Mmmmm..... Very wet here....

That was from the large Thunder storm that came through Ipswich on Thursday the 16th of December... It freaked the Dog & Koo out a bit... The only damage to speak of was a branch from the neighbours tree damaging out TV antenna.... The same tree was kind enough to donate a branch to make garden stakes out of... Looks like the rain will be here until early to mid January so I dont think many major work will be occurring out the back for a while, only daily maintenance with a few seeds going in here & there...
: (»

 GRUBS !!!

The rain & the heat have been ideal conditions for the Cabbage Butterflies & their offspring... I have been out daily collecting the grubs for the Chooks & chasing the Butterflies around the patch with the lid from a bucket... At least neighbours are getting to have a laugh... : )»  
 The Radishes appear to be the favourite food with the Kohlrabi coming in second.. We also have Ants helping the Aphids get established onto a few Eggplants at the moment... It has been hard to keep up with the Neem spraying as the rain would just wash it off within 12hours & it needs a bit longer on the pest/plant to work its magic...


 Gifts From the garden...

 The Panama Red Passion fruit have finally made an appearance... Looks like we will have more than enough for our needs as well as a few gifts for family & friends...
 The other surprise for us has been the Cucumbers... We have gotten about 10 off over the last few weeks & it looks like we will be getting at least 6 a week for the next few... Best result we have had from Cues at this house... We have lost nearly all the other Cucurbits we have planted to powdery mildew except for the Cues & a few Pumpkins that were all sown as seed... Dont think we will be buying seedlings from this family again...
Summer Beauties...

This is the Dragon fruit Cactus that lives on our fence line with the neighbours... Every Summer we get a few flushes of flowers but only 1 fruit has set in 7 or so years we have been here... Very spectacular...



Weekly Harvest...
Mini Roma Tomatos, Cucumbers, Chillies, Shallots, Radishes, Baby Carrots, Eggplants, Strawberries, Parsley, Basil, Sage, Thyme, Beans, Beetroot leaves, Silverbeet, & 3 eggs a day except for 1 when there were only 2...

Since I last posted on Friday the of December we have had 87mm of rain... Great for the gardens & water table but I think we may be in for another 1974 level flood event if it keeps up all through January as predicted by some...

Have a great one all !!!
: )»

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Mighty straw bales...utilized in almost all of our projects, they are especially valuable for use with the livestock, in the garden, and for creative endeavors like building.  The straw bale is an essential reusable staple on our homestead.   Check out some of the ways we reuse this free available resource.

Cold Frame/Mini Greenhouse

Simply made from bales and old windows, this greenhouse fits about twenty wooden seedflats.

 

Natural Building

making cob with clay, straw, sand, and water

 Animal Bedding 

 Compost Material

layers of  green grass, horse manure, straw and a variety of compostable scraps
 from around the farm make a nice hot pile

Growing Mushrooms

 Mulching Garden Beds

potatoes do well mulched heavily with straw
photo by Lori Eanes

Childrens Archery Range

Another good idea: Straw Bale Compost Bins

For the small scale farmer and urban homesteader the possibilities are endless.  You can find bales for sale at your local race track, feed stores and often free on craigslist.  

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Amonia (undiluted left)

Nitrite (1/50 center)

Nitrate(1/20 right)

The farm is cycling ! since the 16th nitrites have appeared and since the 22nd, nitrates have made their appearance, and are seriously increasing since yesterday! This means that in less than 2 weeks, beneficial bacteria became able to start the process of nitrification, and the pH is starting to drop, wich is another sign that the nitrification is happening. Ammonia by the way, have disappeared since the 27th ! Today, there is still a great deal of nitrite. which mean that the water would not be safe yet to introduce fish.











The kit I am using to measure the different nitrogen forms is color coded, and as i explained in my previous post, i wanted to find a way that would be more reliable than eyes to evaluate the concentration (corresponding color on the chart). The website I have use to try to achieve that does not work as well as I hoped. This may be due to the fact that I am not able to produce standards of known concentration to input into the on-line free-ware  (but if I could do that I may feel confident of using my eyes to judge the color). This is still a quit cool attempt to replace a tool like a spectrophotometer.

Green onion, bok choy and the rosemary (in dirt)

Anyway my all point here is that the numbers dont add up, I have not added any ammonia to the system (past the day I removed the egg shells - realizing that they released a lot of it) and while the ammonia measurement did not seem to go over 20 ppm (I have diluted these 1:10), the color suggest that there is now 160 ppm of nitrate. Also, I have diluted the sample from the system when the colors develop in the darker range of the chart, so I do not over estimate the concentrations.
It is also possible that eggshells that may have fallen through the netting of the sock have kept releasing protein - hence ammonia- into the system.

More green onion, parsley and on top, the bell pepper

On the actual plants side: the parsley is doing well (better that the one potted in poting mix), the "saved" green onions are growing away and the bok choy as well. I also transplanted some bell pepper that grew in the my avocado pot (not exactly sure where theyre coming from - but most likely from the worm compost). The only thing that does not do well (as is pretty much dead) is the basil and the 2 roquettes that i planted (probably 2 early). I am wondering if the nitrite is responsible for that or if i damaged the roots of the basil too much...

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You know..... there isnt really all that much I feel the need to add to this article.  It kinda says it all, doesnt it?

Well, except for the fact that vaccines make just as much money in the US, but make  even more money, because the Vaccine epidemic is a globally spread propaganda campaign.

Yea....

d


ps: watch out for Zombies.

American Psycho: Has the United States lost its collective mind?

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist based in Moscow, Russia. His articles have been featured in many publications, including Russia in Global Affairs, Drudge Report, Russia Insider and Infowars.com. Bridge is the author of the book, “Midnight in the American Empire”, which was released in 2013.

Published time: 15 Oct, 2015 14:26

Get short URL

© Lucas Jackson / Reuters

5110

From Ferguson, Missouri to the deserts of Afghanistan the specter of US aggression is fueling the flames of civil strife and military conflict around an increasingly volatile planet. Much of the problem may be connected to the breakdown of the American psyche.

Before attempting to shed some light on America’s mental condition, let’s open with a pop quiz question: What is the top-selling prescription drug in the US? Nope, it’s not Viagra, not Prozac, forget the Percocet. If you dont know, take a peek in the medicine cabinet because there’s a high chance it’s lurking in there, right behind that purple people eater. Yes, you got it. The top-selling drug in the Land of the Free and Disturbed is an antipsychotic, happily named Abilify.
Once again: The top-selling drug in America is an antipsychotic. Now some might say that’s mental.

“To be a top seller, a drug has to be expensive and also widely used,” Steven Reidbord M.D. wrote in Psychology Today. “Abilify is both. It’s the 14th most prescribed brand-name medication, and it retails for about $30 a pill. Annual sales are over $7 billion, nearly a billion more than the next runner-up.”
Let those numbers seep into your brain for a moment: $7.2 billion dollars. $30 per pill. Although that might make for some laugh-out-loud late-night comedy, these numbers are no laughing matter.
This on top of the latest statistic that shows prescription drug spending in the US exploded in 2014 to nearly $374 billion, a whopping 13.1 percent increase in growth, according to a new report from IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
Aside from the fact that Americans are buying antipsychotic medication by the truckload, there’s another disturbing thing about Abilify: Nobody, not even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has any idea what makes it effective. According to the USPI label that accompanies each bottle: “The mechanism of action of aripiprazole... is unknown. However, the efficacy of aripiprazole could be mediated through a combination of partial agonist activity at D2 and 5-HT1A receptors and… etc, etc.”

In other words, millions of Americans are ingesting an antipsychotic drug that not even the scientific community can say exactly what makes it work. Is that not in itself the very definition of insanity?
So where is the uproar, the protest, the media hype over this battle for the great American brain? Behind the wall of silence, there have been a few courageous experts who have broken rank with their colleagues - not to mention the omnipotent pharmaceutical industry - to blow the whistle on the abuse of psychiatric drugs in America.

Professional backlash

Joanna Moncrieff, an academic and practicing psychiatrist, is a long-standing critic of psychiatric drug treatment. Her 2009 book, The Myth of the Chemical Cure, was short-listed for the Mind Book of the Year. In it, Moncrieff “exposes the traditional view that psychiatric drugs correct chemical imbalances as a dangerous fraud.”
According to Moncrieff’s landmark study, psychiatric drugs work by “creating abnormal brain states, which are often unpleasant and impair normal intellectual and emotional functions along with other harmful consequences.”
As Jay Michaelson noted in The Daily Beast, administering such a powerful drug like Abilify “makes sense for their primary use: anti-psychotics like aripiprazole are administered to seriously ill people like schizophrenics. Abilify is a close cousin of Thorazine. Yet, now it’s the most profitable drug in America.”

Indeed, the health risks associated with taking an antipsychotic drug like Abilify can make the cure look worse than the mental disease itself. In fact, the list of possible side-effects associated with America’s top-selling prescription drug makes for some uncomfortable reading.
Here is a description of one of the 13 serious side-effects connected to this “blockbuster” drug: “Uncontrollable movements of face, tongue, or other parts of body, as these may be signs of a serious condition called tardive dyskinesia (TD). TD may not go away, even if you stop taking ABILIFY. TD may also start after you stop taking ABILIFY.”
And here’s another potential for a Dr. Jekyll-type transformation into Mr. Hyde: “High fever, stiff muscles, confusion, sweating, changes in pulse, heart rate and blood pressure may be signs of a condition called neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS), a rare and serious condition that can lead to death.”
And they charge $30 dollars per pill for this? Yes, the disease has been cured, Mrs. Smith, but too bad Mr. Smith is no longer with us!

I was cynically waiting for Psychology Today to come out cheerleading for this exorbitant and potentially deadly antipsychotic drug, but instead Dr. Reidbord came down surprisingly hard not just on the drug, but on our national quest to find calm in a sea of prescription pills, as well as those relentless commercial forces that drive this warped behavior.
“What does it mean to live in the Age of Abilify,” Reidbord asked. “First, that we’re still looking for happiness and peace in a bottle of pills, costs and risks be damned. Second, that there’s nearly no end to the money the U.S. health care system will spend on problems that can be addressed more economically. And third, it’s a stark reminder that commercial interests seek to expand sales and profits whenever possible.”
Ever since the introduction in the 1950s of the world’s first antipsychotic drug, Thorazine, and later with the antidepressant, Prozac, as well as hundreds of other generic knockoffs, the drug industry has been busy supplying the overstressed American consumer with the ‘magic bullet’ to cure whatever ails them.

Chemical-laced consumerism

The US pharmaceutical industry enjoys a rare privilege, not to mention advantage over the average, angst-riddled American consumer: With the exception of New Zealand, it is the only country that allows prescription medication ads to be aired on television 24/7.
Julie Ross of Forcechange.com organized a petition drive to ban prescription drug commercials, and her reason makes clear-headed sense: “Drug companies spend $4 billion a year advertising... In addition to making pill popping seem like a normal necessity, prescription drug ads usually feature newer medications that have not had long term studies performed on them.
"All too often, a drug is recalled years after it is introduced because it’s caused side effects ranging from hair loss to death.”
According to the Centers for Disease Controls, every day in America, 44 people die from overdose of prescription painkillers. The CDC blames the overdose surge on a “dramatic increase in the acceptance and use of prescription opioids for the treatment of chronic, non-cancer pain, such as back pain or osteoarthritis (The most common drugs involved in prescription overdose deaths include: Hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin), Oxycodone (e.g., OxyContin), Oxymorphone (e.g., Opana) and Methadone (especially when prescribed for pain).
In 2013, nearly two million Americans abused prescription painkillers. Each day, almost 7,000 people are treated in emergency rooms for abusing the medication. Has the unbearable weight of the capitalist, dog-eat-dog system gone to Americas head, or is something else at play?

*Viewer discretion advised: Video contains mild profanity.
People who take painkillers can become addicted with just one prescription, according to the CDC website. And once addicted, start packing your bags for the nearest detox center because getting unhooked can takes months, maybe years, maybe never.
Although many prescription medications have worked miracles for millions of people, the “conundrum,” as Robert Whitaker, the author of “Anatomy of an Epidemic,” calls it, is that mental illness in American society is not showing any sign of going away. In fact, it is “skyrocketing.”
“We should expect that the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States, on a per-capita basis, would have declined over the past fifty years… Instead, as the psychopharmacology revolution has unfolded, the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States has skyrocketed.”
Most disturbing for Whitaker is that this “modern-day plague” of mental illness has “now spread to the nation’s children.”
Despite a nationwide call for doctors to stop prescribing antipsychotic drugs for everything from schizophrenia to simple insomnia to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] in children, Americans just continue with their doctor-supported drug binge.
At some point, one soberminded individual may be tempted to ask: Is turning the American populace – courtesy of the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry - into walking, talking chemical zombies, the very thing that the Pentagon is now preparing to battle?
This is no joke or conspiracy theory: As CNN reported, the US Defense Department has devised a coordinated plan “should a zombie apocalypse befall the country.”
“In an unclassified document titled “CONOP 8888,” officials from U.S. Strategic Command used the specter of a planet-wide attack by the walking dead as a training template for how to plan for real-life, large-scale operations, emergencies and catastrophes.”
Next week, Part II: American zombies gone berserk

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/318768-american-psycho-zombies-drugs/

CONPLAN 8888 by JDStuster

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The horizon leans forward, 

offering you space to place new steps of change.

-Maya Angelou

 

The new year has arrived and its hard to believe we are almost through January.  It has been feeling more like May around these parts.  The weather is alarmingly warm and with no rain the land is becoming arid.  We are so grateful  for the grey water system that filters and steadily drips our wash water down to our garden beds. There is nothing else for us to do other than pray for rain and embrace this warm spell.  The starts are overflowing in their flats and so the planting has begun.  All the vegis in the mini green houses are slowly going into the ground; collards, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, artichokes, and lettuce.  I am hoping that this will be the year of growing massive quantities, especially of beans (runners, pole, and bush), squash, greens, and potatoes, as well as some drought resistant edibles like quinoa.  However, this is also the year for us to begin transitioning our property into food forests and perennials.  We are bursting at the seems waiting to implement our plans and ideas--little by little--and patience.

It has been amazingly quiet around here lately.  With systems in place and no baby animals to tend, there has been very little drama.  The days flow in and out with family, chores, and visitors.  Gingers steady supply of milk keeps us creatively conjuring up different kinds of cheese and ice cream.  

We have been hosting our old friend Ellis, the Oberhasli buck we have used for the past three years to breed our does.  He has been an extremely well behaved guy and is quite content with his harem of ladies.  

He passes his day following one to the next, usually with his nose in someones behind. Goats!!  Fortunately May Daisy doesnt mind too much and seems to welcome the affection.  

The kids who were born in May are now eight months old, cute and naughty as can be. Sigh...no fence seems to be able to hold them. Yes, thats the nature of goats, they are true free spirits!  This is the year of giving: giving to others and giving our all...taking impeccable care of ourselves and being the best we can be.

Happy January everyone!  May all your positive new year intentions come to fruition.  Peace and blessings!

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A bit has happened since my last post...
 We have had a bit of rain, lost our Bunny pup to what the vet thought was a snake bite, had a bit more rain, & then a rather serious flood event... We have had to put the garden & some other things on the back burner for a while & have only started to get back into the swing of things now with the kids starting back on their schooling...


 The Ferals in the patch....
 The Kent pumpkin that sprouted in Bed #2 is the only 1 of 2 Pumpkins left the other being at the end of Bed #1... It has had about 6 flowers fertilised, grow to the size of a tennis ball, turn yellow & drop off... I think I might just trim some of the longer runners off & try again with some of the newer ones as it is getting rather large... It now wraps around Bed #1 as well as growing over it & the also down the fence line towards the bottom of the yard... Very impressive looking but not much good if it doesnt set fruit...

Left : A Sweet Basil that I delicately mow & snip around... Right : Ginger that sprouted in the tomato bed.. Must of been a bit left in the soil when we recycled the old spice bed... The tomatoes were pulled due to disease & fly strike.. Cucumbers will be going in after the soil gets fed & a turn... 

 All the other tomatoes were removed from Bed #2 as well... Think we may just plant them near the house where it will be easier to control the fruit fly... We pulled the Fly traps down after 2 weeks as we caught less than 50 in all yet still had by far the majority of the Tomatoes being struck...
Right : The orange Chillies & Capsicums are still popping up everywhere... Happy about this as I think we may need to retire the original Chilli plant soon...

 Too much Rain...

 We lost about 50% of the Kohlrabi due to them rotting in the ground... It was mainly the imiture ones that we lost & like the die back in the Beetroot, we think it has to do with the amount of rain over the last few months... The beetroot do look like they are recovering by themselves & we are picking the larger ones as they look ready... Is a bit of a toss up as the bed could have something more productive go in...



 One benefit of the rain is that we are now seeing little "Rocket" Frogs turn up in the patch... Found a few in amongst the Bush Beans feasting on the small grasshoppers infesting the patch... We keep spraying with Neem but the rain keeps washing it off...  The beans have started to pick up as well... They always tend to after threatening them with being dug back into the bed... A lot of the soil looks really bad & compacted at the moment... This is mainly due to poor selection, as we chose the closest supplier rather than the best, but also due to the rain compacting it as well I think... Most of the beds have had a fork over & a good feed of worm wee (thanks to the new productive Worm Kingdom) & the plants are loving it... I am also getting a quote on some composted Horse manure mixed with worm castings from a supplier at the Gold Coast that will be used to help condition the beds...

Bits going well...

The Egg plants are all going well enough for us to be giving the excess away regularly... The Green Thai have come on well as have the Early Long Purples... We have also been told that what we thought were Lebanese Eggplant (Right) are actually Pingtung Long from Asia...

Left :These are some Shallots I bought marked down drastically at Woolworths...Cheap & already productive... : )»
Right : The Cape Gooseberries keep getting attacked by a leaf munching beetle that feeds exclusively on them... There are also some grubs that squash very easily eating the underside of the leaves... The Darwin lettuce popped up from an earlier sowing that produced nothing...
 The red Cabbages are coming on slowly.. Has been a battle to keep them free of Cabbage Butterfly grubs due to not being able to spray with the rain... I have been spending some time on them every morning squishing grubs & it looks as if we will not loose any... **Knocks on wood**  

One Dragon Carrot has surprised us by going to seed early so we are keeping an eye on it daily ready to collect the seed... The other Carrots are going well as are the spring onions in the bed with them...We have picked a few baby ones & munched on them already...

The Cucumbers are on their last set of fruit I think & we should have some Marketmore Seeds going in this week... The Spice Barrels (Right) are powering along & we are very happy with the way they are progressing...



The Lemon tree is laden with fruit... Unfortunately it has a leaf disease/infestation, like the Kaffir & Tahitian Limes, that must be looked into this week as well...

On the whole I cant complain about the state of the patch... We were not directly affected by the flood as the water didnt enter our property like it did in 1974... The water covered 75% of our back neighbours land (Right) yet they were lucky as their shed/tools were spared & only had their Laundry flooded out under the house... We went & helped a couple clean out their Mothers property on the Friday afterwards but by the Saturday, we were turned away from helping locally so went around offering the use of our washing Machine as a way of helping out others...



Well, thats about it for now so have a great one all...
Hopefully I will post more often now that we are getting back into the swing of things...
: )»

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