WHAT Happened There?

     I have been thinking about how I could use this picture. I knew I wanted to use it in a post, but I wasn't sure HOW to use it. And as I sit here writing, I'm still not sure. So I guess I'll start writing and see where my mind takes me. :-) .
    So, what happened here? Was there a herbicide failure? Did someone forget to turn on the sprayer? Did it rain too soon after application? Or was this deliberate?
     Deliberate? Why would someone do this deliberately?
     Open your mind.
     Follow me to an alternate reality.
     Enter Nelson 's world.
     Why? WHY?
     Testing. Trying to figure out something. Is that last application of herbicide worth it? How do you decide something like that? The only way you can find out is to conduct a field trial.
     Yeah. THAT'S what it is. A field trial.
     But wait, do you know what a field trial is? If you're a farmer, or you are familiar with farming you probably know. But for those of you who aren't, you may not. So I'm going to give you a little idea.
     This idea of mine about it being a field trial may be right, it may be wrong. I don't know. I don't know the farmer who works that field.
     But let's just imagine. Farmer Brown wonders if that last application of herbicide is worth it. How COULD you figure that out?
     Well here's how you could do it. You take a field that is all the same crop. Planted the same day. All of the field has been treated the same all year long. Until it comes to that last herbicide application. And you just don't spray part of the field.
     Then, when you harvest the field you keep the grain harvested separate. When you take it to the grain elevator/terminal they test it. They weigh your load, test for moisture content, and check for foreign material (weed seed). If the grain is too wet or too much weed seed is present (foreign matter) you get docked.
     There is a constant moisture that grain elevators adjust grain to. The level of moisture that is considered 'dry'.  For grain sorghum, that level is 14%. The higher the moisture, the more it costs the elevator to dry it and the less they will pay the farmer. 16% moisture results in 2% shrink and a 4¢ per bushel drying charge. 20% moisture would result in 6.7% shrink and a 28¢ per bushel drying charge. I didn't know the precise numbers so I called a local grain elevator to find out. Thanks to Brett who answered the phone and answered my questions. I really appreciated it and it just reminded me of how much I miss being IN farming. He took the time to answer my questions when he didn't know me from Adam.
    But back to my idea. If you know how large an area you harvested and how much grain you produced from that area, you can determine what your yield was per acre. Knowing the yield per acre and knowing the cost per acre of production let's a farmer make production decisions.
     Weed competition can result in reduced yields, moisture dock can result in lower income. They may have been trying to determine if skipping a herbicide application would affect their bottom line. Like I said, I don't know the farmer, I don't know what happened.
      But I do know this. When I was growing up, if a farmer had a field that looked like that and it was visible from the road, he would have needed a good answer for WHY it looked like that. He wouldn't have been able to go into the farm supply, or the feed store, or the coffee shop, or the sale barn, or the grocery store, or the post office, or even church without someone asking him about it. And some churches, well he might have been the subject of a sermon, or at least put on a prayer list.
      But in all sincerity, I wonder what the difference in yield was between the 'clean' area and the 'messy' area. Or if there was a difference. For all the talk about sustainability, if a farmer doesn't make a profit, he's not going to be able to sustain his farming effort.

Let Me Explain

     Have you ever looked at a package of corn seed? Most of them I have ever seen have a statement on them something to this effect:

Since Corn is wind pollinated, it's better to plant 4 or more short, side-by-side rows than 1 or 2 long rows. This will help pollination and ear development.

     I planted my Glass Gem corn in 3 rows. about 15 inches apart. and planted the seeds 12 inches apart. I originally planted 2 rows of 17 seeds and 1 row of 10 seeds. 

X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X

                                   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X

X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X

     But then I had a little problem with some snail damage after the plants had been up about a week and it wiped out the red X's. I had 7 seeds left so I planted them to try to keep the big gap from being left. I put  some organic snail bait out to try to keep the snails off the corn.

     It didn't work as well as I had hoped it would and I wound up losing some more corn plants. It kinda left my corn looking like this:

                    X   X   X        X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X

                         X      X     X   X   X   X   X   X        X   X

X                                 X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X 

     The 5 purple X's were 2 weeks behind in maturing and are where the "Pearl" kernels came from. And that one blue X was kinda left all by it's lonesome. it matured when the black X's did. But it was over there by itself. 7 feet away from the other stalks that were maturing when it did. And it affected it. It made some beautiful seeds, but that whole ear development thing didn't work out too well. 

     The top ear. That's the one from the plant by itself. Pretty kernels. Pitiful ear fill. The plant by itself didn't have much chance for any of the other plants to pollinate it. Those other plants were in the middle of a big pollination party. While that one was over by itself. Playing solitaire with a deck of 51 cards.

              

Glass Gems and Pearls

     I posted about growing corn a few weeks ago. But I didn't post all the pictures I should have. So to provide some pictures of the process, I planted some more. The picture on the right is glass gem corn 15 days after it was planted. I decided to plant some and see if it could make a second crop. OH NO! I just realized I must be one of those big-ag monoculture farmers cause I planted it in the same spot I planted the other Glass Gem corn.
     No-Till Glass Gem corn, planted by sticking my finger into the ground, putting the seed in the hole, then filling it with compost. 

This is Glass Gem corn 29 days after it was planted. I actually used a shovel and disturbed the ground here a bit before I planted the seeds. It's growing pretty good, but I'm not sure it's going to ever make anything. Mainly because here in South Texas it gets HOT. How hot?

     2 days before I took the picture above, I took the picture to the right -->
If you can make it out, the leaves of the plant are really curled up. It's a corn plants self defense system to protect it from hot dry weather. curling up reduces moisture loss from the plant. (or so I was told once upon a lifetime ago)
     Anyway I hope to get some more pictures. and hopefully I will get a few more ears of corn. The older plants were planted from seeds I got off of these ears. These are definitely what I had hoped for when I planted those seeds in the first place. But I did have a few ears that were behind those. 2 weeks behind them, in fact.

     These ears are what I called the pearls. I don't know if you can make out how beautiful they are. But I photographed them against a dark background. You know how you always see pearl necklaces and earrings and such shown agains black velvet backgrounds? Well, I didn't have black velvet, just a dark colored towel. 
     I have some seeds that I didn't plant. And I am thinking I might sell them. I'm not looking to sell them at the price I saw them on Amazon, where the person was offering 8 seeds for $2. Nor am I looking to sell them at the price I saw on ebay (and they may still be there at that price) at almost $1 per kernel. 
     No, I'm thinking that I will sell them in one of 3 sizes. 25 seeds for $3.75. 50 seeds for $5.00. 100 seeds for $7.50. PLUS shipping and handling.
     So if you would like to try growing some of this beautiful corn, let me know how many seeds you want. Whether you want to Glass Gem or Pearls.

Make An Offer   
     Have a Great Day! God Bless You!

Jesus was an Inventor

     Today is the first night of the revival at the church I grew up in. Things have changed since I was a little child. Used to be the visiting pastor/preacher/evangelist would go to the home of one of the congregation and have supper before he 'brought the message'.
     Now they have a potluck supper on the first night.
     If you don't know me or haven't read any of my thoughts before, you are probably wondering what that has to do with Jesus being an inventor.
   You've read the Bible, you've heard the sermons, you've been to Bible studies. None of them ever mentioned Jesus being an inventor. He gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, made the lame to walk, turned water into wine. The most important miracle he performed though is the one that still touches lives today. Whether you are a believer or not you have probably been touched by Jesus' most fantastic miracle.
    2 fish and 5 loaves of bread fed 5000.
     Yes, on that day in history Jesus invented the casserole. One of the greatest inventions of all time. There isn't a potluck meal since (or at least none I've been to) that didn't have at least one casserole. Whether it's a family get together, a church meal, a meal after a funeral, a department meal at work, a meal to welcome a new neighbor, or even to welcome a new pastor. There has been a casserole dish there.
     The lowly casserole. Often made fun of, but always welcome, a symbol of God's love. Jesus's best miracle in my opinion.
     I know that Jesus really DID perform a miracle when he fed the 5000. And it wasn't inventing the casserole.


The miracle was that he did it without Cream of Mushroom soup.

What If They Were Right? (AKA 40 years)

     When I was a little boy, I had a girlfriend. Her name was Ms. Norma. She worked at the Farm Supply. I loved going to see her. She'd give me hot cocoa. Hey, when you're 3 or 4, that's all it takes for true love.
     Being at the Farm Supply meant there were old guys hanging around there. In all honesty, they probably weren't that old. Maybe not even as old as I am now. But I remember hearing one time they were talking about weeds. And one of them said that pigweed seeds could lie dormant for 40 years before sprouting. 40 years. That's a long time.
     Later in life, when I was 10 or 11, I was in the 4-H club and I signed up for the wildlife food plot competition. One of the other people who signed up was talking about there being pigweed in the seed package they had gotten. There HAD to be because they hadn't had any pigweed in that field in years. One of the Extension Agents made a comment about pigweed seeds could lie dormant for 40 years before sprouting. 40 years. That's a long time.
     And now. I hear reports about there being Roundup resistant pigweeds. Pigweed, the plant whose seeds can lie dormant for 40 years before sprouting. We may be looking at there being Roundup resistant pigweed sprouting for the next 40 years. 40 years. That's a long time.
    Read about the study.
     Maybe those old guys had heard about that study. Or possibly the Ag Extension agent had learned about it in college. Either way, they had heard or knew something that is backed up by scientific proof.
     40 years. That's a long time.
     Just to give you an idea of how long 40 years is, Roundup was introduced to market 39 years ago.
     And what that means is that there is a possibility that those Roundup resistant pigweed, may have been around before Roundup was even introduced onto the market.

Let's Exercise. Or Not.

     I don't exercise. I know I should, but I just don't get as much working out and exercising done as I should.
     Our pastor, Jim Graff, today said something about touching toes and it made me think of something.
     I've worked in the nursery at church for over 12 years. It started out, I would volunteer when they flashed the number on the screen indicating they needed help. Then I started working one Sunday a month. My wife worked in the nursery 2 weeks out of each month so I usually got put with her. Now I work twice a month.
     My favorite age of children are those around 6 months old. Those that have just discovered their feet. if they get fussy, you can take off their socks and shoes and they will entertain themselves for quite a while playing with their feet,  grabbing their toes, trying to stick their feet in their mouths.
     Point is, for a little while in a child's life, their feet are all they need to be entertained.
     What does that have to do with exercise? Touching toes is something people occasionally do as part of an exercise routine.
     Touching toes. Something a 6 month old child loves to do.
     1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
     That's why I don't exercise. No, not really. I'm just too lazy to do it. It also points out that you can use the Bible to justify almost anything.

     

Not Statistically Significant

   You've probably seen those words in relation to a study at sometime or another. Did you ever wonder what they mean?
     Significant to most of us means important.
     Something to be "not statistically significant" means the difference between the observed value and the expected value is small enough that it doesn't raise any eyebrows for the testers.
     HOWEVER
     Just because a difference may not be statistically significant doesn't mean it wouldn't be important to the rest of us.
    For example: a recently released study showed a final average weight of 100.42 kg for group A and 101.75 kg for group B. And those numbers were not statistically significant.
    But these numbers also have some real world monetary values. 
100.42 kg equals 221 pounds 6 ounces. 
101.75 kg equals 224 pounds 5 ounces.
If both groups contain 72 items:  
group A will contain 15939 pounds
group B will contain 16374.5 pounds
each pound is currently valued at 75.702 cents
Group A would be worth $12066.14
Group B would be worth $12395.82
A difference of $329.68.
     That might not be "statistically significant" but it is a monetarily significant. Like a weeks wages significant if you were on minimum wage. Or a car payment for a lot of people. You could probably buy groceries for at least a week with that amount of money. I KNOW I could.

     

 

GMOs Proven Safe in Organic Study

    
     Hogs fed a non-GMO diet are more than twice as likely to have heart abnormalities when compared to hogs fed a GMO diet.
     Hogs fed a non-GMO diet are twice as likely to have liver abnormalities when compared to hogs fed a GMO diet.
     Hogs fed a non-GMO diet are 50% more likely to have spleen abnormalities when compared to hogs fed a GMO diet.

     Hogs fed a GMO diet are twice as likely to NOT have stomach inflammation compared to hogs fed a non-GMO diet.

ALL of this information is available from
http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/8106.pdf
Table 3 found on page 10

     I took a statistics class in college several years ago. The first day in class the professor told us that there were 3 kinds of lies:
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
    

I Dream of Dairy Gerts

Yes you read that right. Dairy Gerts. Not dairy goats, dairy gerts. I blame it on ABS. I had received a poster with pictures of some of the cattle they offered semen from. One of the bulls was a Dairy Gyr. If you've never heard of them before, don't feel lonely. I hadn't either. But the image evidently stuck in my mind.

This is a picture  I found of a Dairy Gyr. It's a milking Bos Indicus. When I was growing up we called anything that looked like that a Brahma. So we have a milking Brahma. They don't give as much milk as a Holstein or Jersey. But if I still have my math skills right, there are some of these that have produced 15000 pounds of milk.
And if they are like the other "ear" cattle, they can handle the heat pretty darned well. Brazil uses a lot of them in milking herds and crossbreeding them with Holsteins, creating something called a Girolander.

      This is a Milking Shorthorn. I don't know where this cow came from other than I found the picture under milking shorthorn images. They don't give as much milk as Holsteins. But they supposedly excel on a pasture based dairy system. Which would be great if you crossed them with a dairy gyr. Because the two breeds combined would produce a cow that would be grazing on pasture during the heat of the day, when the Holsteins and Jerseys and everything else are wanting to lay in the shade.                                
     
 I see a bunch of Santa Gertrudis bulls on a regular basis. They're in a pasture I drive by 4 days a week. The Gerts are out grazing when the Angus and Hereford are laying up in the shade. Santa Gertrudis are a cross of 3/8 Brahma and 5/8 Shorthorn.  So in my mind a 3/8 Dairy Gyr and 5/8 Milking Shorthorn would be a Dairy Gert. Heat tolerant and excelling on pasture seems like an ideal combination. I don't know what kind of milk production they would have, but I think it would be interesting to find out.              
There is one minor drawback to this whole thing. As far as I know, no one has any Dairy Gerts. So I can't find any information on this particular cross. And secondly, I don't have any cattle or land to keep any cattle.
And I hate milking cows, so there's that.


     

Corny Thoughts

     May 15, 2010. This is how my last attempt at raising corn ended. Several inches of rain and high winds finished my hopes and dreams of a corn crop for that year. The rain softened the ground and the wind knocked it down.     
     Unfortunately it didn't stand back up. I wound up with one stalk left and it didn't make an ear. And I had such wonderful plans. I was going to raise my own food. Grown in my garden. Freeze it, can it, preserve it, ANYTHING. It wasn't just the corn though, it wiped out most of my tomato plants, all of my cucumbers and my beans and carrots. And I didn't decide to try it again until this year.

      I really decided it last year when I saw pictures of Glass Gem corn and decided I wanted to try growing some of it. Not for eating or canning or even for popping which is what it could be used for since I think it is technically popcorn. But for decorating, because let's face it, that is some pretty corn. But it wasn't going to be easy. Evidently this beautiful corn is fairly rare.
     I found some seeds for sale on Amazon. 8 seeds for $20. That would be $2.50 a seed. Maybe I needed to rethink this whole corn growing thing. So I found another supply for the seeds. I had to get on a waiting list and when the seeds became available, I bought me a packet. 6.5 grams/50 seeds and it only cost me $7.95 + $2.95 shipping so $10.90 for seeds. I got lucky, my package had 51 seeds.
     I worked me up a little spot of ground. Added some compost. Worked the ground again. And when the farmers started planting corn in the fields, I planted my seeds. I didn't use a bunch of fertilizer so my corn didn't grow quite as fast as the corn in the fields. Or maybe thie corn just doesn't grow as fast as those varieties of corn do.

     Now I have this at the top of some of my 41 corn stalks.
      My corn is tasseling!
     This is the male part of a corn stalk. The part that drops the pollen. The little things you see hanging down is where the pollen is found. Pollen falls down when the wind blows or birds land on the plants. I want the pollen to fall. It's how pollination occurs. Without the pollination, I won't get seeds.

     This is what I have at the bottom of my corn plants. That wild hair that looks like a troll, that's the silk. Silk is how the pollen gets to the kernel. So these things are needed for me to get the beautiful gem-like corn kernels shown in the second picture.
     I'm realistic, I know I don't have any corn on the ears yet. I may not wind up with any kernels of corn on the ears. But I am hopefully optimistic.
     But I'm further along than I was 3 years ago when the wind and the rain wiped me out. Wind and rain may wipe me out again. But if it does, I'm not going to wait 3 years to try it again. I'll try it again next year. And if I get wiped out then, I'll try it again.

     If you would like to get a little perspective, the 51 kernels of corn I got that cost me $7.95 would translate into a 50# bag costing over $25000. This would be really expensive seed corn. But if I had bought the 8 seeds at $20? Well that would translate out to around $450000 for a 50# bag.
WHEW!