I'm out in the garden using this hat every day.
Yesterday, we checked on the bee hives.... Evidently bees are more agreeable when nectar is readily available & being produced (summer) so we only needed netted-hats and the smoker. Smoke 'calms' or 'frightens' the bees and is used before and immediately after opening the hives. We opened up 5 hives and checked each one methodically for chalk broods, for mites, honey production, queens, etc.
This is a re-enactment of the 'two-finger test' which is how my host farmer demonstrated how to tell whether a hen can lay eggs. He caught a hen, turned her upside down, and stuck two fingers in her. That particular hen could lay eggs because three fingers fit.
In other news, the farmer and I drove to a nearby dairy for non-homogenized milk yesterday. This is milk that you take home, let rest in room temperature for a couple hours to separate the milk from the cream and then spoon out the cream at the top.
Also, hay is any type of grass, alfalfa, etc. that is cut & dried for animal feed. I didn't know that until yesterday.
Outside of farm news...I thought this article: http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/63/altruism-vs-economics/3
was particularly interesting. I may post some more thoughts about the 'market' in the future and how psychologists and economists studying human behavior are radically changing economic theory away from 'perfectly rational participants' and away from 'greed and/or self-interest as the necessary main ingredient for a well-functioning market'.
3 comments:
have you learned what straw is?
Yes, or at least a bit....straw is the left-over husk on grain, has no nutritional value and is used for bedding rather than food for animals.
now I have! I thought it was simply wheat leftovers, but now I know it includes other grains. and that you can't fatten animals on it.
Post a Comment