Categories
Animals

Clones

The babies are often called the clones because of their near-identical looks
Photo by Sue Weaver

Bon Bon, Drex, Kira, Emony

Mom calls my newest babies “The Clones” because it’s so darned hard to tell them apart.

Their facial markings are each a little different; that’s all. My kids aren’t really clones. Most cloned mammals are created in the lab. But did you know that armadillos’ babies are natural clones? They are!

We have Nine-Banded Armadillos living on our farm and they are weird beasts. They have scaly, leathery heads and legs and armored shells made of horn and bone, but armadillos have soft, vulnerable tummies.

Feyza, the livestock guardian dog who protects us says they’re yummy to eat but it upsets Mom (a lot!) when Feyza kills one. The strangest thing armadillos do is this (Uzzi and I Googled armadillos, that’s why I know): at one point in her gestation a mama armadillo’s fertilized eggs splits into four equal parts and each part becomes a baby armadillo. So the babies are genetically identical haploid clones.

Human scientists have cloned lots of species. A famous Boer buck named EGGSfile (he’s in my Boer girlfriends’ pedigrees) was cloned in 2003. It cost $22,000 to create several handsome EGGSfile clones. Like other cloned animals they’re genetically identical, but they don’t look exactly alike!

Other cloned species include a camel named Injaz born in 2009; a kitty called Copycat in 2001; a dog called Snuppy in 2005; and a horse named Prometea in 2003.  

However, the most famous clone in history was a cute Scottish sheep named Dolly.

Most people think Dolly was the first cloned sheep. Not so! First came twins called Megan and Morag born in 1995 at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. They were the first mammals ever cloned from differentiated cells.

Morag died of disease in 2003, but Megan lived to a ripe old age.

Dolly was the first mammal grown from an adult somatic cell and she was born at the Roslin Institute too. The cell was taken from a donor sheep’s udder, that’s why Dolly’s namesake is singer Dolly Parton. She had six lambs: a single, twins and triplets before dying of disease in 2003, lot long after her pen mate, Morag. BBC News and Scientific American called Dolly “world’s most famous sheep.”

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Categories
Crops & Gardening

Free Garden Stuff

Rick has often found free plants near abandoned homesites and taken advantage of them, as seen here
Photo by Rick Gush

I like finding stuff for free. 

I’ve always found a lot of plants for free, often laying in the gutter, other times available for the harvesting, and often while adventuring around old, abandoned homesites. 

The first photo is of the Chionodoxa blooming in the potted plants section of our garden.  We dug these bulbs up in the garden of an abandoned villa last fall.  Seeing them all blooming now in their pots is nice, and I’m sure they’ll do well once planted into the garden.

Our garden includes a lot of things that were free for the taking.  A whole lot of the decorative plants were free, the bottles used to construct the terraces were free, the construction lumber and bamboo canes were free, and even some of the edible stuff, like the figs, plums, mushrooms, horseradish, wild arrugula, beet greens and wild asparagus were all free.

I certainly have enough money to buy whatever plants and building materials I need for my projects, but finding free stuff is sort of like a sport.  I imagine that finding free stuff used to be the primary means of gardening.  Now in this time of global-super-shopping capacity, finding free stuff is more fun than ever, sort of counteractively political.

The winter garden construction projects are just about finished now, and it’s time to focus on spring planting and cutting back the jungle of weeds.  I do still have one big project though, and that’s filling up the new lower bed, shown almost completed in the second photo for today. 

Moving large amounts of soil around the garden is a daunting task.  The new bed is quite deep and will need about five cubic yards of fill soil, all of which will need to be carried by bucket. 

The dirt source for this planter is up at the very top of the garden site and is at least half rocks, so it will all need to be screened.  It’s mostly mineral, so I’ll add as much organic material as I can round up in the way of cow and steer manure, old leaves and our home-made compost.  

It takes about fifteen minutes to clean and prepare two buckets full of soil and carry them down to the terrace.  I’m calculating it will take around 200 trips with a pair of full buckets to fill the bed.   My back is aching and my waistline has diminished just thinking about the job.

I did finally plant the first tomatoes on Saturday, as that was the first day that the ground could really be worked.  We’ve got 12 Datterino plants now, and these will be one of the three key tomato plantings. 

The cherry and yellow pear bed will also be important, as will the sauce tomatoes bed.  I’ve got a few big black tomato seedlings in the coldframe too.  I got those for free from a friend, so of course, those will have to find a niche somewhere in the garden as well.

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Categories
News

More Irrigation, Less Rainfall

Irrigation use in India has increased while rainfall has decreased
Courtesy PlaneMad
Research shows that irrigation use in India is more widespread while the amount of rainfall from monsoons has decreased.

Man-made changes to landscape in India have affected the area’s monsoon rains, suggesting that land-use decisions play an important role in climate change, according to a study by a Purdue University scientist.

Monsoon rainfall has decreased over the last 50 years in rural areas where irrigation has been used to increase agriculture in northern India, says Dev Niyogi, an associate professor of agronomy and Earth and atmospheric sciences. At the same time, dense urban areas are seeing an increase in heavy rainfall.

Niyogi used rainfall data spanning back to 1951 that was collected by 1,803 recording stations monitored by the India Meteorological Department to determine different regions’ average yearly monsoon rain totals. While the mean monsoon rainfall for the entire country remained stable, Niyogi found that rainfall averages in India’s northwest region decreased by 35 percent—from 75 to 40 percent—from the historical mean during the past 50 years.

Analysis of soil moisture showed that before monsoon rains came, the northwest region had become as much as 300 percent wetter in recent years relative to the past 30 years, which has been attributed to irrigation from groundwater to sustain intensified agricultural production. This wetter surface causes cooling that weakens the strength of low pressure necessary for monsoons to progress into northern India.

Satellite data showed that northern India is greening sooner than it had in the past. That greening is creating a barrier for monsoons, which provide much-needed rain to replenish groundwater reserves being used for irrigation.

“In this case, you need a warm, dry surface to advance the monsoon,” says Niyogi. “Because of increased irrigation, you now have a wet, green area, which does not allow the monsoon to reach far enough north.”

Because that rain isn’t reaching the region, more irrigation is needed to sustain agriculture.

“Unless this is checked and controlled, the problem is going to become more and more severe,” Niyogi says. “With more irrigation, we will have less monsoon rain. With less monsoon rain, you will need more irrigation, and the cycle will continue.”

Urban areas, on the other hand, are being pounded with rain when it comes. Niyogi says there have been storms in some urban areas that drop as much as 37 inches of rainfall in a single day.

“You only see these types of heavy rainfall events in those areas with heavy urbanization,” says Niyogi. “The more urbanization spreads in those areas, the more of these heavy rain issues we’ll see and the more flooding will become a problem.”

Niyogi says there are two theories on why that’s happening. The first says that urban landscapes create heat, which extends into the atmosphere and energizes storms. The second theory is that pollution created in urban settings interacts with passing clouds and increases rainfall.

He says the results of his study could have land-use implications elsewhere.

“If urbanization is affecting the Indian monsoon season, it has the ability to affect patterns here in the United States,” he says. “This likely isn’t localized in India.”

He adds that India is hotter than the United States, and that may be exacerbating the issues. The next step in this research is to examine landscapes in the United States to see if development has affected weather patterns historically.

Categories
Homesteading

A Few (Hundred) More Mouths to Feed

A Worm Factory Composting Worm Bin System
Photos by Cherie Langlois

Several months ago, we purchased a Worm Factory Composting Worm Bin System made from recycled plastic right here in Washington.

For many years we had a simple homemade wooden bin that served our worms and us well until the bottom rotted out.  Building another one had long been on THE LIST, but never seemed to make it into the elite category of projects to actually be started (let alone finished), so we broke down and bought this one instead. 

This ritzy worm condo consists of a bottom collection tray to capture the liquid leachate called “worm tea,” complete with spigot and worm ladder so worms can climb out if they fall in, and stackable trays for the worms to live, eat, and breed in, plus a cover. 

It came with a 16-page instruction/worm care booklet that left me feeling a bit intimidated.  I had no idea, for instance, that worms aren’t supposed to eat citrus peels or salty junk foods, or that you could cook them to death if you toss in fresh grass clippings. 

The red wigglers actually require specific care

Extreme hot and cold temperatures are a no-no, so the bin needs to be sheltered from summer sun and, in northern climes, brought inside during winter.      

Apparently these squirmy little creatures need care, just like the rest of our menagerie.

Anyway, this weekend we finally set up our worm bin.  Here’s what we did:

1. Put the first working tray on the collection tray base and lined it with wall-to-wall newspaper.

2. Soaked the comfy coconut fiber bedding in water, squeezed it out, and mixed it with shredded paper and a dash of compost on the tray’s floor.

3. Put a few handfuls of food scraps in and covered this with cushy shredded paper, then several sheets of moistened newspaper (I’m thinking these worms will be the most spoiled in the history of wormdom). 

4. Rounded up our worms.  The instructions advise us to purchase worms locally, but Brett had discovered a huge free worm colony in our horse manure pile.  The instructions specify using red wiggler worms, and after careful scrutiny we determined the worms in our pile were reddish and quite wriggly and hence red wrigglers. 

Now for the yucky part:  we plucked the worms from the manure and put them in a bag.  The instructions recommended starting with at least 500 worms, but squirmy masses of worms are not easy to count, so we just grabbed a bunch and called it good.

5. Deposited them in their new home-sweet-home under moistened newspaper, and voila, now I have several hundred more mouths to feed.  Granted, they have teeny-tiny mouths and they’ll be converting our kitchen waste to nutrient-rich compost, but still…

I’ll keep you posted on how they do (unless you’d prefer less slimy subjects!)

~  Cherie 

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Categories
Equipment

If I Had to Choose…

It’s been a good many years since I finished my U.S. Army mechanics training. One lesson has stayed with me well throughout the years.

It was delivered our final day as we received our certificates of completion and orders for our next assignments. Our senior training instructor advised us to look around the motor pool that had been our classroom and lab.

“Look at all the fancy tools you’ve been trained on…wrenches, sockets and screwdrivers of every size and style,” he said. “When you get to your motor pools, you’ll be lucky to find a crescent wrench and pliers.”

He was being honest, if more than a little cynical. He knew that in our motor pools, what hadn’t been lost, stolen or broken was what would be left for our use.  He was telling us that we would have to make do. The jeeps and tanks would still have to roll, whether or not we had a voltmeter to check a circuit.

The same is true in life. It would sure be nice if we always had what we wanted when it came time to do a job. What matters is what we do with what we have. 

That’s why long before I ever bought a set of sockets or wrenches, I invested in a crescent wrench and a pair of pliers. If I had to choose today, they would still be at the head of the list. I would rather make do than not be able to do at all.

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Categories
Animals

Here Comes Baby, Part 2

The mom will often pick her spot to be before giving birth
Photos by Sue Weaver

Second-stage labor begins when a fluid-filled bubble appears in the birthing mom’s vulva (sometimes the bubble bursts before or while the baby’s born and that’s all right too).

As the mom pushes, two little feet appear and then a nose. Some moms keep getting up and turning and flopping down again, others just lie there and push. Either way is perfectly okay.

As the mama pushes, more and more of her baby appears. Between early contractions he may slip back inside his mom a little bit. Not to worry, that’s normal too.

Bon Bon's twins being born

Finally baby’s head and feet are out up to his shoulders. His mom gives a last big push and out he comes. He’s still connected to his placenta by his umbilical cord; blood courses into him for a minute or two, so it’s important not to move him right away.

Instead, strip your hand down his lower face to clear the goo from his nostrils so he can breathe. Then, when the mom jumps up to see her baby and the cord ruptures, place him where she can reach him and get out the towels!

Sometimes things don’t work this way and baby comes out hind feet first. That’s normal in species like sheep and goats.

The mom will clean her offspring until the next one starts being born

However, you need to help this baby get born as fast as he can. As he comes through the birth canal his umbilical cord gets pressed against his mom’s pelvis and if he gets stuck, he can’t breathe because his head is still inside his mom. He can get oxygen-deprived if you don’t get him out pretty quick.

That’s what happened with Fosco. Mom grasped his legs and gently pulled in an arc down toward Shebaa’s hocks (not straight back!) with each contraction. He was big but Mom and Shebaa got him out just fine.

Then the mom will clean her babe until the next baby starts to be born. It’s exciting! These pictures show Bon Bon giving birth to last year’s twins.   

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Crops & Gardening

Easter

Local blessings of palm fronds are held on Palm Sunday in Rapallo
Photo by Rick Gush

Last Sunday was Palm Sunday, so I went with my wife to the local blessing of the palm fronds down on the bay.  There were hundreds of the local folks, all carrying little palm decorations. 

Here in Rapallo, they use very attractive woven palm pieces with sprigs of olive mixed in.  The booths in the vegetable market downtown sell a variety of these woven palm leaves, and at the blessing site a group of craftspeople are making new ones as quickly as the people come to make a donation and take the finished pieces. My wife bought palm weavings for herself, her mother and her sister.  She even sends some of these to my own mother in California sometimes.  

These floral Easter bells were in downtown
Photo by Rick Gush

Everybody holds these palm and olive decorations up in the air when the priest blesses them, then they take them home and put them up on the wall somewhere.  The decorations are used for a year and then replaced with new ones.  The old ones are supposed to be burned, not thrown away.  I don’t take much part in all this, but I do get the job of burning the old palm decorations every year.

The first photo is the group of woven palms my wife bought.  The second photo is a shot of the floral Easter bells mounted downtown.  Rapallo does a pretty good job of putting up lots of different flower beds and other floral decorations.

This Sunday is Easter.  We’ll eat lunch with the family, and it’s sort of like Christmas in that people give each other gifts of chocolate and sweets.  The tradition here is to give hollow chocolate eggs that have “surprises” inside. 

For the kids there are a ton of different big eggs a foot or more in height in the markets, and they all contain surprise gifts.  Most of the gifts are cheap plastic toys and jewellery, but one can easily find eggs with real jewellery, real toys and nice stuff.  Of course there are chocolatiers that will seal up whatever gift one brings them.  I myself have sealed a surprise gift, a cute watch, inside a paper mâche egg for my wife, and I have chocolate eggs for my other relatives.

I also brought my mother-in-law some flowers in pots yesterday, as she loves stuff that one gets for free.  One of the plants I brought was a fresh potting of some marguerite cuttings I rooted in the manure-heated coldframe.  They were quite robust and already flowering in the rooting bed. 

The second flower was a pot full of blooming chionodoxa, part of the booty from a raid my wife and I made on an abandoned villa above Camogli last fall.  The gardens of the villa had been nice at one time and I harvested a number of bags full of aspidistra, daffodils, bergenia, violets, agapanthus, ivy and ripe persimmons.  It was a great harvest, and most of the stuff is now doing great in the garden. 

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Categories
Crops & Gardening

Nursery Visit


Photo by Jessica Walliser

Bleeding Heart.

Over the Easter weekend we visited my family in Eastern Pennsylvania.  Since one of my favorite nurseries—Esbenshade’s—is out that way, I lugged my mother, father, nieces and my son for a visit.

We spent three hours there on Good Friday and left with two cartloads of goodies.

In addition to purchasing some cool-season veggie transplants, I got three big bags of organic potting mix, some algae-relief for my pond, three new perennials (Dicentra ‘Burning Hearts’, a beautiful blue Pulmonaria, and Pennsylvania Dutch Thyme—I wonder how it’s different from standard thyme?), five pounds of ‘All Blue’ potatoes, a handful of Oriental lily bulbs and a horseradish root.

We had a great time walking the aisles of the greenhouses enjoying the Easter flowers and checking out all the water plants.

There is something so relaxing to me about browsing through a place like Esbenshade’s; walking around, smelling the smells, reading the seed packets and thinking about all the possibilities.

I always seem to fall in love with a $200-glazed pot and some amazing shrub that isn’t technically hardy where I live.  I don’t buy them, of course (not because I don’t want to, but because I would blow my gardening budget in one afternoon), but I love to browse and gawk and dream about what my garden will be like when we win the lottery…

I have always had a true admiration for family-run nurseries, having worked in one for many years.  It’s a lot of work and there is no such thing as a vacation for these folks.  Places like it always make me smile cause I know that someone’s heart and soul walks out that door every time someone like me buys a plant.

What’s special about your favorite local nursery?

Categories
News

Young Farmers Rank Agriculture Concerns

American Farm Bureau Federation
Courtesy Iowa Farm Bureau/American Farm Bureau
Optimism abounds for young farmers like Eric Goodman, one of many recent college graduates who are still finding plentiful job opportunties in agriculture despite the slumping economy.

The top three concerns facing young farmers and ranchers in 2010 are profitability, the increase of government climate-change regulations and the impact of activist groups, according to a survey conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

However, 80 percent of those responding to AFBF’s 18th annual survey of young farmers and ranchers say they are more optimistic than they were five years ago, while 82 percent say they are better off than they were five years ago. 

“Last year was a tough year economically for many sectors of agriculture,” says AFBF Young Farmers and Ranchers Committee Chair Will Gilmer, a dairy farmer from Lamar County, Ala. “But despite the challenges, the survey shows young farmers and ranchers are optimistic and hopeful. We expect a bright future ahead.”

The informal agricultural survey shows young farmers and ranchers have a high level of concern about government climate-change regulations, with 79 percent of those surveyed expressing high or very high concern.

Additionally, a majority of young farmers and ranchers surveyed expressed concern about the impact of activist groups on their farm and ranch operations. A total of 85 percent were concerned or very concerned about activist groups. Only 7 percent expressed little or no concern.

“Activist groups are becoming more and more vocal, so that is something we always have to keep our eyes on,” Gilmer says. “There is also a great deal of concern about all the ways the government wants to regulate us, whether it’s cap-and-trade or different Environmental Protection Agency rules.”

Young farmers and ranchers ranked their top three challenges: 24 percent ranked overall profitability as the top, followed by government regulations at 23 percent. Two other concerns tied for third on that list: Competition from more established farms and ranches and willingness of parents to share farm-management responsibilities each received 9 percent.

And when it comes to what steps the federal government can take to help farmers and ranchers, 23 percent ranked cutting federal spending No. 1. Boosting U.S. agricultural exports followed with 14 percent of the respondents, and providing greater help to beginning farmers came in third, selected by 11 percent.

A sizable majority [83 percent] of young farmers and ranchers surveyed said they believe farm income should come totally from the marketplace, while 17 percent said farm income should be supplemented by government farm-program payments.

Young farmers and ranchers are also committed environmental stewards, with 68 percent saying that balancing environmental and economic concerns is important for their operations. The survey says 58 percent used conservation tillage on their farms.  The majority of those surveyed, 57 percent, plan to plant biotech crops this year, while 43 percent said they do not plan to do so.

The survey also shows the Internet is an important tool for young farmers and ranchers. Nearly 99 percent said they have access to and use the Internet, with the vast majority, 72 percent, saying they have access to a high-speed Internet connection. Only 20 percent rely on slower dial-up connections, and 8 percent turn to more costly satellite connections.

The social media website Facebook is popular with young farmers and ranchers. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed have a Facebook page. Ten percent of the young farmers say they use the micro blogging website Twitter, while about 12 percent say they post YouTube videos.

Communicating with consumers is also important, with 77 percent saying they consider reaching out to the public about agriculture and their operations an important part of their jobs as farmers and ranchers.

“We’re recognizing that we need to get out there and talk with our consumers, and we are doing so,” Gilmer says. “Social media is just one more avenue for us to reach those who buy and consume what we produce.”

In addition, the Internet is an important tool for the group to access both general and farm news, with 84 percent saying they use the Internet for news. Seventy-two percent said they turn to the Internet to collect buying information for their operations, as well.

The survey also reveals the group’s strong commitment to agriculture, with 96 percent saying they consider themselves life-long farmers or ranchers. They also express hope for the next generation, with 98 percent saying they would like to see their children follow in their footsteps; 85 percent believe their children will be able to follow in their footsteps.

“Young farmers and ranchers share the same traditional hopes and values that have always guided agriculture,” says Bob Stallman, AFBF president. “This survey shows that the future of American agriculture is in caring and capable hands.”

The informal survey of young farmers and ranchers, ages 18 to 35, was conducted during AFBF’s 2010 Young Farmers and Ranchers Leadership Conference in Tulsa, Okla., in February. There were 373 respondents to the informal survey.

Categories
Crops & Gardening

Nursery Fun

A visit to Esbenshade's nursery proved to be a fantasy visit for Jessica
Photo by Jessica Walliser

Bleeding Heart.

Over the Easter weekend we visited my family in Eastern Pennsylvania.  Since one of my favorite nurseries—Esbenshade’s—is out that way, I lugged my mother, father, nieces and my son for a visit. 

We spent three hours there on Good Friday and left with two cartloads of goodies. 

In addition to purchasing some cool-season veggie transplants, I got three big bags of organic potting mix, some algae-relief for my pond, three new perennials (Dicentra ‘Burning Hearts’, a beautiful blue Pulmonaria, and Pennsylvania Dutch Thyme—I wonder how it’s different from standard thyme?), five pounds of ‘All Blue’ potatoes, a handful of Oriental lily bulbs and a horseradish root. 

We had a great time walking the aisles of the greenhouses enjoying the Easter flowers and checking out all the water plants. 

There is something so relaxing to me about browsing through a place like Esbenshade’s; walking around, smelling the smells, reading the seed packets and thinking about all the possibilities. 

I always seem to fall in love with a $200-glazed pot and some amazing shrub that isn’t technically hardy where I live. I don’t buy them, of course (not because I don’t want to, but because I would blow my gardening budget in one afternoon), but I love to browse and gawk and dream about what my garden will be like when we win the lottery… 

I have always had a true admiration for family-run nurseries, having worked in one for many years.  It’s a lot of work and there is no such thing as a vacation for these folks.  Places like it always make me smile cause I know that someone’s heart and soul walks out that door every time someone like me buys a plant. 

What’s special about your favorite local nursery? 

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