Newsletter #247 2024 Feb 23 Friday
A solid week, with a lot to report
Primal Woods
Pure Maple Syrup
We shipped our first Amber Pure Maple Syrup since 2020; thank you Carrie! It is beautiful stuff I have to say, and of course the taste is beyond compare. Order some for yourself today!
Meanwhile, work in the woods continues. This week we had a load of sap come in at 2.4% sugar content, which is the highest we’ve seen this year. We’ve made 24 gallons of syrup so far; I’d guess we will be approaching 36 gallons total over the next couple of days.
We are trying something new; can you guess what it is? Leave a comment.
The big girls were back on-site Wednesday for sap collection.
Sawmill Services
Sooner than usual this year, we are going to be transitioning into Sawmill Services. The usual is mid-April, this year we will start several weeks earlier, with the effort starting the day after you read this; February 24.
The power company decided to widen an easement, and that resulted in the removal of many trees, some of which are Black Walnut, the most valuable timber in this neck of the woods. Together with my friend Neal, I will will be sorting through these logs this weekend, and loading them onto Neal’s trailer for transport to Primal Woods.
The power company is replacing the wood poles on the right, with steel poles on the left. Fortunately their wooden “mats” are still in place, since they haven’t pulled the new wire, which will make the site much easier to get into and out of. I expect to be milling about 25 logs.
A word here about being “friendly” to the environment; there is nothing friendly about energy production at scale, and distribution of the energy. For example, the old wood poles I would argue, are less unfriendly that the newer, bigger, steel poles. Each of those new poles is fastened to a concrete foundation 8 ft in diameter, and 37 ft deep; if my quick math is correct that is almost 70 cubic yards of concrete, weighing approximately 70 tons, or 140,000 lbs. That’s for each pole. Not environmentally friendly. Underground monuments to “civilization,” and the wind mills are much worse.
Homestead Rebel Farm
Farming is approaching the top of the list, and three things are at the top of my mind:
Pigs; the plan is to run 6-8 pigs this year, $400 down payment required, let me know if you are interested, or want to know more about how this works. We will start earlier than last year, perhaps much earlier, maybe as early as March. We’ve learned a lot, and aside from not having the pigs onsite long enough, 2023 went very well.
Meat birds, aka broiler chickens. I’m thinking 75 birds; again, let me know if you are interested in pastured chickens.
Perimeter fencing. If I’ve learned one thing over the course of the past few years it is this; don’t bring on animals if you are not equipped to manage them effectively and efficiently. Before we start with sheep we need water-tight perimeter fencing. Oh, and a another thing…
Training the oxen and putting them to work!
It occurred to me this morning that the oxen are going to highlight inefficiencies in some of my processes. More on that later this year I suspect.
News
I didn’t spend a lot of time in the News this week, which is probably a good thing. But, a couple of videos got my attention, both from Tucker Carlson. I highly recommend both, and I put out Notes on Substack for each.
.Everything You Need to Know about the Government’s Mass Censorship Campaign
How China and the UN are Fueling the Invasion of America
All too often the truth hurts, unfortunately.
I heard at the barber shop on Thursday that there will be a negative impact on the local peach crop because we did not have enough cold this winter. Expect higher prices as a result. Fruit tree growers use a measure called “Growing Degree Days” to establish this fact; peaches for example, “need at least 600 chilling hours at 45 degrees Fahrenheit or lower to trigger fruiting.” I applied the GDD measure in attempting to predict the end of Sugar Maple sap flow in two posts, and I may try to use it in comparing sap flow volume in the future.
As for the cellular outages; I’ll let the dust settle on that before commenting.
Books
I finished two books since I last wrote, the first was Limits to Growth.
This book is…well, disturbing. The authors put together 10 scenarios; the various outcomes expressed in graphical form. Scenario 1 represents what I will simply call the “do nothing” approach; Scenario 10 represents somebody’s idea of a utopian future.
I’m using Scenario 5 as an example; the templates for the graphs are common to all scenarios. In this scenario you can see population turning down in about 2040; collapse takes place about a hundred years later. Only Scenarios 9 and 10 do not result in collapse. Scenario 10 includes strict enforcement of 2 children per family globally, and a smaller environmental footprint across the board for all humans, among many other things. What came to my mind is that this might have formed some basis for the agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The global elites see it as their place to bring the serfs into line in achieving the globally dystopian “utopia” represented in Scenario 10. Like I said, it’s disturbing.
As an antidote to Limits to Growth; I finished the last of the books studied in A Year With Men, Fathered by God. Becoming a fully developed man is a journey without end, but A Year With Men has taken me and a few of my brothers a good way in the pursuit.
And finally, I put a new book on my nightstand; Giants In The Earth having been recommended by my sister, Melinda.
This is a story about Norwegian settlers on the prairie, post Civil War. I’m about 150 pages into it, and I’m enjoying the read. Best I can make out they’ve settled on Split Rock Creek near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Let’s just say that to them is seemed a barren landscape, and a lonely existence.
Online Presence
My web designer and I have been working on porting over some blog posts from PrimalWoods.com to Substack; this is part of our online presence reconfiguration. The move of posts is not complete yet, as each requires some editing, but it should be completed within a week or two; all will remain free, we are simply consolidating the content.
The more I work with and in Substack, the more I find to like about it.
See the red circle in the screen shot above? I am adding “tags” so that readers can look deeper into a particular category. If you click on Tags, you will get a list of categories; simply click on one and all of the posts so-tagged will be displayed.
Anyway, just trying to make the site easier to navigate, and more useful. Please give it a try.
Last minute update; we’ve collected about 2,539 gallons of sap.
All the best, and may God bless you and yours,
John & Geri
My guess of what you are doing "new" in syrup is smoking it. If not, might be worth it. I have had a few (good ones hard to find) and it is awesome!!
Also, I'd like to recommend a book...Fossil Future by Alex Epstein.