Touching Discovery

Talk a walk through a field and run your fingers across the leaves, or bend over and lightly touch the seedlings emerging from the ground, and you may make the difference between whether those plants thrive or perish.

That's the implication of the findings by three ecologists in Pennsylvania who discovered that touching plants in the field affected their ability to repel insects.

James Cahill of the University of Alberta, and Jeff Castelli and Brenda Casper of the University of Pennsylvania were conducting field studies of plants in an abandoned hayfield and along a forest floor when they noticed that plants they had marked for study were experiencing extremely high rates of attack by insects. Plants that they had not disturbed were faring much better.

Could it be that they, the detached and impartial scientific observers, were making a difference in the plants' environment that affected their survival?

Continued at... Touching Discovery

Michael Hofferber
Rural Delivery
Plants and Seeds
Out There
Artwork: Butter and Eggs Toadflax

Rural Economics

Sip your coffee slowly and it will last longer, one cup of stimulation for twice the length of time. Keep it warm in a thermos and you save on microwaves. Re-use your coffee grounds and you'll save nearly 30 pounds of coffee, or $200, by year's end.
   
Here it goes again, that compulsion to count and figure and cut and scrimp. Like some actuary, I'm compelled to calculate the costs and consequences of every action and exchange.
   
Air-drying laundry on a clothesline saves nearly 50 cents a load.
   
Add two weeks between those monthly haircuts and save at least $60 a year.

Buy heating oil in midsummer and save another $50 or more.

Continued at... Rural Economics

Michael Hofferber
Rural Delivery
Holidays and Notable Events
Farmers Market Supply
Artwork: 12-Digit Desktop Calculator with Tax Function

Give Eggs a Break

When I was growing up eggs were often called "the perfect food" -- a massive dose of protein packed into a small container with all the essential nutrients for making strong bodies. Everyone endorsed them. We all ate them at almost every meal.

Then some egghead discovered cholesterol and everything got scrambled.

Eggs contain more cholesterol than almost any food source, a whopping 212 milligrams or so per yolk. So when doctors started prescribing less cholesterol in the diet, eggs were the first to go.

That decision may have been a little too hard-boiled.

Continued at... Give Eggs a Break

Michael Hofferber
Rural Delivery
Eggs
Eggs and Health Promotion
Artwork: Fresh Eggs

Strays

Another animal has joined our menagerie -- a puppy this time, probably of mixed breed. Barely six weeks old, he's a furry ball with a hungry belly, loose tongue and sharp teeth. He's already made some unfortunate impressions on exposed shins, flower beds and the living room carpet; being cute and affectionate has been key to his survival.

In some households, people spend hundreds of dollars on specially bred and registered pets. They go to great lengths to seek out and find just the right animal. We might have too, I suppose, if we lived somewhere less rural.

All of our pets, including this puppy, have come into our care through unplanned and unexpected adoptions. All but one was abandoned on our property, or nearby, by faceless miscreants too irresponsible to show themselves.

Continued at... Strays

Michael Hofferber
Rural Delivery
Husbandry
Pet Supply
Artwork: Mother's Love

Equinox

We lie on the brink of change. Great storms are brewing. This is the week of equinox, when the Earth stands up straight to the sun before it begins to tilt again, northern hemisphere tipping outward.
   
At this moment everything hangs in balance. The hours of day and night are nearly even. There's some powerful physics at play.

I remember Oregon Coast fishermen, charter skippers and commercial trollers, standing around the bait shop scolding the weather. The worst storms and the most unpredictable catches occurred at equinoxes, they said. Nasty storm clouds would rise out of nowhere and turn the ocean black, threatening lives. Then, quick as cream in a cat's mouth, the clouds would be gone. Skies would clear. Fish would bite.

Equinoxes are times of special powers. Calendars are created around them; crops are planted by them.

Continued at... Equinox

• Michael Hofferber
• Rural Delivery
• Out There
• Artwork: Precession of the Equinoxes

Sacrificial Cells

Plants get sick. They develop soft rot and leaf spot and cankers of all sorts. They suffer ulcerous lesions, mildews, and various wilts and scabs.
   
Apple trees get fire blight, which blackens their leaves and twigs and is sometimes fatal. Potatoes are susceptible to late blight, as 19th century Ireland learned too well, and grapes are vulnerable to powdery mildew, which nearly wrecked the French wine industry.
   
In the U.S. alone, there are more than 25,000 known plant diseases causing crop losses of several billion dollars annually.

Figuring out how plants defend themselves against disease and bolstering those defenses has been a priority for agricultural researchers.

Continued at... Sacrificial Cells

• Rural Delivery
• Growth Spurts
• Plant Proteomics
• Artwork: Powdery Mildew

So God Made a Farmer

by Paul Harvey.

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.

Continued at... So God Made a Farmer

Rural Delivery
Artwork: Farmer by Norman Rockwell

Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story