On 10/7/2017 6:33 AM, Frank wrote:
On 10/6/2017 9:23 PM, George Shirley wrote:
On 10/6/2017 5:51 PM, Frank wrote:
On 10/2/2017 9:26 PM, George Shirley wrote:
On 10/2/2017 7:22 PM, Frank wrote:
On 10/2/2017 8:03 PM, George Shirley wrote:
On 10/2/2017 5:54 PM, Frank wrote:
On 10/2/2017 4:55 PM, George Shirley wrote:
On 10/2/2017 11:21 AM, Frank wrote:
On 10/2/2017 8:00 AM, George Shirley wrote:
On 10/2/2017 6:33 AM, Frank wrote:
On 10/1/2017 10:30 PM, songbird wrote:
Frank wrote:
...
I'm into chestnut season.Â* I don't save as many but like to
shell and
freeze to use with stuffing turkey. I'll chomp on them in
the evening
with a glass of wine but they last less than 2 months in the
refrigerator as they do not keep like fatty nuts such as
peanuts.

Â*Â* i didn't think there were any of those
trees still around any longer?


I hate to leave them for the deer and the squirrels and
saturate my
friends with them.Â* Invited neighbors over today to pick up
as much as
they wanted.

Â*Â* in the days before the fungi they were a major
source of fodder for animals in the forest and
many people would let pigs run to fatten up and
then...


Â*Â* songbird


Mine are Chinese chestnuts.Â* The American chestnut is
supposedly returning and a few years ago I tried a few of
these chestnuts and they tasted the same.Â* I don't think the
wood of the Chinese tree is as good as the American tree.
I have never seen an American chestnut, don't think they grew
in my part of Texas. Have eaten Chinese chestnuts, do they
have the same taste?

George

It's been years since I tasted them.Â* I think taste was same as
Chinese chestnuts and they were slightly smaller.Â* This was at
friends hunting camp in central PA.Â* Guy that brought them in
said they were American chestnuts.

I tried to sell some to local market years ago but they refused
as there is a worm problem.Â* There is a chestnut weevil that I
have never seen but it lays eggs on the hull and they burrow
into the chestnut. I spray with Sevin but can't reach the tops
of both trees and often see a lot of worms.Â* These little
buggers can even bore through a plastic bag.Â* I'm sure I've
eaten more than a few. This year's crop appears clean.Â* You
spray for 3-4 weeks weekly about 6 weeks before harvest.
We tried growing everything without sprays, etc. and damned near
died from what all was eating our gardens. Now we just spray and
then wash stuff from the garden. It's hell trying to grown
things "naturally" when the world is full of things that want to
screw up your garden. Particularly when you're close enough to
the harbor for Houston and all the junk the ships bring in. Some
have destroyed crops that have been grown for a very long time.
Then the gubmint says "You can't spray that, it might hurt the
atmosphere or something else." Heck, I used to flag crop dusters
as a kid with just a bandana tied over my face. I think all that
"poison" is why I'm still around, sort of like being petrified
or so0mething. VBG

When your trees are fairly isolated from similar trees all the
enemies surround them nearby.Â* I had trouble with apple worms and
fungus when I had apple trees.Â* I used to bicycle past an orchard
on Sunday mornings and saw them spraying.Â* Bet there was not a
bug or fungus within a mile after they were done.Â* I also suspect
they did not have to spray that often as it would take awhile
before they were invaded by surrounding bugs.

Probably same for squirrels when I tried to raise English
walnuts. If an orchard knocked their population down it would
take a much longer time to recover than my trees surrounded by
woods full of squirrels.

I may be a chemist but do not believe in the liberal use of
chemicals but in their judicious use.
I made my living for sixteen years making chemicals, but not the
type you're thinking of, just little stuff like benzene, etc. G
After the 16 years as a grunt I moved into management with several
different chemical plants and refineries. We were careful in
handling the stuff and what we sold off to other companies had the
proper paper work for handling them. Unfortunately lots of small
companies made really bad chemicals for bugs, etc. that were two
steppers, get a good bit of the chemical, walk two steps and fall
over dead. Like you I am cautious about any over the counter or
home made chemicals and read the cautions part four or five times.
Breathing some of that stuff fifty years ago or so didn't help my
health. Anyone that handles any kind of chemical, even the ones
under the kitchen sink, needs to be fully aware of what happens if
you breath it, drink it, or get it on you. Amen!

No question.Â* I am often telling my wife to be careful with her use
of bleach and need for ventilation when cooking.
I do too, my wife often cooks without turning on the fan over the
stove, goes straight out through the wall. She's an artist, does
that ring a bell about safety? Years ago we lived in a small trailer
house and I put in a fan above the stove in the wall. When we built
our first home I sold the trailer and got an extra $100 bucks due to
the fan, which cost something like ten bucks. In those days I made
$2.50 an hour as a top operator in a chemical plant and ten bucks
was a lot of money to us. Nowadays guys doing what I did in the
sixties are making what sounds like big money but buys about the
same amount of grub for us back then.

I am very familiar with toxicology and have worked for years with
toxicologists and their labs.Â* Now retired I have written and been
responsible for thousands of safety data sheets in my consulting.

When working, my company often refused to sell chemicals to
companies that could not handle them responsibly.
I hear that, happily I worked for years for Mobil, then moved on to
some of the larger chemical and refining companies. As a safety
professional I got several people fired for not doing their due
diligence and have pulled wounded and dead out of something that
should never have happened. You teach people the right way to do
things and then they go dumb on you just once and kaboom! I'm glad
I'm retired and don't have to do that anymore. We could certainly
throw out some old stories over a cup of coffee. I go to reunions
for a couple of companies, now all combined with the big boys, and
we revisit our youth and some revisit their foolishness. I'm glad
I'm retired.


I worked for DuPont in fibers and plastics R&D but spent the last 3
years as a regulatory affairs consultant.Â* Had to take early
retirement as company began to shrink.Â* They are now Dow-DuPont.Â* The
years in regulatory gave me good experience to consult but that is
now down to 1-2 days a month.Â* Makes me stay current with computers
and new rules.
I spent the last sixteen or seventeen years of my career as a lone
safety professional, working from home. Wrote hundreds of safety
manual's, had a goodly amount of small companies that worked for the
big companies. Did their monthly safety meetings, wrote their safety
manuals, visited the big chemical plants and refineries, etc. to do
walk rounds to see if the client workers were working safely, etc.
Enjoyed doing the job on my own until one day I started having strokes
and heart attacks and finally had to retire. Gave my business to my
best friend who I had been training for some time. He called me a
couple of weeks ago, he turned 70 and turned the business over to his
two sons to run. So it keeps going on, I hope, with teaching people to
be safe. I'm a third generation worker in refineries, chemical plants,
etc. and the only one who worked in safety. I don't miss making the
rounds as my health is not so good, the reason I turned it over to my
friend. Keep it up my friend, you may be saving lives and doing good.

My work dealt with safety of our polymer products.Â* I was responsible
for elastomers, Teflon finishes and acrylics and monomers that made
them.Â* I was department coordinator with our Haskell toxicology lab and
a backup TSCA coordinator.Â* I worked with business managers setting up
product safety compliance reviews.Â* We worked with company regulatory
groups in Canada, Europe and Asia so I had to be familiar with rules in
these areas.Â* I had contacts with EPA, FDA and OSHA.

When I was in R&D our outlook was limited to R&D, manufacturing and
marketing with little contact with upper company management but
regulatory had me working with several upper management layers and it
was eye opening to learn business scope.

Before I left R&D DuPont Central Research tried to get me for a couple
of positions but since R&D was declining and these jobs were related to
another department, they shoved their people there.Â* Probably ended up
better with gaining regulatory and safety skills as this lab is now kaput.
I finally gave in and retired completely after seeing how bad some
companies were and are still. Stopped writing safety manuals and just
said the hell with it. I'm much happier and much healthier since I hung
up my hard hat. Still have problems from long ago strokes and heart
attacks but still kicking along at age 78. Just got my DNA test back
last night and it is not what my parents claimed. I'm not a half breed
Native American, only less than 1% Native, my folks claimed more. Of
course there was no DNA tests when they were young and just knew what
their parents told them. Dang!