I lost my password so that’s part of the reason I hadn’t been updating it. To make matters worse, the spam filter was eating all of the github password resets, so I had to dig through my settings to find the missing emails. But I got my access and reset my github to new more secure password and made sure it’s in my keyring.
![Untitled [Expires June 24 2024]](https://andyarthur.org//data/photo_014137_large.jpg)
Eastward in Canyon
5 Things I Learned the Hard Way While Raising Pigs – Modern Farmer
My farm vet dissuaded me from purchasing a boar to start my herd by sharing horror stories about their razor sharp tusks and unpredictable nature. He said he’d personally rescued a guy from being trampled to death by an angry boar. So I decided to start with a sow. A pregnant sow. Ms. Piggie, as I named her, was a chocolate brown duroc-Yorkshire mix, with a mane of black hair running down her back. She was beautiful, all 350 pounds of her. This may sound strange, but I think pigs have the most human-like face of any animal – if you discount the snout and focus on the eyes, you’ll see what I mean. Ms. Piggie had these incredible eyelashes, just like Jim Henson’s muppet. The economics sounded promising: Pigs average about 10 babies per litter, so for the price of a few weaners I would end up with 10 pigs, plus a mama that I could breed again the next year, and the next, and the next. As with my goats, I would just rent a boar when the time came. That day never arrived, however, as my time as a pig farmer lasted just one stressful year. Here’s a few of the lessons I learned along the way.
Percent of Town Population Living in Blocks with a Density of Less then 100 People Per Square Mile
A while back I was reading a book that was discussing rural populations. The book notes that there are many counties, especially out west, where it appears the county is most rural by a simple county population density calculation, but most of people actually live in a densely populated city or village - and the rest of land is state or federal forest preserve.
The author suggested a different methodology - calculating the percentage of census blocks with a population density less then 100 people per square mile, and then calculating the percentage of populated census blocks within the county that fit that criteria. I did a county map of this some time ago in New York, he it is with individual municipalities.
The towns have no blocks with a density of over 100 people per square mile:
- West Almond town, Allegany County
- Cattaraugus Reservation, Chautauqua County
- Clare town, St. Lawrence County
- DePeyster town, St. Lawrence County
You can find the code for generating this on my Github: Percent of Town Population Living in Blocks with a Density of Less then 100 per sq-mi.R
