Friday, April 1, 2011

Weeds and batteries

I spent seven wonderful hours in the yard today.  I sprayed to kill weeds, I pulled a bunch of weeds for the chickens, I pulled a bunch of the landscape timbers close to where I want them in the garden, and I filled the plastic swimming pool with water for the ducks.  I accomplished a lot and tomorrow I intend to continue where I left off. 

I hope to get the new garden beds put together, or at least some of them.  Today it was easy to work because I had the day off but the grandkids were in school and Army daughter and her husband were gone most of the day.  I even left the phone in the house.  When I came in for lunch I noticed that I missed about 10 phone calls.  I didn't call anyone back as that would have killed an hour or two of my outdoor time.

I bought a new flashlight yesterday.  It's a Maglight with the following specs: 22213 cd, 114 lumens, distance 298 meters, 9 hour 15 minutes on 2 D batteries.  It cost about $25 and I saw it both at the local hardware store and Walmart.  When I got home I immediately went into the garage to get out a pack of D batteries.  I have many packages of 12 and one of the packages was no good.  Several of the batteries had leaked in the carton.  I checked the rest of the boxes and they were all ok.  Glad I picked up that box as a SHTF situation would be a rather lousy time to realize that you have a box of leaking batteries. 

I'm still asking people if they are as puzzled about the milk issue as I am.  For anyone who missed those couple of lines I wrote yesterday about it I'll pose it again.  We are being told that the milk with radiation in California is due to the cattle eating grass with radiation and drinking stream water that also has this fallout.  That just can't be the case.  Most dairy cattle aren't walking around in large grassy pastures.  The California Happy Cow ads are a bit misleading.  Some very small dairies do pasture their cattle, but most are in large pens.  They eat hay or silage not pasture grass.  Their hay or silage is usually covered and was produced long before the earthquake and tsunami.  So, how did the milk get tainted?

3 comments:

  1. We've had a lot of rain and cows do drink rainwater...and they did these tests on dairy cows in San Luis Obisbo and I have seen cows on pasture there...

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  2. I'm going to go out on a limb thinking out loud about your question. Mos of the silage is covered, but the ends are not, not the silage and hay in the troughs. Could falling radiation from the atmosphere cause it? Seems far-fetched. but maybe.

    Maybe the water used in processing the milk.

    Jut some guesses. I personally don't drink milk. I never took to it and my father milked cows before school and didn't either. What milk we get is raw milk and haven't asked about its radiation.

    Steve

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  3. In Fresno and Tulare counties very few of the dairy cattle are pastured. These are the two top dairy counties is the country. It's unfortunate that it may be safer to drink milk from large dairies than the small organic ones.

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