Nature – Page 3 – Kensho Homestead

My Favorite Enchanting Photo

I’ve gazed at it for what seems like hours, though its magic is hardly captured there. It is just reminiscent of the awe I felt.

That I took it, that’s fine enough for now. I’ll be back, no doubt about that. I’ve no idea still what I’ve seen, only that I don’t see what they say I should see.

That we traveled so many miles, and after plenty of discouragement, to get so very fortunate in the end must’ve added to the enchantment. I will cling to it, for a long time to come, I’m sure.

To be in good company, that helps, always. But I expect next time I’ll go alone, and I’ll stay a good long while, hoping that maybe a few more of its mysteries might come to present themselves to me. That’s how it seems to work.

If I’m patient enough, keen enough, present enough . . .
Perhaps.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Already there are many obstacles.

If only they would be, these many obstacles, as permeable as these rocks are to these roots.

If only I could hear their stories and know they were real.

If only I knew. What would I do?

Creep among the rocks, disguised, like these little guys?

Or mock its odd monochromatic effect with bold color displays in every shallow pool or crevice?

What makes a sight worthy of seeing? Is worth only weighed in the eye of the beholder? How many eyes does it take to spoil a place?

Enchanted Rock is a pink granite mountain located in the Llano Uplift about 17 miles (27 km) north of Fredericksburg, Texas and 24 miles (39 km) south of Llano, Texas, United States. Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.

I don’t know much about rocks, but granite is one we’ve all heard of, thanks to its continued popularity in building, from the popular household granite countertops to Mount Rushmore and the Red Pyramid in Egypt.

This is said to be a testament to its durability, longevity, and resistance to weather.

According to Wiki, it’s quite hard:

“Granite is nearly always massive (lacking any internal structures), hard (falling between 6 and 7 on the Mohs hardness scale),[1] and tough. These properties have made granite a widespread construction stone throughout human history.”

Which makes me all the more curious about the intimate relationship between those roots and rocks. According to the official history, we’re only seeing the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

“Enchanted Rock is a small speck compared to the huge underground rock that spans over 100 square miles. That’s almost four times as big as Manhattan!”

It’s quite hard, and yet it ‘sheds’ kind of like a glacier ‘calves’?
“Eventually, weather and erosion shaped these rocks into the odd shapes you see today.”

So, what kind of weather and erosion causes a lozenge shape? Inquiring minds want to know!

A partial official explanation can perhaps be found within worldwide examples of batholiths:

“Batholiths exposed at the surface are subjected to huge pressure differences between their former location deep in the earth and their new location at or near the surface. As a result, their crystal structure expands slightly over time. This manifests itself by a form of mass wasting called exfoliation. This form of weathering causes convex and relatively thin sheets of rock to slough off the exposed surfaces of batholiths (a process accelerated by frost wedging). The result is fairly clean and rounded rock faces. A well-known result of this process is Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.”

That explains the ‘thin sheets’ perhaps, and the rounded rock face, but not so much the lozenges. And the root-rock infusions!

Continuing with Wiki:

Lanite, a rare type of brown rhyolite porphyry with sky-blue quartz crystals and rusty-pink microcline feldspar, is found nowhere else in the world except in Llano County. Llanite can be found along a highway cut 9 mi (14 km) north of Llano on Texas 16. The largest piece of polished llanite in the world can be seen at the Badu House.

The Llano Uplift, a roughly circular geologic dome of Precambrian rock, primarily granite, covers about 50 miles along Texas Highway 29 and was 1.5 billion years in the making. Call it Rock Heaven: Geologists identify 241 rocks and minerals in Llano County, including llanite, a blue-specked dark granite found nowhere else in the world.”
Travel: Rock Heaven in Llano|April 2018| TPW magazine
Lovin’ Llano | October 2008 | TPW magazine

But apparently it was not the discovery of granite, but rather that of iron ore that transformed Llano into a boom town.

“Newspapers spread the word about Llano, recklessly playing up the magnitude of the region’s mineral resources. “Llano iron ore is the finest on the continent,” one story claimed. “Iron Mountain will produce 2,000,000 to 4,000,00 tons annually after the first year.”

“Little visible evidence remains of the Llano iron boom. A 1906 tornado destroyed some of the boomtown buildings north of the river. Other structures suffered a more mysterious fate.
“A number of buildings on the north side burned,” JoAnn McDougall explains. “The owners did it to collect insurance money. They needed cash and didn’t see any other way to get it. So many buildings burned, the insurance companies stopped insuring buildings in Llano, at least for a while.”
The Badu Building

The Badu Buildinghttps://rockandvinemag.com/2024/02/the-badu-building/

According to Wiki:
The geology of northeast Africa is very similar to that of Texas, and many of the two regions’ minerals and fossils are only found in these two locations.[2] A dike of llanite crops out on Texas State Highway 16 about nine miles north of the town of Llano.[3]
Llanite, which is similar to granite, is very strong, with a crushing strength of 37,800 lb/in2 or 26,577,180 kg/m2.[4] The mineral is also very similar in appearance to pietersite

Enchanted Rock was the absolute highlight for me on this road trip, and we almost didn’t make it. For one thing, I almost might not have been able to muster any enjoyment from it at all, being that I was wickedly hung over.

A hangover that dissippated in an instant, in a sudden and unexpected weather shift. The day before I’d been suffering in intense heat walking in a shadeless midday scrubby desert and I was attempting to muster the strength for the same again. For the first 45 minutes of the drive it was not looking promising. What fortune came then, in the last 10 minutes before the entrance, was the most welcome of weather whiplash …

Except that meant the main path of the Enchanted Rock might have to close any minute. Any amount of rain makes the rocks very slick, and they want no accidents. Best get climbing quick!

To be continued . . .

For more Enchanted Rock fact and fiction, begin at the 1:06 mark.

https://youtu.be/OO61UcJMHGw?si=4x33GYsB9oI3lbuF

Between Shitty & Country

Having become far more accustomed to the surreal ‘nature’ of ‘reality’ in the last decade or so, I was less baffled by the still ever-increasing Suburban Sprawl on my recent roadtrip through the Hill Country of Texas.

Because of course, by now we are all hearing constantly the war drums of the Globalists and their plan to put all ShittyZens into Smart 15-minute Cities™ under Palantir Surveillance Systems™ paid for with our tax dollars and paving the way for digital money cheered on by ‘Freedom Fighters’ where everyone will be eating food manufactured by Pig Pharma, who begrudgingly keeps the ShittyZenry alive through forced drugging deemed voluntary.

Homesteading gets sold as a solution, which it is not, and never was, and even I knew that as a novice 15 years ago, before it was cool. Homesteaders rarely last 5 years, I’m told, like most small businesses. Makes perfect sense to me, because it’s the only work I’ve ever done that gets harder with time instead of easier.

It’s a lot like all the lies being sold to us about everything, everywhere, all the time.

Perhaps the 15-minute city agenda works in some places, but I see nothing of the sort here. The Shitty Sprawl continues, unabated and unabashed, developing the vast parcels of land without the people, in an unstoppable concrete jungle that clearly doesn’t listen to the same news as we are subjected to from the 24-hour Cybernews Today Club.

Residential and commercial alike, vast development continues, and sits empty for tens of miles outside every major city in Texas: Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston. The foreign populations increase, but not nearly at the rate the buildings to house and employ them get constructed.

And out, and out, and out they go, encroaching far worse than infesting cockroaches. Blocking the views, crushing the landscape, sculpting and paving and polluting any and every open space where someone can maybe hope to make another dollar.

11 new Commercial Mega-projects for the Austin market!https://aquilacommercial.com/learning-center/megaprojects-planned-for-austin/

“The project is set to deliver 1,200,000 square feet of office space, 140,000 square feet of retail space, 1,700 multifamily units, and 200 hotel rooms. The development will also create 14 acres of green space. ”

Mind you, there are already huge empty building ALL over the shitty.

Plus,

(A whopping 14 acres of green space! 😂)

I like when I hear rural (and other wise) folks refer to the cities as ‘shitties’ because I think it fits. Let’s call a spade a spade. What I saw on my roadtrip was horrendous and makes me thankful for the wee refuge we have created here, for now. But the Shitties aren’t the real problem here, in fact. We are being swallowed up, everywhere, by the relentless Shitty Sprawl.

Amazon and Walmart will be offering drone delivery service, so perhaps that will alleviate some of the choking traffic that stagnates around every Shitty, all day long. Those drones must be very adept at navigating through the expanse of electrical towers and fat mess of wires that crisscross every skyline and create a hideous hellscape of prison-like bars. So much for the vast open horizons of our fabled cowboy days.

In Houston, veterans and cripples beg at every underpass and intersection, weaving themselves like Frogger players through 5-lanes of traffic. San Antonio has been ruined by tourism and is now, in just the last 5 years since I was last there, a crowded, filthy slum pretending to be full of family fun. Austin is just more of the same which started well over a decade ago, and continues its relentless expansive march into the drought-stricken Hill Country, paying no heed whatsoever to the limits of water or other pesky human needs. Technology!

Yes, technology is both the Great Driver and the Great Savior. As well as the Great Disrupter and the Great Connector.

While the water gets diverted into Data Centers, swimming pools and water sports for the foreign tech teams, tourist traps sprout up like, well like tourists traps always do.

Mystery Tours and Great Escapes (TM) and Wild West Simulations based on previous historical simulations. Hotels that require Smart phones to check-in and coffee shops that sell fancy foamy cocktails, but don’t take cash.

Such is the American Dream I’ll be expanding upon in the next posts, based on my recent, rare roadtrip. There will be highlights among these many Shitty Horrors, I hope they will be enough to create some kind of basic balance, as temporary as I expect that will be in the grand scheme of things.

The Pie in the Sky Tech dreams are in fact nightmares for a great many of us. The kind of projects ‘our betters’ have planned for the world are little more than anti-human miseries sold as ‘fun’ and ‘sustainable’ while they are in fact conning the populations of the world to build playgrounds for the uber-wealthy on the backs of the common man: THE story as old as time.

Will Austin become the next Neom?

city of neom saudi, future home of the 2029 Asian Olympic Winter Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom
Yes, there is the usual rumblings of faux climate concerns.
“Amidst increasing global-warming concerns, the project raised multiple issues ranging from the expected high temperatures in the desert land, the energy impact and detour of local water resources to the construction of artificial ski slopes from scratch.”

Our Texas mega-Shitties equally demonstrate ZERO authentic concern over their continued expansion.

“The new construction home market in Austin, Texas, remains vibrant, with homebuilders offering attractive incentives like rate buy-downs and closing cost contributions. Demand is steady, as Austin continues to attract buyers drawn to its growing tech scene, great schools, and high quality of life . . .”

In Shitty-speak, a ‘high quality of life’ is apparently defined by constant drought, non-stop shitty-wide traffic and enough beggars to make one feel rich even while living in a mini-studio apartment above a freeway.

Pay no mind whatsoever to Austin’s infamous traffic. It’s main corridor, dubed ‘A Freeway Without a Future’.

I-35 in Austin is one of nine freeways where the infrastructure is “nearing the end of its functional life.” Photo courtesy of Getty Images
Apparently this was a problem inherent in the 1928 Master Plan of Austin’s infrastructure that is now visible to ALL: The Master Plan was in fact, rascist. So that explains everything.

The Master Plan https://austin.culturemap.com/news/city-life/austin-i35-freeways-without-futures/was rascist, of course!

Perhaps the future plan will mirror a devotedly Non-Racist plan, like that of Neom, Saudi Arabia, where everyone has equal opportunity to be a ShittyZen, provided they don’t mind being surveilled like a prisoner.

From Wiki:
“At one company meeting, Nasr said on record, “I drive everybody like a slave, when they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects.”[108] He also threatened to replace employees stuck in other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, which included the former director of branding and marketing.

Surveillance
Designers of The Line announced plans to use data as a currency to manage and provide facilities such as power, waste, water, healthcare, transport and security. It was said that data would also be collected from the smartphones of the residents, their homes, facial recognition cameras and multiple other sensors. According to Joseph Bradley, the chief executive of Neom Tech & Digital Co., the data sweep would help developers feed the collected information to the city for further predicting and customizing every user’s needs.
However, Saudi Arabia’s poor human-rights record and use of espionage and surveillance technology for spying on its citizens emerged as a roadblock, according to digital rights experts. Vincent Mosco, a researcher into the social effects of technology, stated that “the surveillance concerns are justified” while further adding that “it is, in effect, a surveillance city.” The Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology did not respond to digital rights experts and researchers’ requests for comments.

Other criticisms
The project has been critiqued as a “laboratory of false solutions” inasmuch as carbon capture and storage (CCS), green hydrogen, and carbon-offsetting are self-serving panaeceas backed by the fossil fuel industry which do not work at scale. Furthermore Salman’s vision for the city includes such fanciful technologies as flying cars, robot maids, dinosaur robots, and even a giant artificial moon.”

Even a giant artificial moon?! Wow! Who needs water anyway, fly me to the moon! 🤪

Geoengineering Update

“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.”

(PDF) Natural Disasters are Not All Natural

2018 Security Framework Characterizes Geoengineering as Weapon of War – Zero Geoengineering

2018 Security Framework Characterizes Geoengineering as Weapon of War

Season 6 Episode 25 1995
Simpson’sPredictive Programming

Millennial Pep Talk

The Millennial Gardner gave a great little pep talk at the end of this confessional concerning his myriad gardening mistakes over the years. There should be more such vids as this. The positivity movement is dead, in my opinion, though MG is still a devoted adherent.

Positivity–Capitalism couldn’t survive without it!

He’s not yet reached the ripe age of bitterness. He thinks he will be able to continuously throw money at the problem, and I rather doubt that’s a viable long-term solution. I hope I’m wrong.

But overall I really appreciate his rejection of the typical appraoch to problems today: The Head in the Sand vs The Pie in the Sky. That’s what I see most often, and on that I think he’d agree with me.

So, more power to him!

We all need a pep talk now and then and Millennials especially it seems to me are inheriting the ends of the Shitshow and are expected to pull it all together again after the wrecking ball.

Hardly a lesson in equity, or perhaps the best lesson that could be.

The gist of his little pep talk is valid–anyone who excels at anything worthwhile has experienced, and learned from, the greatest teacher of all–Failure.

It’s not nice or pleasant or fun or comfortable to learn the lessons of failure. And we live in a culture addicted to nice and pleasant and fun and comfortable.

Not really a conducive atmosphere for learning.

Yet, sometimes the results of the lessons are far more pleasant than we might expect. Like, in my case, my greatest lesson in gardening so far has been flowers.

Flowers and ‘weeds’.

I had no idea the delight they offer when I first started gardening and I made little room for them in my garden, whether the classic garden cultivars or the wild weeds who long to make themselves welcomed. HUGE mistake!

I’ve been working on correcting that for many years now, and it’s absolutely paid off in myriad forms: more bees, more joy, more pleasure, more beauty, more sense of wonder.

The garden feels like less of a chore and more of a privilege with every bloom. The attraction is magnetic, to insects, to birds, to me. I observe better, I take more time, I allow my natural esthetic sense to align with the food crops and converge into a very satisfying balance of food and fancy.

Somehow, whether in my heart, or soul, or imagination, co-mingling the wild in with the crops has engaged me in a way that is a continual wellspring of curiousity and desire, even in the worst of times.

The rapture of emergent colors, the allure of fragrance on the breeze, the dance of the petals and the delight of the bees, I think what my early garden experience was missing was in fact the essence of ME. Because you don’t get that from books.

Learn from our failures dear ones, that’s why we tell y’all about them. Don’t let them dim your spirits, but use them in good faith, and find a way.

More Bees Please!

I don’t follow this very popular homesteading channel, Off-Grid with Doug & Stacy, too chatty and hyperbolic for me, but that’s what gets the clicks, so more power to ’em. Yet somehow, the Algos knew to put this particular new episode prominently on my feed.

Natural beekeeping in horizontal hives!

It’s excellent! I first heard this beekeeper many years ago and am so glad to see he continues to promote natural beekeeping and adding to his informational website. He’s also added equipment, books and events, and if I still lived in Missouri, you can bet I’d have befriended him ages ago.

Dr. Leo Sharashkin
https://horizontalhive.com/index.shtml

It really is a thrill for me to watch the growth of treatment-free beekeeping over the last decade. It used to be not only terribly difficult to find good information, but also it was treacherous. I’m not joking either. Natural beekeepers are the anti-vaxxers of the beekeeping world, with all the bullying, ridicule, and obnoxious bloviating to prove it, which I experienced for years with this simple preference.

I do not want Big Pharma livestock. It’s really not a crime, though you will be treated like a criminal to suggest it or admit that it’s your practice to most mainstream and commercial professionals. According to many of them, the fact that treatment-free beekeepers exist at all explains why their colonies are filled with diseases. It’s blind faith in The Science. And The Science is not rational.

Folks might be surprised to learn that the lifespans of pets and livestock has decreased sharply over the decades. Bees, like all the animals, are basically treated as a disposible commodity. One disgusted veterinarian who turned his practice to homeophathy complained about this in milk cows, but actually it can be observed in ALL livestock:

“While my cow patients in Wisconsin often lived well into their teens, some to over 20 years, the average California operator culled cows at 2 years old. They’d been pushed with so much grain and ever higher production goals that their health suffered and they were literally dispensed with when they couldn’t keep up.”
(3) When “organic” dairy ain’t – by Will Falconer, DVMhttps://vitalanimal.substack.com/p/when-organic-dairy-aint

But that is clearly changing! It could be that more are recognizing the false science of Pig Pharma, finally. Or, that there is so much success now in the treatment-free circles, and so many more are starting to practice it, that the bullies in the business are starting to become outnumbered. That’s my hope anyway.

One commercial beekeeper replied to Leo’s inquiry with a common fact:

14:45 “If I stopped treating my bees, I’d lose 85% in a year . . .”

I would LOVE to try a skep hive!

That’s right! And plenty of beekeepers, commercial and hobby, have experienced that, unfortunately. I also had a very hard time in the beginning. It took a lot of failure and a lot of research.

Mostly it took conviction. Good health is not found in medications. It is achieved through wholesome practices, which are the same for bees as all of life: Clean living and being left to pursue the most natural ways as possible.

From the interview we learn Doug & Stacy had similar issues as I had when beginning in beekeeping, and it was through Leo’s work and presentations they understood why and began to change their practices with continued success. Leo insists, you don’t need to invest much money, contrary to popular opinion. You don’t need to keep buying bees to grow your apiary.

Treatment-free practices rely on the natural intelligence of the bees to care for themselves. We do not requeen when we make a colony split, requiring the bees to raise their own queen. This keeps all beekeeping local, as it should be.

One of our horizontal hives with an observation window.

Instinct of the local area grows in the colony from one generation to the next. Also contrary to popular opinion, the bees get more resilient with each generation when left to their own decision-making, ie. when to swarm, how much honey to store for the winter, when to build up brood in the local conditions, which queen to keep, and when to get rid of her.

Leo’s entire apiary was grown through trapping swarms and making splits. I’ve not had much success with swarms and will try to start following more of his advice for attracting them. You’ll actually have more success attracting swarms in less rural areas, as counter-intuitive as that might sound. But bees are a bit like deer in that regard, they are attracted to the closest and most abundant and varied food sources, which often means near where humans are residing.

While he uses horizontal hives, like I do, he also has some good advice for beekeepers in cold climates and hive designs which help keep colonies alive during long winters.

LOVE SWARMS: The Complete Guide to Attracting Honeybees

by Dr Leo Sharashkin, Editor, Keeping Bees With a Smile

I once drove all the way to Arkansas on my search for treatment-free bees. This is what the car looked like when I arrived home! 😆

Unfortunately, after all that trouble, these bees also did not survive a full year. BTW, I was not stung once.

When I finally understood the importance of getting bees locally and allowing the weak colonies to die off, I finally had some success. But, it’s still a work in progress and I’m so happy for all the advice and expertise from those with more experience and success.

Live and learn!

Beauty & Bounty

Such a busy time of year already, made busier with our remodeling projects, but we always make time to stop and smell the roses.

And bow to the weather gods, or geoengineers, who have spared us this time, and after so much barking, we are grateful there was no bite. Before I sing our praises, let me acknowledge those further north who are biting the bullet this time around. Our picture perfect skies are so very rare, I don’t like to think about all that means.

We did prepare all we could for the worst, annoying as that was. Out came the row cover fabric again and the wheelbarrows full of logs to hold it down, after just having cleaned all that up and took it to storage the week before.

We expected a frost for sure.

All the pots had to be gathered to cover all the peppers and tomatoes. And considering it was so hot and humid and over 8o degrees when we were doing all of this, it felt more incongruent than snow along the coast of the Gulf of America. 😂

But, I can’t complain, because as I just said, we got very lucky. No hail, tornados, landocaines, flooding and we just barely scratched by the frost threshold.

Just look at that sky! I can’t tell you how long it’s been since seeing such a sight!

There is so much beauty and bounty, in nature, and in cyberspace too!

Just yesterday I was scrolling through my Youtube feed and about every 100 suggestions up pops a true gem, like this old Mexican lady cooking her heart out and sharing it with the world. This is the very best of the power that’s right at our fingertips, I truly believe that: The world’s people sharing about their cultures. The cuisines, the histories and myths, the music, the dance, the landscapes, the languages, the gardens, the architecture–and the ordinary folks sharing them. Unfortunately, as the AI gods have demonstrated, for every such miracle there are about 100 curses.

Make food not war!

There are the tiniest gems not to be missed through all the noise and all the neon glare.

And it seems like they are beckoning me to slow down and notice them.

What would you rather do . . . follow me around the garden, or do more of that thing you call work?

A plot of volunteer poke weed and garlic, as if they’re just screaming, we are here for your good health, so happy to be here, we keep returning for you!

Sometimes, when I least expect it, we learn how to grow together better. Like I was thinking of the old Southern trick to set out red-painted pebbles to fool the birds into keeping off the strawberries. I thought, I bet some well-placed breakfast radishes would have the same effect, and sure enough, it’s working. The birds have moved off that bed ever since those radishes started showing their little red tops, and bonus, we adore radishes, maybe even as much as strawberries.

We have been eating giant salads every day, with enough surplus for our neighbors.

Along the country roads all is flourishing. The bluebonnets are brilliant and I even caught a roadrunner, just barely.

Such gifts of beauty and bounty! What a precious, ephemeral time to infuse their bursting energy into our year ahead. What we put into it is what we’ll get out of it, just like life.

I hope your spring is being beautiful to y’all, too! Thanks for stopping by!

Country Life, Modern Style

Still, no time. I’ve lost a month, maybe two, in projects and to-do. Now I risk missing the whole spring to more of the same. And yet, in spring, it’s never all that bad.

There will always be time for baking delicious bread, and making fabulous cheese. Even in the midst of kitchen face-lift chaos, the healthy food must go on.

Quinoa-rosemary sourdough made with potato water
Fantastic!

Still, no time, but still want to share some quick happy snaps and briefest of updates, because I’d hate to be totally forgotten before even gone! 😊

It was a beautiful day, so I decided to take the scenic route to the herdshare where I pick up one gallon of raw milk at the cost of $15, that’s about a 1 hour round-trip. On this day, it took more like 3, with multiple occasions for nearly getting stuck in the mud. But it was very scenic and an adventure to boot!

Excuse me, sir, might I pass?

Apparently they get much more rain than we do and the scenic route proved impassable.

But the cows didn’t seem to mind.

Meanwhile back on the wee homestead, Patty has had a big brood!

………….

And the wild cherry has never looked so good! I wish I could get a better pic.

…………..

We’re spending so much on our interior face-lift the roosters are taking over, no time to reduce their numbers, the benefit being, no sleeping in.

………..

The garden is growing so fast, and the citrus and magnolias I planted last year are just now sprouting. But all that for another post, too much to do!

Hope all’s springing with y’all, thanks for stopping by!

Another fixer-upper on the route to my herdshare. Looks a bit over our pay grade.

How about this one, also on the route?

Destined to become a Black Heritage museum, so they say! 😆

Homestead Hope(ium?)

What is the difference between Hope, and Hopium? There’s a fuzzy line and it’s very easy to misjudge, but it’s located somewhere between: “Yay, Trump will save us all from $11/dozen eggs!” And “We should start a chicken mega-ranch.”

If those two meet in the middle of the road, might creative minds find that they’ve absent-mindedly crossed with logic and conclude a few laying hens might be just the ticket? A bit of self-sufficiency, why not? After all, it’s not rocket science . . .

Joel Salatin exposes the WEF agenda!
“Josh Sigurdson talks with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, an entrepreneur and farmer who for years has fought against Monsanto, factory farming and dependence pushing for people to homestead and/or farm and not be dependent on the system.
We previously interviewed Joel in 2017 regarding Monsanto. Now, 8 years later, we delve into the massively expanded technocratic grid as more than ever, people are dependent on grocery stores, the grid and AI, weakened by design.
The World Economic Forum agenda is to destroy self sustainability and make people weak slaves to technocracy. Eventually they want food rations and carbon credit scores. They’re already being rolled out to some degree and with the 2024 United Nations Pact For The Future, this problem is encroaching quicker than ever.
The climate lobby attempting to bring down farms is more alive than ever. There are solutions however which Joel Salatin has spent decades teaching people.
There is also a rumor circulating that Joel Salatin was picked to head the USDA. He explains this and more in this interview.”

https://www.bitchute.com/video/xp8FhgIdgdHh

Though it is the gateway livestock, and that’s official, I’ve even heard it repeated by the official fact-checkers at NASA.

Don’t worry, more government will save us! They will VAXX this FLU away, similar to the way they spray on the weather!

Respiratory diseases? I can’t imagine how that might be happening! So baffling!

But as James Corbett points out, chickens are the simple solution, but not necessarily the Easy one.

Most folks will take the easy way out, drink the Kool-aid, puff the Hopium, and exclaim RFKJ is here to save the day. Cheap eggs and healthy injections on the way!

To Hope is to Hopium as to Smoke is to Suffocate.

Resilience their way?

Moving Aussie’s to Smart Cities:

https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/the-managed-retreat-resilience-racket?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

They got you by the balls! Now what’s a bit of responsibility for a few hens compared to that?

The Pleasure Principle

A post for Valentine’s Day, something I’ve never done before, as far as I recall.

I imagine it as an Ode to Narcissus, which is my own personal meaning attached to this holiday. Through the Greek myth we are told that Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water and up to modern times there are myriad explorations for what that represents.

The most well-known today, coming from Wiki:

The myth had a decided influence on English Victorian homoerotic culture, via André Gide‘s study of the myth, Le Traité du Narcisse (‘The Treatise of the Narcissus’, 1891), and the only novel by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Most often in our modern era it’s considered a negative thing—a forsaking of the beloved or even God, or the destructive self-love of a tyrannical ego, or the folly of youth.

Echo and Narcissus, oil on canvas by Nicolas Poussin, 1627 (Louvre, Paris)

But for myself, I imagine its original intent as being more pure and innocent. I don’t imagine the Greek myths were to be taken as literal stories of living people and Gods, but rather the mysteries and processes of Nature.

Eros is Cupid, but I imagine that what’s being unveiled between these 3 figures is depicting the process, the mystery, the intimate and delicate balance with Cupid (Eros) manifesting through Narcissus’ love of beauty and pleasure.

That something bigger than we mere mortals is occurring when we fall in love, sometimes even against our own will, awakens and evokes the spirit of Eros. A natural force so powerful we think of it as a drug, capable of making us behave in uncharacteristic, undesirable and even dangerous ways.

Narcissus is in love with love, which is to say, in love with life.

In the water, a classic symbol of emotion, he truly saw himself in the spirit of divine love.

The latest modern remaking of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

What came after that initial myth were the modern cultural assaults and chronic misunderstandings cursing him with egoism, arrogance, selfishness, cruelty, taken to the extremes of self-absorption, self-loathing and eventually self-destruction, as in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Eros as uncontrolled self-obsession.

My belief is that to fall in love with anything, or anyone, is to fall in love with oneself; that is, an aspect of one’s own reflection. Just as Narcissus is our first flower to appear in spring (it’s blooming right now in fact) Narcissus symbolizes the coming reawakening of all our natural pleasures as spring approaches and life is renewed.

Before the Easter ritual of fecundity, first the pair must meet, and fall in love.

In celebrating the courting rituals, it’s the one holiday that’s not considered a family affair, and conjures an atypical respect for intimacy in our mass-loving modern culture.

To me it is a holiday of guilty pleasures, quirky pursuits, strange beliefs and peculiar tastes.

What’s your pleasure? Do you indulge it enough? Or perhaps, too much? Narcissus wants to know!

Do you prefer the cake or the icing?

Immediate reward or delayed gratification?

Are you the driver or the passenger?

Is ‘fun’ the same as pleasure?

Is your pleasure a particpatory adventure, or to be delivered on a silver tray?

Active or passive?

Photography or painting? Reading or writing? Listening or singing?Watching or playing? Cooking or eating? Looking or being seen?

Is there one without the other? Is there the other without the one?

A personal story of guilty pleasures.

A fine restaurant, with a fine atmosphere, and fine company, is my guiltiest pleasure of all. I’d spend lavishly without reserve, relish with abandon, obsess over every detail, waste hours, or weekends without a second thought. Dionysus takes the reigns when I experience such exquisite care, such regard for pleasure and beauty, I’m easily swept away. (And unfortunately, just as easily disappointed.).

Hubby did not know that about me. How could he possibly, he’d only known me a week or so.

Perhaps it’s not such an unusual thing, considering the love affair with food that’s shared across seemingly all cultures, if not always appreciated to the same degree with all people.

I’ll forever cherish the singular date when Hubby won me over, especially because I know the chances of something remotely similar ever happening again are microscopic. It was one of those one in a million evolutionary occurrences, kind of like the Big Bang.

As we all know, it just takes one miracle.

He planned it to the letter—chose the best restaurant, actually went there in advance to choose the best table overlooking the water, spoke to the chef personally, tipped the maitre’d in advance.

Who does that? I mean, I would probably, but who else? Only in the movies, right?

It wasn’t on Valentine’s Day, there was no chocolate or champagne. But I did drink too much, and he swiftly transformed into my white knight on a scooter. He was the crafter of the most perfectly romantic night of my life. And romantic is not something he’s ever aspired to, by any standards, and by his own admission.

Like I said, just one miracle. Perhaps a little help from Cupid?

I was ho-hum before that. Not that he wasn’t a good catch, of course. Certainly loads of divorced 30-something women are attracted to a man who finds it to be bragging material that his belongings fit into a backpack with few aspirations besides spending half the year in a hammock on a Thai beach.

We had a lot in common, as in we were both fairly uncommon vagabonds. Not trust-fund kids or military brats, that was most common in the ex-pat scenes in those days. We worked and scrimped and hustled and snubbed our noses at such privilege, when we could afford to. Otherwise we enjoyed their parties and their company and their contacts.

We met at one such fancy affair, and he wasn’t my type, that’s how I saw it in the moment. Not because of any of those previously mentioned assets, those I actually found pretty charming, especially that he would be bragging on them with a woman he’d just met. I was far more impressed with his stories of rugged adventure than any of other’s comfort and privilege.

Not our photo, though we do have great ones, somewhere. This one is from kingscup.com

But I was just barely out of another failed relationship; I just wasn’t on the market, according to me.

He perceived otherwise. I dare say, I have never been pursued with such seemingly carefree precision. He is/was not ever a lady’s man, had less relationship experience than me, and was not there looking for love.

It didn’t help that my just-failed relationship was with a photographer, and that he was there as another photographer’s assistant. Of course I noticed he was fit and handsome and friendly and funny. I imagined we could become friends, maybe even friends with benefits. My imagination stopped there.

This is a stock photo, the resorts we stayed in were even more glorious.

We bumped into each other often, as would be expected, since we were all covering the Phuket King’s Cup Regatta. They had us all staying in top resorts, sailing the seas by day and attending parties every night. It was amazing and overwhelming and so deliciously extravagant and foreign.

Even under such conditions, he was able to corral my attentions, redirect my intentions, and totally capture my life’s trajectory (as dismal as that was looking at the time considering I was living in an old, drafty single-wide in my dad’s trailer park in Mena, Arkansas.)

Though I’m sure he won’t admit it and questions who was doing the seducing, I will still insist, it surely wasn’t me. Narcissus, perhaps?

We are told it’s human nature to pursue pleasure and to recoil from pain. But all around us we have plenty of evidence that’s not the case at all. In honest observation it looks much more true that pain and pleasure have a very mysterious relationship that is quite unique to each individual.

I personally will not allow the Dorian Gray’s of the world to eternally spoil the beauty of Narcissus, so I celebrate Valentine’s Day as a gateway into the new season’s promise of pleasure.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all the Lovers of Love, Beauty, Pleasure and Life!

Homestead Happenings

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

Homestead Happenings

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