Newsletter #291 2025 Jan 13 Monday
It's been uniformly cold, 20's usually, brushing up against 30F. Started the 11th round bale for the oxen today. And the Pigs! They'll be in a stock trailer a week from today.
I picked up round bales this week; the roads were iffy. I was discussing the situation with George, the farmer I’m getting the bales from, and decided that in this case discretion was the better part of valor; I left the trailer at the top of the driveway, and did not risk the truck or my 6,000 lb load on the big north-facing hill on our property. It was a good decision. Today I fetched the first of the five bales with the tractor and moved it to the barn.
Primal Woods
Pure Maple Syrup
The Pure Maple Syrup is heading out the door. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the stocks of the Whiskey Barrel Aged and Vanilla.
Meanwhile it’s time to start ordering bottling supplies for the upcoming season. I did make progress on getting the oxen ready for the season; I now have a tongue appropriate to the work on the Sap Wagon.
It’s 11 ft long, which might be borderline too short, but we’ll see. I still have to repair Elmer’s halter, which came apart over the fall. Oh, and I also need to add a 12 ft chain to the tongue assembly; pulling power will be transferred through the yoke and chain, turning through the tongue.
Sawmill Services
Given weather considerations, the Bob K milling will be postponed to sometime after January 22.
Above is from my last visit to Bob; he moves some big logs with his articulated loader, and the board feet total piles up quickly.
Homestead Rebel Farm
Picking up Round Bales 11-15 at George’s farm in Decatur. The roads were slick; though with 4WD it was no problem on the level. And I wasn’t too worried about up hills; it was going down a steep hill on the Homestead with 6,000 lbs behind the truck that gave me pause.
I got into a stock of firewood that was not sufficiently “seasoned,” which is to say it’s still “green,” or wet. It just doesn’t work. It burns, but it takes to much energy to dry the wood in the boiler, which means there is a significant loss of energy available for heating. But, when it's cookin’, it’s cookin’!
That’s 1,420°F in the reaction chamber. Lesson learned, or re-learned; whole logs take years to dry, to be seasoned the logs need to be cut into 18-20 inch long firewood rounds and allowed to dry for at least six months.
The Pigs are doing well, and as of next Tuesday I’ll have one less chore to do! Which is a reminder, if you want to put some great pork in the freezer, please reach out. In addition to being great food, it helps us to keep the farm going!
The Oxen are working on round bale #11. Before this batch of bales is exhausted, God willing, they’ll be pulling the Sap Wagon through the woods!
Farmhouse
There’s a lull in occupancy, though we are using the Farmhouse for meetings of my church men’s group. The men’s group and our church generally speaking, are in a period of change, as we transition to a “home church” model. If you want to know what that might look like, think of the book of Acts, and Paul’s epistles to the seven churches; those eight books of the Bible are all about the first century church.
News
Speaking of the church; what can we do to resist evil? I posted the first in a series on the subject:
I’m now a paying subscriber to Absurdistan, by Elizabeth Nickson. Solid, long form, written reporting.
I also wrote a post on Ukraine. We’ve been at war incessantly since WW II. At what point are we going to rein in our military adventurism and an intelligence community that has completely left the reservation? This is up to us, We the People; our representatives will not get it done, cannot get it done, without Us.
And finally, our phones and computers are making a big step-change in their surveillance capabilities, thanks to AI. Don’t accept any and all new technologies that come down the pike, including AI. Windows Copilot and iPhone 16 should be on the other side of a bright red line. AI is not your friend.
Books & Such
I’ve got three books either finished or being read. I’m close to finishing Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. No real change to my conclusions; both WW I and WW II were the direct result of massive failures of diplomacy. And therefore, unnecessary.
I started and finished Land Rich Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer, by Brian Reisinger. It is a great book, prompting a lot of thought, which prompted me to also buy a hard copy. I’ll have more to say on this book in the not-too-distant future.
I listened to an interview of Jeffrey Sachs this week, which led me to look into the so-called Church Committee. The Church Committee was the first real oversight of the CIA, three decades after its empowerment by "Ike” Eisenhower. Here we are five decades further down the road, and there has been no subsequent real oversight of the CIA since Church. Let’s put it this way; there is nothing new under the sun. Nothing that Assange revealed, nothing that Snowden revealed; it’s all been going on since WW II, and it’s still going on. The book I’m listening to on Audible is The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys—and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy. Senator Church (D, Idaho) allowed that J. Edgar Hoover’s 50 year reign at the FBI was the start of the American police state. Even now, the FBI only masquerades as a law enforcement agency, the FBI is in fact one of 17 intelligence agencies under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). That explains a lot. The Church Committee also looked at the National Security Agency (NSA), which has been spying on American’s since the beginning. As far as the Intelligence Community (IC) is concerned, the rules don’t apply to the IC. On the positive side, in the 60’s and 70’s some “main stream media” reporters were still reporting; the MSM had not yet been wholly coopted by government. To put the current goingson in perspective, I highly recommend this book.
I have a new book on the night stand, though as yet I haven’t broken into it, The Mystery of John Colter: The Man Who Discovered Yellowstone. When I was a young teen, still in junior high school, my heroes were mountain men; specifically Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, and John Colter. Of course I recently read Boone, but Boone was not one of my early heroes; Boone’s legacy though was passed on to “the Corps of Discovery” (the Lewis & Clark Expedition), and Colter, a member of the corps, did not return to St. Louis, but stayed in the West, and became one of first mountain men. I’m looking forward to this book.
All the best, and may God bless you and yours,
John & Geri
Don’t go! You can help us to keep the wheels on this effort, by visiting the website, and buying some of our Pure Maple Syrup!
OR! I can understand not wanting to sign up for a subscription…I get it, but if you would still like to support our efforts…
OR! If you find value in our work, please do consider supporting Homestead Rebel for $5/month subscription.
All the best, and may God bless you and yours,
John & Geri
Earn rewards, free access to pay-walled content, by referring a friend!