Investment Advice

For almost 100 years, people in the United States have been playing the stock market. Average people, mom and pop, buy stocks in things they don't understand. The market rises and falls and some people win and most lose. Somehow, people think it's respectable or good for their money to make money. The antinomian, or outright sociopathic activities of corporations makes them "wealthy". Their standards are sold out by companies like Apple, Nike, GE or whatever, but they get paid a dividend, or in stock buy-backs, so it's all good.

Retirement savings has institutionalized that system with 401(k)'s and IRA's. Resources that used to stay in a community go to New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco. The houses, roads, and infrastructure of people's home towns get gradually more dilapidated. Their kids move away to seek a job for funny money in the big city.

In my hometown, where I actually still live, several local businesses buck this trend, and actually do very well. Plowing resources into the local community--making an Ark or fortress against trouble--is a really good idea. Investing in businesses that routinely do evil, and are run by people that hate your existence is a bad idea.

401(k) Versus a Farm

In the years since the financial crisis, I've become very skeptical of financial "wealth", not just in terms of the ability to "store value", which is a ridiculous concept anyway, but more importantly, participation in the financial system really supports some of the worst people on planet earth, and perpetuates an antinomian devouring machine.

That poked and prodded me toward building a farm and becoming focused on value and exchange of value, versus the lies of "price" and money. All the money in the United States is derived from debt, and is really backed by the productivity of its people. It comes from an entirely parasitic usurious system. Money is dead. Banks are vampires. They have no material life or existence, they're blood suckers.

In spite of that belief, I still have a 401(k) and contribute to it two times a month. It's hard to turn down the "match", which in my case, is just other paper conjured into existence by the business I work for. Theoretically that money is backed by "equity" in the corporation, but that's just another pile of dreams and schemes. It's slightly more real than dollars, but is much less real than a pile of dirt, or fertile soil.

It's a good exercise to think about a moral choice versus a pragmatic or "economic" choice to obtain more "000's" in a computer account somewhere.

It's an easier choice to make when you believe all that paper wealth is probably going to be robbed to feed the vampires sometime in the next decade(s).

Any "dollar" I plow into the farm actually gets captured in something tangible. Any "dollar" or "stock dollar" I plow into my 401(k) goes into a computer and is a captive to a system that's opposed to the interests of me and my family.

Moving the Garden to a New Equilibrium Condition

One of the projects I'm doing this year is installing a border around the garden. I pile up wood scraps from the greenhouse build (I'll do a post on that once it's done), plus old rotting logs from the woods, and top it off with wood shavings. The idea is to separate the garden area from the yard so the plants that spread along the surface of the ground, or via roots, or runners can't breech the barricade. Also, the rotting wood is a food source, hopefully, for more fungi. If the garden can be coaxed into a condition where the soil food web has more of a fungal component, then that should be good for the crops, and help to suppress weeds.

I noticed last year, that the most effective weed suppressant was autumn leaves. In the garden where I've got a layer of leaves down, there have been zero weeds encroaching from the yard or sprouting from seeds. This fall, I'll redo some of our flower beds with a layer of leaves as a weed barrier, then cover that with pine bark mulch, which also does a good job at weed suppression.

Straw is not nearly as effective, and by the warm season (soil temperatures > 70F), grass and other weeds start peeking through. Woodchips are somewhere in between.

Winter Wheat Cover/Corn Patch Update

I terminated the winter wheat, then planted corn in the crimped over plants. I think I planted the corn too early this year, though. The spring was cool and very, very wet here. In other parts of the state, there was flooding and some farmers didn't even plant a crop. The cool, rainy conditions prevent the corn from germinating.

The plants didn't really start growing until late June. The first batch of seeds probably just rotted. I'll probably plant corn again next year, following a similar method, but I'll wait until the soil is 70 degrees. I terminated the winter wheat too soon, also.

The corn that is growing does seem pretty healthy and strong. The no-till method eventually works, but it's slow going. Areas of the garden with more compacted soil are a dead zone, though. I probably need to pile a bunch of compost there and let it rot for a couple of years.

Ducks and Strawberry Patch Success

This year, our strawberry patch produced many, many quarts of strawberries. Most of the plants back there are mature, and each one produced a handful of strawberries through June. I originally planted 75 bare root plants a couple of years back. Several died that winter, but the survivors did well this winter and they were all very healthy by June.

The main problem we had last year was slugs and snails. They probably destroyed 75% or more of the strawberries. This year, the ducks wiped them all out with a daily visit to the garden. The only losses we had were due to voles and birds. Those losses were minimal even though we have a million voles and birds. I think we'll get one more year of productivity from the strawberries.

I treated the garden with vole repellent--that worked very well. I'm planning to redo the fence this fall, and hopefully that'll mostly rodent-proof the garden for a while.

I also seeded sudan grass in the strawberry patch. If it takes off, hopefully it will stifle some of the runners and help shade the berry plants through the hot months. I tried planting some last year, but it never really got started, and only patches grew. This year I planted it over several days and it looks more likely to grow.

Cover Crops in the Garden 2019

We redid our garden beds last fall. I replaced all the old/rotting treated lumber with logs and reformatted the beds a little bit to give us some more space overall. I also planted cover crops--winter wheat, red clover, and hairy vetch. It took several weeks to get it all done as winter rolled in, so the maturity of the crops this spring varied so some areas in the garden were well covered and others were almost bare when the snow all melted.

By mid-May the most mature winter wheat was ready to terminate, so I crimped it with a 2x4 and some angle iron. That seemed to work reasonably well.

The crimped/smashed wheat then provides a mulch for the warmer weather crop, corn in this case. As the corn matures, I'll plant the next round of cool weather seeds and keep the cycle going. It will be interesting to see how the residue from the wheat is consumed by the soil over the summer. The soil in the garden has been significantly loosened and seems, by visual inspection, to have more worms and organic matter than the prior seasons.

First Redwing Blackbird Sighting

I saw the first redwing blackbirds of the season yesterday. Spring is not so far off! Here's a nice website that allows people to post such sightings: Journey North.

Birds Checking Out Nest Boxes

Every year I've been building some nesting boxes and putting them around our property. We're just starting to exit the winter of 2018-19 and have had a few stretches of warm days. The local bird population seems to be shifting from their winter habits into spring habits. The bird feeders, for example, aren't getting emptied out every day. Also, I notice the birds are starting to check out the nesting boxes.

Unfortunately, I've been slow to build a batch of bird houses for this year. I want to build some bluebird boxes (which often get used by sparrows) and also some platforms for swallows. Last year some barn swallows were scouting our property for a house, but didn't settle in.

It's probably not too late to get some new houses out there, but I better get out in the shop this weekend and at least get started. Here's a nice reference for bird house specifications.

Ducks in Cold Weather

refilling the pond after February warm up

Our 4 ducks (3 call ducks and 1 khaki campbell) made it through the hardest part of the winter (so far) of 2018-2019. They have a nice coop that's insulated and is heated with a 1500 watt space heater that was able to maintain the indoor temperature in the 60s when it was -5F outside overnight with the doors closed. During the day with the door open, it was able to keep their water from freezing.

Prior to the winter, the ducks didn't spend a lot of time in their coop even in crappy weather like rain and sleet. During the coldest days, though, they finally figured out the coop is a refuge and enjoyed the straw bedding.

It seems like the ducks easily tolerate temperatures above 20F, and start to get annoyed at temperatures below 20F, and generally dislike single digit temperatures. They like to go outside, though, even in brutal cold, at least for a while. They dislike snow, though. Once it starts snowing, they'll generally go inside. On the coldest days they avoided the pond, but if the temperatures were 10F or above they'd go into the water.

We put straw down on top of the snow on the brutal cold days. Typically the ducks would stand or sit on straw on the coldest days.

Duck Pond Aeration Keeps it Open All Winter

The smallest opening in the ice so far after a very cold night

We've been aerating the duck pond water since day one. The aerator I use only consumes about 30 Watts so (EasyPro KLC25 Linear Diaphragm Pond Aerator Air Compressor 23 Watt). It's been running 24/7 for almost a year.

I was really curious what would happen in the cold temperatures. For the past week or so, we've had below freezing temperatures and some very cold overnight temperatures (single digit Fahrenheit).

The pond stays open immediately above the aerator bubblers. If the temperature is warmer, the hole is larger. We break up some of the ice that formed overnight on a daily basis. Since we only have 4 ducks, they're all able to get in the water and stay clean and play around.

The aerator I'm using is for a 5,000 gallon pond which is roughly the size of the duck pond. If I ever need to replace it, I'll probably get a larger one.