[Phil]

I went undiagnosed for 30 years. Lyme has stolen the best years of my life. 🙁

[Phil]

if it aint broke don’t fix it 🙂

Ha ha, I normally agree with that, but the internet is a whole different animal.

[Phil]

I have a Pioneer Maid and I love it. It is airtight and has a firebox as big as a regular wood stove. It is heating the house as I type.

[Phil]

We don’t offer store milk to guests, but do “warn” them that our milk and cream is raw. Just about everyone is fine with it, which sort of surprises me. Sometimes somebody asks if there is a risk, but they generally dive in when they gauge my own unqualified belief in the safety and benefits of real milk.

[Phil]

dlskidmore;20954 wrote:

I could be convinced to convert to raw milk if I owned the cow/sheep in question, but as soon as you start pooling milk from multiple cows, it seems to me that the risk of less favorable microbes inhabiting the milk would go way up. One bad pail of milk contaminates the batch. I think this is a good deal of why big milk companies have to pasteurize and always will, they not only have to be confident of the biological security of their own herd and quarantine practices, they have to trust every single contributing farmer’s biological security and QT practices.

I guess it depends where you live. Farmers selling raw milk do pool the milk from their own cows, but I’m unaware of any raw milk that is pooled between farms. In my state (CT) raw milk sales are legal, and the farmer needs to be certified and inspected just like any other dairy, only the standards are even higher. So the bottom line is that the milk is tested regularly and often.

But raw milk is not just a petri dish waiting to be inoculated, the good bugs in it provide a protective element against contamination. Pasteurized milk is dead and can be easily contaminated.

[Phil]

Just my 2 cents on raw milk and lactose intolerance, I thought for most of my life that I was lactose intolerant, but now that I drink only raw milk I have no milk issues whatsoever.

[Phil]

I’m betting that the majority of the reported raw milk illnesses weren’t caused by raw milk at all. There’s a tendency to point the finger at raw milk as the culprit just because there’s a bottle of it in the refrigerator.

[Phil]

On poorish ground I wouldn’t expect much further growth and would cut if you have the weather. Well fed soil might be different, but I have no real experience with that sort of ground sad to say. 🙁

I’ve never worried about regrowth before cold weather (CT), I haven’t seen any bad results from cutting even in December. The exception may be alfalfa. As soon as it gets really cold top growth will die anyways, either way it will have to grow anew from root reserves only in the Spring. In theory it might even be better to cut late with no regrowth, because scanty regrowth won’t really be producing enough photosynthesis to build root reserves and will only be depleting them. Just my theory. 🙂

[Phil]

A lot of homesteaders and others are prepping sort of without really thinking about it, it’s a way of life. To me the best preparedness is to implement self sustaining habits into one’s life right now, using things from the current system with the knowledge that they might not always be available.

There are lots of scenarios from mild to cataclysmic, I don’t care to spend much time speculating. I try to always work towards being able to live a good life without electricity or fossil fuel, with lots of local collaboration and a positive attitude. The irony is that with increased self reliance I seem to become happier and feel more secure. Ease and self indulgence is like a drug, but it is highly overrated IMO.

But there are still many things to improve. To me, a real achilles heel is that not enough people are saving seeds to make a fairly quick shift to all local food production.

[Phil]

But what kind? Definitely not Black.

[Phil]

At this point I’m leaning towards Mulberry myself. 🙂

[Phil]

I’ve got a couple old Case VAC’s

[Phil]

That is a shame, but privacy is always an issue on the internet. I have simply decided that I will conduct my internet activities as I would conduct myself in a public place. If I don’t want the whole world knowing something, I don’t say it.

Privacy on the net also sometimes gets worried about a little too much IMO. People are horrified to see that if they Google their phone number, their name and address comes up. They don’t take into account that that info was already in a public phone book. Most things that can be known about someone on the net can be known by digging offline, it’s mainly that the internet is easier and faster.

[Phil]

If you get a PM with links, don’t click on them.

[Phil]

I think new member DennieeAdamz is a spammer.

[Author]

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