#91
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FLU
On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 15:13:18 +0700, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 06:19:20 -0000 (UTC), dave wrote: On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 14:38:31 +0700, John B. wrote: On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 05:50:19 -0000 (UTC), dave wrote: On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 08:15:59 +0700, John B. wrote: epic snip ... No two weeks vacation either, you got to get the plowing done and the garden in or there won't be anything to eat next winter. Hint: Agricultural things have progressed quite well since you were a kid. Nowadays they have GPS controlled combines which can be operated by staff and not only the owner of the farm. Sure. Combine harvesting has been going on even longer then I've been around and they are expensive, which is why you seldom see one in the normal farmer's inventory. But what you don't think about is that to be economical combine harvesting can only be used in large fields that are relatively flat have straight boundaries. It isn't effective in fields that are irregular in shape or are not relatively flat. Have you read " The Grapes of Wrath"? Certainly. It was a lot of years ago but I don't remember anything about Combine Harvesters. I remember that the harvests had failed and everyone left for California. The harvests were down. But the main focus was the industrialisation of farming and people being run off the land by banks buying up small farms. These were then joined together into easily tractorable long straight lines. Not to get into a big argument but I seem to remember that the main point in the first part of the book was the fact that the rains had failed and turned that part of the country into a "dust bowl" and that there was no work, no food, no nothing. And yes, people lost their land when they didn't pay their bills, but that was hardly a practice restricted to Oklahoma. But worse, as the farmers defaulted on their loans banks failed at a high rate and there was simply no credit available at all. But yes, there were underlying reasons. The common use of tractors allowed plowing much wider areas than a man and a horse could plow, tractors were far more powerful and allowed deep plowing which destroyed the deep root structures of the prairie grasses but the basic reason was a series of droughts during most of the 1930's. It created what was quite literally a dust bowl with 75% of the top soil blown away. Over an area of 100,000,000 acres. It also triggered (I believe) the largest immigration in U.S. history with something like approximately 3.5 million people moved out of the area in the period from approximately 1930 - 1940. Sounds about right. I'll shut up now. -- davethedave |
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#92
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FLU
On Wednesday, November 29, 2017 at 11:18:18 PM UTC+1, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/29/2017 1:22 PM, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-29 09:38, jbeattie wrote: On Tuesday, November 28, 2017 at 5:16:03 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote: snip [...] And sure studies are made of the pressures of city life... All you need to do is write up a good proposal and get the grant and away you go. A government funded study. We get them over here. Every few years you see an article in the Bangkok newspaper about someone that got yet another grant to study "Prostitution in Thailand". So ignoring the fact that prostitution have been studied innumerable times in the past some bloke gets a grant to study them once again. Having lived in the country and in the city, I don't need studies. I know and made my choices accordingly. Interestingly my wife who grew up in a huge city sees it the same way. She would never move back there. Well yes, the best of both worlds. Out of the built up areas and still close enough that one can drive into town for shows and shopping. One might call it the dilettante life style. The problem with this conversation is that Joerg oscillates between the abstract "country" and the reality of Cameron Park -- which is a golf-course community with an "airpark" in the Sierra foothills up the road from Sacramento.Â* It's a fine place to live if you like suburban developments. It does put you near open space, but its not the wild west, the Mid West or anything like the "country" that I envision -- e.g. farm land or the mostly vacant land in eastern Oregon. https://traveloregon.com/wp-content/...ning_final.jpg There isn't any "oscillation". What I am saying is that it takes very few miles on roads or, preferred by me, on singletrack and I am in truly pristine country. Totally rural, quiet, no traffic. To achieve this in a major city can easily require an hour of riding on a bike. Â*I have no problem with bedroom communities or small towns near large towns. I'd live in one, and they can be quiet and relaxed -- unless they're filled with angry drunk drivers and mountain lions.Â* For a sleepy bedroom community, Cameron Park seems more dangerous and stressful than NYC. And with planes buzzing around, it can't be that quiet close to town -- but who knows. http://www.city-data.com/forum/sacra...sion-good.html It is correct that it is almost a bedroom community though we do have a business park right in the village. Airplane noise, yes, but a Cessna 172 purring off into the distance is something different than the din of traffic and other noise in a large city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDWZkXjDYsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECGCoo3Ogxg Again, false dichotomy. You pretend the only choices are the din of a dense mega-city vs. a neighborhood so quiet you can hear the mountain lions tiptoeing by. My ride today was 47 miles. I was passed by maybe 100 cars the entire time, most of those because I wandered around some old suburbs at the end rather than riding directly home. There were several five mile stretches where no cars passed me at all. Yet if I'd chosen to ride northwest instead of southeast, I could have ridden through two decent sized cities and their government buildings, libraries, restaurants, entertainment venues, shopping malls and more. And since I know all the roads and streets, including the quiet ones, traffic would have been very easy for me to handle. I thank God I'm not so timid as to be afraid to ride the roads. -- - Frank Krygowski Frank what is your problem with Joerg's preference where to live or to ride bike? Lou |
#94
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FLU
Cal country road riding is dangerous
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#95
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On 2017-11-29 17:01, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 08:01:31 -0800, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-28 16:50, John B. wrote: On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 07:50:41 -0800, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-27 16:21, John B. wrote: On Mon, 27 Nov 2017 13:16:19 -0800, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-27 12:15, Frank Krygowski wrote: [...] Oh - and I'm sure your completely separate bike paths will be hermetically sealed, and given their own supply of filtered and purified air, right? It wouldn't do to have them downwind from some cars. One can't be too careful! The one I took on Friday does come close to roads and even ... gasp ... Highway 50 at one spot where you can hear faint vroom vroom sounds. Smells? Pine needle scent, foliage, earth, and oo, the occasionally horse poop. I rather smell horse poop than the soot from a big Diesel. You might be so city-addicted that you don't notice the difference but I sure do. Quite the opposite I would say. and, yes, I grew up in a rural environment so I am familiar with all the smells that exist "out in the country". But to those who actually reside in that environment don't even notice them, they are part of the normal atmosphere. It is only the city slickers who comment on "Oh... Smell the pine trees. Of course there is an odor of pine trees, there ought to be as all you can see is pine trees for miles around. Your comment about smelling "horse poop" is a dead giveaway. The correct term is "horse manure" and it is a normal part of the rural atmosphere, or at least the normal rural atmosphere in areas where horses are kept. In other areas it might be cow manure or chicken manure and is a perfectly normal part of the environment where those critters are raised. As a little kid I grew up in farm country. Scientifically correct expressions such as manure are mostly used by upscale folks that don't live there. Locals call it poop or ****. Which is what it is. Sometimes dung but that can already be seen as a frou-frou expression :-) Strange comment. At least in my experience. I never heard the term "**** spreader" used, they were called "manure spreaders". I heard that all the time, mostly in other languages. For example, "Guelle Anhaenger" (ue is an umlaut in there) which loosely translates to "**** trailer". That's how farmers called the "liquid manure" tank trailers they carted to their fields, opened a valve and then pulled it across behind the tractor. Leaving behind a serious stench. If you want to include non-English languages to interpreted to English than you open the gate to some pretty strange terms. For example, the correct term, in Thai, for cigarette ash is "cigarette ****". An ashtray is a "thing for cigarette ****". Of course "kee" the term I am translating to "****" doesn't imply feces in Thai, it means something more in line with the English term "waste". If you want to go further abroad, the correct term to identify a railway train is "fire wagon". Logically, if you wish to argue English language terms then it is probably logical to argue in English. Well, pretty much all Texans I know call horse manure horse **** or horse poop. Or is Texas outside the English language region in your eyes? To some folks it is ... [...] What you do to maintain the chemicals necessary to support plant life is spread "natural" fertilizers... i.e. manure on the farm land. Yes, cow dung. BTDT. Nope. Any type of manure although I seem to remember that chicken manure was used with some caution as it tended to "burn the field" as the old folks described it and chicken manure does have the highest amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium of common farm manures so perhaps they did know what they were talking about. They successfully ran farms that way. Else their bank would have taken over. Subsistence farming, i.e., a small family owned farm that supported the family is, and probably has been for a generation or more, pretty much a myth. Even when I was growing up in New England they were rare as one simply couldn't make a living doing everything yourself. Not at all. Many large farms out here (and where I grew up) are already squeezed to the hilt with taxes, fees, costly labor rules and so on. It's no subsistence, it's been their livelihood since generations. So (to be a bit vulgar) first you grow the veggies in **** and then you charge the city folks extra for doing so :-) That's what they did where I grew up. They also sold the **** itself to city dwellers to fertilize their flower beds. That must have been noticed by investment bankers who, as Jay put it, sold "**** parfait" in the shape of bundled mortgage "securities" except that those eventually blew up. You equate spreading manure on flower plants with spreading it on vegetables and then selling them for a higher price because they are "organic"? City dwellers don't sell their plants. Why would they? It's some kind of frou-frou phenomenon, dissing anything store-bought :-) You know, that really says something about intelligence levels of the city folks who buy the stuff doesn't it. Maybe. Anyhow, I know that I live in the country when the supermarket sells steer manure, has horse feed supplement in the main aisle and the local radio station plays Stable Mix commercials. You wrote the other day describing a palatial mansion "custom built" I believe was your term, and you frequently talk about your wife complaining about mud in the garage and now you are trying to imply that you live in an environment with horses? Yes, it takes minutes on my bike to get to where lots of horses are. I never said owned a mansion because we don't. I'd have to point out that the average horse produces about 37 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons of urine daily, which totals about 50 pounds of raw waste per day in feces and urine combined. My MTB tires know that and so do the backs of my riding T-shirts :-) If your wife complains about the mud from one small mountain bike I really doubt that you are stabling any horses. We aren't, other are. The radio programs advertising animal feed is obviously not germane when discussing your living accommodations. They do not run such ads if there isn't a lucrative local market. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
#96
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On 2017-11-29 19:24, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/29/2017 8:01 PM, John B. wrote: I'd have to point out that the average horse produces about 37 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons of urine daily, which totals about 50 pounds of raw waste per day in feces and urine combined. About that: A few years ago, my wife and I were on a driving trip heading west and decided to head north through Michigan and camp at Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Along the way, we spontaneously decided to visit Mackinac Island, a small car-free resort island in Lake Huron. People get around the island by foot, by bike or by horse-drawn carriage. It sounded charming, and we'd never been there. We called ahead to reserve a hotel room, then loaded our bikes onto the ferry and disembarked at the island. Walking from the dock to the main street, we passed through a sort of long roofed arcade, and I got worried: Do they have lots of homeless bums here, who pee anywhere they want to? The smell of urine was _very_ strong! Once we got to the charming main street, I stopped worrying about bums. The problem was horses. The gutters were literally running with horse ****. And it occurred to me: This is probably how all cities smelled before the motor car arrived to remove the horse pollution. That's how it was in the village where I grew up except the smell was from "cow ****". The local ranchers regularly drove herds through the village. There was only that one street so no other options. It never bothered me. Diesel exhaust blasting into my face while riding on roads does though, big time. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
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On 2017-11-29 22:22, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 23:44:55 -0400, Joy Beeson wrote: On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 08:01:55 +0700, John B. wrote: The radio programs advertising animal feed is obviously not germane when discussing your living accommodations. Not to mention that the vast majority of the horses in the United States are pets -- horse feed in the supermarket is a sure sign that you are *not* in farming country. Many horses here are pets but there are also people working in agriculture or private forest management who use them to get around. Especially when the trip contains sections where ATVs or dirt bikes are not allowed. Then there are the hardcore cowboys who ride their horse to Safeway and back, boots, hat and all. Often I have to dodge horse poop on the shoulder or in the bike lane along county roads. That sure isn't from any pet-riding. Back when we had horses I never saw horse feed in a sack small enough that you could carry it out of the supermarket :-) Read more precisely. I talked about feed supplement, not feed. But even for the supplement you better show up with a pickup truck. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
#98
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On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 13:40:00 -0800, Joerg
wrote: On 2017-11-29 17:01, John B. wrote: On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 08:01:31 -0800, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-28 16:50, John B. wrote: On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 07:50:41 -0800, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-27 16:21, John B. wrote: On Mon, 27 Nov 2017 13:16:19 -0800, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-27 12:15, Frank Krygowski wrote: [...] Oh - and I'm sure your completely separate bike paths will be hermetically sealed, and given their own supply of filtered and purified air, right? It wouldn't do to have them downwind from some cars. One can't be too careful! The one I took on Friday does come close to roads and even ... gasp ... Highway 50 at one spot where you can hear faint vroom vroom sounds. Smells? Pine needle scent, foliage, earth, and oo, the occasionally horse poop. I rather smell horse poop than the soot from a big Diesel. You might be so city-addicted that you don't notice the difference but I sure do. Quite the opposite I would say. and, yes, I grew up in a rural environment so I am familiar with all the smells that exist "out in the country". But to those who actually reside in that environment don't even notice them, they are part of the normal atmosphere. It is only the city slickers who comment on "Oh... Smell the pine trees. Of course there is an odor of pine trees, there ought to be as all you can see is pine trees for miles around. Your comment about smelling "horse poop" is a dead giveaway. The correct term is "horse manure" and it is a normal part of the rural atmosphere, or at least the normal rural atmosphere in areas where horses are kept. In other areas it might be cow manure or chicken manure and is a perfectly normal part of the environment where those critters are raised. As a little kid I grew up in farm country. Scientifically correct expressions such as manure are mostly used by upscale folks that don't live there. Locals call it poop or ****. Which is what it is. Sometimes dung but that can already be seen as a frou-frou expression :-) Strange comment. At least in my experience. I never heard the term "**** spreader" used, they were called "manure spreaders". I heard that all the time, mostly in other languages. For example, "Guelle Anhaenger" (ue is an umlaut in there) which loosely translates to "**** trailer". That's how farmers called the "liquid manure" tank trailers they carted to their fields, opened a valve and then pulled it across behind the tractor. Leaving behind a serious stench. If you want to include non-English languages to interpreted to English than you open the gate to some pretty strange terms. For example, the correct term, in Thai, for cigarette ash is "cigarette ****". An ashtray is a "thing for cigarette ****". Of course "kee" the term I am translating to "****" doesn't imply feces in Thai, it means something more in line with the English term "waste". If you want to go further abroad, the correct term to identify a railway train is "fire wagon". Logically, if you wish to argue English language terms then it is probably logical to argue in English. Well, pretty much all Texans I know call horse manure horse **** or horse poop. Or is Texas outside the English language region in your eyes? To some folks it is ... [...] What you do to maintain the chemicals necessary to support plant life is spread "natural" fertilizers... i.e. manure on the farm land. Yes, cow dung. BTDT. Nope. Any type of manure although I seem to remember that chicken manure was used with some caution as it tended to "burn the field" as the old folks described it and chicken manure does have the highest amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium of common farm manures so perhaps they did know what they were talking about. They successfully ran farms that way. Else their bank would have taken over. Subsistence farming, i.e., a small family owned farm that supported the family is, and probably has been for a generation or more, pretty much a myth. Even when I was growing up in New England they were rare as one simply couldn't make a living doing everything yourself. Not at all. Many large farms out here (and where I grew up) are already squeezed to the hilt with taxes, fees, costly labor rules and so on. It's no subsistence, it's been their livelihood since generations. What was there about "small family owned farm" that you didn't understand? You might also want to google "Subsistence farming" try http://www.dictionary.com/browse/subsistence-farming -- Cheers, John B. |
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On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 13:44:31 -0800, Joerg
wrote: On 2017-11-29 19:24, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 11/29/2017 8:01 PM, John B. wrote: I'd have to point out that the average horse produces about 37 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons of urine daily, which totals about 50 pounds of raw waste per day in feces and urine combined. About that: A few years ago, my wife and I were on a driving trip heading west and decided to head north through Michigan and camp at Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Along the way, we spontaneously decided to visit Mackinac Island, a small car-free resort island in Lake Huron. People get around the island by foot, by bike or by horse-drawn carriage. It sounded charming, and we'd never been there. We called ahead to reserve a hotel room, then loaded our bikes onto the ferry and disembarked at the island. Walking from the dock to the main street, we passed through a sort of long roofed arcade, and I got worried: Do they have lots of homeless bums here, who pee anywhere they want to? The smell of urine was _very_ strong! Once we got to the charming main street, I stopped worrying about bums. The problem was horses. The gutters were literally running with horse ****. And it occurred to me: This is probably how all cities smelled before the motor car arrived to remove the horse pollution. That's how it was in the village where I grew up except the smell was from "cow ****". The local ranchers regularly drove herds through the village. There was only that one street so no other options. It never bothered me. Diesel exhaust blasting into my face while riding on roads does though, big time. But that is very much a matter of personal preference, isn't it? At least I remember someone writing about somewhere in the N.W. (I think) where they sprayed liquefied manure on fields and how obnoxious the smell was. Apparently some like the smell of manure and some like diesel smoke :-) Heck, there are even some that get "turned on" by sniffing glue. -- Cheers, John B. |
#100
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On 2017-12-01 16:48, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 13:44:31 -0800, Joerg wrote: On 2017-11-29 19:24, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 11/29/2017 8:01 PM, John B. wrote: I'd have to point out that the average horse produces about 37 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons of urine daily, which totals about 50 pounds of raw waste per day in feces and urine combined. About that: A few years ago, my wife and I were on a driving trip heading west and decided to head north through Michigan and camp at Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Along the way, we spontaneously decided to visit Mackinac Island, a small car-free resort island in Lake Huron. People get around the island by foot, by bike or by horse-drawn carriage. It sounded charming, and we'd never been there. We called ahead to reserve a hotel room, then loaded our bikes onto the ferry and disembarked at the island. Walking from the dock to the main street, we passed through a sort of long roofed arcade, and I got worried: Do they have lots of homeless bums here, who pee anywhere they want to? The smell of urine was _very_ strong! Once we got to the charming main street, I stopped worrying about bums. The problem was horses. The gutters were literally running with horse ****. And it occurred to me: This is probably how all cities smelled before the motor car arrived to remove the horse pollution. That's how it was in the village where I grew up except the smell was from "cow ****". The local ranchers regularly drove herds through the village. There was only that one street so no other options. It never bothered me. Diesel exhaust blasting into my face while riding on roads does though, big time. But that is very much a matter of personal preference, isn't it? You do know the difference between a nuisance smell and potential lung cancer, don't you? At least I remember someone writing about somewhere in the N.W. (I think) where they sprayed liquefied manure on fields and how obnoxious the smell was. Apparently some like the smell of manure and some like diesel smoke :-) I don't know either. However, Diesel smoke and soot causes nothing but complaints while "rural scents" aren't too bothersome to people like me who are used to them. Heck, there are even some that get "turned on" by sniffing glue. Or the "new tube smell" a cyclist experiences :-) -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
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