Milking Mamas, Busy as Bees

Big days on the wee homestead! The cucumbers are coming in by the bushel full, the lambs are dropping like rabbits, the mushrooms are growing like mad and the bees sound exceptionally pleased. I can’t keep up!

Luckily, Handy Hubby is here now every day, thanks to his ‘early retirement’ (that is his layoff six months ago) thanks to The Great Scamdemic. With his steady efforts and attention our place is shaping up beautifully and my stress levels have been reduced by half, even as chaos still reigns. For these are not the only new milking mamas, I’m now officially a milkmaid in training myself!

Welcome, Summer! Two piglets for a goat in milk was our barter with a friend. She’s settling in nicely and Phoebe was the first of the herd to greet her.

Learning to milk in humid and buggy 95 degrees F is every bit as pleasant as it sounds. 😏

Impressive udder and gymnast-like capabilities!

Handy Hubby crafted me a nice milk stand from plans posted by Fias Co Farms, a very good resource for goat newbies.

The chanterelles will surely give up very soon in this heat, so I forced myself to brave the mosquitoes and ticks once more to gather one last big basket full. I came across a new variety while hunting that’s not in any of my books, so I contacted Texas Foraging expert Mark ‘Merriwether’ Vorderbruggen, who identified it and directed me to this excellent site:

https://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/hexagonal-pored-polypore

Since our temps went from April-like to August-like overnight, I got stuck in a bit of a bind with the bees. Because I’m trying to work between 3 different hive types (very stupid, do not entertain this folly I would advise) I’m trying to get them to move of their own accord. It is working, but it is quite a slow process. I will eventually have 3 colonies from this one very full nuc without too much destruction or fuss, or at least that’s my plan.

To end I offer a true garden success. I’ve been experimenting a lot with companion planting, sometimes with advice from permaculture books, but sometimes just by my own observations. This year I planted sunflowers very early, before it was warm enough for the cucumbers and melons. My thought was to attract the bees to the garden like a lure down to the still small cucumbers. It’s worked like a charm and the trellises are bursting with activity.

I’m also trying some new tricks with the tomatoes, letting the cherry types go wild, but highly managing the large varieties and interspersing them with various herbs, lots of comfrey, turmeric and ginger. The results are not yet in on those efforts, but I’ll keep y’all posted.

Mmm, grapes, our favorite! Ta Ta for now

Cornerstone Article to the Reading of Winter Watch: The Tavistock Method of Brainwashing and Social Psychiatry — Winter Watch — Citizens

‘The proper study of political mankind is the study of power elites.’ — A.K. Chesterton (1899-1973) From 1930 to 1933, Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) studied psychology and sociology at the University of Frankfurt (aka The Frankfurt School) in Germany […] The post Cornerstone Article to the Reading of Winter Watch: The Tavistock Method of Brainwashing and Social Psychiatry first… Cornerstone […]

Cornerstone Article to the Reading of Winter Watch: The Tavistock Method of Brainwashing and Social Psychiatry — Winter Watch — Citizens

Covid, Cybernetics, And The New Normal — Wrench in the Gears

This is a guest post written by a humanities teacher and freelance writer who holds a masters degree from the School of African and Oriental Studies, a public research university in London. It lays out over fifty concerns regarding pandemic policy implementation and plans for a cybernetic future, full spectrum dominance of life on the…

Covid, Cybernetics, And The New Normal — Wrench in the Gears

Flooded Dells & Chanterelles

Wow, what weather! We got 12 inches of rain overnight on Monday, far more than we’ve ever seen here. Unlike the tornadoes, hurricanes and hail, however, I don’t complain about the rain. This region was made for rain, and lots of it. It’s the droughts that are far more difficult to withstand, and far more unnatural.

Texas Weather Modification doesn’t respond to public inquiries and they don’t share data on all the various projects happening around the state, so who’s to say if this was all Mother Nature. Man’s tech being ‘proprietary’ after all, we peons and peasants are relegated to the realms of conspiracy theory. Folks will continue to deny the weather warfare schemes until the bitter end, I suppose. No one wants to believe man is manufacturing the weather, despite clear evidence right at our fingertips.

However, that’s beside this particular post’s point. This is what we woke up to, the sound of Niagara Falls outside our window! While still in bed I said to Hubby, “What is that sound? It can’t be wind, the trees aren’t blowing!” One look outside and I saw, that’s the creek that now looks like the Mississippi, flowing right over the road and bridge (sorry for the shaky camera, I was focused on the roar more than the image).

While we had several fence issues from the debris, lost a favorite old tree, and the electricity was out for a spell, it’s absolutely amazing to me how resilient nature can be.

The water was mostly receded in just one day and then, out come the lovely fruits as kind rewards for our losses and extra labor.

Chanterelles abound, the flowers and veggies are flourishing. The mosquitoes and ticks too, no gifts given without associated costs.

One delicious dinner of pasta in cream sauce with chanterelles, green brier tips and sweet peas. And another favorite tonight, pizza of course, which Hubby pronounced my best ever. Our own homemade cheese, bacon and sourdough crust certainly help the chanterelles sautéed in garlic butter make their best impression. .

While hunting chanterelles I stumbled upon a rather large patch of this rare beauty which I once mistook for a wild orchid. Actually it’s a Purple Pleat-leaf, in the Iris family. It’s gorgeous in the wild, but wilts immediately when cut. I carefully uprooted a few of the tiny shallow bulbs and transplanted them in the garden.

Hopefully the bees will find them as lovely as I do! If not, they still have their garden favorites.

FOOD FRAUD: Dr. Frédéric Leroy – The Hostile Takeover of Food Production — RIELPOLITIK

Source – iceagefarmer.com “…Dr. Frédéric Leroy, a professor in the field of food science & biotechnology at Vrije Universiteit…detail(s) what can only be described as an attempted hostile takeover of all human food production. Dr. Leroy outlines with studied precision the UN Food Systems Summit: the agenda to end traditional farming and ranching, the players […]

FOOD FRAUD: Dr. Frédéric Leroy – The Hostile Takeover of Food Production — RIELPOLITIK

Memory Holed

Memories
Like they never happened
Squashed
Like roaches in the basement
Their rotting carcasses
Swept under the carpet

We choose good times
Can’t you see the signs
No ugly allowed
Nor pain, nor facts
Just juggle those masks
To make us proud

Or display them loud
With a colorful tattoo
Pretending they weren’t taboo
And all is always fine with you

Whitewash and minimize
Feign by gaslight
Transfer and twist
Fog and spin
Bypass
Such fun laughs
Never admit defeat
Then rinse and repeat

Scream them harmless
Shun she who reminds you
With a potent cue
To fill your brain
With only
The vapid, fake and inane

Truth is for troublemakers
In our realm where
The Mythmakers reign
She most stuffed with happy lies
Wins this lifelong game

Scapegoat, the weight of other people’s guilt | Psychology Spot — Citizens

By Jennifer Delgado That person is the one who bears all the problems, shame and guilt …….. thus diverting attention from the real conflicts that must be resolved. ……..The phenomenon of the scapegoat in Psychology can be traced to two Freudian defense mechanisms: displacement and projection. Scapegoat, the weight of other people’s guilt

Scapegoat, the weight of other people’s guilt | Psychology Spot — Citizens

Greetings from “New Normal” Germany! — Consent Factory, Inc.

On April 1, 1933, shortly after Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazis staged a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany. Members of the Storm Troopers (“die Sturmabteilung,” or the “Storm Department,” as I like to think of them) stood around outside of Jewish-owned stores with Gothic-lettered placards reading “Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from […]

Greetings from “New Normal” Germany! — Consent Factory, Inc.

“I don’t mean to single out the Germans. There is nothing inherently totalitarian, or fascist, or robotically authoritarian and hyper-conformist about the Germans, as a people. The fact that the vast majority of Germans clicked their heels and started mindlessly following orders, like they did in Nazi Germany, the moment the “New Normal” was introduced last year doesn’t mean that all Germans are fascists by nature. Most Americans did the same thing. So did the British, the Australians, the Spanish, the French, the Canadians, and a long list of others. It’s just that, well, I happen to live here, so I’ve watched as Germany has been transformed into “New Normal Germany” up close and personal, and it has definitely made an impression on me.

The ease with which the German authorities implemented the new official ideology, and how fanatically it has been embraced by the majority of Germans, came as something of a shock. I had naively believed that, in light of their history, the Germans would be among the first to recognize a nascent totalitarian movement predicated on textbook Goebbelsian Big Lies (i.e., manipulated Covid “case” and “death” statistics), and would resist it en masse, or at least take a moment to question the lies their leaders were hysterically barking at them. 

I couldn’t have been more wrong.“

Beasts Big and Small

There is the famous gardening adage of ‘4 in a row’ but it seems there should be another one something like ‘Every single success brings 4 new challenges’.

Because of course, now that we’ve spent years building up a gorgeous loamy soil from our heaps of sand and clay, the moles, voles and gophers have moved in with a vengeance. It’s gotten so bad I’ve had to enlist Handy Hubby with his big guns.

Rodent traps: a lot of work, but at least they are working, 4 captured, and counting.

And now that we have the fanciest coop in the county, we’re losing more eggs and chicks than ever—to the only beasts still able to penetrate the walled and fenced fortress—snakes. Another job for . . . Guess who?

Yes, that’s a water moccasin, poisonous. Hubby’s also found a couple of HUGE rat snakes stuffed full of eggs and chicks.
A dozen chicks lost and a broody hen giving new meaning to ‘a bucket of chicken’

Of course the snakes don’t go after the rodents, why go to the extra effort of hunting when there’s free food lying around everywhere?

Of course the cat doesn’t go after the snakes or the rodents, or maybe she does, but she can’t keep up with the steady traffic.

So we’ve lost all our cabbages, most of our broccoli, a couple dozen onions (don’t believe the hype, onions are not a rodent deterrent by any stretch of the imagination).

But, at least the forest beasts are well-fed.

Tori: “I don’t like onions anyway, where’s the chicken?!”

Forced Helplessness: Welcome to the Machine

Convince the young mother the White Coats know best. At first sign of conception, Condition her with fears of the unknown. Insist she consult the experts at every stage of childhood development. Mock her legitimate concerns of the benefits of: Formula, Vaccines, Medications, Ultrasounds, Nursery School, etc., while simultaneously shaming her for irrational mothering ‘instincts’.

Convince the young bachelor the women are out to trap and ‘sperm-jack’ him. He’s a prisoner of the ball and chain. His own needs and desires are toxic and dystopic. He must dominate or be dominated. He NEEDS a Brotherhood for this fantastic feat Against all that haunts him.

Convince the young couple they will most likely get divorced. Portray their family life as boring and dismal. Co-opt their bonding time with workaholism, alcoholism, materialism and addictions and distractions of every variety imaginable.

Convince the family their entire existence is ‘Interdependent’ with the Machine. They cannot exist without it. The Machine provides everything they need: Food, Water, Energy, Entertainment, Health, Purpose.

The Collective, the Individual, are nothing without IT.

Convince the Philosophers civilization itself is the Machine and Mankind could never exist without it.

Convince the Politicians and their progeny they are destined to rule, as the Workers are destined to be ruled over. Emotional manipulation will ensure they stay in their stationed positions in order to care for the weakest among their group rather than make a move toward the upper echelons of the Pyramid hierarchy. “Selfish” will become the big sham/shame buzzword.

Convince the weakest of the group they are the strongest thanks to ‘Democracy’.

“It is not an easy task to unite the efforts of the human race toward the accomplishment of any common good. Mankind in the majority is selfish, provincial in attitude, and concerned primarily with personal success and acquiring creature comforts. It will not be possible to build an enduring peace until the average man has been convinced that personal selfishness is detrimental to personal happiness and personal success. It must be shown that self-seeking has gone out of fashion, and that the world is moving on to a larger conception of living.” The Secret Destiny of America by Manly P. Hall 1944