Ducks4you 2021 Ragtag Thread

[ducks4you]

Gonna squeeze every bit out of this Thread!!!
So busy this time of year. 2nd office Christmas dinner tonight, so I won't be doing much outside.
I pulled/burned weeds along the fenceline which is 3+ ft from the chicken run enclosure. I pulled all burdock and any clumps of burdock seeds and burned them yesterday. I also pulled up a tarp that I had used for piling up weeds. It is now hanging on the gate to the inner sanctum for the weather to clean it, then to be used to cover stored pine shavings.
Got a couple more posts, then...a new thread!

 

[ducks4you]

We mowed earlier this month. Cup and Cakes stall gate wasn't closed. He ate his grain, drank some water, ignored his pile of stall hay, ate 2 flakes on the ground in the hallway, and took it upon himself to mow the inner sanctum...all night. Did a good job, too.

 

[ducks4you]

Middle DD asked for a canner for Christmas. I wrapped 4 packages AND numbered them:
1) Beginner type spatterware hot water bath canner
2) funnel, lid magnet, big ladle and sticky canning labels
3) 12 pack of pints, wide mouth
4) 8 pack of plastic storage lids, wide mouth
She was Very pleased and wants to come over next summer for some apprenticeship.

 

[ducks4you]

ONE...LAST...POST!!!!
Yesterday I did work outside. I pulled weeds underneath another portion of fenceline ready for cardboard dumping. I burned them with my very full burn barrel contents, which surprisingly smoldering afterward for quite some time.
NO CHANCE IN HADES would my firepit fire spread yesterday. The ground is as wet as a used tea bag.
I bought a new wheelbarrow tire for my big wheelbarrow. One of the tires had a split in it, and I didn't search far enough to get anybody to put a brand new tire on the rim.
No matter, the one I bought has no innertube and won't need to be pumped up.
Good...so far.
Couldn't follow the instructions, so I couldn't complete putting it on. NO time...ya know, New Year's EVE and football games, and all the jazz, so I moved it for temporary storage in with the tractor. Rain, today, which is WHY.
Instructions are safely hung up in the tool shed.
Even at $52.00/tire I May buy another one. Same store sells the regular tire for $22.00, w/out the rim, which means I would have to muscle off the old tire and muscle on the new one.
The thing that I love about my MIL's sub, sub, sub compact old wheelbarrow is that it has a hard rubber tire. It's probably as old as ME, and this year will need to have a hole welded shut in it, but it's WORTH keeping, and I keep it stored inside.
While enjoying my fire I took a piece of rebar and put 4 more holes in my tree pot, [a little bit over 2 ft tall, with a matching saucer.
I had cleared it out, put it upside down and was aPALLED!!! at the 4 small draining holes. Now it has IMHO adequate draining. Sometimes you can find Great ideas on the internet, that is, to heat up metal and melt holes in plastic plant pots.
If you Buy a pot without holes, turn it over and take a look. Chances are you will SEE circles where you can make holes. I bought 3 of those this year that had this.
more...

 

[ducks4you]

I used my reciprocating saw to finally chop down the 1 1/2" diameter tree of paradise growing 1 ft to the south of my garden shed. a 5 minute job well worth doing.
I put my new extension cord cover on, the one that heats up my new 60 ft hose. I have run them both through a 12 inch wide, 10 inch high piece of clay pipe, (that came from...????) to protect them from the elements and the occasional "horse acting stupid" episode. Mine is orange, but I like the design. It snaps shut on both sides and in the center.
FINALLY, we relaxed and I didn't do too much cleaning up/putting away. Here is Eva who ALWAYS has to touch Pyg while they nap. Happy end of 2021, all!!

 

[Zeedman]

I had cleared it out, put it upside down and was aPALLED!!! at the 4 small draining holes. Now it has IMHO adequate draining. Sometimes you can find Great ideas on the internet, that is, to heat up metal and melt holes in plastic plant pots.
If you Buy a pot without holes, turn it over and take a look. Chances are you will SEE circles where you can make holes. I bought 3 of those this year that had this.

I bought 10 extra-large plastic pots from Aldi this year, which had no drain holes... but yes, the suggested drain locations were marked on the bottom. A great way to drill those holes is with a large counter-sink drill bit; when the bit goes through, the shoulder cleans off any clinging burrs. I then flipped the pots over and quickly touched each hole from the inside, to remove any burrs there. The result is very clean drain holes, and a cordless drill makes it a quick & easy process.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Yes, a light honey taste. I also picked the flowers and let them air dry for dandelion tea. I grew them in my garden at our old house in Livingston. I get a few here, but the sheep love them and usually get to them first. LOL I picked bags of seed and scattered them here when we moved. I love their bright, cheery yellow color.

One big surprised I had recently was when I tasted some spruce tip jelly I had ordered from Alaska. Much like the pine syrup from Italy I had gotten some years ago, it doesn't taste nearly as piney and resinous as one would think. In fact, there is almost a blueberry note to it.

Now, that I think of it, the baby pine cones in syrup I used to get from Russia (and still have a few jars of) also had that taste, just much, much stronger (someone Russian told me to never eat that much of that stuff at one sitting, it can apparently damage your liver if you take too much in all at once.)

 

[seedcorn]

Question. Why would anyone eat something that can harm your liver (or any body part)?

 

[flowerbug]

Question. Why would anyone eat something that can harm your liver (or any body part)?

there's a lot of things that can fall into that category, several with very wide appeal (alcohol, sugars, *cides)... the liver is a way for the body to detoxify things that would otherwise be harmful and then get rid of them. i wouldn't be surprised to learn how complex an organ it really is with all the things it has to cope with.

i've said before that the key indicator organs in the human body are the kidneys and the liver because they will eventually reflect how humans are doing at treating the world. if the rates of disease of these organs increase you know you are doing wrong.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Question. Why would anyone eat something that can harm your liver (or any body part)?

You also have to remember that a lot of these foods had their origins in conditions where eking every calorie out of your environment possible. Even if something could harm you if you ate too much of it, if you DIDN'T eat it at all, you were giving up valuable potential food.

And after a while, it becomes tradition, or you develop a taste for it. Sorrel and Spinach will wreck your kidneys if you overindulge, but I don't see anyone barring restaurants from serving spinach salad and shav (sorrel soup). Grass pea seed can destroy your bones, nerves and blood vessels if you make it a major part of your diet for an extended period of time. but the fact it grows under very tough conditions (like massive droughts) makes it work cultivating. Even garlic and onions can wreck you if you consume too many of them (they wreck animals even more, which is why you are never supposed to feed your dog or cat anything with garlic or onions in it.) In the tiny amount in your toothpaste, stannous fluoride keeps you teeth strong, in a large does, it's rat poison. in the forties and fifties, weak doses of strychnine were pretty common to add to health tonics, for their stimulant properties. Optometrists still used atropine (the poison in deadly nightshade) to dilate eyes to check them. And I think they STILL make nitroglycerine pills for heart conditions.