The tangy smell of manure reminds me of home 💩

Or something like that said the dairy farmer page I follow said. Silage and cow shit. I’m continuing to read Mark Kopecky’s Managing Manure, learning more about the micro and macro-nutrients in manure, testing, storing and spreading shit. It’s actually quite interesting, despite all the books I’ve read about livestock, farming and homesteading over the years as I’ve never read a full book on manure, as I chew down my breakfast.

Starting at 4:50 AM this morning I was up, putting the beans on the stove and bread and acorn squash in the oven. 🍞 Just basic whole-wheat, water, and yeast bread, the beans are the 15-bean soup mix, so that’s a bit processed though I the nutritional facts don’t seem to contain anything too alarming. I added the remaining pinto beans I had in another bag, to extend them. 🫘 Had some of the bread this morning dipped in the balsmatic vinger and it was pretty darn good, along with an omelet, 🍳 first fried up then covered with veggies I ground up in the food processor and then made crisp in the oven by using the broiler. Good stuff, especially as it’s kind of a cold morning and I refuse to turn my heat until the nights are well below freezing and the days aren’t much warmer. It’s not like heat is particularly effective or cost-efficent with my apartment becoming so drafty and diaploated. I find it hard to believe it’s been 18 years here, and the maintaince the landlord has done over the years has been pretty minimal. 👷

I’ve also been listening to Peter Wolhileben’s  The Secret Life of Nature 🐸 about the interconnections of natural systems and ecology between species, and before I finished that book, I stumbled upon Kim Phillips-Fein’s Fear City, about the New York City Fiscal Crisis of the 1970s. I find modern history to be quite fascinating, especially when it’s close to home and helps explain why things are the way they are. Why is tution no longer free at CUNY and SUNY? Well, the fiscal crisis is a big part of the story. 📚 There are just so many interesting e-books and audio-books that I can read and listen to from the library. I also find myself reading the NY Times each morning and sometimes the Times Union now that the library provides them for free over the internet. Not that the Times Union is worth the paper it’s printed on – it’s mostly a paper of crime portrayed as pornography and random liberal whines about how bad the Trump administration. 🗞️ Trump is bad on many levels, but the liberals are so obnoxious. I read about all the new gun control laws and I get so angry. Or look at Google Maps and see all those  rural homes and farms with burn barrels in Pennsylvania and nobody really gives a damn out in country. 🔫 🛢️ Truth is the liberals want to close to all off the woods, declare all public lands wilderness and ban all public use except for gawking at it out of the windows from SUVs on expressway. 🌲 You mean you shoot deer 🦌 and fish  🐠 and have fires 🔥 up in wilderness, you awful people.

It looks like the neighbor had their junked car hauled off 🚙 after crashing into the tree and their fire place. Already got a loaner car as their car is rebuilt. That lady was quite elderly, she probably put into the wrong gear, and hit gas when she meant to hit the gas. Still it’s kind of sad that most people are so dependent on motoring everywhere even when they really shouldn’t be due to declining vision and health.