@enhydra lutris

Other than the garden and food forest, our place is primarily forest. Been thinking of creating a chicken tractor. We do eat a fair amount of eggs. Would have the put an electric fence around it because of all our predators.

We use a cardboard base as our first mulch layer. Then manure and finally covered with straw. That works well in our situation/ecosystem. No weeds nor root mass other than past crops. We don't pull the roots of past crops out either. Paths and lanes are just cardboard with mulch. Here in the subtropics things rot and turn over quickly.

Have fun in your garden!

Can't run livestock in my mini garden, alas, not even chickens. Plus something, possibly crickets, keeps chowing down on everything overnight. Anyway, I will continue to greedily devour the stuff on soil, even though ours is pretty hopeless and following best practices is iffy. Can't leave the soil undisturbed for too many growing seasons because it fills up with roots from outside, invaders, some even from neighbors' yards. Ah well.

be well and have a good one.

@magiamma

Glad to hear the swale is coming along. Projects may take awhile to create, but payoff for decades.

I did a three day fast last week. I try to do at least one water only fast every month for me to feel healthy.

Harvested lots of peppers today. Still need to chop and freeze. Figs are sporadically ripening. Okra seems always reliable and prolific. Have to add Bt to the cabbage and broccoli this evening...they're getting eaten. Just started last night.. I recently learned this year that sunlight will kill the bacteria and make it ineffective.

Be well and take care! Hope the smoke has dissipated and the fires quelled.

Going on a fast. No news until Monday night. See if I miss much. Getting more done on the swale. Hope to be able to capture a bunch of agua.

People I know are starting to melt down. Hard times for many.

There’s this - food for thought.

A new definition and measure of sustainability

https://medium.com/@stevenspencer_49630/a-new-definition-and-measure-of-sustainability-e874676625ff

The traditional and original definition of sustainable development from the UN — to meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs[iii] — is not achievable without a substantial reduction in global consumption. The problem not only lies in that current generations want the world served on a silver platter and delivered by Amazon, the core of the issue is that even if we truly aimed to only address our needs instead of our ‘wants’, we would still need vast amounts of energy to provide food and clean water for the 8+ billion people on the planet. It is estimated the Habar-Bosch Process provides the fertiliser for every individual over the 4 billion mark. In other words, earth can support around 4 billion people before extra energy is required. [iv] [v] [vi] That process accounts for around 1–2% of the worlds entire energy supply[vii] and is responsible for roughly 1% of global CO2 emissions (around 450 million tonnes in 2010).

It appears achieving sustainable development, with a population that requires energy to simply sustain itself, is a non-sequitur. I would continue that line of argument to propose that whenever a civilisation begins to rely on an external energy source to sustain itself or grow, as is highlighted above by the Habar-Bosch Process, it becomes inherently unsustainable.

Thanks for the ww. Take good care.

@Unabashed Liberal

was a vow to send $200 prescription drug discount cards to 33 million Medicare beneficiaries “in the coming weeks.”

https://news.yahoo.com/donald-trumps-much-hyped-health-015454078.html
it continues:

However, the President said the $6.6 billion outlay needed to fund this program would have to come from savings from his “most favored nations” drug pricing proposal, which he announced on Sept. 13, and which experts say would be close to impossible to implement before the November election.

Bunch of nothing I bet.

Like you we're staying close to home. We are going to see some friends at the Cloudland Canyon State Park near Trenton, GA. We're meeting for an outdoor picnic. I feel pretty safe outside where the sun's uv can do its job, and air is moving. So, take care and be well. We'll try to do the same.

of photos, thanks for posting the color photo of the (old) Monroe County Courthouse 'Courtroom.' I took the liberty of reposting it at Friday's Photography Thread, since my photo was black and white.

Mr M and my gardening days sorta ended in Interior Alaska. But, we totally enjoyed it during all the years we were there. Our North Star Borough summer "Fairs" had competitions for farmers/gardeners who produced the largest vegetables. It was wild, since so many varieties grew to be humongous--with 20 or so daylight hours at summer solstice.

I'm trying to check out some of the proposals (stemming from so-called Executive Orders) coming from OM's Administration Thursday. So far, it appears that some, if not all of them, might be executable without a formal law. But, I'm still checking, and will report what I find later.

Dr Sanjay Gupta (CNN) stated that we simply can't have "guaranteed issue"--meaning, the pre-existing condition coverage in the ACA--unless, we surrender to the likes of insurance industry lobbyist Liz Fowler. Obviously, he doesn't name her, but, he states that insurers are in charge, how dare we cross them! (meaning, unless we have a mandate to purchase a policy, we cannot demand guaranteed issue)

The Administration claims they can 'leverage' insurers participation in our healthcare systems--Medicare, Medicaid, ACA Exchange, etc., to get that concession from insurers. We'll see. (if it's possible, and, if they have the political will)

Glad the summer has been such a productive one for you and yours (gardening). Take good care as you make your way around a 'no mask' locality. Obviously, since we've not taken the 'risk' of traveling south, so, can't say if folks on the Eastern Shore are as allergic to them, as it sounds that your locale may be. (I've read that Mobile has a mask mandate, or did.)

(here in TN) When we venture out in very limited way--drive-thru ATMs; occasionally, drive-thru pharmacy, although we can get mail service (just to get out!); drive-thru Library, etc., our observation is that 'about half' the people he sees are wearing some kind of face covering. (at best) There is one food store (Food Lion) that is not mandating face masks--go figure. (saw it on their website--we're staying out of all of them, for now)

Hey, have a nice evening, and, stay safe.

Mollie

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went.”
~~Will Rogers, Actor & Social Commentator (1856-1950)

@Pluto's Republic

Virology is really interesting. QMS wrote about an iodine mouth rinse which destroyed Sars-Cov-2. Here's a bit about it.
https://today.uconn.edu/2020/06/uconn-health-researchers-find-simple-ora...

The fact that TPTB are not pushing Vit D is negligent too. And who have you heard speaking of ivermectin? https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/ivermectin-to-be-used-for...

Cheap generic drugs are not going to be pushed. This pandemic is being managed for profit.

Thanks for your thoughtful insightful comment!

But do we have to pull from the same gene pool?

The farming and soil cultivation was really inspiring, Lookout. I haven't looked at all the videos yet, but I like this topic very much. It's both practical and philosophical. An almanac and an oracle. And, I suppose, a prophecy for those who dare to look.

Our food production systems like our sick care for profit system are failing us.

.

At some point, I came to accept that our systems cannot be reformed. They are too twisted and flawed to be safely regenerated. They need to be re-evolved from the bottom-up and designed to serve the needs of humans, first and foremost. The wellbeing of the people and their environment must be the first principle of people who work in government. Or, perhaps you were saying the same thing.

I don't know how to fix the fact that the American people, as a whole, have profoundly devolved into Orcs. How will they ever make restitution for the murder and mayhem and all the death and suffering they have caused throughout the world? They haven't a shred of self awareness, which has made them very susceptible to Covid-19. Several damaged generations will have to die off, unless the mental defect is epigenetic.

::

I spend my days studying our pandemic viruses. I call them the Virutopians. They are masters of adaptability and have several different ways to do the same thing. Lately they have been covering their spikes with sugar granules to become more enticing. They clearly group think. A person can breathe in several live viruses, which will stick to the mucosa lining the nose and throat. But viruses will not attack. The viruses remain inactivated until they reach a quorum, or Viral Load. (Only they know the exact number.) Meanwhile, the mucosa slowly moves them to the back of the throat for elimination. Most people become infected this way, especially front line Doctors and Nurses. I imagine we all pick up viruses when we're out around people. There are aerosol clouds floating at face level, even outside. The kind of masks people are forced to wear offer no protection. If you can smell perfume through your mask, viral aerosols can pass right through them.

A hundred years years ago, during the Spanish Flu pandemic, people also wore masks. They washed their hands, stayed away from crowds, disinfected surfaces, and did all the same things that we do today. But they also knew how to wash the virus out of their oro-naso-pharynx mucosa before the viruses could built up a Viral Load. This is what curbed the infection rate for the US armed forces, and gargling became something of a national pastime for school children, factory workers, telephone operators, nurses, and families everywhere. Whole towns got rid of the infection this way. At the moment, it is the most effective prophylaxis available, based on a quadruple blind study, designed initially to save the lives of Front Line medics. But nobody has paid much attention. Perhaps that's because the study is not yet peer reviewed, or because the study was done in Pakistan. (It was funded by MIT, but that's not apparent.) Maybe the study will be ignored because there is nothing to patent, and the pharmaceutical companies all have expensive prophylaxis inhalers in the pipeline. However, if I know about this highly-effective 100 year old solution, and the US Public Health Cartel does not know or does not tell — then we probably are doomed as a civilization.

This is what I meant about not wanting to regenerating our systems. They are bad to the bone and exist only for the sake of their bureaucrats. As one US physician penned in an opinion piece I saw today:

The research infrastructure in the US continues to be far too inflexible and far too slow to address basic research questions quickly in a pandemic…. We should have learned about the benefit of masking in March, not July. We should have learned about convalescent plasma in April, not September. Medical journals are still reviewing a Mayo clinic study 5 weeks after it was submitted. How about a 24-hour review when more than a thousand people are dying daily?

Our slow and clunky research system was most evident with the September release of the CDC's small survey study of 314 people concluding that dining out raised COVID-19 risk. Why are we getting these results in September and not April? We should have learned about the massive benefit of steroids during the New York outbreak, rather than in June from a U.K. trial -- in which US researchers declined to participate because it did not meet their elaborate standards.

Similarly, the FDA should be able to respond faster to the needs of a health emergency. For example, they should not be requiring 6-month stability testing before releasing a novel vaccine. The NIH should post grant RFPs (request for proposals) within 24 hours of a newly declared pandemic. And insurance companies should stop denying payments for care related to research during a health emergency.

.
The Virutopians believe that the potential for intelligent life exists only on planets with extreme diversity. Diversity is what supports complexity, and complexity reaches out toward the One Absolute. They say if environmental diversity begin to shrink, planetary life is tipped into extinction. It sounds like a Viral Load to me.

@ovals49
5.5 min
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWuyvBAWWQ]

Here again the FDA won't approve it because it isn't expensive nor profitable.

is an interesting idea, one which I had not heard of being in practice during the Spanish Flu.

Searching the “tubes” on the subject I was surprised to find news of a “gargle and spit” test for COVID that may soon replace those diabolical long nasal swabs.

If this is a reliable way to flush out COVID virus samples for testing then it stands to reason that gargles the virus does not tolerate could intercept a incipient infection in the sinus making its way to the lungs.

My conspiratorial mind wonders if the splash of coverage on the gargle test is meant to deflect from any interest in regular gargling as a preventive regime.