Showing posts with label homesteading. Show all posts

Thursday, May 1, 2014

My Favorite Podcasts And Resources

I thought I would share some of my favorite podcasts and websites that I frequent to get information and entertainment. People often ask me how I know the things that I know about so many different topics. I don't do anything special, I just research what I am interested in. It's simple really, I read books, listen to a ton of podcasts and Google is a thing. Plus I mess up all the time, which I find is a great way to learn something new. The important thing is to know how to learn and do proper research, "knowing" the specific details about a topic is secondary.

Here are some of the informational podcasts I listen to on a regular basis. Some of these podcast are still going strong, some have stopped creating new content, but still have their episode archives up.

Homesteading - Permaculture - Survivalism

Guns - Hunting

Science - Space - History

Health - Nutrition - Paleo

Brewing - Cooking

Interesting - Random

Here is a list of video sites I am subscribed to or watch often. Some are just funny, some are very informative. I want to Highlight two of the most interesting and useful video sites I frequent.

T.E.D stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED's mission is to bring scientist, entertainers and inspirational people together to speak in a video format about whatever topic they are passionate about. I have watched every TED video on this site that I am interested it, that is a lot. Check it out, you will find something you like.

Khan Academy is the direction I believe education, not only of children, but anyone who wants to further their education, is going now and into the future. The days of the modern education system are numbered. Before I go off on a long tangent about the systemic problems of the modern education system, let me just say, you should check out the Khan Academy. You would have to try not to learn something new.

YouTube is a great resource. The following are all channels I am subscribed to.

I know the above list is long, but it is only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the information available to anyone who wants to look for it. All of these links and resources are free, some have voluntary yearly subscriptions, which I have a couple of.

These are just some of the things I am interested in. If you are into spinning wool, you would be amazed at how many resources are available for free online. Just Google it. ;)

The important thing is to know how to separate the bullshit from the well meaning uninformed writer, from the truly valuable information. Make sure to get your information from more than one source, three is a good start. If you come across something you are interested in, and there are links from the article to the source material, read it and make your own conclusions.

I could do a longer post on all the books I recommend, but one in particular comes to mind that will help you sift through the bullshit in life. It was written by my personal hero, Carl Sagan. Read this book before you die, the sooner the better.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Obviously Wikipedia is a great resource. Just remember, anyone can go in and change things. Most of the time, if there is incorrect information, it is corrected very quickly. The community is very good at self policing.

There is a specific survivalism wiki set up through The Survival Podcast community. Check it out here. TSP also has a great forum that I have been a member of since 2009, check it out here.

Google is such a great resource. If you really want to delve into something you can do a search on Google Scholar. This search will pull up any published scholarly articles on the subject you are interested in.

I hope this post helps some people find new and interesting sources of information and entertainment.

Friday, October 18, 2013

We Lost One Of Our Hives.

Homesteading is not easy, nor is it always sunshine and roses like some blogs would have you believe. I feel it is important to share our mistakes and set backs so others can learn from our experiences and realize it is okay to mess up and not get it right the first time or in this case the second. That said I love what we are doing, and can't wait to add more plants and animals to the property.

I realized the traffic in one of our two hives had changed in the amount and nature. I noticed the hive entrance was not being guarded and the amount of bees coming and going had diminished. None of the bees going in the hive had collected pollen and when I looked under the hive I did not see any bees bearding the comb.

When I opened the hive my suspicions were confirmed. The hive had swarmed. I am not sure if the queen died and they had to raise a new one or they did a split. Whatever happened they had to raise a new queen. Here is what a queen cell looks like. Instead of the uniform hexagons bees normally make, queen cells look more like a mud wasp made them. I found other smaller queen cells around the comb, but I am pretty sure this is the one the new queen emerged from. All the other cells were much smaller than this one, leading me to believe the queen that came out of this cell went around and made sure there were no usurpers in the wings.

This is all that was left in the hive, a handful of dead bees. I have no idea what happened, maybe the hive was stressed and they left after the split. Whatever it was it happened fast. In a normal hive dead bees are cleaned out regularly, so to see so many dead bees left behind makes me scratch my head. All the honey and pollen was completely clean out. I am sure the swarm took most of it and the bees I saw coming and going were robbing what was left. If any bee keepers out there have a theory on what happened please comment down below.

On a happier note, the new comb guides are working much better than the original design I went with. The comb is nice and straight for the most part and no significant cross-combing happened. You can see the comb on the right of this picture was starting to curve a bit into the next bars but that small amount of movement is easy to fix.

You can see the new comb design here. I used cove molding with a 90 degree angle to give the bees a more defined guide. I am not as discouraged as I was last year when this happened. Maybe because I lost both my hives last year. But mainly because of a podcast I heard about capturing local swarms and how easy it is. I plan on making a couple swarm traps to use in the spring. In the meantime I am going to focus my energy on keeping our other hive healthy through the winter. I am going to feed them this year, hoping they will make it through. If not, I will try my best to catch a couple locally adapted swarms in the spring.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Tomato pest or opportunistic scavenger? And a corn story

We have so many tomatoes coming in right now. We picked a couple hundred recently. But I found something strange on the Amish paste tomatoes. It is a good thing there are hundreds of them!

I have never seen or heard of a woodlouse eating a tomato before. So I was genuinely surprised to find this tomato being devoured by a bunch of tiny crustaceans. It always amazes me to think these little guys are more closely related to lobsters than ladybugs. This is the common rough woodlouse or Porcellio scaber.

These are not typical tomato pest. From the research I have done it seems they will eat a tomato or strawberry after something else has bitten the fruit. It seems once they have a way in then they will gladly eat your tomatoes. A lot of people believe it is usually a slug that does the initial damage with the woodlice following since they share similar niches, shady wet areas. I am going to put out some beer slug traps and see if I get any slugs. I have been meaning to make more toad habitat so maybe this will motivate me.

So I learned a lesson in corn farming. It seems I should have known this since my father's family were corn and potato farmers, but I guess some skills and info didn't make it from my grandfathers generation to mine. One of the reason we are homesteading and doing the blog is to relearn these important skills so we can pass the information on to our children and grandchildren. This corn is a solid blue corn variety. I planted it next to our yellow and white sweet corn. The color yellow is dominate so if your blue corn gets cross-pollinated by your yellow corn this is what happens. I will only plant sweet corn next year. Lesson learned.