Eighty Years (or so) To The Big Zero

This is a fascinating article/blog post on something, probably, no one has any idea is happening to farmers around the world.

Apparently seed producing corporations are genetically engineering seeds that will become sterile after one growing season there by forcing farmers to purchase more seeds. The UN and many other nations said, “No, that’s probably not a good idea.”

So now seed producing corporations are producing Zombie seeds that remain sterile until a third product - in the form of a fertilizer or other material - is spread over the fields, there by activating the seeds to grow.

This means farmers have to purchase the seeds, and the reactive agent to make them grow.

Tell me again why the monetary system (and unchecked capitalism) is such a great way to run a society and how corporations have the best interests of the people in mind when developing products?

http://farmwars.info/?p=845

Am I reading the post incorrectly?

-Steagus

Thinking out loud, This Land

Wednesday I killed my cat - Kerrigan.

I’ve been looking at jobs and one of the big issues is that I have four cats to take care of and I said to myself several times last week and this, that if I didn’t have cats I could go anywhere in the world to look for work. If only I wasn’t tied down with these cats.

Wednesday two pitbulls were running loose in the neighborhood and ended up taking up residence in my backyard. I shot at them with my slingshot but they were moving too fast. All the other cats raced into the house but one. I looked for him and called his name and finally I saw him tearing across the backyard toward the old church. Right on his tail were the two dogs. He made it under the church and those dogs circled around for a long time. I shot at them and made noise but they kept coming back.

Eventually the other cats went outside but five minutes later tore back into the house through the cat window. I went outside and on my back step was one of the pit bulls. I swung at it with my AmpGuard Sword (a long foam sword with a bamboo core - they hurt when you get hit) but only managed to make noise. They took off.

I haven’t seen Kerrigan since Wednesday night. I went out with a flash light and looked under that church. He wasn’t there. Those dogs are gone also.

One less cat to worry about. I feel sick.

I wish I could just shot them with a bb gun but I’m not that … I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right or proper. Am I being soft? What if I did shot them and they died on my property? Then I’d have to bury them or try to find their owners. Now if I had kids in the backyard and dogs were chasing them I’d get my 30/30 without hesitating. But for this.. what can I do? What I really wish is that I made enough money to fence in my property and not have to worry about stray dogs tearing through the yard. If I was able to fence it in this wouldn’t be an issue and my cats would be safe. It’d also help deter the teen thieves who keep stealing my gasoline/diesel cans after burns in the yard.

The job hunting is going all right. Haven’t had any call backs but have only applied to five jobs so far:

Newspaper (I know some people who worked for the paper and they say it is a terrible place to work. Terrible.)
City (really want this job. My former boss is going to put in a good word with the Mayor who will hopefully put in a good word with the department this position is for. We’ll see.)
Iraq (Inventory manager)
Korea (Teaching English)
Department of Health (local - possibly not a ‘real’ job. Could’ve just been a posting to satisfy legal requirements to advertise the position while they already have an in-house person ready to take it.)

I had a thought that if I could sell my property/house I might be able to make enough to pay my mortgage, debt and perhaps even student loans and then start over with another place in the area or elsewhere in the country, with only a 30 year and utilities to be concerned with. That would be interesting if it was possible. Although with the housing market the way it is I’m not so sure. Of course I do have 3 acres so…. Maybe I could get a realitor to check it out.

How many ideas and half plans can you juggle? I’m working on eight right about now.

Thinking out loud, This Land

Last Sunday some friends came out and we cut down a bunch of trees. We cut them into sections of about six to eight feet to be used as borders for a raised garden at the school.

While we were doing that the big tractor came over and did some great work moving the pine trees that had been piled up at the end of my driveway for years now. Then he went and pulled all the stumps out of the back yard. It was amazing.

Here are some before and after shots of the driveway clearing. See that huge Live Oak in the background? Now it can breathe.

You can just make out where he moved the pine trees in the left side of this next image. It’ll much easier to burn them in the open now.

Speaking of burning this is an image of the fire I started the Monday (24Mar08) before Spring Break. It was still smoking when I went to work out in the yard last Sunday (13Apr08). We had four days of rain during this time also. How it stayed lit I have no idea. The fire must have hidden in a root under the dirt or something.

This Land

Four weeks after planting here are some garden pictures.

Granted I only helped plant them. My friend, whose land the garden is growing in, has been maintaining it these last few weeks so other than the planting I haven’t done much but take these pictures. But these are great pictures, no?

This Land

So my computer broke again this week. I just got it back up and running.

I don’t mind that it broke. Things break but what bugs me a little is that I have absolutely no idea why it just stopped working.

It may have been an update, a bad shutdown sequence, or a failing harddrive, I’m not sure.

Well fortunately CompUSA went out of business and I was able to purchase this software called Acronis 11 Home Edition. I put in the backup disk, booted to it and restored to a previous state. Unplugged all the harddrives but the C: drive and the program drive and was back up. This of course after a day of troubleshooting.

I spent the last couple days after work upgrading all the software and other minor windows tweaks that I realized I wanted after the first time I set my system up so in a way I suppose it works out.

I was going to play board games tonight but went and took a nap and woke up three hours later, two hours after board games started, so didn’t make it. Really just needed to get some sleep.

Big weekend ahead. Neighbors coming over to help clear some land on Sunday. Co-Worker coming over to pick up cut up and haul away straight pine longs for a raised garden project at the school that same day, and Second Saturday readings by students for most of the day on Saturday.

On an economic, daily commute message I’ve started carpooling with a co-worker. We switch of days for the week. This will help both of us save on gas. The only down side is that I have to get up at 6 am each morning to be at work at 7:30 am. But that means I get to leave at 3pm rather than 4pm. Saving the gas is good.

Well gotta run. Numbers is on.

The Daily Commute, Thinking out loud, This Land

I started the land cleanup a little later than expected yesterday.

And after one day of clearing and burning it now looks like this.

Just goes to show you what can be done with a little elbow grease, sweat and off-road diesel. 8^)

Oh yeah, and while I was out there and the fire was just starting to make me become very nervous and I was debating how long it woul take for the Fire Department to arrive a big yellow elephant came by and helped out. But not too much. Just an hour or so. Really I could have done it all on my own but he seemed so eager to help out I just let him.

See all those roots and stumps in the pile?Those are the massive pine tree stumps that have been in the ground for over a year. (See first image in this post.) I kid you not, the big digger nearly tipped over trying to pull one of the largest stumps out of the ground. He had to dig all around the stump and snap the root systems. When he finally pulled it up the root stem was at least six feet long. It was nearly as big around as the stump itself. You can’t see it but it’s inside the core of that fire.

Here’s what the fire sounded like twenty minutes after they left.
Flash movie of Stump Fire

This Land

So things did not go so well that weekend.

I didn’t make it to the hike because of my cat. I saw my cat Vayne on Friday night and he had this huge swelling on his shoulder. There was no fur and some discharge and it was like a small bubble on the side of his shoulder. A friend of mine who recently lost one of his long time dogs had similar bulges and it turned out to be cancer. So I got up real early (6:45 am) in the morning on Saturday and started calling the vet.

I called, and called, and called. No answer. At 9 am a friend called and asked about Vayne. I said I couldn’t get a hold of the vet. “You calling the right number?” “Well yeah, it’s …… that’s the number.”

“They have two numbers.”

Silence. “Really?” He tells me the number he calls, and I check my print out for the Vet and there it is, the second number is the number he calls. I hang up and call and someone immediately picks up. They make room and I take Vayne into the Vet. He’s not happy. He’s crying the entire time even though I have my hand inside the cage petting him and calling his name. He’s still “meow”, “meow”, “meeooow”, “meh”, “MEOOOOOOWW”, “eow” for the entire 11 mile drive.

Doc sees him and says, yeah we’ll need to keep him overnight because we can’t get to him today. But clearly something is wrong. Could be infected but we’ll see. You can pick him up on Monday.

Sunday. Monday. Monday evening I call. “Hello. I’m on my way to pick up Vayne.”

“Oh that’s great. He’s fine. There was nothing wrong with him. Just a bruise on his shoulder. He would have been fine in a couple days. But at least we know.” (And indeed he is fine, not even a limp.)

$180 for the knowledge that my cat ran into something and spranged his shoulder.

I had to put it on my new Motiva Discover card. My first credit card purchase of the year and a blow toward Reset.

So I missed the hike. I was really looking forward to it.

Oh and I figured out how to get my SATA drives working but that’s another post on how Awesome it is to be a Geek.

Right now I’m just glad to be back up and running (not in RL) but on the computer.

I’m on vacation for the next two weeks so will be updating the various pages and stats for the Six Months to Reset experiment in the coming days. Have to plan out exactly what is a priority. Today I intend to do some burning of a huge pile of debris from some land clearing a while back with new material from the Tornado.

 Just beyond the bird house is a pile of trees. This was done during the winter. And just over the trunk of my new Toyota Corrola LE is the oak that was knocked over by the tornado. It’s in the last picture also. The second shot is a close up of the trees at the end of my driveway that blocked it and the easement that connects the road to my house and my neighbors home further back. We were cutting those trees up that morning just to get out of the driveways.

Hey, here is a picture of a tree that fell on the same day as the Tornado but was 7 miles away at a friend’s house. We had some very strong winds that morning all over the area. He was going to have to pay someone to cut it down but now that’s not a problem.

 (That’s not me. Just a friend who has helped me work on my yard and taught me a lot about living in the country. He’s gonna help get my garden going for next year. The spot I’m burning today is where I’ll be putting the garden.)

Until later.

The Credit Trap, This Land

So we had a tornado on Friday. One of the two tornados touched down in my backyard and I was awoken by the sound of the ‘train’ tearing up trees. Yesterday I went into the back forested area and found the exact spot the tornado landed. I’ll see about getting pictures.

Here are some pictures of the aftermath. (After I cleaned up a little. Being able to get out of the driveway and access road was a priority.)

Coincidentally (sp?) my computer finally went out on Friday and I’m waiting on part to fix it so all my updates have to be done at work. 8^( (Hence not many updates until my main computer get fixed.)

I have 122 pictures so I can’t put them all online. I’ll add some more as time permits. There’s much more destruction. No one was injured or killed so that is good. Just property damage.

I was out on Sunday helping the neighbors clean up and we cleared a lot of material/trees. It’s amazing what you can do with a small group of detemined people pitching in. Ok one more.

Later.

This Land

I mowed the yard on Saturday and as in the words of a friend of mine I “jocked out.”

I spent from 9am to 1:20 pm working outside and then came inside took a shower and sleep til 6pm. I was very tired.

To help you prepare for working in your yard I have compiled a list of tools you may need:

Bolt Cutters

Pliers

Loopers

String Trimmer

Lots of String Coils for trimmer

Ear Protection

Safety Glassses

A man  or woman

Chapstick

and a sleepy cat

After a couple hours of hard labor you to may have a beige (but trim) winter lawn like this:

(Before)(After)

(Before)(After)

(Before)(After) (This is a good picture.)

(Before)(After)

This Land

On the 28th of December 2007 I got it into my head early one morning to mow the yard before the new year officially hit. It was a brilliant plan.

1) - take before pictures of yard.

2) - step outside and take pictures

3) - replace step 1. with step 4. then proceed to step 5.

4) - get dressed

5) - do step 2. then proceed to step 6.

6) - mow yard

Easy. As most brilliant plans are.

I took a couple shots of the back yard which is too brown and dead to put on an uplifting happy site like this and I took some pictures of the front yard. Green winter grass springs eternal.

That strip of dead brown in the lower left corner of the image is Zoyza growing like only bought by mail zorya can. Isn’t it beautiful? (see the process below on how you too can get a yard like this. 8^)

So I pull the string trimmer mower out of the barn (see lower right image below) and fire it up. (I nearly broke it a couple weeks ago. I couldn’t tell if it needed oil in the engine or not (the stick is crystal clear and there is oil covering the entire stick so I figured it was fine, but since I hadn’t put any oil in it in 1 maybe 2 years I figured it definitely would need some soon. But the stick was covered in oil I tell you, so I didn’t put any in.) and when it stopped working suddenly with a lurch, as I was going into a thick brush and white clouds of burnt oil smoke came from the sides I figured it was telling me it needed oil. I checked the stick. It was dry. Finally! So I put oil in it until the stick said stop. It never did. I put an entire quart in the engine. The stick didn’t say when I tell you, it was the stick’s fault.)

So when I fire it up on that cold December morning and white pillowy smoke starts coming out the side and it’s jerking from side to side like a $25 dollar a hour mattress I figure it’s getting the gunk out. That’s cool. Work that gunk out. Yeah. Work it.

Then it stops. No gas. Ah, ok.

So I drive ten minutes to the store, get gas, come back and fill the tank of the string trimmer. It’s a 6 hp string trimmer by the way and of the push variety. You put twenty inch long strings folded in half on the rotary and use them as blades. It’s a better machine than a regular lawn mower because when you wrap buried barb wire around the shaft it bounces back much easier, and when you hit a stump three inches off the ground hidden in tall grass your machines doesn’t go flying out of your hands. It’s for taming the lawn before you can starting working with it. 8^)

Gas tank full, stick still says full, start the engine. Nope. Start the engine. Nope. Won’t start. I didn’t want to have to do this.

I get the instruction manual and read it. Hmm… 20 ounces of oil max. 1 quart > 20 oz. Damm. I think I fucked up.

I drain the oil. I clean the chrome. I polish the fire engine red paint and gently talk to it reading Emily, and Whitman poetry as I try to get it back to working order. This takes thirty minutes.

It broke.

A week later I get it back from the lawn maintanance people a friend of mine knows.

“Yer git oil everywhur. Why it dint start. Carborator git oil in it. Filter soaked wit oil.”

“Ok. So it can be fixed though right?”

“Sures. Git me aday.”

3 arces of land you can call your own (after 30 years) = $12.5k
6 hp gas string trimmer from Lowes = $450 dollars.
Learning that less is more when it comes to oil = $52.68

And here is the process on how to prepare land for growing grass.

This Land