Automatic or Standard?

 

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About five years ago I was the manager at a bulk plant that distributed fuel and oil.  We had 16 drivers that drove Kenworth, Volvo and Freightliner trucks to get the product to our customers.  Every last one of the trucks except for the Freightliner had automatic transmissions.  In fact, I was surprised to learn that none of the younger drivers knew how to even drive a standard!

I did some quick research and found that over 99% of the vehicles sold today are automatic.  Obviously, that means that less than 1% have a manual transmission. What a shame!  I vividly remember my Dad buying a Datsun 280Z in 1978, I think?  The color of the paint job on that car was Persimmon.  It really stood out.  Other than the paint color, what made it really stand out was its speed and the sheer enjoyment it was to drive.  It would run like a spotted ape.

In a world of automatic everything with push buttons and touch screens, is there anything that makes you feel more connected, more alive than driving a car with a stick shift?  I can picture myself sitting in the comfortable bucket seats in that 280Z.  The interior is clean and all black.  There is a scent of Brut cologne from a spray bottle that sat in the glove box.  I crank the engine, put it in reverse, and it is as if a dance has begun - a dance that you don't have to count the steps - you just innately know them.

Every part of your body is in alignment, in sync, with the car.  You shift it into 1st gear, pressing the clutch with your left foot as you give it some gas with your right.  The car reacts to your coordinated actions.  The shift knob fits in the palm of your right hand so perfectly, it's like an extension of your hand.  You are using your eyes as you're watching the RPM gauge and using your ears while listening to the sound of the engine.  In perfect choreography, your feet and hands know exactly what to do as you let off the clutch, hit the gas, and repeat the process as you shift all the way up into 5th gear.  By now you're flying and the music is playing while you sing along and a smile breaks across your face.  

The only thing that frightened me in that car was to have someone pull up behind me while on an incline at a railroad crossing while waiting for a train to pass.  You look in your rear view mirror and estimate how close they are to your rear bumper.  You know you've got to get this just right.  You must push the clutch and get it in gear and let off the brake and hit the gas at just the right time to not roll back into him or have the car die.  Sweat beads on your forehead.  Somehow, it all works.  Driving that standard made you feel like Mario Andretti.  The King of the Road.  There was no stopping you.

And where are we today?  Self driving cars.  Automatic Transmissions.  Touchscreen dashboards and digital gauges.  Have we taken all the fun out of driving?  The newer vehicles won't even let you put it in gear if you aren't buckled up.  Holy Moly!

What does all this have to do with farming?  Well, in our society's quest for all things efficient and automated and easy and fast, there's something to be said about sitting down in the barn and milking a cow on a quiet morning as the sun is rising.  There's almost the same choreography and timing in milking: squeezing and pulling, opening your hands and closing them in a beautiful rhythm.  And it's relaxing and makes you feel alive and connected to something that's real.  In whatever you do today, do something real, something stimulating that involves your eyes and ears and hands and feet.  Something that gives you satisfaction.

Ecclesiastes 3:13: "That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God."

An Afternoon at the Water Park

Without rain in a while, I noticed the garden is struggling.  The sweet potatoes, peppers and eggplant look like they are about to wave the white flag.  I relented and turned the sprinkler on and just let it run for a couple of hours.  You could see a noticeable improvement in the crops as the slow soaking mist got down to the roots.  The sprinkler is in the very center of the photo below:

But it's not just the garden that is affected by the heat and the long, humid summer days.  The animals feel it, especially LuLu as she's in milk.  She sits in the shade with her tongue out, panting.  We'll go out and spray her off with the water hose to give her respite from the heat.  She really likes that.

Cows, to be quite honest, aren't the smartest of barnyard animals.  They'll look and look at a gate and can't quite figure how to go through it and have to be eventually led.  Low IQ moo for sure.  But I'll give LuLu credit when credit is due.  She saw the sprinkler on and figured out that there was a westerly breeze blowing and positioned herself on the east side of the garden where she could enjoy the cooling spray.

Not much of a chance of rain in the 10 day forecast, with highs in the upper 90's.  I guess I'll be turning the water sprinkler on to cool down Ol' LuLu for the next week or so.

Water Woes

We keep missing our rainfall and the grass is parched and thirsty.  Today, we had a 65% chance of the wet stuff, but we came out on the short end of the stick and got 0 rainfall at all.  On the north side of our barn, I positioned some water troughs to catch rainwater running off of the barn roof.  Normally, these stay full.  Very rarely do we have to turn on the faucet at our water trough under the pecan tree because they drink out of these three water troughs.

The water troughs are empty.  The cows use this opportunity to push the empty troughs around in the pasture.  I have to stay on my toes and push them buck under the drip line in the event we would catch a surprise shower like we got last week when 0.4 of an inch fell.  They've already finished all the rainwater we caught during that shower.

But there are other water woes.  Nicky, the bull would like to tell you about one that has affected his pasture that we call, "The bullpen."  Lean in close and he'll tell you about it.

Speaking of Nicky, he's little Betsy's father.  He is full of muscle and he's mean.  If you get around him, he's snorting and kicking up dust and making threatening gestures at you with his big old head.  It's time to bring him to the butcher shop and fill our freezer with meat.

I'll get back on topic.  The water woe in the bull pen was noticed a couple of afternoons ago when I looked out and saw a geyser spraying up into the air from the water trough in the bull pen.  I walked out to see that the plastic float valve had broken.  The float valve is very important as it allows the trough to fill until the water level pushes against the float and turns the water off.  This keeps the water from overflowing the trough.  When the plastic piece broke, it allowed water to spray into the air and make a big mud hole around the water trough.  There's no telling how long the water was flowing.

Fortunately, I got a new float valve and installed it.  That process wasn't without adventure.  Fire ants had built a big mound right where I needed to undo the old one and install the new one.  Those fire ants tore me up!  I got it all installed and turned the water back on only to find a leak in the threads.  I was rushing so fast to avoid the ant bites, and I forgot to put the teflon tape around the threads.  I had to go back and do it again!  But this time, I got it right.  No leaks.  It will, however, take a while for the water to soak in to the ground.  It's not good for animal health to have mud holes like this as it is a vector for parasites, mosquitoes and other things that plague good animal health.

Cajun Music Jam Session At the Gator Chateau

On every other Saturday morning beginning at 10:00 AM and ending at 1:00 PM, there is an acoustic Cajun French music jam session at the Gator Chateau in Jennings, Louisiana.  This nice place sits at the Oil & Gas Park located at 100 Rue de l'Acadie, Jennings, LA (I-10 at Hwy 26).  This same building houses the facilities where you can come by and hold an alligator.  Actually, if you look at the photo below through the window on the right, you can see someone holding up a baby alligator to hand to a tourist to hold!

We like to go walk on the walking trail that circles the lake at the park and then have a complimentary cup of Community Coffee Dark Roast, sit in the chairs in the nice air-conditioned facility and listen to French music.  Local folks show up with their instruments, bringing guitars, accordions, fiddles, bass, and other instruments to play together.  The neat thing about it is that it is a nice mix of both young and old, male and female.  They look like they are having a good time.  I know we enjoyed it!  Hit the arrow below and you can listen to about 1 minute and 10 seconds of some toe-tapping French music.

If you ever find yourself wanting to do something different, hold a baby alligator, drink some strong coffee, and enjoy a morning listening to some great music and learning more about Cajun heritage, The Gator Chateau in Jennings, Louisiana is the place to be!  

Dealing With Mastitis (Dr. Trish, Medicine Woman)

One thing you've got to watch for with cows in milk is mastitis.  The system that we normally follow has been a good one in that we've not had any problems with mastitis.  That system is: We separate the cow and calf at night and we take all of the morning milk.  The cow and calf are put back together in the morning after we milk, and the calf nurses hard all day, emptying the udder.

LuLu calved last time in the middle of a drought giving birth to a little bull named Nicky.  She was heat stressed and didn't produce a lot of milk.  As a result, we let the calf have all of the milk.  Then, one of LuLu's teats got cut and she wouldn't let the little bull nurse on that quarter because it hurt her.  She'd kick him off of it when he'd try.  It was a few days before we caught it, and by then, mastitis set in the front left quarter.  We tried and tried to clear it, but were unsuccessful.

A month ago, after LuLu calved Betsy, we tested and the teat that was injured last time still tested for subclinical mastitis.  That's a condition where the milk shows no visible signs of infection and the udder is not red, hot or sore.  The good thing is the udder is separated into four quarters and they are self-contained.  So for the past three weeks, we milk the 3 good quarters for our use and let Betsy clean up the quarter we didn't milk as well as the rest that we did.  She does a good job of emptying all the quarters.

But we've got to get the affected quarter cleaned up.  Here's what we did: Tricia contacted Synergy Animal Products in Pennsylvania.  They offer organic udder care products.  We used a protocol called "A Farmer's Secret."  We mix 10cc Yellow Jacket, 10cc Excell 7000 and 10cc Cellex.  These are products that Synergy sells.  Those three products are mixed and put into a syringe fitted with a teat infusion cannula.  The contents are then injected into the affected quarter by means of going up the teat.  Here is Tricia getting it done.

We make sure LuLu is distracted while eating sweet feed and alfalfa.  She didn't seem bothered by it at all.

Almost done!

This is done three milkings in a row after the udder is empty and then we keep the calf off of her between milkings.  The second part of the protocol is rubbing SCUM on the affected quarter.  SCUM is Super Cow Udder Mint and it smells great!  

You rub the SCUM all over the bag, working it in real good.

We also gave an oral dose of Ex-Cell 7000.  15cc's of this is put into a syringe and I held up her head and gave it to her.  It must taste good as she didn't object and swallowed it all.  

This was repeated for three milkings in a row and then we waited a week.  Once the week was up, we tested for mastitis using the California Mastitis Test (CMT).  We did this just this morning at 6AM.  To do this you squirt milk from each teat into a paddle and squirt a solution into the milk and swirl it around.  If it thickens, it shows you have mastitis.  The amount of thickness indicates the level of the somatic cell count of mastitis in each quarter.  Time for the moment of truth!  We applied the solution an swirled and.... (drum roll)

NO THICKENING.  The subclinical mastitis was cleared up!  Success.  It's so nice to see positive results!

Instead of milking out three quarters, we'll be milking out all four.  We'll be happy.  Betsy?  Not so much!

De-Horning Little Besty

Back about 50 years ago growing up, my younger brother fashioned himself as a train conductor or something.  He had an affinity for trains.  One day my parents were notified that my brother had hopped on a Missouri Pacific Lines train heading south out of town, riding on it like a hobo.  Another time, he found a railroad flare and lit it.  He was waving it above his head and some of the molten substance dripped out of it and landed on his head.  That must have hurt something fierce as it burned his hair off.  He jumped in the car afterward and the scent of burning hair filled the car.  To this day, he still has a bald spot about the size of a nickel to remind him.

Tonight we'll show you someone else who got their head burned, but not by a railroad flare, and this time it was intentional.  It's time to de-horn Betsy.  We don't want horns on animals.  Those horns can be used as weapons, or they can cause them to get their heads stuck in the fence.  When a calf is between 2 and six weeks old, it's time to get it done.  When we separated LuLu from Betsy last night, we put the breaking halter on Betsy and told her that she wasn't going to like us much after tonight's events.

If you look in her hair right above where her ear is, you can see a tiny horn bud.  I took some clippers and clipped the hair away from both horn buds to fully expose them in order for me to see better to get the dehorning iron placed where it needed to be.

Here's the tool we use to get the job done.  It's called a dehorning iron and you plug it in until the end of it glows cherry red.

I held Betsy's head down securely while Tricia held her legs so she wouldn't kick.  Then we hold the hot iron on her horn and count the time.  You hold it for a period of 10-12 seconds, slightly rotating so that the entire area around the horn bud is burned.  Then I use the iron to burn the tip of the horn off.  Betsy was not happy.  The trick is doing this while holding a thrashing animal and not burning myself in the process!

What you are looking for is a copper-colored ring around the horn bud.  That's an indicator of success - that you've killed the roots of the horn and it won't grow.

This process is repeated on either side.  Then Betsy is left to rest.

She was glad to see us go.  This is not an enjoyable task for any of us involved, but it is necessary, and we reluctantly do it so that we don't have animals with horns.

"Wet" Honey and How to Dry It

The rice harvest around here is in high gear.  I remember when harvesting, you take a sample and put it in the moisture machine to test to make sure the rice has the right percentage moisture.  If you make a mistake and fill the bins with wet rice, you run the risk of it mildewing.  Once that happens all you can do is sell it for chicken feed for next to nothing.  Ask me how I know.

As it turns out, honey requires the same moisture check.  If your honey is too "wet," it will ferment and turn into mead, the first alcoholic beverage in the world.  The find the moisture percentage, you need a little tool called a refractometer.  Looks high tech but only costs $20.  First you calibrate it using extra virgin olive oil.  To test the honey, you put a few drops of honey on the glass and close the lid.  Then you hold it to the light while looking through the eye piece.  Honey will hold if it is between 15.5% and 18.6% moisture.

How does honey get wet?  Well, most people will tell you that if you pull honey from frames that are fully capped, you'll be okay.  Others will tell you that if your frames are 80% capped, go ahead and pull it.  The 20% uncapped, they'll tell you, isn't honey, it's nectar.  We've learned that some 100% capped frames have high moisture content and some uncapped frames can be 17% and be considered dry.

Refractometer (Looks fancy and high tech)  

I tested each of our four 5 gallon buckets.  Unfortunately, each of the buckets tested 19.5 except for one that tested 19.0.  That means it runs the risk of fermenting.  This honey needs to be dehumidified.

In our guest bathroom, we transformed it into a honey drying house.  We put a dehumidifier in the bathroom and covered the honey with muslin cloth to keep anything from falling into the honey.

The humidity showed to be 35% in the bathroom with an 89.4 temperature.  Hopefully the drying will cause the honey to drop into the safe range.

After two days running, we really weren't making any headway in drying the honey.  So here is what we did:  We left the dehumidifier running on the north side of the bathroom.  We poured honey into the uncapping tank and a 5 gallon bucket with a honey gate on it.  We barely open the honey gate and let the honey drip slowly.  The honey drips into a filter that sits over another five gallon bucket.

The honey drips into the filter where it slowly spreads out, widening the surface area, before dripping into the 5 gallon bucket below.  On the other side of the bathroom, a fan is positioned to blow on the dripping honey.

After a day running the dehumidifier, I checked the humidity checker: 30% humidity with a 91 degree temperature reading in the room. 

Here is a photo of the first tank dripping very slowly through the filter and into the five gallon bucket.

Here are both of the buckets being dripped into by the uncapping tank honey valve and the five gallon bucket with a honey gate on.

We will continue to drip the honey like this until it is dry.  Today, I checked and the moisture content in the buckets we drip into had dropped a point!  From 19.5 to 18.5%  Mission accomplished.  We will do this same process with all of our five gallon buckets of honey.  Now we can start the bottling process!  We are almost out of honey to sell!  Only a few jars of the fall honey crop left.  We'll get this done so that when our honey customers stop in we'll have an inventory to sell.  Tricia picked up some jars from Rayne yesterday so that we can begin the bottling process.