Autumn is the best time of year in Tennessee. Spring is second-best. The weather is nice either way, but autumn means the bugs are going away while spring means they’re coming back. I’ve already killed two wasps in the basement this week, and Chareva has already pulled a tick from her leg. But bugs aside, it’s nice to see the land come back to life after winter.
Chareva expanded the garden in the front pasture awhile back so we can grow more of our own food. She also started a new one on the big hill behind the house, preparing the area with some mixture of soil, straw, compost, cardboard, sand, food scraps and other stuff I don’t fully understand. I just know a lot of stuff was piling up back there all winter … and that if we did this in a suburb, we’d be considered the neighborhood low-lifes. Once the weather warmed up, she drafted the girls to help her spread the stuff around.
I can’t tell if Alana is exerting herself in this picture or just unhappy with the chore.
Sara found her own use for the sand before spreading it around.
Once the area was prepared, Chareva got busy building a fence around it to avoid feeding the local wildlife. Here she is pounding in a t-post, apparently while preferring to remain anonymous.
She called me out to help when it was time to unravel a hundred pounds or so of fencing. Whoever designed that fencing is a genius … no matter what you do, no matter which angle you choose, the fencing to tries to unravel itself in exactly the opposite direction of where you want it to go next.
I unwound the fencing and pulled it tight while Chareva connected it to the t-posts. We had a couple of old gates sitting around (the previous owner left a lifetime supply strewn around the property), so those will become garden gates once they’re attached.
The garden plants are in the basement right now. The garden is pretty much Chareva’s bailiwick, so I didn’t even ask what she’s planting this year. But apparently I’ll be enjoying some eggplants, cucumbers and bell peppers at harvest time. I guess I’ll also be eating a Rutgers, whatever that is.
Meanwhile, the girls have been celebrating warmer weather by looking for life forms in the creek.
On Saturday, I looked out my office window noticed something was making impressive splashes in the water, so the girls ran out to look. Apparently it was this guy doing the splashing.
Sara also snapped this picture. She assures me that’s a salamander under the water.
Chareva left today to spend a week in Chicago, so in addition to working as a software contractor (from home, fortunately), I’m responsible for the care and feeding of one cat, two Rottweilers, two human children and 19 grown chickens. The girls and I agreed on a division of labor for the chickens: I carry the heavy bucket of water to the chicken yard, Alana fills the feeders, and then while Sara collects the eggs, I keep the Rapper Rooster at bay with a rake. Collecting eggs means having your back to the rest of the barn, which is when he usually decides to attack.
We’ll be building another chicken yard of some sort soon. We don’t really have a choice: Sara’s 25 chicks are getting noticeably larger …
… and so are Alan’s four chicks.
Sara has to auction five of hers at a 4-H event, but we’ll still end up with more than 40 chickens.
Great. Because the 18 or so eggs we get every day now aren’t enough.
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“Because the 18 or so eggs we get every day now aren’t enough.”
Tee hee hee! Teach the girl the joys (?) of capitalism — a road-side egg stand? Local farmers market?
That’s definitely in the works.
“Because the 18 or so eggs we get every day now aren’t enough.”
Tee hee hee! Teach the girl the joys (?) of capitalism — a road-side egg stand? Local farmers market?
That’s definitely in the works.
I hope I’m wrong, but predict the deer will be able to easily jump that garden fence.
-Steve
Definitely. We’re going to add a second barrier, which is supposed to do the trick.
With a second barrier you might even be able to have a chicken moat around the garden. As a bonus, you can say that you have a chicken moat.
Also, deer hate rosemary, russian sage, and lavender. So a nice deer-repellent border might also be a good start to an herb garden.
Good suggestions, thanks. I might create a chicken moat just so I can tell people I have a chicken moat.
I hope I’m wrong, but predict the deer will be able to easily jump that garden fence.
-Steve
Definitely. We’re going to add a second barrier, which is supposed to do the trick.
With a second barrier you might even be able to have a chicken moat around the garden. As a bonus, you can say that you have a chicken moat.
Also, deer hate rosemary, russian sage, and lavender. So a nice deer-repellent border might also be a good start to an herb garden.
Good suggestions, thanks. I might create a chicken moat just so I can tell people I have a chicken moat.
Rutgers are a variety of tomato.
Cool. I love fresh tomatoes.
Rutgers is a pretty tasty tomato. Love the pictures… I grew up on a dairy farm, with chickens, and my mom was a rabid gardener. I inherited that gene for sure! Nice looking new garden bed!. Next weekend I’m building a raised bed for asparagus.
I think the most my mom ever grew were some tomatoes at the side of the house. It’s been educational.
Since we are suburbanites with – what, 9 raised beds? so far – and more coming, as well as two compost bins in the back yard, I can assure you that you wouldn’t be thought of as the neighborhood lowlifes – just the neighborhood oddities. Of course, our neighbors thought we were nuts before we started growing our own food in the middle of suburbia.
I was thinking more of the scraps of cardboard piling up. It looked as if we’d had a hit-and-run accident involving a moving van.
Rutgers are a variety of tomato.
Cool. I love fresh tomatoes.
Rutgers is a pretty tasty tomato. Love the pictures… I grew up on a dairy farm, with chickens, and my mom was a rabid gardener. I inherited that gene for sure! Nice looking new garden bed!. Next weekend I’m building a raised bed for asparagus.
I think the most my mom ever grew were some tomatoes at the side of the house. It’s been educational.
Since we are suburbanites with – what, 9 raised beds? so far – and more coming, as well as two compost bins in the back yard, I can assure you that you wouldn’t be thought of as the neighborhood lowlifes – just the neighborhood oddities. Of course, our neighbors thought we were nuts before we started growing our own food in the middle of suburbia.
I was thinking more of the scraps of cardboard piling up. It looked as if we’d had a hit-and-run accident involving a moving van.
My Grandpa always grew Rutgers tomatoes. They are delicious.
Hope you don’t mind a slightly off topic link, but you like face-palming news. Via drudge, Yale forced a naturally thin girl (I think a foreign student) into very regular medical checkups and counseling, with threats to expel her if she didn’t gain weight. After too long of dealing with the BS she fought them.
http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20140406/yale-student-92-lbs-stuffed-her-face-with-cheetos-ice-cream-to-pacify-school-officials
Good grief. So now we’ll go after people who are too thin or too fat.
She is from NJ.
My Grandpa always grew Rutgers tomatoes. They are delicious.
Hope you don’t mind a slightly off topic link, but you like face-palming news. Via drudge, Yale forced a naturally thin girl (I think a foreign student) into very regular medical checkups and counseling, with threats to expel her if she didn’t gain weight. After too long of dealing with the BS she fought them.
http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20140406/yale-student-92-lbs-stuffed-her-face-with-cheetos-ice-cream-to-pacify-school-officials
Good grief. So now we’ll go after people who are too thin or too fat.
She is from NJ.
Off topic: Here is something. (Swiss) Germans poiso- ahm, drug-, I mean, /supplemented/ mice with glucosamine. Claim they live longer.
It is here:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140408/ncomms4563/full/ncomms4563.html
The full report, courtesy of ETH Zurich(?)
Very good. Ristow for some (probably trivial and unscientific) reason does not ring well to my ears, but this looks like real science and they should be lauded for that, and for free access.
As usual, the rub is in how to interpret the results, and in how to form misleading headlines from them.
The media, “supported” by PR department or not, give us quite a lot of.. uh PR. That magical compound may “simulate” a low carb diet with its benefits (wait, what? I thought your brain dies off without carbs?) without actually shunning pasta. I am not sure how to comment on /that/.
Oh no wait, “by mimicking”. Straight from their publication. Mhhm.
Glucosamine diminishes/blocks (by ETH results) glycolysis. Glycolysis is the first step in burning glucose, and in anaerobic conditions, the only step. One may theorize that they found a working anticancer agent by inhibiting glycolysis. Mouse mortality reduced by cancer mortality times fudge factor. It’s a theory. It fits, but no more evidence (no post-mortems).
Would be a bombshell. Even more interesting is, haven’t Ristow et al. worked on Warburg effects before, blocking or force-expressing frataxin? Mhhmmmm. Years ago. Maybe they didn’t and YAS is confabulating things.
Questions, questions. If you block glycolysis, where does the glucose go? Your armchair scientist re-consulted layman basic biochemistry. Biochemistry says there is alternative pathway for burning glucose. In strange bacteria and slimes, not in eucaryotes(?). So I cannot think of where the glucose goes. There is the polyol pathway and excretions, but these damage everything (we call that diabetes) and work only with real bad hyperglycemia 200+ I’d say.
And yet, the glucosamine mice had no problem with blood sugar, even slightly improved readings.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Questions, questions. I cannot seem to find what these gerontic mice were fed, but maybe I overlooked it in the ton of technical details their publication provides. Oh, these were not brave pets suffering for science, they were mice from Some-weird-breed, you know, the order-your-disease-kind-mice. Breed line is given in publication: C57BL/6NRj. Researching that gives a description of their genetics that armchair scientist cannot correlate to metabolism problem. Maybe irrelevant and accidental. In any case, these were pretty old freak mice.
Then, there is this question of the mice losing fat. All of them. G mice /and/ controls. Down to 40% from start.
Is this physiological in mice?
Is it maybe in C57BL/6NRj freak mice?
Did they starve them? Why would they do that? And why would you give figures for chow consumed (G vs. control) if the chow (again, what chow?) wouldn’t have been ad libitum? Questions questions. Or your armchair scientist’s poor eye coordination in a lot of technical data. Can you (or maybe Peter) read it better than me?
I am still puzzled as to where the glucose went.
Maybe they did starve them.
Maybe DM2, or at least some kinds of DM2, are not really about making alimentary blood glucose go down, but by lack of aerobic follow-up burning of said glucose, and recycling it. The common DM2 drug metformin basically blocks recycling (from lactate). Also, Peter had a snippet about how the system is very respondent to alimentary glucose signals, but not so sensitive about recycled glucose (longer way to effect).
Well, maybe they did starve them and that was that.
At least one product of the fine quality journalism we enjoy on this country and planet claims Prof. Ristow told them that he plans to take glucosamine daily.
Their results show increased mitochondrial genesis. That I would like very much.
They also show increased use of proteins for energy, which sounds like wasting perfectly good proteins and well, scare anti-Atkins stories. Thanks for confirming, Prof.
And there is still the question of where the glucose went. I would not like to have it end up in a nice NAFLD personally.
But if you want to take your chances, glucosamine is said to occur in cartilages, bones, bone marrow, and fungi.
Yes, YAS’s poor reading skills to blame again. There it is:
“Mice […] had free access to water and to pellet rodent chow containing 14 mg kg−1 alpha-tocopherol and 10 mg kg−1 ascorbic acid”
So they did not starve them. Even more curious!
Off topic: Here is something. (Swiss) Germans poiso- ahm, drug-, I mean, /supplemented/ mice with glucosamine. Claim they live longer.
It is here:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140408/ncomms4563/full/ncomms4563.html
The full report, courtesy of ETH Zurich(?)
Very good. Ristow for some (probably trivial and unscientific) reason does not ring well to my ears, but this looks like real science and they should be lauded for that, and for free access.
As usual, the rub is in how to interpret the results, and in how to form misleading headlines from them.
The media, “supported” by PR department or not, give us quite a lot of.. uh PR. That magical compound may “simulate” a low carb diet with its benefits (wait, what? I thought your brain dies off without carbs?) without actually shunning pasta. I am not sure how to comment on /that/.
Oh no wait, “by mimicking”. Straight from their publication. Mhhm.
Glucosamine diminishes/blocks (by ETH results) glycolysis. Glycolysis is the first step in burning glucose, and in anaerobic conditions, the only step. One may theorize that they found a working anticancer agent by inhibiting glycolysis. Mouse mortality reduced by cancer mortality times fudge factor. It’s a theory. It fits, but no more evidence (no post-mortems).
Would be a bombshell. Even more interesting is, haven’t Ristow et al. worked on Warburg effects before, blocking or force-expressing frataxin? Mhhmmmm. Years ago. Maybe they didn’t and YAS is confabulating things.
Questions, questions. If you block glycolysis, where does the glucose go? Your armchair scientist re-consulted layman basic biochemistry. Biochemistry says there is alternative pathway for burning glucose. In strange bacteria and slimes, not in eucaryotes(?). So I cannot think of where the glucose goes. There is the polyol pathway and excretions, but these damage everything (we call that diabetes) and work only with real bad hyperglycemia 200+ I’d say.
And yet, the glucosamine mice had no problem with blood sugar, even slightly improved readings.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Questions, questions. I cannot seem to find what these gerontic mice were fed, but maybe I overlooked it in the ton of technical details their publication provides. Oh, these were not brave pets suffering for science, they were mice from Some-weird-breed, you know, the order-your-disease-kind-mice. Breed line is given in publication: C57BL/6NRj. Researching that gives a description of their genetics that armchair scientist cannot correlate to metabolism problem. Maybe irrelevant and accidental. In any case, these were pretty old freak mice.
Then, there is this question of the mice losing fat. All of them. G mice /and/ controls. Down to 40% from start.
Is this physiological in mice?
Is it maybe in C57BL/6NRj freak mice?
Did they starve them? Why would they do that? And why would you give figures for chow consumed (G vs. control) if the chow (again, what chow?) wouldn’t have been ad libitum? Questions questions. Or your armchair scientist’s poor eye coordination in a lot of technical data. Can you (or maybe Peter) read it better than me?
I am still puzzled as to where the glucose went.
Maybe they did starve them.
Maybe DM2, or at least some kinds of DM2, are not really about making alimentary blood glucose go down, but by lack of aerobic follow-up burning of said glucose, and recycling it. The common DM2 drug metformin basically blocks recycling (from lactate). Also, Peter had a snippet about how the system is very respondent to alimentary glucose signals, but not so sensitive about recycled glucose (longer way to effect).
Well, maybe they did starve them and that was that.
At least one product of the fine quality journalism we enjoy on this country and planet claims Prof. Ristow told them that he plans to take glucosamine daily.
Their results show increased mitochondrial genesis. That I would like very much.
They also show increased use of proteins for energy, which sounds like wasting perfectly good proteins and well, scare anti-Atkins stories. Thanks for confirming, Prof.
And there is still the question of where the glucose went. I would not like to have it end up in a nice NAFLD personally.
But if you want to take your chances, glucosamine is said to occur in cartilages, bones, bone marrow, and fungi.
Yes, YAS’s poor reading skills to blame again. There it is:
“Mice […] had free access to water and to pellet rodent chow containing 14 mg kg−1 alpha-tocopherol and 10 mg kg−1 ascorbic acid”
So they did not starve them. Even more curious!