she senses roots calling from the past, something deeper was once here, something grander, was it an alignment, a race, an epoch, antiquitech, infrastructure, what?
What’s been lost? Where has it gone? Who took it? Who continues to take it?
A new series for Kensho, Starting now . . .
What does ancient Persia and modern Texas have in common? The Ice House.
If I said that to a Texan they’d think I meant the popular outdoor beer gardens, and their version of history would go back to the early 1900s and they’d think that was old. Perhaps they’d offer some local trivia or home-spun yarns, like the original Texas Ice House was the first ice manufacturing company, which is now claimed to be have been merely an ice storage facility, which later became the modern day 7-11 francise. There is, like most home-spun yarns, some truth in that story. And much redirection and fabrication as well. Perhaps to keep your eyes of our own ancient history.
More from Wiki: In some parts of Texas, especially from San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country down to the Mexican border, ice houses functioned as open-air bars, with the word “icehouse” becoming a colloquialism for an establishment that derives the majority of its income from the sale of cold beer.[24] The distinction between South Texas ice houses and ice houses of other parts of the state and the South has been connected to the Catholicism of the region, a deeper-rooted Mexican culture, and the influence of German immigrants.
A nice find from a local antique shop. I believe some of the old buildings in the nearby small city of Palestine once used this radiative cooling system.
I believe it begins in Persia, still home to many ice houses, called Yakhchal. Alternative energy in the modern Western sense is really ugly, cumbersome, expensive, destructive, in comparison. Yet, there is evidence that the Yakhchal was once more widespread than just in the ancient, or modern, middle east.
The yakhchal is used for preserving and storing food, cooling structures, even making icy sweets. It works through radiative cooling, which existed in ancient times, still is in existence in remote areas today, and yet, it’s not the norm here, in the modern and advanced industrial West. Why?
The dome of an ice house in Italy.
That they propose it now to cool the entire planet with this line of tech means they think they can scale it that far up, yet they can’t manage to scale it back down, again. How can that be?
What is the difference between the common springhouse and an icehouse, which is the Yakhchal? My neighbors once had a springhouse, but I’d only know that because he told me himself, before he died, at over 90 years old.
Where else would such useful information be kept, I wonder? How will the next owners know there was once a springhouse there, one that might even be restored to a functioning status, when I see on their real estate listing that not even the grandchildren seem to know or care about this old feature? Who cares now, right, because we have the water co-op and the electric company we can pay each month.
I believe a case could be made that the very common structures once known as springhouses were the vernacular equivalent of the ice house.
Much is written about ancient Persian architecture in this work from 1887 by “Madame” . I can’t help but wonder, similar to how the meaning of Ice House changed in Texas, did the meaning of Madame also change? ‘Cause Dude does NOT look like a lady!
Three main types of Yakhchals exist: vaulted, underground, and roofless, each adapted to different climatic conditions.
Passive cooling so common and effortless that even poor people could afford ice: (PDF) Yakhchal; Climate Responsive Persian Traditional Architecture
Mehdipour, Armin. Yakhchal; Climate Responsive Persian Traditional Architecture.
Yakhchāl – Wikipedia The Mughal emperors also recorded to adopt the technology of Yakchal. Humayun (r. 1530–1540, 1555–1556) expanded ice imports from Kashmir to Delhi and Agra, insulating blocks with straw and saltpetre to slow melting, a Persian technique. Early Baraf Khana (underground pits) stored ice, adapted from ‘yakhchāl’ for preservation.[4] Akbar (r. 1556–1605) organized ice transport from Kashmir to Delhi, Agra, and Lahore via a 14-stage relay system, delivering ice in two days using saltpetre. The ab-dar khana at Fatehpur Sikri used sandstone cisterns and qanats, resembling yakhchāl, to cool water and make sherbets and early desserts.[5] During the era of Jahangir (r. 1605–1627), Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri describes baraf khana as insulated cellars storing ice for palace cooling, food preservation, and kulfi, a frozen milk dessert with pistachios and saffron. Ice was harvested in Lahore from shallow ice pans and stored in straw-lined pits.Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658).[6] Shah Jahan built a baraf khana in Sirmaur to supply Agra and Delhi’s Red Fort. These underground structures with thick walls stored ice for drinks, food, and kulfi, symbolizing imperial luxury.[7] Although many have deteriorated over the years due to widespread commercial refrigeration technology, some interest in them has been revived as a source of inspiration in low-energy housing design and sustainable architecture.[8] And some, like a yakhchāl in Kerman (over a mile above sea level), have been well-preserved. These still have their cone-shaped, eighteen meter high building, massive insulation, and continuous cooling waters that spiral down its side and keep the ice frozen throughout the summer.
A ‘wind catcher’ tower
What we see as far as typical architectural features of the Yakhchal are domes, sometimes occuring with minerets, or spires, and sometimes with bells associated as well. Underground gardens are also a feature in the more elaborate designs.
Interestingly, Dallas has such an architectural gem, though I’ve not found any mention of the yakhchal or ice house technology mentioned in the literature.
The celebrated architect of the famous underground Dallas square.
From Wiki: Thanks-Giving Square – Wikipedia
The Square is set fifteen feet below ground level with a four-foot wall blocking the sight of automobiles to create a serene, green island. Water plays a prominent role in the landscape, with active fountains masking city noise.
Sitting amid the steel and glass skyscrapers of the Dallas business district, Thanks-Giving Chapel’s white spiral building is a beautiful—and unusual—sight. A curvilinear chapel resembling the 9th century Al-Malwia (snail shell) freestanding minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra, Iraq, built by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil, is not a building a visitor to Dallas expects to see. Another pleasant surprise is the Qur’anic verse “Grateful praise is due to God alone, the Lord and Nourisher of the worlds” engraved on a granite column at the entrance to Thanks-Giving Square. A portion of Psalms 100 appears on the Wall of Praise, also at the square’s entrance.
In 1971, the Dallas-based nonsectarian Thanks-Giving Foundation hired renowned American architect Philip Johnson to design a chapel that would celebrate the value and spirit of the institution of thanksgiving. Completed in 1976, Johnson’s white marble aggregate building dominates the three-acre triangular site that is dedicated to spiritual reflection. A sloping bridge built over a cascading waterfall connects the courtyard to the chapel. From his study of art history, Johnson was inspired by the spiral form of the Samarra minaret—which is similarly connected to the Great Mosque by a bridge.
“The spiral design perfectly conveys the foundation’s dual mission of offering a place for all people to give thanks to our creator and celebrating the value and spirit of thanksgiving for both sacred and secular cultures throughout the world,” Tatiana Androsov, Thanks-Giving Square’s president and executive director, told the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Inside the chapel, a visitor’s attention is immediately drawn to the Glory Window (above), a multi-colored stained glass ceiling created by Gabriel Loire. This striking creation was memorialized in a United Nations stamp in 2000, the International Year of Thanksgiving. In one area of the room is a large white Carrara marble cube mounted on a sandstone circle made of local Austin stone. The cube is symbolic of the unification of mankind; the circle symbolizes eternity.
During the week, the chapel is a convenient and tranquil location in an otherwise busy city for Muslims working in the downtown business district to pray. “Although there are 22 mosques in the Dallas area, many Muslims working in this part of town like to come here, especially for Friday prayers,” Androsov explained. Visitors from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa come to the chapel as part of the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, she added. The Thanks-Giving Foundation is a Department of Public Information NGO with the United Nations. For more information, visit www.thanksgiving.org.
Thanks for joining me on this little journey through time and space!
domes and spires everywhere back then!
One last deep speculation–could this ancient architectural tech also relate to the so-called Mound Builder indigenous tribes all over the Americas?
“Papers, please!” was a running joke among Western expats living in Eastern Europe. I wonder how many of them now carry a permanent spying device with great pleasure or perhaps even cheerfully signed on to the digital passport program, first in line, buying into the ploys of safety and convenience.
The Globe was supposed to move in the other direction entirely! We won the Cold War, supposedly, in order to NOT be treated like the perpetual citizen-criminals of Kafka’s stories.
Eastern Europe in 1989 was a surreal place for a young university sophmore voyaging long distances by train alone for the first time. It was at once charming and derelict, welcoming and suspicious, familiar and mysterious.
On the one hand I never felt physically threatened, not even as flaneuse on the city streets at night. On the other hand the decrepid state of the infrastructure whispered danger somehow, because neglect itself is a dark force.
On the one hand the relative poverty was palpable, though my midwest suburban upbringing was middle class, great food variety and consumer goods were far more available. On the other hand their resourcefullness has had a lifelong impact on me and was my first critical look at the innate and corrupting consumerism of my little world.
I didn’t speak the languages and there were very few English speakers. I got by, barely, with French, rudimentary German and smiling, mostly. Americans were considered automatically suspect, so some travelers would claim to be Canadian at any venue not requiring their passports.
Already on the issue of passports I was laughingly naive.
A variety of stamp collecting, or paving the way for the Global digital gulag? It was an especially exciting moment in the expats life when your passport got so full of stamps you had to go pronto to the nearest embassy to get new blank pages stapled into the back of the official document.
Interestingly, while Americans were considered automatically suspect, there was still a sort of cult following that adored America and those who were positively thrilled to meet one, and I made it a point of meeting those unique sorts.
I went on to be a Peace Corps volunteer there a few years later precisely because of my immediate attraction to this region. I felt compelled to know it better and the fact I had the opportunity to spend three more years there, mostly in Czech Republic, but traveling the region extensively, was in fulfillment of my deepest desires and longings at that time.
For all that I loved it, there I also felt my greatest repulsions.
The dystopian Kafkaesque bureaucrocy I experienced was not just fiction. The general acceptance of the populace, while not exactly Stolkholm Sydrome toward their Soviet occupiers, was still a quiet resignation which struck me as particularly pathetic considering their far more astute knowledge of history.
My old passports are the best symbol with which I can try to express my current level of despair seeing my greatest repulsions come to fruition all around me, even as we ‘the Capitalist West’ were the supposed winners of the Cold War.
What did we win? A military industrial complex acting against the best interests of its people. A Corporatocracy run by corrupt public-private partnerships which pretends not to be a fascistic system. Progress that is defined entirely by blind acceptance of anything stamped with the Technocrat seal of approval. Endless paving over of the countryside for roads and minimalls and condos and tourist traps in the ugliest construction ever known to ‘civilized’ man.
Civilization itself has morphed into something totally uncivil, hideous and expanding entirely out of control.
I, like many other intrepid travelers, thought of the passport merely as the modern equivalent of the old travel trunks stamped fashionably with destinations. We thought of them as a collection of strange signs and symbols we’d forever associate with our new memories of far-off places. They were the paper images of our wanderlust we planned to show one day to the grandkids, not knowing they would be holding a digital scrolling device we’d rarely be able to pry from their clutches.
Just a decade ago this was all ranch land
“Once traditional farming systems have been destabilised by the debt-trap of subsidised loans, structural adjustment policies, corporate input regimes, global supply chains, patented seeds and monocultural production, mass migration to cities becomes an inevitability engineered from above. The city thus absorbs the displaced because the countryside has been systematically stripped of opportunities or carved up for infrastructure or real estate schemes.”
What if we’d been given the actual choice, not the strategically invented one, between our current paradigm of progress as a global militarized surveillance state and the ‘stagnation’ where the Eastern Bloc resided for half a century?
This, or this?
Electric prison bars or progress?
Do folks really think WHEN this whole shitshow goes tits-up there will be government funding for the clean-up and restoration of this once beautiful land?
That I don’t want this EVER, for ANYONE makes me some kind of bitter-clinger communist?
“ALA’s annual State of the Air report found that 156.1 million people—46 percent of the population—now live in counties with failing grades for ozone or particle pollution, nearly 25 million higher than last year. Previously less-affected areas, such as Minneapolis, saw significant spikes in unhealthy air days tied to climate-exacerbated wildfires and particle pollution, such as dust.”
Universities funded by public-private partnerships clandestinely tamper with our atmosphere using euphemistically-named scientific jargon like ‘Plume dispersions’ as if this is not mass poisoning?
A hellscape of ‘progress’ in the form of the most ugly, extractive and intrusive landscapes imaginable?
How did ‘WE’ win in this global game that began long before I was born?
What kind of twisted minds call this progress? We have 70 years of documented atmospheric tampering while officialdom continues in denying its impact, which is now going into overdrive while the voices of the livid citizenry, especially those losing their livliehoods in the rural regions, get squashed. Same as it always was.
“Similarly, Gerard Winstanley, writing in the 17th century, envisioned a society in which land and labour were shared as a common good, not commodities to be exploited. His insistence on communal responsibility and ecological justice underscores the radical, enduring potential of agrarian ethics against the logic of extraction and profit.
In this light, the critique of urban-centric development becomes more than an economic critique. It represents a challenge to the very definition of progress. The rejection of the celebratory narrative of neoliberal modernity is a philosophical insistence that a society cannot be judged by its technological prowess while its ecological foundations crumble and its people are alienated from the sources of life.
The modern city, therefore, becomes a battleground where two visions of civilisation confront one another: the dominant model of corporate-led, centrally managed growth and the fragile but persistent ethic of stewardship, locality and shared responsibility. As made clear in my new open access book, The Agrarian Imagination: Development and the Art of the Impossible (available here), genuine human development cannot be measured by urban skylines or GDP figures but by the survival of relationships between people, land and community that give meaning to life.”
What disgusting filth is this filling our living room?!
We were just sitting there watching TV (Clarkson’s Farm) when the light aligned to see them perfectly. I got the tablet as quickly as I could and got it on film. But what I got is a mystery to me. Smart dust?
We’d just had a surprise rain shower the day before, which made me sick. I didn’t equate it with the rain at the time, Hubby didn’t get sick, so I don’t know. But I felt exhausted and like I was getting the flu. I took a hot shower and it didn’t help. I was shivering and feverish and went to bed about 6 pm. At midnight I woke up completely recovered.
Dane Wigington (GeoengineeringWatch.org) talks often about the toxic rain, of course. He also tells listeners to do an experiment themselves: Go out at night in a very dark place and beam a strong flashlight upward and you can see the heavy metal and other particulates densely polluting the air. I’ve done this, and it’s true and disgusting. This is what we are breathing all the time and cannot escape and certainly why a good portion of the population has breathing issues and allergies and all kinds of other degenerative diseases.
At least we can still say “NO!” to the poison injections.
But how do we say “NO!” to the toxins saturating our air?!
What do y’all think, Smart dust along with geoengineering particulates tested and proven to be polluting every breath we take?
Just a couple of vids to share today. I have not (yet) done any sort of deep dive on the Hill Country flooding. I have heard some of the speculation and I’m sure readers could guess my opinion to any question of whether this was a ‘natural’ disaster.
I was confused by this first video showing how quickly the flooding happened in an area that was getting no rain at the time. It looks like something from an amusement park. But, I did hear they opened certain dams in some areas to divert the intense water flow, so maybe that could help explain it. I’m going to look into this part of the operation in future.
What’s far easier to see is the current government propaganda drive, and it’s thick and multi-layered. We’ve got promises of disclosure coming from stooges and patsies being played as blame gets shifted and terminology gets altered.
We will not be led into their narrative spin cycle. That’s why I’ve included the 2nd video. The Spinners want the public blaming small, local cloud-seeding operations, not the global military operations.
NOLAButterfly is the researcher of the 2nd video and has been active for a very long time. Notice how few views she gets, how little exposure. I’ve seen her kicked off multiple channels over the years and get in heated arguments with top researchers like Jim Lee, who definitely looks to me like he’s joined the dark side.
I cannot say if her theories are correct. I can say her silencing speaks volumes to me. From what I’ve experienced and seen myself, I believe she has some very plausible ideas backed by research. She explains clearly in the vid what she sees happening and it’s worth a listen.
Click on the link for the 2nd video, because the embed doesn’t work properly with Rumble videos.
It’s been so long since an update I don’t know where to start. Or where to end, or what to include. But I figure there have got to be a few readers out there hankering for some other news besides the shitstorm coming at us from the global mafia and the media cartels.
Mostly done, finally!
In my last update we’d started remodeling the kitchen. That was a very big DIY job, it took a very long time, and we’re still not totally finished. But we are very pleased with the results that were easy on the budget and tested our creativity, skill and resourcefulness.
I thought I’d include our first time redoing the kitchen, in 2009 when we first moved in, with the previous owners’ belongings to haul away before we could begin. It had been empty for many years and the mice and roaches had taken over. It was a disgusting experience, the worst of which we got to avoid this time, so that was a bonus.
This time we also repainted the ceiling and walls and all the cabinets as well as the breakfast nook bench and storage unit Hubby had built previously. He also replaced the countertops and handcrafted new lighting and shelves, expanding on the same ‘steam-punk’ style as he used on the entryway table he built last year.
Work in progress:
Just installed butcher block countertops, quite the challenge when floors and walls aren’t level or plumb!
After way too many lost hours, I was not always a happy DIYer! But I am pleased with the result.
I spent a lot of time stripping and re-staining the kitchen table. I still want to dress-up the windows treatments and paint the doors and bases of the table and stool. But then we got too busy and had to devote our time to the garden and orchard.
The cucumbers and zuccini that were badly damaged by hail in late spring did make a bit of a comeback, but now are succumbing to the heat.
Unfortunately and as usual, a lot of the time devoted to the garden gets wasted because of crazy weather. This year has been no different and we had a lot of rain at the wrong time for some crops at some stages. The older peppers did fine with it, but the younger ones look terrible and are not recovering. Same with the tomatoes. The heirloom Scarlet Runner bean is struggling and not producing, but is still quite pretty as an ornamental.
I’ll be writing about those seeds, as well as the ones that grew this great big beautiful Black Hopi sunflower (the tallest I’ve ever seen!), in an upcoming post about Gavin Mounsey’s book Recipes for Reciprocity, because the seeds came from him.
These cucumbers were just the right age for survival and are going strong now.
I’ve gotten good at succession planting over the years for the reason of crazy weather. In very early spring I try to get tomatoes, flowers and herbs started, but am often disappointed by late frosts. Days of heavy rain and high humidity with overcast skies can easily cause damage to younger more vulnerable plants in early summer. By this time of mid-summer I’m sowing more cucumbers, herbs, and sometimes beans, but it’s often already too hot for them to get established. At this point, we get what we get until fall brings more hope.
But of course I can’t be satisfied with that and am always experimenting. Often it’s fall tomatoes or melons, which rarely work out. This year it’s the challenge of romaine lettuce through summer. I seriously doubt it’s possible, but I’ve got a tray that has just germinated under lights inside to give it a try. I’ll put them in a shaded box, with plenty of hardwood mulch in an attempt to keep the roots cooler. It’s been in the 90s everyday lately, humid and not cooling off much at night, but there’s still some growing that wasn’t smashed by the heavy rain and hail a couple of weeks ago.
Left photo is view from garden, normally the creek is not visible at all. Right photo is walking along the power easement to the very flooded creek banks.
We also had another big oak tree die suddenly in the prime of life. The last one was just taken (partly) down by the electricity company’s crew because it risked falling into their cables. The latest one Hubby will have to fell himself, before it comes down on the fencing. That will probably be after he fixes his bridge to nowhere that he just built last year in response to flooding and was nearly taken out by this year’s repeat performance.
Sudden Oak Death Syndrome?
In the last two years, with no tornados or hurricanes to blame, we’ve had three large trees right around us flash out dead in a matter of days. Rather disconcerting to me, to say the least.
No such bounty this year I fear.
Still, let’s end on a positive note. Some years are better than others. We had an inexplicably bad blackberry year, but this year was excellent. Hubby made blackberry wine with much it, which was much better tasting as a young wine than the one I tried to make and age last year. Some years we have amazing tomatoes. Other years it’s great melons. Maybe this year it will be spectacular grapes?
It doesn’t take much for fabulous meals when food is fresh. Fermented herbs and veggies add flavor and nutrition with just a little garden surplus or foraging time. The chanterelles always do better with lots of rain. Hubby’s delicious young blackberry wine makes such a refreshing spritzer when mixed with kombucha. Eating seasonally from our land is so rewarding even when we don’t have a bumper crop.
I have a long list of content coming up during the swelter season, so all the more excuse to stay indoors. Thank Man for air condition! 😆
“In conclusion, the use of military climatic and environmental modification technologies appears to be the most relevant explanation to understand the increase in natural disasters over the last 20 years.
“For a half century, the military has been developing technologies to turn climate and extreme environmental phenomena into weapons. This study is a literature review, which was conducted with the following objectives: 1/ to expose the known powerful military technologies of climate and environmental modification; 2/ to emphasize that many extreme environmental events observed in recent years coincide with the effects that these military technologies are able to generate; 3/ to analyze the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the origins of the increase in natural disasters. The literature used comes from official sources: peer-reviewed scientific articles (except one); patents; intergovernmental organizations; military documents; policy documents; university documents; national newspapers; news agencies; writings by respected scientists in their fields. Results of the literature review reveal that HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program), the most powerful ionospheric heater in operation, is able to influence climate. High-power electromagnetic pulses in the earth’s crust, produced by a mobile magneto-hydrodynamic generator, is a technique developed since the 1970s to trigger earthquakes. Directed energy weapons, a real technology, can ignite destructive fires at range. For several years, official documents report effects on health and the environment similar in all aspects to those that would be detected if solar geoengineering by stratospheric aerosol injection, a climate-altering technique, was used. Due to numerous biases and a lack of objectivity, the IPCC’s arguments on the causes of the growth in extreme environmental phenomena (heat and cold waves, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, 75 droughts, floods, wildfires, air pollution, etc.) are flawed. The solar hypothesis isn’t appropriate either, given its low activity for several years. In conclusion, the use of military climatic and environmental modification technologies appears to be the most relevant explanation to understand the increase in natural disasters over the last 20 years.”
“We successfully got DVD hail!” He’s so excited! Is this guy working for the weather gods? The Texas Weather Modification Association perhaps? Or maybe Weather Modification, Inc.? A new startup with funding from the Gates Foundation?
I suppose they will soon be selling gardeners’ and homesteaders’ insurance. I’m really looking forward to the days I can list my squash on the future’s market so assholes like this can bet on it’s failure and cheer when he adds another 10 cents to his electronic wallet. I long for the new opportunity to fill out paperwork to get reimbursed 3 cents on the dollar, or rather, on the CBDCs: Was it crooked neck squash or zuccinni? Were the onions beyond the bulbing stage? Were the seeds purchased at a WEF-approved supplier? How much rainfall did the seeds receive in the initial 30-day growing period, so that we can deduct that from your refund?
Weather derivitives are already a big thing, so the insider trading when companies can boast about their crop and property destruction potential is bound to up the ante. But, it’s not war, don’t think of it as war.
It’s really about resilience and making communities stronger. And if the youth have a hoot while destroying their neighbors’ gardens, well, you know, boys will be boys!
What do you care about some lost work and produce when you can contribute to the future of science anyway? What are you, some kind of Luddite?!
It’s been quite a long time since an update on the wee homestead projects and activities; it’s hard to know where to start! How about, for consistency sake, I bitch about the weather for a bit, and then move along to better tidings.
Of course the geoengineered chem-filled skies continue, as does our Yo-Yo season (formerly known as winter). We are using the air conditioning now, it’s been 80 degrees for days.
Buttercup is especially sensitive to the YoYo, to the point of regular getting seizures at such times, also lethargic and losing her appetite.
Buttercup hiding in her box all day.
There was of course the lows not long ago in the 20s and I was very concerned for the newly planted citrus. We employed quite the set up of lights and covers and they faired very well, I’m happy to report.
Invasion of Asian beetles on the citrus cover
But there has been a bad invasion of these awful beetles, which we’re vacuuming off the ceiling multiple times a day. Not to be confused with the garden-friend, the lovely little lady bugs, NO, these little beasts are really nasty. They infest, as obvious from the photos, and they bite, and as if that’s not enough, they stink.
I don’t like when folks call them lady bugs, they are not at all ladylike, so I try to correct them anytime I hear complaints, which is more often than you might think. The reaction I get is much more open and accepting than when I inform them about the manufactured weather.
Old lettuce bolting, replacing with new lettuce started under lights indoors, along with broccoli and cauliflower.
It does keep us on our toes, dealing with the Yo-Yo. Lettuce and herbs bolt prematurely quite often, seedlings come up then freeze or wither. We never know from week to week what to expect or how to plan.
I don’t normally have such a fancy setup, but these trays were gifted to me and they’re working quite well germinating some lobelia and snap dragons.
My indoor lights and heating mats make things easier, as does the row cover in the garden, but it is constant juggling. And if I miss a beat, death. Like happened with the Mexican oregano I was so proud of. I forgot about it outside one night when it frosted. Very disappointing considering our long journey of discovery, and how long I babied those few little sprouts, trying to anticipate their every need, carting them inside for warmth, then outside for sun and wind, and just when they were getting their legs, gone. All my fault.
Well, except for the geoengineers, because I wouldn’t be doing this constant refrain if our weather was consistent or predictable or seasonal.
I’ve tried twice since then to sprout the herb again with no luck. I will succeed eventually, of course, we’ve come too far in our quest to fail. The Mexican oregano has a long tale in these parts. Failure is not an option. More on that in the last HH post, if you like. https://kenshohomestead.org/2024/11/14/homestead-happenings-43/
I’d like to say it was the same with the milk quest. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as confident; I feel failure is probably inevitable and maybe even imminent. For the time being I’m counting my blessings I’ve found another (perhaps temporary) source. Last time I was complaining about the cost, this one is even more expensive at $15/gallon. At that price I’m not going to be experimenting with any new cheeses, that’s for sure. To make cheese at all is not really feasible, except for the most delicious of selections—Camembert. Otherwise the precious commodity goes toward morning coffee, ice cream, and buttermilk for recipes and the extended expiration date.
Camembert to be draining before salting
I’ve been doing continued research on the topic of raw milk and what’s available and in general, where’s the market vibe. I found one young entrepreneur with a private herdshare selling cheese for $25 a pound. (A Herdshare Agreement or a Grade A license from the state are the only ways to sell raw milk in Texas legally.).
With my new herdshare deal I can buy more milk for cheesemaking, if I’m willing to pay $15/gallon. Considering the hard cheeses I typically made were 5 gallons ideally (better for aging in less than optimal conditions), that’s a really expensive cheese.
Certainly what can be made on-site are far better cheeses than can be bought at the store; that’s why I started making cheese in the first place. But still, it’s really hard to justify all that work, and expense, when we can still buy organic cheese for about $8/pound.
I will splurge one time in late spring, if possible, when the grass is thick and so the milk most rich. And we do still have two goats, hopefully pregnant, so there’s a small hope of cheesemaking in my future, if all goes well.
Moving on to the garden, the garlic is going strong and I’ve just got the onions in, 3 big rows of each. The garlic we plant is elephant garlic which does so much better here than any other variety I’ve tried, and I’ve tried lots. These are local for over a decade now and their productivity has yet to disappoint.
The onions are from purchased sets and they normally do well, though some years are a bust, like last year. I also started some from seed under lights, to compare if they are more consistent and adaptable, because the sets have gotten pricey in recent years and it’s irritating to pay good money for possible failure. Onions do not like Yo-Yo weather, but then again, who or what really does?
At least some seem to tolerate it better than others. We’ve got a couple of ‘oyster trees’ that are bringing us regular tasty gifts.
I’ve also tried a couple new things that have been long on my list. There’s the soap that’s just now cured, a bit earlier than I’d read is typical. I’m really pleased with it! It lathers very well and the scent is rather sensuous. My intention was something earthy and erotic, and I think I succeeded.
I got the sensual part down, now I need to up the aesthetic! Trust me, looks are deceiving here, I just need better molds! Never underestimate the power of packaging, eh?
After finishing up slaughter season and chopping up downed trees for a month, Hubby has moved on to a far more desirable and needed project, according to me, our kitchen! Yippie!
We’ve needed new countertops badly for many years, ours have been well-worn in 40 years, especially since we’ve gotten here and the space went from softly used a few times a year, to a daily year-round assault. It’s actually pretty impressive the counters aren’t near dust by now, considering how quickly more modern materials fall apart.
New island done, now for the hard part.
Old, ugly, not square or plumb . . . Good times coming in Hubby’s near future!
New countertops got us on a roll and now we’re planning new light fixtures and maybe even a new paint job. Big ideas, perhaps not backed up by time or commitment.
Those big ideas, I’m full of ‘em! In my mind the kitchen’s already painted and my next project is to paint the table, which I’ve wanted (and once tried) to do for as long as we’ve had it. I can imagine I might have a table with a surface that looked something like this . . .
But I’d be perfectly willing to settle for this . . .
Or this . . .
So, after I repaint the kitchen in the few spare moments between juggling plants in YoYo season, I acquire the skills of an artist, and paint something I can really be proud of . . .
Whenever I’m finally able to manage that, y’all will be the first to know!
In the meantime, here’s where we were at in the last update . . .
