Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

....
IF baser human instincts like greed can be reined in. Our
greatest threat is from our selves.

seems like it. and not just at the obvious violent
level, but also at the social organizational level.
if the society gets too saturated with people and
those needs are so great that we never have anything
extra to put into space exploration then we are as
sunk as we'd be if we'd just nuked ourselves or
poisoned ourselves.

You're making me nervous here. Do you mean that the cost of human
services would limit R & D, or do you mean the continued financial
predation of the many by the few would limit R & D?

the cost of human services is already a limit
on R&D and will continue to be one.

the other social disparity is a different
beast entirely and i'm not going to get into
that topic...


....
There has been less discretionary money for a long time. Even after
spending Billion$ to build the International Space Station, it is now
scheduled to be allowed to re-enter the atmosphere, and burn up.

which is stupidity magnified, but no big surprise
given both Skylab and Hubble experiences. that is
why we need an actual colony on the moon or a large
enough asteroid going, why keep wasting resources
on projects that are just going to destroy themselves
as their orbits decay?


Cutting social services wouldn't be my first choice.

nor mine either, but if we reduce population gradually,
restore the environment so that the people that remain
are well fed and have a clean and decent home and that
their children will have likewise, then we have room
for eventually getting out of this gravity well.

among the other alternatives is that the corporation
will take over (private or public, non-profit or for-
profit won't make much difference to me as long as it
gets us into space and heading to other planets, stars,
etc. in some form of viability).

you may say that the price would not be worth it if
you are selling your soul or being a slave, but i'm
quite sure that many people currently living on this
planet see life as quite limited and would be glad to
sign on. 100,000+ want to go to Mars even if it is
a one way trip (that's a lot of labor potential and
that may be what it takes to get a viable colony
started well enough that it could take more people
later).


that is why i'm a big fan of population control
at some point going even lower in population than
the carrying capacity of the planet (along with me
wanting wild spaces to still exist). it gives a
buffer for using some resources to explore beyond
the planet surface, but also having a lower population
also gives us more room for errors in judging what
the planet can actually support.

As with crime, there seems to be a proportional relationship between
poverty, and over population. Affluent, countries are seeing their birth
rates drop. On the other hand, regions that depend on subsistence
farming have high birth rates. Making peoples lives better, makes them
less dependent on their children, and they have fewer of them.

yes, seems to be happening, but no guarantee
that it will continue. some changes or a war or some
other event and all that could shift into higher
gear again.


By all means, let humanity return to 30 to 300 million more highly
nurtured people, but we are all going to have to survive a peak of at
least 9 billion, living underneath a more menacing sky, astroids are
gratuitous.

i don't think we have any existing government
that can really survive with a declining population
of that magnitude.

i would think that it almost impossible to get
back to 30 million because the wild lands already
in existance likely hold many more times than that
population.

also i think for the longer term it won't be
a lower overall population because as we get
established in space and on other planets then
the population starts expanding again (hopefully
with more forethought and control and better
policies about land use and wild-spaces).


Ever see that experiment where they
put a couple of rats in a large cage, and then let nature take its
course? Over population drove the rats crazy. Some went catatonic. Some
chewed on themselves, and most just became aggressive.

i've read different versions of the experiment
and never actually desired to see it happen.
again, population control, self-control is a
requirement for long-term survival. we're not
going to make it if we do not exercise some
sort of discipline with regards to population
and consumption of non-renewable resources.

We could do the opposite of what they do in France, and give tax breaks
to those who don't have children, and maybe for reduced consumption. Use
less, pay less. Maybe "durability", or "easily repaired" could replace
planned obsolescence.

i'm all in favor of taxes which discourage
non-recyclable or resource depleting or
polluting... but that's a whole different
conversation too.


some sciences can improve what is and isn't
a renewable resource, so i do have some amount
of optimism there (along with digging up and
recycling old dump-sites for metals, glass,
plastics, ...).


Ice Age canceling Dante's Inferno? Let's look at the science.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...culation-may-h
ave-released-co2-at-end-of-ice-ages
At the end of each ice age, the ocean exhales carbon dioxide. Scientists
believe this explains the difference in atmospheric CO2 concentrations
between

ice ages, which have lower concentrations of carbon dioxide, and

warmer, more CO2-saturated periods like the one we're living in now.

an ice age is going to be pretty CO2 limited,
so yes, the oceans will be a source of CO2
replenishment. take away most of the living
ecosystem and a lot of CO2 emissions are
going to disappear too.

Replenishment??? Our problem now is getting rid of CO2, not replenishing
it. As the oceans absorb more and more CO2, they are getting more and
more acidic. Take away phytoplankton, and we are in real trouble.

i've recently gone into the writings of Margulis
and Lovelock (about Gaia). Margulis's book on
the Microcomos was interesting if a repeat of many
things i've already read in other places. so it
was far enough back, but i would have liked to have
had more time and energy to write down more notes
of things to look into more.

Lovelock's Gaia is much more interesting from
the atmospheric chemistry perspective, but i
still have a pile of books to read by him so
we'll see how the story changes.

one thing that surprised me was the claim that
without life that Nitrogen gas would end up
turned into a nitrogen compound said to be more
stable than the gas, but surprising to me as i
figured the reason we had so much Nitrogen
gas in the atmosphere to begin with was because
it was more stable than any other version.

but as i said, we're still in the early stages
of this bout of reading...

ok, back to ice-ages and CO2. the sub-topic
was that the oceans would be a sink of CO2 and
a source of replenishment, and i was agreeing
with you that they would be a source of
replenishment.

to help offset an on-coming ice-age

[which takes
much less than i imagined as Lovelock claims a
reduction in just 2% of sunlight would do it, but
at the same time he claims the percentage of
energy given off by the sun has increased some
30+% since the earth formed -- hmmmm...]

the existing CO2 overload in the oceans would
finally have a chance of gradually reducing (as
the oceans cooled they can store more gas) both
the level and the acidity. also the cooler
temperature shrinks the volume too. lower water
levels in time.


the colder water temperatures will put more
gasses in solution, though i think the real
impetus for the ocean giving off more CO2
would be the return of sunlight on the water
so that more algae will grow, that and the
added warmth, the big breathing out...

Water adsorbs more CO2 as it gets colder. I'm losing your thread. What?
Warmer water evaporates more water vapor, which is also a greenhouse gas.

it is only a greenhouse gas if the water
vapor does not contribute to cloud formation
(higher planetary albedo) and likely some
other things too which we don't really
understand as of yet.


does all of that ice cause more earth-quakes
and volcanoes in the end? with the poles
getting all of that ice, it might be that the
earth does get more active and in some manner
that helps reverse things again in time.

More water vapor in the atmosphere means more and nastier storms as that
water vapor turns to rain, it releases heat. More warm air rising means
faster air speeds. All in all, a really bad deal for everyone.

which doesn't say anything about my point
about the effect that the weight of more ice
might have on the crust and an increase in
volcanism.

yes, warmer temperatures increase evaporation
and the energy available to forming larger
storms. do those larger storms start causing
so much damage that they start killing off
enough people, plants, animals, destroying
wetlands, farm fields, forests, etc. that it
starts showing up in how much CO2 is being
emitted? maybe. maybe not.


-----

I'm sure you know that even if we stop burning fossil fuel now, it will
take some hundreds of years, with present technology, to return to 390
ppm CO2.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/...tinue-to-rise-
even-if-we-cut-emissions/

for some period of time, then it levels off
and then it declines (if we've managed to go
back to where glaciers recover, snows and ice
cover at the poles increase again).

[i'm offline when i read-write most of these
notes, so it doesn't do me any good to include
links to articles that i have to guess their
meaning from the title in the link]


i don't really know, it depends upon how many
plants we can get going like trees which can soak
up tons of carbon, if we can get many areas of
the planet reforested that may soak up more CO2
than expected. already there is some slight
evidence appearing that plants are already
increasing their absorption of carbon... if we
can stop over-grazing and get areas reforested
and replanted then we can use good land management
to soak up several tons of CO2 per acre per year.
just that we have to stop adding so much more.

I hope those trees are being planted quickly.

it doesn't take long for trees to cover an
area if it gets above a certain temperature and
there is enough water.

around here any area left bare for 10-30 years
will be covered by tons of new growth, trees,
shrubs, etc. i have to weed, cut them down on
a regular basis.

poplar trees go to 40ft in 7 years and they
blow seeds around for miles. the white pine
will hit 40ft in about twice that time and
spreads seeds more slowly, but the CO2 tied
up is in a much more durable form (poplar
rots rather quickly even as it grows).


India to Eclipse China as World's Coal Power
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...china-as-world
-s-coal-power-buoying-bhp.html

Everybody wants to be 1st World.

and the first world is now changing and
improving in various ways. those new coal
burning plants are not going to be as horrible
as the old versions were. maybe they'll
include plans for carbon sequestration? i
dunno. i do know that the world will continue
to exert pressure on CO2 polluters. nobody
will be immune.

if the situation gets bad enough individual
citizens might even start going commando to
disrupt the polluters. it has happened before
and may happen in the future.

in the meantime, buy land, plant forests,
that at least is the most certain way of tying
up CO2.


-----

A comet collision, a MASSIVE volcanic eruption, or a nuclear war could
throw enough particulate matter high enough into the atmosphere to block
the sun, perhaps for decades, and give us an ice age, and there would
also be human suffering on an unimaginable scale.

true.


What do you see as triggering this joyous convergence of Ice Age/Inferno?

a freaking huge amount of luck.

You're a candidate for a little town with a replica of the Eifel Tower
in the Nevada desert. What you bring to Lost Wages, usually stays in
Lost Wages.

the trend is continuing (a declining demand
of 1% per year) in water use for the SW even
including all the growth and that is without
dealing with the largest user of the water
(agriculture) in a high-priority manner. if
instead they put a lot more resources into
turning those current farmers into more water
efficient users (drip irrigation, recycling
water, dry farming, etc.) that water diversion
needed could be reduced by quite a large
amount.

i don't see either California or Nevada
going without water from the Colorado River
completely, but if you can reduce the draw
down enough then you can then restore something
of a natural flow once in a while. any returned
flow turns the river delta back into a productive
wetland again and you've also regained a CO2 sink
and fresh water source for thousands of square
miles... starts to recharge aquifers. gets
plants and life going again.


Seems that's where you'd be going after saying that perhaps global
warming will be good for something. I doubt that it will be good for the
starving, homeless refugees.

if an ice-age started in the next 30 years?
if the one offset the other?

perhaps there will not be the disruption and
refugees?

if we get hit by the cosmic/comet lotto the
whole exercise may become rather moot.

Yes, with a bang or a whimper, in fire or in ice, we all die, some,
damned, inconvenient day.

You may get hit in the cross walk. There are no guarantees, the best you
can do is to minimize risk, which we aren't doing.

i know, that's what irks me, that while the
individual citizen can act faster than the
government to reduce their carbon footprint
we still can't seem to get through to the
policy makers and destroyers that yes indeed we
do want a change large enough to stop the
damage from continuing. i don't see big-oil,
or now, big-gas going away without a fight, so
really we have to put energy into doing things
that will actually soak up CO2 no matter what
else happens. to me that is replanting trees
and putting more carbon in the soil in any
way i can.

It appears that fossil fuel producers are trying to segway to clean
energy, but making maximum profits in the mean time. Fossil fuel makes a
good profit, if you don't count the clean up. and they don't.

they're starting to get the bill. that
will only increase as CO2 goes up and people
start seeing the damage.


In any
event, my efforts are like a tinkers dam in compared to Noah's flood.
Perennial crops make a lot of sense though.

every little bit helps, every person can make
a difference.

perennial crops would make a huge difference
if they could be used in arid areas. just to
not have to leave bare dirt for any period of
time is a huge difference to the quality of the
soil.


On a daily basis, the best I can do for the world is to keep a few
hundred sq. ft. of soil alive, buy organic, buy locally,

ever look for a CSA?

Sure, we have them everywhere, plus several farmers markets. Local, and
foreign produce is marked in local stores.

the farms around here are larger and
monocultures of corn or soybeans most of
the time. other than working with one
neighbor in trading a few items we don't
have CSA options close enough.


Right now, apples from Chile
taste better than last years local harvest does right now.

i can get all the apples i could process for
free this season. i have no free time or energy
to do it. i think Ma is in a similar boat as
we still have about half the tomatoes to pick and
process and i have other things to do too.


and try to find
a politician who isn't a corporation whore to vote for.

i'm sure there are some, but it's not just corporate
whores that are blocking things but others with views
about "the end-times" or "god's plan". somehow we have
to be able to work around such obstructionists or
delusionists.

But it is the corporate whores who feed the craziness for their own ends.
http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-b...kids-caught-br
ainwashing-children/
http://www.businessweek.com/investin...ves/2007/05/ex
xons_climate.html
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heartland_Institute

in all cases those companies have people who
work for them who are not whores or environmentally
ignorant. in time their voices are making a
difference. in the global scale of things given
enough time most people will come around and make
the changes needed.

in the meantime what do you do with Monsanto
employees? are they all evil?


....
Petitions are are near
worthless. If you're not out in the street making a nuisance of
yourself, nothing will happen. Beat those pots, and block those
intersections.

a pledge is worth something if you actually make
a change.

the folks in Boston have made a lot of changes so
it can be done. if folks out west can do similarly
then the water needed can be reduced enough to restore
a flow to the Colorado River Delta, some flow is better
than none (as a few rainy seasons did show).

Southern California is desert and semi-desert, and has 2 major
metropolitan areas, as well as extensive agriculture (lettuce, tomatoes,
dates). I don't see wasting water on golf courses, and swimming pools.
Water rationing really should be imposed. A standard allotment, and then
very high prices for any excess consumption.

yes, it's long past time when rationing and
taxes should reflect the actual lack of water
out there.


You want to kill Arizona's golf courses? TERRORIST!
It's a job killer.

if the golf courses were supplied with recycled
water and if they didn't use *cides i wouldn't say
much about them. better yet, if they were mowed
with sheep and green energy lawn mowers, then my
opposition goes down even further. i'm no big fan
of dead spaces and wasted water or energy, but in
contrast that green space may be less negative
impact on an area than leaving it as pavement,
parking lot or bare roof tops. if we could take
advantage of that green space (in the roughs and
the other edges) to provide habitat for bees and
other wildlife then we might actually gain some
level beyond what is liable to happen in an
otherwise arid region. take it up another notch
to using the space as a provider of green manure,
fodder, fruits, veggies and open to the poor for
free then you've got a bit more of my support.

Do you know what the temp is today in Phoenix? 107F. What grows well in
100F+ heat, bird? You gonna give the sheep T-shirts and caps to wear?

they'll be much thinner sheep without as much
fur perhaps. i dunno. yet, i bet it is cooler
on those green spaces than it is on the cement,
parking lots and rooftops.

one of the needed things for permaculture is a
tree that does survive such temperatures to give
shade and protection from dessicating winds and
there are trees that can survive those conditions.
it's not hopeless.

This is also a very fragile ecosystem that only needs one ATV, or dune
buggy to mess it all up. It would also be a good location for a solar
farm.

i'm talking about an area already covered by
trees or growth, like a golf course. dune buggy
or ATVs are not going to be a frequent happening.


Certain areas of southern California do a good business with date palams.

within some level of density they may even be
water neutral, but i think it unlikely any
producer is planting that sparsely. at least
Southern CA does get some rain here or there.
it's not quite as bad as it could be.


An area called Fountain Valley is found in the middle of the old Santa
Ana River bed. It's called Fountain Valley, because way back when there
were artesian wells. By the time the farmers got done exploiting it,
their pumps could barely reach the water that was left.

are they doing anything to restore the
aquifer?


The area also sucks up fossil-fuel-made electricity for AC. There are
better uses for Colorado River water, and Global Warming coal fires. Use
the resources sensibly and return Phoenix to the "snow birds".

yes, AC could be reduced quite a bit if people would
go underground or use geothermal cooling/heating and
other passive cooling techniques, even if it only shaves
off a little of the demand, every little bit can make
a difference. both solar and wind are coming along
and making a difference too.


the bad news:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...rado-river-dro
ugh
t-lake-powell-mead-water-scarcity/

Freshwater sources around the world have been used at rates faster than
they can replenish themselves. Pipelines for freshwater from Canada or
Greenland make more sense than KeystoneXL.

i'm pretty sure that those won't happen either
as Canada will likely need all the water it can
come up with too. wouldn't make any sense to
dry out the tundra and to turn that into yet
another desert if we drain too much water away.
instead we should be happy to have it return to
forested land.


and some good news:

http://environment.nationalgeographi...water/l/lesson
s-f
rom-the-field-rainwater-harvesting-in-hiware-bazaar--india/

Rationing may make sense to you or me, but Capitalism wants to turn
water into a commodity, i.e. you get what you can afford. Can't afford
it it? Tough!

Watch the Guardians of Privilege come out to fight this.

how will they fight an actual working villiage
and system? i think it is a great example of
what needs to be done on a much larger scale.
like the Oglalla Aquifer water pumping should
be limited in areas where the rainfall has not
met replenishment rates.

Say, "hello" to dry farming.

i think this village is long past the dry
farming and in much better shape. they are
farming based upon water levels in wells and
rainfall amounts. dry farming is something
quite different. these folks get rain enough
most of the time for two or more crops. dry
farming often counts crops in alternate years
a success.


as for me, not sure yet, the worms and other
soil critters get to digest me, beyond that i'm
not decided yet because a lot depends upon if i
stay here or move someplace else. the older i
get the more likely i'm not going to have the
energy to start all over again from scratch, but
that is what i would really like to do.

I'll probably be moving soon too. I hate to leave this hill, but we're
getting too old to live on a slope. Living on the flat makes so many
things easier.

i hope you can find a good place to be.

We won't go far. We can go to the boonies, if need be. Back roads aren't
as bad as the freeways around here.

still will be a challenge to find a good
site at a decent price.

A good site at a decent price? What a concept! This is California, the
home of the $250,000 fixer-upper. We'll settle for "no common wall".

we sure don't have that problem around here.
250K would get you a nice house and acreage.
farm land is still expensive though *sigh*.
the house down the road is for sale, 1.84
acres...


....
When you consider how much we (Homidea) have changed in the last 2
million years, if we are still around when the Sun goes "red giant" I'd
be surprised if we recognized our descendants.

my guess is we'll have split into thousands of
new variants by then. some recognisable and others
not.

Mammals didn't really get going until after the Chicxulub event, some 66
million years ago.

yep. we're short-timers compared to many
other species.


Look how much mammals have changed to take advantage
of the empty niches that the dinosaurs left.

yes, that's what i mean, but instead of undirected
changes brought about by chance mutations and rather
random forces of selection it might be even more quick
of a change once we understand what is needed, what is
acceptable and desired, etc.

You seem to expect a rational approach to evolution, bird. If we were
rational we would have hung our politicians, and their patron by now.

we are their patrons. the only reason they
persist is because the problem is always someone
elses official...


No, it's going to be a market driven GM-evolution, if it happens. First,
most people will choose to have a son. The choices on the price list
will make Johnny big, strong, smart, and light skinned. Blond and blue
eyed will be popular in some circles as well. Problem is that big
requires more food. Strong in a world that requires less physical labor?
Making Johnny smart is tempting autism. Light skin is OK, if you don't
live in the tropics. Blond and blue eyed may help Johnny get a job, but
will have drawbacks again for those that live in the tropics.

I suspect, bird, that you were thinking more along the lines of genetic
modifications that would allow the species Homo sapiens to live in the
oceans of Europa.

or just tougher or smaller to survive space
colony efforts. perhaps more flexible spines
or double jointed to get through twisty
passages. dunno exactly. just that it becomes
possible and directed once we know more.


Some will want that, but most of us will choose to reduce our diversity
in favor of making a profit in the next quarter, i.e. soon.

if profit is what gets you fed and you
have no land then that's what has to happen.


And then the next Chicxulub event will happen with all its attendant
horrors. I doubt that all of humanity will be lost, but more would have
survived with greater biodiversity. IMHO.

more will survive if we have colonies on other
planets and in asteroids and the moon and off on
trips to surrounding solar systems.

though i sure hope we will get more detection
scopes in space to find them long before they can
hit us. we certainly have the technology to get
detection in space. we probably also have the
technology to deflect well enough if we can detect
it in time. we could even turn a near miss into a
new satelite or colony. taking a lemon and turning
it into a diamond... that would be sweet.


....
always a good idea to let someone else go
first. "yeah, you eat all those GMOs you
want and i'll try to avoid them and keep an
eye peeled for toxic effects in you and your
children."

Too much enthusiasm. I would never recommend for someone to be a guinea
pig. If there is a problem, I trust the government that as been
encouraging us to spend our money to be the test animals for GMO feeding
studies, will step in and offer assistance to those who took their
advice.

well i'm in favor of a free society to some large
extent. so if they could raise GMOs to be non-contaminating
to other plants and people wanted to eat them when
clearly labelled then i'm ok with that. the stumbling
block i have is that the GMOs are not contained and
we have no choice about eating them if we eat food that
isn't produced by us.

You noticed that too, hmmmmm?

a good reasong to grow as much of our own as
possible...


... - i snipped some

Whaaaaaaat? You didn't like my idea of transferring "consciousness" to a
chip (solid state drive) in a mechanical, inorganic, ageless being?

Humph!

i ran out of gas, what can i say?


....of gardens and other stuff...
Work starts in about 2 weeks, and I'm hustling to finish up my
projects.

What a Pollyanna I am. Work starts Tue. at 9AM. So many projects still
to finish. I hope they have the AC cranked up.

get your pipettes ready!

They were calibrated 2 weeks ago. We start of with juice samples, which
is pretty basic, pH, Total Acidty (TA), sugar (by refractometer), and
the accursed potassium. Fun starts when we have wine, AND juice samples.
This is the nobody leaves until all the work is done stage. When
fermentation is over, it quickly becomes "no overtime".

why "accursed" potassium? i mean why do you call
it accursed? difficult to measure or just trouble
when it is too high in the juice and not easy to
remove?

No, not hard, just time consuming. It is usually the last measurement of
the day. So far it has gone smoothly, but when the probe starts to load
up, as it will, the results aren't stable, and they need to be run (and
re-run) until there is less than a 2% error.

ah, ok.


don't freak out! deep breaths, in, out, slowly,
there ya go...

In this heat, it is more like panting ;O) The peppers are loving it
though.

yes, the peppers are coming along well here too.

finally was able to pick about 10lbs of tomatoes
today. some BER in the smaller romas that were
developing about a month ago in that heat wave we
had. this round of heat there is much more cover
and mulch to help.

Most of our tomatoes are still holding back, but we are close.

we have picked another 10-15 lbs and more are
turning orange.

Not bad for your slow start this year.

it's picked up since then. i estimated our
first large picking (right before 3+ inches of
rain) at 130lbs, but it was more than that
because we're at 50+ qts and it takes 3-4 lbs
per qt and still have another 10 qts to go
(salsa).

the sucky aspect is that i've managed to pick
up some crud and my lungs aren't happy. with
the high temperature and humidity this week i've
been mostly stuck inside other than a few bouts
of picking weeds, cucumbers here or there snagging
a few cherry tomatoes and checking the cabbages.

i think "stir crazy" is the phrase. tomorrow is
supposed to be cooler and i hope to get out and
chop some poison sumac back. it's gotta be done
and if it is too much i can stop at any point
and it doesn't matter if i cough pieces of lung
on it (whereas there might be some problem if i
do that canning salsa ). as of yet, i've
stayed away from the canning other than doing the
very first batch (last Tuesday).


....
"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget
ourselves."
- Mahatma Gandhi

To be fair, he did say "dig".

i can dig it.

Mahatma dug it.

i've yet to read a biography of him.

Tagore was an interesting character too.
i didn't know until the other day that
there exists an organisation of his
followers still going (with aims of
global governmental unity or destruction
i'm not sure yet as i have to read up
on them now)...

Thanks, he had eluded me until now.

yw. i haven't found the organisation as of
yet, but i did read a bit about the school he
founded with his Nobel Prize money.


no-till wasn't popular then. there's a bit in
_Seven Years in Tibet_ which we enjoyed when they
were building the movie theatre and the people
digging would not dig any more until they found a
way to rescue each worm uncovered.

Oh, were the Jainists putting them on again? What a sense of humor.
Maybe they should have hired Confucianists.

just a movie, but amusing anyways as it happened
we first watched it when i was starting with the
small scale worm farm.

Probably won't be back 'till the week-end.

Last year we waited about a month before the harvest started. This year
the harvest started while the winery was still bottling (not good). If
the weather holds, it should be an orderly harvest. If we get heat,
everything will ripen at once, and we will be overwhelmed. If it rains,
mold will sweep the vineyards.

amazing at how much depends upon the weather.
good luck.


Try not to get into trouble without me.

i'll save a seat on the bench here.

Good, I don't want to miss anything.

me either. Ma made cinamon rolls. she's
so good to me...


World Domination Through Vinification.

vini, vini, vini!


songbird