Saturday, May 30, 2009
I Have Mushrooms!
I was just out in the gardens. I planted another eight cucumbers, and planted in the acorn squash, and some butternut squash. I turned to watering the tomato/pepper/bean bed, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but dozens and dozens of tiny, pebble-like red buttons under my yellow wax beans.
They're not this big, yet, just the size of aquarium gravel.
Each bean plant has a button or three under it. These are the primordia of the Giant Garden Mushroom fungus that I buried directly under the beans. Damn, I wish my computer wasn't rejecting my little digicam, as this is such a cool thing to see. These mushrooms have the capacity to get really huge-- the size of a salad plate-- but, right now, they are just little. I'll need to keep them nice and wet, and hope the soaring temps (tomorrow will be in the 90's) don't kill them. We're talking about a 4'x6' area where each square foot now has a sort of reddish hue under the beans, for so many primordia across the soil surface. I just ran out and did a better count. Each square foot has nine bean plants, times nine square feet-- 81 plants. Every single plant has at least one shroom under it, and most have at least two, with five plants with at least five around it. If half of them die, I'll still have over 6 dozen big ol' Stone Mushrooms (Strapharia rugoso-annulata) in just a few days. They don't appear to be under the peppers or tomatoes, just yet, but, they are a little further away from the concentrated fungus planting. Perhaps it is just a matter of time, while the mycelium runs, or they don't like the other plants-- we'll find out soon enough.
Looking at the old bean bed, where I have Jalapenos, Cabbages, Carrots and Garlic planted, and under which, I placed the H.U.G. (an Oyster Mushroom), and looking very, very closely, I can see lots and lots of scallopy, primordia growing out of the wood chip mulch under the peppers. It looks like I may get a good deli jar full of them fairly soon, too. I've got lots of work to do out there to do today.
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Labels: Mushrooms, My Life As It Is, Mycorrhizal Fungus, Organic Gardening
Friday, May 29, 2009
The Option ARM Recast...
Atrios, in his purposefully vague, one-liner style, has been hinting at this for a while now. He cites the collapse of Commercial Real Estate as retail goes tits-up creating more job losses, leading to defaulted home mortgages and "Jingle Mail" walk-aways, as those people-- who already know they are underwater (payment over value)-- simple say, "The hell with it." They either don't have the money for a refi, or the credit to get a refi, or a Bank willing to refi. Indeed. The hell with it. Calculated Risk has dribbled it out, as well.
Mish Shedlock has been saying much the same. Mish called the situation, right now, a year ago.
I was looking for the nice chart of his, showing the Sub-Prime resets and the Option ARMs recasts. Two arrows on the chart. Pointing to Sub-Prime it read, "We'll survive this," next to the Option ARMs, it read, "We won't survive this." I tend to agree, with fear in my heart. Either we completely change the Global Economic system quickly, or the whole world has already spent itself out before the Top of the Fifth Inning. I think we'll see the latter first.
At any rate, this article scrapes it all together into one, big ugly picture.
via Dr. Housing Bubble
Let me be abundantly clear. We still have a Pay Option ARM and Alt-A mortgage problem. This will hit in full force in 2010 and we are already seeing many mortgage holders having trouble with actual recasts brought on by negative amortization. Yet there is a crew of people saying that Alt-A mortgage products will not bring any trouble because of the low interest rate environment. Unfortunately the low rate misses the bigger issue. Low rates are helping but the problem that we will be seeing is the massive onslaught of recasts, not resets that will be occurring over the next few years. This is a big reason why we won’t see a housing bottom in California until 2011 at the earliest. Many of these loans were made to supposedly better qualified borrowers in mid to upper priced areas. These areas will begin to crack like an egg dropped on the floor late in 2009. The Notice of Default tsunami will guarantee this much.
I am stunned that some people are actually saying that Alt-A mortgages or Pay Option ARMs will create little problems in the market. Okay. Then how about we remove the public-private investment program that conveniently has a cap with the FDIC of $500 billion? After all, if there isn’t any problem with toxic mortgages why should we have a toxic mortgage program that has the design to eat up $1 trillion in loans. Exactly. Let me break down the latest figures from data by none other than the Federal Reserve
Much more at the link.
After this week's Treasuries trashing, I am working on another post about Treasuries, but, again, everything is clouded with chaff. The Treasuries situation is pretty volatile, and I think that next week is going to give us a more fuller story. MadSat was right about the FED monetizing the debt. They poured all they had into buying up Treasuries over the past two weeks, and failed to even dent the tidal wave. Troubles.
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Labels: Collapse, Option ARMs, Real Estate, US Treasuries
Thursday, May 28, 2009
A Cat Haiku: "Long, Bad Day For Mouse"...
A tragedy in three acts.
Murray caught a mouse.
He has no teeth. Spot, no claws.
Mountain Girl had both.
--mf
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Labels: My Life... With Cats
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wild Grapes...
I have a ton of Wild Grapes starting to grow under nearly all of my Pine Trees. I noticed them in my annual Spring ChemWar sorte on the Poison Ivy. I used some cardboard to protect the grapes from the spray. So, now I have a whole lot of Wild Grapes growing at the bottom of my Pine Trees, and I don't think that I want them growing up my Pine Trees.
Now, I rather fancy a few jars of grape leaves in the larder (cain't get that mooslim food in these here parts), and would like to try making some wild grape wine in the future. Should I dig them up, move them, and make a trellis? Train them away from the pine trees? Or, should I just compost them, and make arbors for some real grapes in the future? I really don't have any perimeter fencing to train them to, or I would just do that. I don't have much experience with Wild Grape, but, I've seen some ugly tangles of them. Are they tamable? Is it worth it?
One side of me says, "These are the only really beneficial "weeds" volunteering to grow on the land, so far-- let them be, and harvest what you can for a year or so." The other side of me says, "Let that Wild Grape grow in place, and the Poison Ivy will crawl right up it and the Pine Trees (again). I might get some grape leaves and a few grapes, but the Poison Ivy will get me."
Any thoughts? Is Wild Grape a Blessing or a Bad Deal?
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Labels: Food Foraging, Wild Grapes
Miniature Hereford Cows*...
* actually, these are not "miniatures," they are more classically-sized Herefords, the big giants we are used to are the hyper-bred freaks.
I intend on some chickens, and small livestock once the Zone 1 garden beds are fully set, and the Zone 3 corn field/orchard gets established. I thought I would would be limited to a few goats. I like goat milk and mutton just fine, but, I think I'd rather raise some mini-cows. Same amount of fencing; I have enough room for a mating pair, and a baby. I'll probably start with goats, but I'd like to work up to mini-Herefords. Finish the gardens and compost area first. Anyway, I though that this would be a good article for those with a couple of acres, and seeking livestock options.
via LA Times
"Aren't they sweet?" asked Ali, 52, shooing Half-Pint, Buttercup and a dozen other cattle across a holding pen. "They're my babies, every little one of them."
The Petersens once raised normal-sized bovines on this stretch of Nebraska's rolling eastern grasslands, but with skyrocketing feed costs, the couple decided to downsize.
They bought minicows -- compact cattle with stocky bodies, smaller frames and relatively tiny appetites.
Their miniature Herefords consume about half that of a full-sized cow yet produce 50% to 75% of the rib-eyes and fillets, according to researchers and budget-conscious farmers.
"We get more sirloin and less soup bone," Ali said. "People used to look at them and laugh. Now, they want to own them."
In the last few years, ranchers across the country have been snapping up mini Hereford and Angus calves that fit in a person's lap. Farmers who raise mini Jerseys brag how each animal provides 2 to 3 gallons of milk a day, though they complain about having to crouch down on their knees to reach the udders.
I would think that a milking stand would do OK if you trained her to it early on.
I'll be helping the Neighbor Kid this coming weekend to build a chicken coop/tractor set-up. Our plan is to be able to easily move the chooks out of the chook house, and into the tractor and around his yard and garden areas. The tractor is going to be necessary, as we have a pair of neighborhood Red-tailed Hawks. My neighbor across the street found an injured Red-Tail out in his yard. He and his kids took it in, over winter, cared fr it and fed it, and trained it to get back into the airy wilds. It recouped, took to the sky, and found a mate. So, we have very few mice or other vermin, and the folks on the next road lost half their chickens in a month or so. A good chicken tractor and coop set-up is really the way to go. The NK's set-up will be a prototype for me. I want to be able to park my chickens on top of my beds in the Fall/Winter/Early Spring to eat weeds, bugs and grasses, and to plow and fertilize the beds for me. I'll happily plant cover crops for them to munch on. So much to do, and to look forward to down here on Monkeyfister Manor.
I must work on Zone 2 crops in the yard. It is a serious point of negligence for me.
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Labels: Chickens, Miniature Livestock Breeds, Suburban Farming
Sunday, May 24, 2009
What Dangerous Rightwing Extremists?
Hal Turner Edition.
This seems blatantly illegal to me.
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Labels: Dangerous Right Wing, Hate Crime, Hate Speech, Wingnuts On Parade
