Billy wrote in

ct.net.au:

If you were raising steers for commercial consumption,
there could be some sense to it but the rest of it just
seems like meddling intrusion.

if i was raising steers, they would be grass fed & humanely
slaughtered (yes, PETA folks, that *is* possible). it is
getting very hard to find abbatoirs that are not huge meat
factories though, & it's already illegal to eat farm
slaughtered livestock.
i did have a steer that was being trained as an ox, but it
turned out he hadn't been properly neutered & when the
testosterone kicked in at 10 months old, he picked me up on
his horns & tossed me across the pen. i had my vet finish the
job, but that one time clouded his judgement as to who was the
boss... he was delicious.

i think you should separate the gastropods by at least 6
feet too...

With the iron phosphate, it seems I've done better than
that.

i'll have to look up the toxicity of that. i want to kill
slugs in my pastures. they're the alternate host for meningeal
worm (primary host is deer), which are fatal when the llamas
pick them up. if i can safely spread that in the pastures
(maybe when the llamas are in a different one? rotational
grazing is good stuff), that would be great.

i have some old type echinacea (purplish pink). are any
of
the newer colored cultivars non-patented & suitable for
medicinals?

I haven't got that far yet, Echinacea purpurea is all I've
played with to date.

hummingbirds on the east coast love them.

I was just starting to get a couple of purslane a week from
my garden when it went dormant (I hope that is what it is.)
Doesn't have an interesting flavor but I will eat it with a
garlic-herb vinaigrette in hopes of being healthier.

seems to me that the purslane is not one of the early
starters here. i seem to notice it once the soil warms up &
then it's everywhere. i pulled 3 wheelbarrow loads of it out
of 3 row paths last summer... & it was back within 2 weeks.
it really doesn't taste like much. i nibble on it while
weeding sometimes. a vinegrette could only improve it.

What makes it beer instead of maple wine? With beer you
have to germinate the barley, then bake it, and then brew
at varying temps to get the right mix of dextrins (if I
remember correctly) for mouth feel.

i buy my grains still. i do grind them though.

To make wine, you would
add water to bring the solution to 21% to 25% sugar, add 7
- 10 grams of tartaric acid/liter, a handfull of raisins
for nutrient, and a kilo of yeast/1000 gallons. See
instructions for making mead. With wine the sanitation is
crucial. With wine the acidity keeps the micros under
control although a little potassium metabisulfite at the
end of fermentation is called for.

i don't much care for wine (but then, i don't drink beer
either...). i suppose i *might* find winemaking as interesting
as brewing, but maybe not. cider sounds interesting, or
distilling...
lee
--
Last night while sitting in my chair
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.