Flea Be Gone

The weather is getting warmer, so that means nasty buggies are coming out.  Plenty of ways are available to poison them, but you have to be careful they don't poison you or your pets -- even if they are natural.

Creating Biodiversity

On Reddit, FlimFlamandFlamJam asks, "Let's say I bought 1,000 acres of monocropped farm land. What would be the best way to go about converting it back into land with a lot of biodiversity? And let's say it's just me and I don't have a team helping me."

My answer:

First question, is the land flat or hilly?

Second question, you say it's just you. Does that mean just your muscle power, you and any animals you can control, or you and some big machinery you can rent?

Because if it is just your own muscle power, I find 1/4 acre plenty to keep up with unless it was my full-time job, I couldn't even imagine 1000 acres. That said, and if your land is flat, the main thing you can do to increase biodiversity is just start introducing plants that you think will be useful. You can use mixes from places like Ernst Seeds if you want.

If the terrain is hilly, you can start in on a better option for increasing biodiversity: creating ponds. This is best done with the keyline system in any case, but if its just your own muscle power, this is critical.

With heavy machinery, you can go a little crazier, even on flat land. You still really need to pay attention to the contours, but you do have the opportunity to reshape them. In fact, the best thing you can do to increase the biodiversity of flat land is to change it into hilly land by creating hugelkulture beds. You can do this by hand, but on the scale of 1000 acres, it would take several person-lifetimes.
And when you make water features, swimming ponds where you can dive in from the shore are not exactly the best for biodiversity. You want to really emphasize the water's edge and make it as big as possible if you want to encourage biodiversity.

If you have animals, you have the opportunity to do more than just your muscles, but not as drastic as large machines. One thing you can do is look at abandoned areas nearby and see what takes over, and then figure out what will graze on that. That will help keep things in balance without requiring your constant attention. (But don't just graze willy-nilly, or they just might avoid the thing that tends to take over.)

All Cows Eat Grass

Occam's Grazer: An In-depth Introduction to Holistic Management

This is a really good introduction to holistic management, a way of raising cattle that helps restore the landscape.  This is intended for general audiences, it doesn't require a lot of background in animal husbandry.

Animal Power

English: Llama trekking experience, Forest of Dean Treks are available, starting from the Speech House Hotel, either with llamas or donkey/pony and trap. Here the animals are resting at Mallards Pike Lake whilst the trekkers take on refreshments. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Theresa Crouse at Survivopedia lists 5 animals to raise for survival transportation: horses, mules, donkeys, llamas, and dogs.  To that I would add goats and oxen.  Green Solutions Magazine points out that camels and elephants are important beasts of burden in some parts of the world.  Mythcreants covers most of these plus using humans or exotic animals -- of course, they're talking about creating fiction, but their goal seems to be making it realistic.

Something Fishy about this Method of Farming...

Barry at RatherYes.com has a rather extensive article about raising tilapia using aquaponics.  While it is an advertisement to sell you a book, unlike most of its kind, it lets you know upfront exactly what it is, and instead of teasing you with all the benefits you will get from buying the book, this article has information that is actually useful; insufficient for actually raising the tilapia, but extensive enough to make a decent decision whether this is something you might really be interested in.

Related articles

• Is Tilapia Unhealthy?
• Should I Eat Tilapia?
• Grilling with Hannah: Tilapia Tacos
• McCook woman raises fish, vegetables using aquaponics

The Cure: Morning Coffee

A suburb in the Eastern United States
Several months before the Announcement


Jane walked to her big oak dining table, coffee with cream and two sugars in her right hand, the rolled-up newspaper from her front doorstep under her left arm.  She sat down and laid the paper on the table, grateful that her local newspaper was still in business and delivering papers to her doorstep.  Like most everyone, Jane had a tablet and a smartphone, but she spent enough of her day staring at screens.  When she sat down for her morning coffee, she enjoyed having the whole paper spread in front of her, turning it page by page.

In between, as she sipped her coffee, she liked to look out her big french doors just past the end of the table.  It had been a hard winter.  Even though the average temperature was a bit higher than normal, that just meant they had had more ice storms and less snow.  She couldn't ever remember the power going out as many times as it had that winter.  Now finally Spring was returning; the snow had melted, the animals were out and about, and the birds had returned.

She had an excellent view of her bird feeder, which she had just refilled the day before.  She was looking forward to watching their antics while she sipped her coffee and browsed the headlines.  Much to her chagrin, a squirrel was sitting on the bird feeder.  Just sitting there.  She would have to check the metal guard and figure out how it got past that.  Still, it was odd that it was just sitting there, quite still.  She expected it would have been trying to get at the bird food.  She wondered for a second if maybe someone was playing a practical joke and put a squirrel statue on her bird feeder.


Apparently that's what several starlings thought -- or maybe they just didn't see the squirrel. Two landed on the same side as the squirrel, three on the opposite side.  That appeared to break the squirrel out of its trance.  It lunged for the nearest starling, who didn't have a chance to react, and sunk its teeth into the hapless bird's neck.  The others started to fly off, but the squirrel leapt onto the other bird on the same side of the feeder and bit its wing.

With a mad fluttering of wings, starling and squirrel spiraled to the ground until the squirrel finally hit the ground.  The jolt was just enough for the starling to break free and spiral away, obviously having trouble with its damaged wing.

Jane rushed out the french doors as she saw this happening, and the squirrel ran off when it saw her coming.  The other starling had plummeted to the ground from the bird feeder.  It had twitched a few times, but by the time Jane picked it up, it was motionless.

Jane was livid.  She had never been so mad at another living creature before.  She resolved to go buy a BB gun after work and make sure if that squirrel ever came around again, it would never hurt another bird.

Going to the Dogs, Again...

Highly Uncivilized has an interesting use for butternut squash: dog chews!  I'm not a big fan of butternut squash myself -- I prefer spaghetti squash or Delicata -- but my dogs can really go through the chews, so it'd great to make them myself.

Going to the Dogs (and Cats)

Around the Cabin has some really interesting recipes for making your own dog and cat food.  I definitely want to try them out sometime.