IAF Podcast Episode 23

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Air date: Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Icebreaker

🌽🌱🌽🌱🌽🌱🌽🌱🌽 There was a farmer who grew excellent quality corn. Every year he won the award for the best grown corn. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors. “How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.

“Why sir,” said the farmer, “Didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.”

So is with our lives... Those who want to live meaningfully and well must help enrich the lives of others, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others find happiness, for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all..."

Happy Thanksgiving. Don't just be grateful -- pay it forward. Spread the word about the Grand Solar Minimum.

News

Viewer Feedback

Michelle C.

Greetings! It was 11 degrees this morning, really cold for NW PA in November. Could be record low. Just wondering, has anyone else been hearing the ad campaign on TV and radio? It started a few weeks ago. The theme is Save the Food and Don't Waste the Food. This is a first for me. It is usually buy more and waste as much as possible so you can buy more. Short life dates on labels to encourage waste so why now 180 to don't waste? What do they know?


bipola telly

No shortage of flying insects in my area... Perth West Australia. 

Flies of many species, mosquitos, butterflies. moths, grasshoppers, native bees, beetles, flying ants, native wasps, european wasp.... not so many honey bees. For now anyway....


Max Rockatanksy

If you can afford it, stock up on Silver impregnated bandages, absorbant medical pads etc, they may come in handy in the near future (coming from someone who is studying nursing).

Horse237 on aphids / calmag:

Add bone meal to the mixture you are feeding your earthworms and not just for the calcium and magnesium. Earthworms produce chitinase when the eat bone meal. It repels and kills aphids by attacking their exoskeleton.

John Hopkins

Goat milk is more digestible (nutritious) and with their smaller size you can have more of them diffusing risk. The main advantage to cows is they can eat hay and silage that has some mold (not a lot though) goats can die from eating moldy feed that wouldn't phase a cow. I like the general idea though, some crops that get ruined in storms you might be able to feed them to animals. Though I think you will need a solar dryer in the coming weather changes to make hay and most people aren't set for silage.  If you had a large group and resources I would make an argument for silage silos dug straight down into the top of a hill and cows. Silage can keep for years with only minimal nutrition loss in a decent sized silo (not to mention silage by its nature is already partly digested and therefore you get more nutrition "fermented food"). I grew up on a beef and dairy farm and have kept goats for personal use. Solar drier. I saw a lumber drier similar to this in some book. A shed built up off the ground (4 feet?) a row of window box solar heaters on the south side (in the norther hemisphere).  vents on the north side at the ceiling level. I thought when I saw it that it would work great for drying large amounts of food or small amounts of hay. Something like this will be a necessity with bad storms in the coming days.  Probably want closable shutters for the solar heaters though. The window box heaters should be one way in the bottom and out the top into the shed venting on the other side of the shed not the normal recirculating ones. Close vents at night unless you live in a very dry area, probably when raining too.