Progress picture of the hazelnut cluster we’re watching
Author: Lisa
Separation of Church and State
As I see states enacting laws to require religious education in public schools, I think of the history of trying to incorporate Christian philosophy in law. I’ve always wondered *which* Christian. The real answer, I expect, is everyone assumes it is their own. Good for garnering votes, but that’s going to make implementation dicey.
Obviously some sort of Reformationist Christianity (sorry Catholics!). But there’s a big difference between Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Mormon, Presebeterian, Mennonite, etc. And, yeah, they locked up the courts so what the Constitution says and what the authors meant probably don’t matter … But I like to throw Deist in there as a knod to the founding fathers.
My gut is it ends up being “left up to the states” generally. So Arkansas can be Southern Baptist, Maybe Catholics get Rhode Island (only like 40% of the population, but the next highest is Pentecostal at like 6%). In states like Ohio, religions are going to have to band together to get a majority — it’ll be like a coalition government in the UK. If we’re lucky, “I don’t want to live in a theocracy” will win a state or three.
We are either stuck with whatever religious edicts align with our region or we move. And the feds are just in charge of saying it’s not a violation of the Constitution when women wearing slacks gets banned in some state. For reasons. Really good, substantiated by history and text, reasons.
https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-ten-commandments-displayed-classrooms-571a2447906f7bbd5a166d53db005a62
2024 Hatch — Chickens
Our first birds are hatching — we’ve got ten Bresse chickens (and I learned that there’s both a dominant white gene and a recessive white gene. French flocks go for the recessive white because you’ll always get white birds. American Bresse have dominant white … which means you get a colored bird!)
Black Raspberry Coulis
To go with our smoked lamb, I made a coulis with maple syrup and black raspberries Anya picked and froze last year. Easy recipe — a pint of black raspberries (thawed) and about 1/3 cup of maple syrup (this would be a “to taste” kind of thing!). Boil for about ten minutes to break down the berries a bit, run it all through a blender, then use fine mesh cloth to strain out the seeds. It will set up as a jam once it cools, but it’s a nice sauce to drizzle over food whilst it is still hot.
Brisket
We smoked a brisket and lamb shoulder this weekend — basic salt & pepper rub, smoked with fruit wood, then brought inside to finish cooking. We’re going to order some butcher paper to see what that’s like because wrapping it always gets the bark soggy!
Hazelnuts – 2024
The hazelnuts are just starting to form — it looks like we’ve got nuts developing on the newer plants on the north side too. As far as propagating plants, I’ve pretty well established that dropping a woody cutting in willow water doesn’t work. Dropping a green cutting in water doesn’t work. Next, I’m going to try a green cutting in soil and air layering. I’ve found a few places online that say air layering worked … even if it looks a little odd having bundles of soil wrapped around the branches of your shrubbery.
First Fireflies of 2024
I don’t remember when we saw the first fireflies — walking back to the house after dark, there was one lonely little flash out in the field. But, over the past week or so, that one flash has been joined by dozens of others.
Testing Zookeeper using NetCat
Provided you have stat enabled (something like 4lw.commands.whitelist=stat, in ./config/zookeeper.properties), you can use nc to send stat to each zookeeper and verify it is working. You can also tell which is the leader and how many clients (your current request is one!) are attached to each zookeeper node.
2024 Garden – North Side
We got most of the north side of the garden planted — watermelon and tomatoes are still in the greenhouse (sprouting)
2024 Garden – Veggies
Today, we planted (from West to East) haricot vert beans, a row of peas, sweet potatoes, and regular potatoes (Masquerade, Harvest Moon, and Sangre from W to E along the north side of the kale island, and Baltic Rose along the south side of the kale)
