G is way too busy with all the work she does for the Humane Society of Ray County, MO. She works *way* more than 40 hours in the average week at it. She's responsible for the books, the money, and the records of animals in and out, costs, income, disposition - some always die.
She also takes the pictures that go in the animals' record that we keep, and in the folder that goes to the adopter.
She makes up the folders. Assembles them from materials from various sources. Plastic folder, care information, animal's history to the extent we know it, chip #
So the gardens had gotten away from her. Grown up in annual grasses and forbs. I don't do much close-in work, my care area is the outer lands. She does the house yard. Flowers and food. It doesn't look like a row garden. It's pretty. (I can't find the picture.)
She went out the other day and pulled all the giant foxtail (mostly) which is a millet, and laid it out on the ground to dry. Today I took the girls out into her yard on the little work cart, and gathered up her work.
That's enough food for three donkeys for one day, that garden.
One day's weeding, twenty minutes gathering on the cart. I had several little things like this to do, and wanted to just go driving because we hadn't for two days. I've been working on equipment.
The yard has I food - and - flower island that takes up all the middle part,
It grows different things in different years, usually potatoes, tomatoes, sweet potato, cantaloupe, but it's been a hard year. Climate change is real today, not in fifty years like moron Bernie Sanders said the other day. The world is failing now, outside your windows.
But we're eating out of it, and the donks are eating out of it.
Anyway, there's a "moat" of grass lawn around the island, just wide enough for her to easily mow with a riding mower. It's basically the same width as my work cart. A grass lane.
On one side is the steep dropoff to the road, eight or ten feet slope covered with native wildflowers and forbs, and on the other side the island where the food and flowers grow. It's a circle, the girls fit in it nicely. They step up when I ask them, walk sideways to avoid
obstacles. They pretty much know how wide the cart is and where its corners are, because in ill-advised moments of running away they've gotten hung up on gate posts and been stuck.
Donkeys don't do that twice. Next time they run the cart fits through the gateways.
Ask me how I no
So I take the pitchfork, and we go into this nice maze, and I gather all the dried weeds. We take it up to the barn. We back the cart up into this spot where they stand in the stall,
And I pitch half the garden hay in to Abe.
Then we go around behind the barn and stash the rest for everybody's supper.
She cut some trees today, so we hauled them up to the stall too. They'll eat all the leaves and twigs, most of the bark. They'll leave sticks big as my thumb.
Suppertime.
Good day.
Later.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
About half of the people who thought up and wrote down the structure of this nation though slavery was morally justified. Ethical.
They had convinced themselves this was true.
Without slaves they would not be able to take, hold, and reduce for profit, great swaths of this, then,
2. wildly grand, undescribably productive, continent, whose owners did not have firearms.
This is called "Human nature" today, except the believers believe it is high energy machinery which makes this objective ethical.
Back then it was slaves.
Same purpose. Same *exact* purpose.
3. Without slaves, having the natural power of food grown on Earth for ourselves and animals, one family could take ownership of and control about 5 to 10 acres.
Anti-slavery Founder John Adams grew up on a prosperous 10 acre farm in New England.
If the President actually gave a fying fluck about climate change, ver 927.
If the President wanted to reduce emissions today, he would explain to the people the necessity of doing the following:
Intentionally induce a global recession or depression.
2. That the President does not want to reduce emissions today is demonstrably true.
The President has told us, among other things, that by 2030, half of all new cars will be electric.
Leaving aside the energy sources of electric generation, 2030 and Now are different.
Much.
3. The President has also said that by 2050, we will get 50% of our electricity from solar panels.
Leaving aside the energy budget for building and installing those solar panels, 2050 is, again, significantly different than Now.
He has exactly zero interest in reducing emissions.
The global supply chain could not operate without plastic.
Before plastic containers were invented, the global supply chain as we know it did not exist.
I remember when plastic containers were invented.
The global supply chain is younger than I.
It now exists as a failure point.
The global supply chain could not exist without speed. You couldn't run this deal on sailing ships. You couldn't even run it on steamships. Diesels.
Only jet flight. Extremely high speed.
Imagine the killowatt-hours of petroleum in that fruit. The embedded energy.
100% waste.
I post this graphic often. It is extremely informative.
Alert people look at it and say MY GOD OVER ⅔ OF ALL THE ENERGY IS REJECTED! Less than ⅓ gives us desired results!
SOMEBODY FIX THAT!
(It's not fixable, it's physics.)
I say the time we need to reduce our emissions is now.
I invite anyone to refute.
I say that it is inexcusable to plan a huge high emissions project to add to our already high emissions society.
I do not believe we have room to drastically increase our emissions now.
Refute.
The infrastructure project is ill-defined, but it is known that a significant portion of it is to build new highways.
Every increase in highway capacity has been immediately followed by an increase in traffic and traffic energy throughput.
Refute.
I've made my work cart into a luxury ride. Cushion and everything.
Tomorrow morning I'm taking the girls and the work cart out to Kansas City's Longview Horse Park to participate in an event billed as a "fun drive," hosted by the Kansas City Carriage and Driving Association.
It would be nice - more attractive looking - to take the road cart, which is kind of an Amish SUV. But Clara may be pretty nervous at first, and four wheel carts are easier to break or wreck.
I am in something of an ethical quandary. I suspect I'm going to go with "more fun" and not "more ethical."
My mind turns these issues over and over.
Tomorrow I am taking my donkey team, Missy and Clara, about 55 miles to Longview Horse Park in Kansas City for a "fun driving event" organized by the Kansas City Carriage and Driving Association.
I can rationalize this by saying it will help make my girls safer to drive, practice
But I can drive them around here on country roads and accomplish the same thing without pulling them, and a horse trailer, with my monster diesel pickup truck, 110 mile round trip. My friend Sydney is going too, taking this pony.