Alan Skeoch

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  • EPISODE 468 Power EYOND BELIEF FOR1905…STEAM TRACTOR AND 40 PLOWS



    EPISODE 468    POWER BEYOND BELIEF FOR 1905…STEAM TRACTOR AND 40 PLOWS

    alan skeoch

    oct. 2021
    (courtesy of friend Thom Norris)


     This is a departure from my regular Episodes in that I did not make the video but

    I think readers will be impressed.   Congering the prairie was done by three steps.

    Two of the steps were quite disturbing to any thoughtful person.  The third step
    is the subject of this episode … POWER !

    1)
    First the land
    was cleared of its rightful owners…the indigenous peoples

    2) Then The great herds of buffalo Were slaughtered…THEIR bones sacked like chordwood. They had provided food for those indigenous people.
    But they also got in the way of railway construction.

    3) And only then could The prairie soils be turned over and harrowed….and that
    is where this story takes off.





    Subject:  Powerful Steam Tractor
     

     

     
      
      
      
     


     

     
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  • EPISODE 465 BLACK WALNUTS…WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THEM?

    EPISODE 465    BLACK WALNUTS…WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THEM?


    alan skeoch
    oct. 2021



    Every year someone gets conked with a falling black walnut.  Like getting hit with a world series hardball.
    This year it was Marjorie’s turn.  She got wopped on the bare upper arm as she diligently tried to gather
    the walnuts before the cursed red squirrels got hem hidden away in the barns.  

    Now we differ on black walnuts.  I like them and have planted a number of trees on our farm.  Marjorie does 
    not like them at all.   A subject of some tension each year as the walnuts fall.   they are edible but getting to
    the walnut meat requires a sledge hammer and careful hand picking the walnut meat from the tooth breaking
    shards.   Red squirrel teeth are better at this than human teeth.  A walnut shard is capable of breaking the
    best of human teeth.  So walnuts are just wasted.   We race to get as many as we can before
    the red squirrels.  Then what should we do with the baskets of nuts?   There was a time when I 
    pitch walnuts along the Ontario side roads like Johny Appleseed did.   Now I take credit for a lot of walnut
    trees in full growth with their progeny ‘whopping’ a few cars no doubt.




    what to do with this year’s crop?   “Let’s put them in Andrew Skeoch’s fire it.”  “Not far enough away, the red
    squirrels will find them and bring them back.”   “What should we do with the red squirrels.?” “Call Jackson Skeoch, he
    may have an answer.”

    In short black walnut season is a troubled time.





    Yes, black walnuts float.  Ghastly site each year on our small pond nearest the house.

    Black walnuts are killers.  Their root system is toxic to other trees.  I made the mistake of planting a hickory tree
    within 20 feet of a walnut tree.  For three decades the two have been sparring beneath the ground.  This year
    the hickory died and the black walnut celebrated by filling the pond with nuts.   I hope the floating nuts do not
    hurt our snapping turtle as he or she sleeps for the winter at the bottom of the pond.



    Marjorie is smiling.  A forced smile as she made me look at her bruised arm.



    Math problem for you…what speed can a falling walnut reach before it hits the ground…or before it got Marjoie?


    Here is one cache of the red squirrel…we got them 





  • EPISODE 466 LEAVES CHANGE COLOUR …MEANS WINTER IS COMNG

    EPISODE  466    LEAVES CHANGE COLOUR…MEANS WINTER IS COMING


    alan skeoch
    oct. 2021

    The older we get there faster the seasons change.  Seems like no time between the autumn leaves
    of 2020 and those of this year 2021.  Maybe that is because we have been mentally caged up by Covid 19.
    Or maybe it is just a function of age

  • EPISODE 464 THE LUMPER POTATO…AND THE GREAT HUNGER IN IRELAND

    EPISODE  464    THE LUMPER POTATO…AND THE GREAT HUNGER IN IRELAND


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  • EPISODE 464 IRELAND….POTATO FIELD ON EDGE OF THE SEA

    episode 464    POTATO FIELD ON EDGE OF THE SEA





    alan skech
    oct. 2021

    TINY potato fields were still common in Ireland such as this one being tended by an Irish octogenarian in the 1960’s.  There was 
    a time, before the Potato Famine of the 1840’s, when 40% of the Irish population depended upon these little fields for their
    survival.  And when the potato plant failed starvation, death, or flight from Ireland often in decrepit ‘coffin’ ships designed to bring hand hewn timbers 
    to Britain.

    The potato had the power to change the world for good or ill.  Sometimes both good and ill at the same time.

    Historian Charles Mann wrote  an astounding article titled “How The Potato Changed the World” In the November issue of
    Scientific American.

    His article gave much meaning to the picture I took in 1960 of this Irish farmer and his potato crop grown on the edge 
    of a cliff hanging above the Atlantic Ocean.   A rocky field.  On the left is a rock pile presumably moved from the field.






    When disease shrivelled the potato fields in 19th century Europe, devastation followed.  Ireland
    suffered worse than other European nations, all of which discovered they could no longer feed
    their people.

    So many people were alive in he 19th century that some wondered how they all could be fed.
    .  Population had expanded…indeed exploded due to the arrival of potatoes in
    Europe from their origin high in the Peruvian mountains where potato plants originated.  My cousin
    James Townsend, an agronomist, has climbed through the unusual fields of Peru where the potato
    is almost worshipped.   I remember Jim describing the incredible variety of Peruvian potatoes.
    There are around 5,000 varieties of potatoes, many of which do not look
    like the potatoes we eat boiled, mashed or chipped.  Some are tiny.  Some are red..or purple, or white…
    or all colours of the rainbow.  Some are so toxic that they can only be eaten if covered in mud because
    the mud neutralize the  toxins

    Europe came to rely on just five six varieties brought back to Europe by Spanish “conquerors” as
    they systematically dismembered the Inca Empires of the Americas.   Safe to say that those
    potato plants were ultimately worth more than all the gold shipped as well.  

    International Potato Center
    photo by Martin Meja, AP, as in Scientific American, Nov. 2011

    Today potatoes are the fifth most important food crop in the world.  After wheat, corn, rice and sugar.

    Another historian, Alfred Crosby, used the expression Columbian Exchange to highlight the way
    Europeans affected life in the Americans…and the reverse, the way the Americas affected
    western Europe.  Two ecosystems collided.  Wheat  and potatoes.  Which was the better
    food crop?  Which was more productive?  Which was easier to  harvest?  Which provided more
    nourishment per acre?   The potato. THE POTATO!

    Wheat field canoe blown flat by the wind?  rains of wheat can also get too heavy and drop to the groud
    if harvested late?   The loaded wheat grains fall over.  Potatoes are very different.  They
    are tubers. They grow under the ground.  Hardier in that sense.  And potatoes provided more
    nutrion per acre…much more.  Irish cottagers could live on the potatoes they grew in
    their tiny stoney fields.  Harvesting is easier using potato forks or potato plows rather than combine harvesters.

    Potatoes can grow very large. Charles Mann describes one potato farmer harvested a 25 lb. potato
    bigger than  his head.   One year we grew potatoes on a field that had been fallow for two decades.
    The harvest was amazing.  Huge potatoes.  Baskets of them. But only happened that one year
    Our harvest this year is pathetic.   Why?  Land exhaustion…need guano and lots of it.

    IMPACT OF THE POTATO ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS

    Another historian…William Macneill…argued “the potato” by feeding rapidly growing populations, 
    permitted a handful of European nations to assert dominion over most the world between 1750 and 1950″

    Effects

    1)The potato Ended the famines which had been common when population outgrew food supply
    2) Triggered the rise of wester civilization.  Between 1750 and 1850 the potato…cheap, easy
    to produce food brought increase on population…industrial revolution …urbanization.
    3) Guanno followed the potato.  Use of fertilizer multiplied food production even more.
    Shiploads of bird dung from islands off coast of South America changed agriculture.
    Some of these deposits of dung were as much as 150 feet  thick.  This ancient supply has been
    exhausted.  Today the chemical industry provides most of fertilizer 
    4) And when potato plants failed due to beetles and disease another new industry grew…the pesticide
    industry which by the 1940’s and 1950’s was using ever stronger forms of arsenic as 
    a control.  Arsenic kills potato beetles.   (lethal to us as well)  
    5) Pesticide industry is killing insects we depend upon such as honey bees.  We seem to e
    approaching a huge global problem.

    This expanding food production is called The Green Revolution.   So far we are able to
    feed everyone…basic food for many…limited food for some.  

    But there is a limit.   Ireland found that limit when the potato plants failed.  The effect was
    devastating.








    This was the tiny potato field tended by Mr. Kennedy in Bonmahon in 1960.  When we returned on a tour in 1965  his potato
    field was grass.   I don’t know what happened but it underscored that there are limits to global food production.

    Much more can be said but the hour is late.

    alan skeoch
    oct. 2021