Farmer McGregor
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“Russian Claim: Austin Dead In Ukraine” — Real Raw News
The RRN website is entirely bogus. By their own admission on their “About” page:
“Information on this website is for informational and educational and entertainment purposes. This website contains humor, parody, and satire. ”
In other words: bullshit. Perhaps just more Qanon style psyop for the foolishly willing dupes.I’m also with MPSK in that the answer is 48.
@Michael Reid nails it in that Butter Is Better, and animal fats are critical to human health. Look at the work of Dr. Weston A. Price who studied the diets of the healthiest humans he could find on the planet. Probably the most robustly healthy peoples he encountered — at that time a hundred years ago, while consuming a traditional native diet of almost nothing but animal fats — were the various ‘Eskimo’ tribes.All “Seed Oils” are patently unhealthy, but are cheap to produce and highly profitable to the big agri-bizzes. For this doctor to say to not eat “any oils” is almost as stupid as saying to not eat “any foods” since oils from different sources vary widely in their properties and nutritional value. And “oils” (fats) of various sorts are present in many otherwise healthy natural foods from both vegetable and animal origins.
You’ll oft hear the diet dictocrats declaring how healthy Salmon is because of the Omega fatty acid ratios, and they are correct. But did you know that the fat (tallow) from organic grass fed (and grass finished) BEEF is every bit as healthy for you for all the same reasons? (Yo Michael Reid, tallow also makes wonderfully tasty deep-fried goodies.)
@John Day
re: The article “Marines Neutralize Fleeing FEMA Convoy…” from Real Raw News.Gotta watch out for anything from this source. By their own description: “Information on this website is for informational and educational and entertainment purposes. This website contains humor, parody, and satire. We have included this disclaimer for our protection, on the advice on legal counsel.”
A while back they had an article claiming that HRC had been executed by firing squad at GITMO. Definitely entertaining idea, but patently untrue.
Stepping up for @Germ:
Former Olympian Helen Smart passes away at 42 as family and colleagues mourn her ‘sudden death’.
Former Olympian Helen Smart passes away at 42 as family and colleagues mourn her ‘sudden death’Pennsylvania man, 21, collapses and dies while hiking in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
Pennsylvania man, 21, collapses and dies while hiking in New Hampshire’s White MountainsGreetings to you, Germ. Hope all is well with you down south.
And, of course, TVASSF!@ram “…a lot of hormones are used in the production of meat.”
As well as milk, which is mostly consumed by children.
The dairy industry has fought long and hard to prevent milk producers from labeling their milk as ‘hormone free’ when they DO NOT use hormones to increase lactation (look up rBGH).Also, NO ONE should ever consume any form of soya other than products that have been thoroughly fermented to destroy the endocrine disrupting hormone mimickers (look up phytoestrogen).
Soy is the primary protein source in most livestock feeds, and the hormone mimickers have been found present in the eggs and meat of chickens (we feed only soy-free feed). Some form of soy or soy derivatives are used in nearly every processed food product on the store shelves. Soy milk is poison.Historical aside: Buddhist monks consumed tofu as a libido suppressant (!).
@zerosum “…and invalidates all of their land deals.”
You took the words right out of my… er… off my fingertips.
I was thinking this very thing as I was reading your previous post.
Actually kind of hoping Russia does exactly that.@Dr. D “…he changes from an 80 year old with dementia to a vigorous, well-spoken guy with no trouble walking about…”
@afewknowthetruth “Six months ago Dima was telling about losses of Russian lives.”
I have, in recent times, heard Dima quote reports of Russian losses that came from disparate sources (such as social media posts) when he got them, or when the RU MoD reports losses from shells fired into Russian territories. I am fairly confident that this information is simply hard to acquire; certainly the Russians publish as little as possible, holding their cards very close to the chest.
As for you, I sure hope you are not in the direct path of ‘that beast’. Be well. And safe.
@zerosum “Note: Ukraine. Military Summary And Analysis 2023.02.11 does not like to tell about Russian failures and about loss of Russian lives.”
Dima at Military Summary channel is actually pro-Ukrainian. His kill stats are quoted directly from the Russian Ministry Of Defense daily report. The Ukrainian military does not (afaik) publish any stats except for occasional gross exaggerations; I suspect they don’t have their shit together enough to compile those numbers. He reports what info he can find. And he occasionally refers to the Russians as ‘the enemy’. He seems to try to be as honest as he can.
My main beef with him is the huge amount of time he spends describing what he thinks the Ukes or Russians are going to do, or what they ought to do. He is often very wrong in his prognostications.
@phoenixvoice “…articles multiplying on the ‘net about how raising hens is SO COSTLY that ya’ll are better off financially buying eggs from the supermarket.”
Having raised countless chickens, and consumed/sold countless dozens of eggs while carefully tracking the real-world costs, I can tell you with certainty that, in temperate climates, you absolutely cannot produce eggs as cheaply as those from the ‘food-industrial-complex’. In a sub-tropical climate where natural foods (bugs) are continually abundant so purchased feed is not needed, eggs can be pretty cheap. Not so here in Colorado.
The industrial egg producers have not only economies of scale to their advantage, but very importantly, their feed costs are a fraction of what we pay for retail chicken ration. Roughly half of the cost of the primary feed grains (corn and soy) is paid by the govt via the ‘farm bill’ subsidies. Backyard chicken owners pay substantially more — multiples more — for feed.
Regarding the Tractor Supply branded chicken feed: this is some of the worst, bottom-of-the-barrel cheapo crap you can buy. It is made mostly from the waste byproducts of the grain processing industry. I would be surprised if it came close to meeting the crude protein levels indicated on their label, or that the protein-bearing ingredients are of good quality or digestibility. IIRC their label even has a disclaimer saying something to the effect that what is stated thereon “may not reflect the actual contents of the bag” and you should go to their website for more info. The idea that they would deliberately incorporate something to prevent egg production into their product is pretty ludicrous. As previously stated, we’re talking about really crummy feed.
Inadequate protein will always hamper egg production, especially in hens over a year old; especially especially in winter when the photoperiod is short since the hormone that drives egg laying is stimulated by the optic nerve. Birds in nature do not produce offspring when there is no food out there.
Be aware that the industrial producers figured out a long time ago that the ‘optimal’ protein level for egg layer ration is somewhere around 16 to 18 percent. Meaning that if you feed more protein (the most expensive ingredient in the ration) you may get more eggs, but not enough more to pay for the added protein. 16% is the point of diminishing returns. Given the option, chickens will consume as much protein as possible, say 80 or 90 percent, primarily animal foods. So it stands to reason that a low quality ration will simply not provide enough nourishment to sustain egg production.
‘Feed Ze Bugs’ to your hens, and eat wonderful eggs.
How many girls?
There are four girls plus their reflections in the wall-mirror, as well as another two or three in the far end of the reflection which are not shown in the primary picture (on the left side of the image).Unless, of course, that any of these four identify as something other than girl. /s
For those who may not remember this, it is the original piece spoofed by the mRNA piece posted by @Germ on comment #122707.
The Man Who Never Returned by The Kingston Trio.@John Day
Am I mistaken, or is the “edwardslavsquat” substack article you referenced in comment #122313 a year old?
If so, then not sure of its relevancy at this time. Not trying to nit-pick, just curious.@Bishko “A simple dredge and settling tank would recover most of the components of the devices used.”
But you can be quite sure that if the Russians moved in the equipment to do this it would be labeled as and act of aggression and a violation of sovereign territories…
@Bill7 “Lots of doom-porn out there.. who benefits, and in what ways?”
In my experience, the types who produce this stuff are generally psychotic (psychopathological) on some level. IOW, their perspective and understanding are removed from reality on the ground. They live from crisis to crisis, event to event, etc., constantly spewing their twisted opinions in order to build their sense of significance, their intrinsic value, their self-esteem. “Look at me! I’m important! I know stuff you don’t know!” This is the stuff of the selfie generation: narcissism. Solipsism, even.
It doesn’t matter that the crap they were spewing six months ago has long since been proven wrong; their attention is focused only on their current obsession. Look at Alex Jones — he’s been sued and humiliated for the nonsense he has said in the past, but at the time, it made him look and feel really important (in his own eyes, and in those who followed him).
I hope this makes some sense.
@my parents said know comment #115775 re: something big in Denver and associated video…
I’m 70 miles north of Denver, not hearing any rumblings from the conspiracy types (I’m associated with a number of them, many are my customers who gravitate toward my little homestead (doomstead?) farm.
Even the video clip replays from the Denver news channels refer to the whole ‘but-out bag giveaway’ as part of ‘national preparedness month’. Not sure how they’re gonna effect the population much since Denver metro is in excess of 75 million peeps. Awful lot of bug-out bags.
I haven’t look closely into all this, but considering that in the past decade, the Colorado front range area has lost several thousand homes to wildfires (some not far west of my place, and over a thousand were in a completely developed subdivision in a Denver suburb — the entire neighborhood burned down), I can’t help but guess that this is who these efforts are targeted at.
The video strikes me as doom porn. I’ll bet nothing comes of this. Sept.24 will be here soon enough.
We’ll know more then…@slimyalligator “The issue with mechanical cultivation is it burns up organic matter (CO2 bloom) which has a work around. Crop rotation.”
Zactly! Which is why ALL annual tillage crops destroy topsoil. Crop rotations MUST include multi-year spells of perennial polyculture (multi-species) pasture in order to rebuild lost topsoil by annual cropping, tilling, cultivating — disturbing the soil — etc. And those renewal spells are best accomplished by grazing ruminants on those polyculture pastures to assist in carbon sequestration by repeatedly grazing down the plant top growth and converting it to manure.My land is old riverbed, so it ‘grows’ cobbles as frost heave pushes them up; an actual ‘rock garden’!. Constantly de-stoning, have small mountains of river rock to get rid of since we have no use for them.
Cheers to you as well.@Dr. D “… Greenhouses find it economical to pump in, at great expense 5x the present CO2 levels which causes an explosion of growth…”
Exactly, and another good example: Corn farmers routinely cultivated their corn fields when the plants were almost too tall to run the equipment over them. The primary purpose was to knock down the weeds growing between the rows. Also, it broke up the surface crust allowing better water penetration — this is especially important when furrow irrigating since it deepens the flow channel while piling soil up on the bases of the plants helping them to stay erect (prevent lodging).
Few of them understood that this process also introduced a lot of oxygen into the topsoil causing a bloom of bacterial action which volatilizes (oxidizes) soil carbon (organic matter) into carbon dioxide. This bloom and subsequent release of large amounts of CO2 around the plants contributes to an explosion of growth such that you could hear the plants growing. The guy in this video mentions the rapid growth after cultivating, though he doesn’t say anything about the CO2 bloom — few conventional (especially older) farmers would know that information.
Sadly, many ‘modern’ farmers use glyphosate applications on their fields for weed control rather than mechanical means. The guy in the video refers to cultivating as being “like the good old days”!
@Germ Wow, You da Man!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you (Thank you cubed) for all your research.My day for Wendell Berry. @Dr. D’s thoughtful missive about capitalism vs. socialism (reply #114077) immediately brought to mind another of Berry’s essays I was reading earlier today.
The essay, In Distrust Of Movements, Berry makes some observations regarding economies:“… if we are concerned about land abuse, we have begun a profound work of economic criticism. Study of the history of land use (and any local history will do) informs us that we have had for a long time an economy that thrives by undermining its own foundations. Industrialism, which is the name of our economy, and which is now virtually the only economy of the world, has been from its beginnings in a state of riot. It is based squarely upon the principle of violence toward everything on which it depends, and it has not mattered whether the form of industrialism was communist or capitalist or whatever; the violence toward nature, human communities, traditional agricultures and local economies has been constant. The bad news is coming in, literally, from all over the world. Can such an economy be fixed without being radically changed? I don’t think it can.” (emphasis mine).
Dr. D, if you are not familiar with Berry’s writings, I encourage you to get that way; you and he have a lot in common as exceptionally good thinkers.
@upstateNYer I want to second @John Day in welcoming you back. I too have appreciated your perspective.
BTW, any fat, like lard or peanut oil, will slowly melt away tar without harming the victim!@phoenixvoice: An excellent rant, indeed! Many thanks. Inspires me to read Marx for myself, having never done so.
You might appreciate some of the writings of the brilliant Wendell Berry. For example, an excerpt from The Idea Of A Local Economy“…the idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence. In a viable neighborhood, neighbors ask themselves what they can do or provide for one another, and they find answers that they and their place can afford. This, and nothing else, is the practice of neighborhood. This practice must be, in part, charitable, but it must also be economic, and the economic part must be equitable; there is a significant charity in just prices.
Of course, everything needed locally cannot be produced locally. But a viable neighborhood is a community; and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common. This is the principle of subsistence. A viable community, like a viable farm, protects its own production capacities. It does not import products that it can produce for itself. And it does not export local products until local needs have been met. The economic products of a viable community are understood either as belonging to the community’s subsistence or as surplus, and only the surplus is considered to be marketable abroad. A community, if it is to be viable, cannot think of producing solely for export, and it cannot permit importers to use cheaper labor and goods from other places to destroy the local capacity to produce goods that are needed locally. In charity, moreover, it must refuse to import goods that are produced at the cost of human or ecological degradation elsewhere. This principle applies not just to localities, but to regions and nations as well.
The principles of neighborhood and subsistence will be disparaged by the globalists as “protectionism” — and that is exactly what it is. It is a protectionism that is just and sound, because it protects local producers and is the best assurance of adequate supplies to local consumers…”
@redshift: “How do I know you religious people actually have morals and are not simply afraid to disobey God?”
“The fear (respect, reverence) of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”
from the ancient book of Proverbs in the Jewish bible (the Old Testament), parenthetical added.Being of afraid of God is a good thing. Very good.
Eating Insects 101:
Look into it and you’ll find that the people groups who have historically done this almost always eat them in their pre-pupal (larval) stage. Insect larvae are rich in both protein and good fats, without any of the chitin. Also, the larvae are generally sterile thus free of the pathogens and parasites which will infect them as adults.When adult bugs are consumed, it is the inner contents, not the exoskeleton (shell) that are consumed. Survival manuals will tell you that to eat grasshoppers (locusts, large crickets, etc.) you hold them by their hoppers against a hot rock; the boiling innards will burst out where they are easily consumed without having to eat the shell and have been mostly sanitized by the heat.
Once upon a time I watched a fascinating video of some tribesmen in a tropical jungle (I don’t remember where, and my efforts to locate the vid on the webs was fruitless else I would post it here). They would capture a large wasp and tie a feather to its leg with a thread. Then they followed it through the jungle as it led them back to its nest — a grey paper blob the size of a basketball hanging in a tree. After destroying and driving away all the adult wasps with smoke and flames, they would rip the nest open and gorge on the larvae which were the size of a peanut M&M. This was a great treat to them, well worth all the hassle involved in procuring it.
Meal worms (the larvae of the Darkling Beetle) are very commonly fed to reptile pets and are easily produced at home (I have experimented with growing them on the litter from my chicken coop because the chickens love them and this would be a great way to cycle nutrients on the farm if successful…) Before feeding them to your pet, it is strongly advised that you allow the worms to gorge on some nutrient-dense foods for the purpose of ‘gut-loading’ them; your iguana depends as much or more on the contents of the insect’s guts as on the insect’s body.
End of lecture.
@citizenx re: reply #113148
Don’t hold back, man. Tell us how you really feel!
The tragic part is that you’re correct.@zerosum: “The Himalayan Vulture – L. Cheney”
Darn near spewed coffee… well done!
@D Benton Smith
Thanks for sharing your story.
I too had intended to encourage you to do so yesterday.
This has the makings of a great book, and maybe a movie!(From yesterday) @wdt “…transmutation..I don’t think this means what you think it means… Organic transmutation….sorry, no”
Uh sorry, Yes, I know exactly what it means. Just because the scientific orthodoxy of our time runs shrieking with its hair on fire at the mention of it, it has nonetheless been repeatedly found true. Of course, you will have to dig deep and hard to find anything on the ‘net about it precisely because of that orthodoxy. Believe what you want.
As far as feeding straw to cattle, you are absolutely correct. The ‘protein’ in green forages are the molecules with large shares of nitrogen, which is absent in straw (cellulose and lignin). The ‘fermenting’ of those compounds releases the energy necessary to maintain a healthy rumen biome, which can then process limited amounts of cellulose, especially for heat production.
@aspnaz asks: “Okay, educate me. As a home brewer, I do not see fermentation as bacterial action. In fact, bacterial action will destroy your beer whereas fermentation by yeasts – which are fungi – will produce the good stuff without odd flavours.”
Excellent point of differentiation to be expounded.Fermentation in the chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts, or other microorganisms, typically involving effervescence and the giving off of heat. The process of fermentation involved in the making of beer, wine, and liquor, is that in which sugars are converted to ethyl alcohol by the action of selective yeasts. Lacto-Fermentation is the action of the type of acid loving bacteria called lactobacilli in which sugars are converted to lactic acid.
Yogurt and sour cream are common lacto-fermented dairy foods, lactobacilli being the native bacteria in raw (unpasteurized) milk. Traditional sour kraut is lacto-fermented cabbage, Korean kimchi is a jumble of vegetables that have been lacto-fermented, or ‘soured’; these are foods that have been processed for long-term preservation. There is no alcohol involved, as with yeast, and lactic acid is a strong disinfectant and therefore a preservative. People around the globe throughout all of known history have employed lactobacilli in the preservation of their food, even though they didn’t know the science behind it.
The ‘fermentation’ in the rumen stomach of a cow is done by variety of bacteria, never yeasts. Incidentally, if a cow cannot burp regularly she will bloat, sometimes requiring the stomach to be lanced to relieve the pressure. If you’ve ever made kombucha, you will have employed a combination of yeasts and bacteria in the form of a blob known as a SCOBY (Symbiotic Community Of Bacteria & Yeasts). To convert wine to vinegar, you employ a bacterial colony known as a ‘mother’ which employs acetobacter to ‘ferment’ the alcohol into acetic acid.
When we brew beer and wine, we certainly seek to avoid bacterial contamination, and want to ONLY employ Saccharomyces in the fermentation process. Unless we are one of those nut-jobs who have taken to using strains of Brettanomyces because it imparts funky flavors — in case you didn’t pick up on it, I DO NOT like “Brett” beers. The ‘Sour Beers’ that have become all the rage in recent times are made by allowing some bacterial fermentation — usually involving lactobacilli — which will impart similar flavors as found in yogurt and sour kraut. Not a big fan of those, either. Malty reds for me.
3rd paragraph from the end, farmable bug:
@Bishko says:
“The chicken needs more protein in their feed than leaves them in the egg. The same with bugs. There is no miracle process where bugs generate protein, fat, sugar or any other nutrient without ingesting it first.”
First sentence absolutely correct. Second one not so correct. It is not the higher life form that generates protein etc., it is the bacteria and other microscopic life forms that do this work. Certain families of these ultra-tiny critters can, and do, reconfigure molecules like cellulose into more complex nutrients.My cows pulverize large volumes of plant tissues then rapidly ferment them through massive bacterial action (that is what fermentation is) in their rumen stomach (the bacteria at work there are collectively referred as ‘the rumen’). The rumen reconfigure the plant tissue molecules into the various lipids and amino acids (building blocks of fats and proteins). The cow then digests the massive volumes of dead bacteria bodies to extract those and other materials for making milk and meat. See A Cow’s Digestive System
Incidentally, this is why humans generally do not thrive on a plant-based diet. We simply lack the facilities (large multi-stomach system) to derive adequate nutrition from plants without giving very special attention to concentrated fats and proteins.
It is bacteria that are essential for the production of fatty and amino acids, carbohydrates, and vitamins (especially the B-complex vits) from simpler molecules. This process occurs within all higher life forms, including ourselves, which is why robust health is tied directly to the quality and health of our gut biome. An insect’s digestive tract is the same in this regard which is why they can convert even ‘very dead’ plant matter (compost) into the building blocks needed for their own growth and reproduction.
Bacteria and fungi are alchemists that can even do elemental transmutation under the right conditions.Insects are actually significantly more efficient at converting organic matter into proteins than conventional livestock. The limitation to this is that of scale. A 1500 pound cow is much more resilient to environmental changes and easier to manage, thus far less precarious than 1500 pounds of insect larvae and their breeding adults. Those bugs can’t give me 6 gallons of marvelous milk every day. Milk, cream, butter, yogurt, cheese… by chewing on the grass that grows all around me.
Here is a ‘farmable’ bug, the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKgg_kncASY. Consider scaling this up to produce tonnage, which is what would be necessary to be of any value.
I have toyed with ‘farming’ mealworms (the larvae of the Darkling Beetle) since they are indigenous and spontaneously appear in the litter that accumulates in the bottom of my chicken coop (I use the ‘deep litter’ method of manure management using high-carbon materials like dry tree leaves, straw, and wood shavings to capture and dry the chicken droppings. This ends up being composted or tilled directly into vegetable growing beds in the fall. Hello Dr. John Day!). Since the mealworms can thrive on old chicken manure, it makes sense to try to use them to convert that manure back into fats and proteins for the chickens. Closed loop!
‘Farming’ insects, especially on waste biomass, makes far more sense as feed for livestock, especially chickens, than for human food. Insects can be very effective vectors for various pathogens, parasites, etc., which cannot survive a chicken’s “hot” gut. Insects are, after all, a chicken’s most natural and preferred food.
@wdt from yesterday: Late comment 07/20/22
As a beekeeper, I gotta say WOW! The glass ceiling idea is brilliant! The usual treatment for hive robbing is to so restrict the size of the entrance to the hive-being-robbed that the guard bees therein have a fighting chance of repelling the robbers.
Thanks for this.
@Antidote “Re: the Cat 994H fuel burn. Not true. Maybe 1800 liters/hr. Not gallons. Still a lot and we get the point.”
It doesn’t say 1800 gallons per hour, but over a 12 hour shift. That’s 150 gallons per hour which is still an exaggeration according to the Cat Performance Handbook chart to which you refer. The chart says 994H fuel consumption can be as high as 52 gallons per hour under heavy usage.
52 gallons per hour doesn’t surprise me; my little 3-cylinder Kubota easily sucks down well over a gallon an hour under ‘heavy’ usage (heavy for it, that is). 50 gallons is a LOT of diesel, currently worth over $300 at the local retail station. Very likely there is more energy embedded in the manufacture of those batteries than they will ever “save” during their usable life
Should have just burned the diesel fuel in the car rather than the big-ass loader.
@zerosum — “The elites believe that they will be able to escape the kill zone of an atomic blast/energy shortfall/failing distribution network/food shortfall/pandemic/etc and survive in the ruins of the remaining civilization.”
Well said, sir. Very well said
It does seem as if they are exactly that delusionally short-sighted. Perhaps that’s what is behind the “you will own nothing and you will be happy” schtick: the ruling elites will be served and provided for by those of us serfs (slaves) which they allow to remain alive. Hasn’t that been their plan through the entire recorded history of “civilization”?@Veracious Poet “What will it take for the lowly, insect-like “electorate” to realize, en masse, that ALL of the insanity, maiming, death & destruction is ultimately THEIR FAULT...”
Typical of societal collapses it requires that the entire generation of pampered losers (most of current populace) simply die out over time. The subsequent generations — those which survive — will grow up in the midst of the resulting chaos and hardship so will resultingly be tough and resilient unlike their pathetic forebears. It is cyclical. The current crop are mostly doomed since they will never get their shit together enough to put together a cohesive society or operate a legitimate government.
Think: Dark Ages before Renaissance.
@boilingfrog “…Granola Shotgun – where’s Johnny now?!”
Been wondering that myself. Sure hope he’s okay.
