Newsletter #275 2024 Sep 13 Friday
A solid week with a little milling, some food preservation, videos of putting up some firewood for winter and the animals.
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Primal Woods
The weather is simply perfect. Warm temps to be sure, but aside from today the humidity is tolerable. I have a lot to do outside, and for the next ten days it appears I won’t be able to use the weather as an excuse!
Sawmill Services
Those planks are 2-1/4 inches thick, 12 inches wide, and ~12 feet long. From them will be taken two 42” wall-mounted shelves for LeAnne. I’ll track progress on these until they are on the walls in her new salon.
Bruce invited me out to see what could be salvaged from a 120 year old timber-framed barn. It just about brought me to tears. An insurance company won’t insure the nearby house without the removal of this barn; it will basically be dismantled by excavator. There’s nothing I can do, but sort through the debris for reusable posts and beams. It’s a damn shame, I’ll say that. When you think about the work involved in building this barn at the turn of the century, over a century ago.
Homestead Rebel Farm
Now we’re getting somewhere; with the freeze drier that is! Being able to preserve eggs, and virtually all of their nutrients, for 20-25 years is a big win.
We have the medium-sized Harvest Right freeze dryer, and based on our growing experience, we may have to get another to handle seasonal volume in the future.
A quart, 18 eggs, fits in to each tray.
We also freeze dried our first Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s); in this case chicken soup.
Freeze drying is the best at shelf-life and nutrient preservation; nothing else even comes close.
I still have a lot to do on the farm this year, specifically with respect to the provision of drinking water for the animals, the management of runoff, and fencing for sheep. Today I made a short video of both batches of pigs, and the oxen; all is well.
Farmhouse
Killing three birds with one stone; beautification of the Farmhouse property, putting up firewood for heat and nights by the fire pit, and avoid the gym membership!
News
You have to wonder…where is the State Department?
“Rural/Urban symbiosis…” We’ve lost it, it seems to me. The “flyover” states are the enemy. This post reminded me of the book Human Scale; what you see in the background of the image below is of inHuman scale.
Books
I’m still reading JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. I came across something interesting in this week’s reading. JFK and Khrushchev had private correspondence, handwritten, trusted only to single individuals on each end. They each were avoiding their military, diplomatic and intelligence agencies; these agencies on both sides wanted nothing to do with the peace that both JFK and Khrushchev came to want after the Cuban missile crisis brought home the possibility of utter destruction. Then, Khrushchev convinced Castro to engage in a similar secret dialogue with JFK; Castro also wanted peace in the wake of the missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs. The JFK-Castro dialogue was just about to get traction when Kennedy was murdered.
The lesson? A president alone cannot get the job done, even a popular president; when a policy is going to result in disempowerment, and/or dis-enrichment of the military-intelligence-industrial complex in particular, and its revolving door to captured government agencies, those so threatened will undermine the president’s efforts at every turn, up to and including assassination of any president so bold.
Geri and I are now members of the Angel Studios “guild.” You can have a look at what movies Angel Studios has produced here, and if you are interested in joining guild, and having a hand in some of their great productions, click here.
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All the best, and may God bless you and yours,
John & Geri
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