Practical Poultry Tips

Sometime in the late Forties, my Dad realized that was worrying about the Mideast Crisis. But why? The odds that Harry Truman was going to call to ask his advice were zero. Nor does the US have a system of national referendum that would allow him to vote “Yes” or “No” on the Mideast Crisis. Dad was not actually on the hook for having a well-thought-out opinion. Where was his concern coming from? Read more...

If you look on the Internet or ask your neighbors, you’re likely to hear a lot of nonsense about rodent control, stuff in the Pied Piper class of implausibility. What really works?

Successful Rodent Control: A Personal Example

What works best for me, on my farm? Rat poison (or rodenticides, if you’re feeling fancy). Do I like using poison? No, I do not. (Posions are deeply unpleasant.) But I found it necessary, and you probably will, too. I’ll talk about how I used it just recently. Later on, I’ll talk about alternatives, both real and fake. Read more...

Kindling a fire used to be done with newspaper. After all, everyone has tons of old newspapers lying around, right? Not anymore! I don’t, anyway. We stopped taking a daily paper a while ago. You know what we have tons of? Amazon Prime boxes!

I once read an extension service report from … somewhere … that claimed that using strips of cardboard was the key to easy fire starting, and it’s true! Read more...

After the recent failure of the Oroville dam’s main spillway, the question I keep asking myself is, “Where did the engineers go to school?”

Back in 1889, the South Fork Dam broke after heavy rains, opening up like a zipper and flooding Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing 2,209 people. The dam had overflowed, and dams fail catastrophically when this happens. Especially earth-fill dams. Read more...