October 21st, 2023 Issue
The Necessity Of Humus / The Necessity Of Humility / Harvesting The Cold- An Ice House / Foraging White Pine Needles / Float Fishing Lesson #2- Center Of Gravity / Fly Tying Lesson #2- Tools
The Necessity Of Humus
I had someone years ago that came to my farm, for one of my seminars. After I was done speaking he came to me and asked if I would be willing to help him start a garden on his property. I told him I would be happy too. He went on to explain though that there was one big problem, he lived on the shore of Lake Michigan and all his property was basically beach sand. Yes this certainly created a challenge for sure, but not an obstacle that was insurmountable. In fact it makes for a great lesson on building soil.
What would happen if you took a beautiful healthy tomato seedling and planted it in just pure beach sand? After a while it would become stunted and its color would turn yellow. It would attempt to set one fruit, with what little energy it had, and it would die. We realize that pure beach sand is not a proper growing medium to nurture a tomato plant in.
What if we had an expensive soil test done, and figured out exactly all the minerals we needed, and we carefully mixed up just the right blend. Would that help the situation and improve the growth of the tomato in the pure sand? I’m afraid not much.
In fact a friend of mine, that is Amish, is a farming consultant. He told me a fascinating story of something that actually happened to him. One day he received a call from someone that was very upset. The man that was calling explained that the previous season he had spent $10,000 for a very fancy GPS system for his tractor. That system was designed to map out coordinates and take special soil tests. This man had read how important it was to get the proper balance of minerals, so he spent a bunch of money to figure it out and apply the minerals. The problem was, the next season he didn’t see that much improvement in his crops. He was angry and wanted to know why. My friend agreed to go to his farm and try to assess the situation. When my friend entered his field he knew immediately what the problem was. The soil was dead. The farmer had been poisoning it for so long, with so many different agrochemicals, there was practically no life left in it.
So why was life the limiting factor? Because God designed plants to live in a symbiotic relationships with microbes. It’s that simple. There are many minerals and other important compounds that plants cannot create or assimilate on their own.
So what would happen with our beach sand if we decided instead to just not worry about the minerals, but instead just get as many kinds of life as we could and put them in the sand. Well the mushroom spores would go dormant. The worms would wiggle away. And much of the bacteria would go dormant or parish. Why? Because life necessitates being fed. As an example, if you brought a cow home to your homestead, and put it in a fenced in area that was pure beach sand, and only supplied it with water. What would happen? It would die or bust through the fence to go somewhere else.
Are you prepared to start to see the biology that is on your homestead as another form of livestock? If you can begin to see how important this life is, that I talked about in the first newsletter, you are on your way to a garden that is full of abundance.
So minerals by themselves didn’t work. Biology by itself didn’t work. Would it work to put the minerals and biology together? Nope. The livestock are still without the food they need. So we can now deduce that food is the limiting factor to taking beach sand and creating a garden. So unless you become extremely savvy and knowledgeable about what the best foods are, you’re not going to proceed towards the abundant harvests you’re desiring. Now I am going to save the lessons on the best foods for another day. I need to make one more really important point yet in this post.
Whatever kinds of food you decide to give your soil livestock, whether it is a cover crop or a special kind of wood chips. What I want you to understand today, is that when they eat that food, the byproduct that remains is called humus. Humus is the beautiful rich substance that is the result of good decomposition in the soil. It gives the soil its rich color and wonderful smell. But God designed humus to be incredibly important for many reasons. Humus has the ability to hold on to minerals. There are negative and positive bonding points on high quality humus. This is what keeps your fertility from washing away with a big rain. Those bonding points grab and hold on to the minerals until the plants or biology need them for growth. Humus also has the ability to store huge amounts of water. Humus is the limiting factor to creating a fertile soil that has what the plants and microbiology need.
Now this article has laid the groundwork for you to learn how to build soil. It has also primed the pump for a very important spiritual lesson as well.
The Necessity Of Humility
In the Quilt Garden lesson, at the beginning of this newsletter. We looked at how minerals and life were both necessary to build a rich garden soil. But both of them together are not enough. For the spiritual illustration I am about to give you, I want you to see minerals as Bible doctrines, and the life, as God’s Spirit.
The beach sand, is an empty unregenerate heart, of an unbeliever. Giving that heart nothing more than Bible doctrines, will not save them, or give them the abundant life they were created for.
Do you remember how taking the life and putting it in the sand didn’t result in an abundant soil either? Getting someone to say the sinners prayer is not enough. God’s Spirit taking up residence in your heart is only beneficial if you know how to feed it. If you want to invite God in, but go on living your life the way you always have, you’re not going to experience the abundant life you were created for.
So doctrine and Life is not enough. The Spirit of God desires to be fed. So how do you feed your Spiritual Life? Through true repentance. Just like feeding the biology in the soil results in humus being created. Feeding God’s Spirit will result in humility being created in the soil of your heart. The larger the amount of humility you fill your heart with the greater your capacity for true abundant Spiritual Life. Something that is very Interesting is that the words humus and humility share a similar root word. When I first learned that, this illustration started to open up to me.
So what is true repentance? Repentance is not just a one time event at the beginning of your conversion. It is a daily walk with the Lord.
Luk 9:23-24 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.
So this is a daily denial of ones self, in order to follow Him. He knows how difficult it is for us, and uses “Take up his cross daily” to convey His message. In todays Christianity, understanding true repentance just at initial conversion has been lost for the most part. But the idea that we are to live a life of continual denial of oneself, in order to follow Christ daily, is almost nonexistent.
Col 2:6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
If you have been truly born again, you are someone that has had a glimpse of how God sees them, and understands the Love God has for them by giving His Son on the cross as a payment for their sins. That glimpse or revelation, either caused you to harden your heart and reject God, which is pride, or it softened your heart and you were honest with God and ask His forgiveness. When you go through this process, the result is that you receive that first application of “humus” in the soil of your heart. You have humbled yourself at the revelation of how God sees you, and you took steps to obey Him when He made clear to you what you must do.
Luk 8:11-15 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. 14 And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. 15 But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.
As a gardener this is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It would take me several newsletters to unpack so many of the important truths given here. For this discussion though I want you to pay attention to the last verse especially. The good ground in the Lords eyes are those individuals that have “an honest and good heart”. They are honest about what God shows them about themselves. This is called walking in the Light. God shines His revealing Light on our lives and if we have a good heart, that humbles itself, we will be willing to stand in that light and observe what it reveals about us. If we have an evil heart, that is filled with pride, we will step out of the light and deny what it seeks to reveal.
God is not shining His Light on you just so that He can reveal how bad you are. He has a plan and a purpose for your life that is very special. The only way you can enter into that plan, is to humble yourself. But it isn’t a one time humbling, it is a daily walk. Daily He desires to continue to shine new Light on your life. Daily you will have to deny the pride that wants to rear its ugly head and humble yourself again. Something I will commonly say to the Lord is, “Father help me too humble myself, so I will not have to be humbled by you”. You see some day every knee will bow and everyone will be forced against their will to stand in the Light for all to see. It will be a very humiliating experience for so many people. To those that are willing of their own free will to choose to humble themselves now, daily, they will have nothing to be ashamed of on that day.
But what do those individuals do that are willing to stand in the Light? “having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” They have heard a “Word”. How did they hear it? Through their conscience.
I will share something with you that recently happened to me that will help to illustrate this point. I had some visitors come to the farm. They are friends of mine. We were having a good discussion. As one of my friends was speaking I interrupted them and shared something. At the time, I don’t think anyone present thought much of it. The next morning as I was talking with the Lord about something, He spoke to me through my conscience and convicted me that it was not right that I had interrupted my friend while they were sharing their heart with me. This was the light shining on me. Then I felt convicted I need to ask their forgiveness and acknowledge to them that what I did was wrong. This was “hearing the word”. I texted the individual and ask for them to forgive me for interrupting them. This was the “keep it”. Many people will think I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. You always have to remember, this is a relationship based thing. This isn’t a blueprint for you to slave away at in your own fleshly efforts. Always wondering if you have done enough. No this is a place of rest. You have an intimate relationship with the Lord and He speaks to you daily. This is a refining process that takes time. The most important thing is that we are faithful to deal with what the Lord puts His finger on now. That is all He asks. If you are willing to be exercised by this process daily, your life will bear much fruit. The scriptures say that those that are “faithful with little, will also be faithful in much” We have to be willing to deal with the Lord in these small things faithfully to bring us to a point He can trust us with much bigger things.
Lest someone read this and think this only applies to things we have done wrong, it doesn’t. There are so many other ways the Lord will speak to us, that we are able to obey Him and in time bring forth fruit. In the next newsletter, I will be emphasizing how important the minerals or Bible doctrine is to this relationship. Just like the soil must have a broad spectrum of minerals for the life to use to nurture the plants that they are in symbiosis with. So must the Spirit of God have a broad spectrum of doctrine as well.
1Ti 4:16 Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
Luk 6:46-49 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say 47 Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: 48 He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. 49 But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.
Most of the lessons in this newsletter are being built from previous teachings, in former newsletters. If you missed a previous newsletter or your email service provider was not able to show you this email in its entirety, then this link will take you to my Substack profile where you can see all my newsletters in their entirety.
Harvesting The Cold- An Ice House
Years ago when we first moved to the area, that we established our homestead in. I was talking with an older gentleman about the different resources that were locally available. He made a statement that really caught my attention. He said to me, “there is lots of wood, water, and cold”. I was struck by his statement and asked him why he had included cold in his list. He had a friend that had been old enough to have remembered the days when ice houses were commonplace in the countryside. Today most of my Amish neighbors have them, but that is about it. He saw cold as a resource, because he realized how much electricity or other forms of energy were being used just to keep things refrigerated throughout the year. Back in the day people would harvest the ice in the winter and store it to use throughout the rest of the year. So that conversation always stuck with me.
Several years later I was visiting an Amish minister, that had come to my farm for one of my seminars. As I was at his home, he took me out to a pole barn where he had his ice house. We walked in a door and closed it behind us. Now we were standing in a walk in cooler where he had, I believe some peaches stored. The “cooler” was kept cool by having another door in that room opened slightly that led into the ice house itself. If he didn’t need the cooler for food storage he could close the ice house door and no cool air would escape. These modern Amish ice houses are made with thick high density foam. In the old days the ice was packed in sawdust to insulate it. Now with the foam walls no sawdust is needed. They are very efficient.
There is one more conversation I had with someone about ice houses that was very Interesting. Quite a few years back I spent some time with a gentleman that owned the marina on Lake Charlevoix here in Northern Michigan. He had inherited it from his father and it had been in the family for generations. In the early 1900’s, that marina had used one of its large buildings as a commercial ice house. The ice was used to pack fish in, for their journey to places like Chicago. When he received the property the ice house building had not been used for twenty years. When they went in with front end loaders to take out the huge amount of sawdust that was still piled in there. The ground was still frozen underneath and they found chunks of ice. Because the building had been used for so long to store ice all year a permafrost had developed underneath, that the big piles of sawdust had insulated all those years.
Several years ago our family decided we would get one of these Amish made, high density foam ice houses. There were quite a few new Amish families moving to our area and they were having a semi load of ice houses brought in from Wisconsin. We ordered one and it was brought in with their load.
The Amish families in our area will get together and go to a local pond, once it has frozen enough, and cut ice and bring it back to their farms. I decided to do something different. I noticed that the inside of their ice houses smelled like a pond. Which only made sense. But I didn’t want the inside of my fridge to smell like a pond though. Call me fussy, that’s ok. 😁 So I decided that I would make my own blocks out of fresh well water. I have a friend that has a business making jams and jellies. They have lots of 4 gallon buckets left over that I get from them. I take them and put water in, to within about 2” from the top. This allows the ice to expand and come up. I wait till we will have nights that will be around zero for a few days, before I attempt to make blocks.
The first few years, after they were frozen all the way through. I would bring them into my seedling greenhouse and let them warm up a bit and get the ice out of the buckets. This was the most labor Intensive part of the process. Handling the blocks many times. When the next winter would come I still had around 1/4 of my ice left that I would have to get out before putting new in. So last year I decided to put the ice in the house still in the buckets. It took a fraction of the time. Well I couldn’t fit as much in because of the buckets. What was the result? I was out of ice towards the end of September. I have spent $30 on ice at the local gas station, to use till it gets cold enough here soon that I won’t need ice. It was definitely worth it. There was way more than thirty dollars of labor saved by not taking the ice out of the buckets. So in the future if I ever purchased another ice house I would get one that was a bit bigger and I would have no problem having enough ice to last me through.
This first picture is of my buckets waiting to freeze. I have them up on wooden planks on a set of saw horses. You wouldn’t want them on the ground or the ground warmth would retard their freezing.
This is a picture of the inside of the house with my old method of blocks being stacked.
This link will take you to several videos I made about ice houses.
https://rumble.com/user/Schaafcraig?q=ice%20house
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Foraging White Pine Needles
The more I learn about wild foods, the more I am amazed that more people don’t take advantage of them more often. Today we are going to look at White Pine needles. They have an amazing amount of Vitamin C. In fact one of the most important forms of Vitamin C, for your body to assimilate. Something I find Interesting is the fact that during the winter the amount of Vitamin C increases substantially. Just the season we need it most.
Most people will use the needles to make tea. It has a pleasant flavor. Nothing you’re going to write home to mom about, but nice. I have it growing in abundance, in the small forest on our homestead. When I want some tea, I just walk out my door and gather a handful and simmer them in water on the wood stove. Simmering is important from what I have learned, there are important compounds that are present that are damaged by heavy boiling. The longer you let it simmer the stronger it will be. The stronger is definitely better for you.
White Pines have a cluster of five needles. Red Pines will have a cluster of three needles. Not all pine needles are edible or suitable for tea. You definitely want to utilize the White Pine. This picture is of young White Pines on our homestead.
Lesson #2- Understanding Center Of Gravity
So in the first lesson we learned about surface tension and how it effects the level of sensitivity that can be achieved with different floats. In this lesson I want to teach you another very important concept, that you will need to understand in order to choose the proper float for any given situation. That concept is called the center of gravity.
If you look at the photograph above you will see many different shapes of floats. Some are thin and strait. Others have bodies on their tops, and others on the bottom. Each of these floats have been designed for specific situations. Most “bobber” fisherman here in America would just use the same bobber day in and day out. In Europe, fisherman will change them if any conditions change while they are fishing. Asking a European float fisherman to only use one float all the time, would be like telling Arnold Palmer he had to play 18 holes of golf with only one club. That would be unthinkable.
The best way for me to teach you about center of gravity is to use the illustration of a teeter totter. Look at the second float from the right in the picture. It is grey and totally the same diameter its whole length. That float is made from a peacock tail quill. If you were going to try to balance that float on your finger, like a teeter totter, you would place it right at the center of its length. That is really easy to understand.
Now what happens to the center of gravity when you put a body on the bottom of the float? In order for it to balance correctly you would have to move down to the bottom of the float somewhere in the body area. If the body was on the top of the float it would balance towards the top.
Now why is it important to understand where the center of gravity, or balancing point, is on the float? The most sensitive float will always be the straight float. When you add bodies to the float it adds resistance to being pulled under as easily. But a straight float has a major problem. If there is any wind or river current, the float will rock back and forth like a teeter totter, because of the pressure exerted on one end only, making it more difficult to detect bites.
So this is where the bodies come in. You always want to move the center of gravity farthest away from the pressure. Let’s take a windy day as an example. Wind creates a conveyer belt of water that grabs everything in its path. The only way to overcome that drift is by getting the center of gravity underneath that conveyor belt. There are situations I want my float to drift in a lake, but sometimes I need them to stay right where I put them. Some fish are very structure oriented. If you have your bait within close proximity to the structure you’re catching fish. If it immediately drifts away, then you are loosing out on possible strikes.
I’m going to share with you an actual situation I was in, when I was a professional fisherman. I was in a bass boat with another pro and we were filming a television show. The weather turned very windy. In fact so windy we had two anchors out, and the boat was still drifting. I had located some structure that had big Bluegills. So I took the seventh float from the right in the photo and put it on my line. That float has a peacock stem, balsa wood body and has a chunk of lead in the bottom that helps it to cock in place immediately. The lead also helps the float to cut through the wind like a dart. With the right rod and light line you can cast that float 70 yards. In this case I was not fishing very far from the boat. When I would cast, I would cast beyond where I wanted the float to end up. Then I would thrust the tip of my rod under the water and reel line until my float was in position and my line was fully submerged. With the line and the center of gravity of the float under the drift my float was able to stay in place. The other fisherman that I was with was dumbfounded. He could not believe my little float stayed in place and his boat continued to drift. I had to let line out gradually to keep the float on the structure because of the boat continuing to drift. I ended up catching some really nice Bluegill that trip.
So now you should know why we put bodies on the top of the float. If you look at the second float from the left, it is called a turbo master. It is designed to fish very turbulent rivers. In a river, the greatest pressure comes from below the float. So you need a very thin stem in fast water, that the water can go past without pushing it and making it unstable. In other words the center of gravity at the top.
So now you are on your way to being able to choose the right float. In future posts we are going to look at many other nuances that you need to consider to get it just right.
Fly Tying Class- Lesson #2 Tools
In this second lesson we will be looking at some of the different tools that are used to tie flies. This link will take you to the video.
https://rumble.com/vwiydj-fly-tying-tools.html
Excellent newsletter, as always 😊
Thank you!