Coffee anyone ?

[farmerjan]

Yep it really does. I’m tired of the bizarre noises when I breathe. Snap, crackle, pop. Kittens. Kookaburra bird. The queen from Aliens. The queen from a standard beehive (cue @drstratton). Lethargy punctuated with bouts of coughing. Yep I’m ready to be over this mess.

I can so relate with this flu/pneumonia type thing I have going added to the harder to breathe since I got so run down from this %@#*&^ Alpha gal tick allergy syndrome.... Have not been able to get past a certain point of "getting better" before it hits me again.... some days It is all I can do to breathe without the coughing choking rasping......

 

[murphysranch]

Where I am in the Calif Desert, diesel was $7.09 at the Loves/TA truck stop. Costco regular gas was $5.79.

 

[RR Homestead]

Gas at $4 a gal today

Sadly I'd love to pay $4 a gallon here. Well not love but you know what I mean.

A friend of mine uses DMSO for his bad knees. He said it also helped his tinnitus!

I can ask him how he applied it if you're interested.

I bought some not long ago. Would love to know how he did it!

I can so relate with this flu/pneumonia type thing I have going added to the harder to breathe since I got so run down from this %@#*&^ Alpha gal tick allergy syndrome.... Have not been able to get past a certain point of "getting better" before it hits me again.... some days It is all I can do to breathe without the coughing choking rasping......

Really sorry you've been having so many sickness issues. I truly pray you feel better soon.

 

[fuzzi]

Keith has a sheep friend, named Doris:

Doris is suffering.

Doris does not know she is suffering. The suffering has been inferred from a photograph posted on social media by someone who visited the fell in August, stood at the gate for four minutes, and looked at Doris looking back at them.

"She looked so sad," the caption read. "Standing there alone in the rain. No shelter. Just staring."

Let's assess the evidence.

The rain: Doris has grazed through eleven consecutive days of horizontal Lake District rain without reducing her hours. The rain does not constitute suffering for an animal wrapped in eight centimetres of lanolin-coated fleece that actively repels moisture. The fleece is not a fashion choice. The fleece is a biological weather system.

The aloneness: Doris is in a fell with other sheep. She grazes at distance from them because fell sheep are not herding animals in the lowland sense. They distribute across the landscape. Doris is not isolated. Doris is optimally positioned.

The stare: Doris can recognise up to fifty individual sheep faces and ten human faces and remembers them for two years. She was not staring sadly. She was filing you.

The shelter: the spot behind the east wall where Doris sleeps on cold nights is four degrees warmer than the exposed fell and has been her chosen location on every comparable night since her first winter. She did not look sad in August. She looked at the gate visitor in the specific way a prey animal looks at an unknown presence: assessing, not emoting.

This is the anthropomorphism problem.

We look at an animal experiencing its natural environment in the way it evolved to experience it, doing the things it is built to do, in conditions it is designed for, and we project onto it the emotional state we would have if we were standing in that field in those conditions.

We would be cold.

We would be lonely.

We would look sad.

Doris is not us.

Doris is a fell sheep on a fell. The fell is what she is. The rain is her element. The aloneness is her preference. The stare is cognition, not grief.

Doris's cortisol: normal, per the vet's annual check.

Doris's welfare domains: no concerns across all five, per the farmer's records.

Doris's opinion of the caption: she has filed the photographer's face.

Doris will remember that face for two years.

Doris is grazing.

Doris has always been fine.

We are the ones who needed the shelter.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2035768828680917366

 

[fuzzi]

And here's more about Keith:

Gerald eats grass. Doris eats grass. This is not a criticism. Grass is what permanent pasture produces and the rumen of a cow and a sheep is optimised for it. The system works.

Keith does not eat grass. This is the thing that needs explaining.

Keith is a browser, not a grazer. A grazer takes the top growth of grass and forbs, working horizontally across a sward, keeping the structure open. An ecologically vital function. But a browser takes woody material: lignified stems, bark, shrub leaves, the things at the field margins and hedgerows that no other livestock will touch because their rumen cannot handle it. The bramble cane. The thistle stem. The knotweed rhizome. The blackthorn shoot.

Keith's rumen contains a microbial profile built over ten thousand years in the Zagros Mountains for exactly this material. Tannins that would inhibit digestion in most animals: handled. Thorns that would deter most mouths: irrelevant. The woody fibre that passes through Gerald undigested is, for Keith, the menu.

This means Keith occupies an ecological niche that nothing else on a British farm fills. The bramble advances whether or not Gerald and Doris are present. The knotweed establishes regardless. All of it continues unless something with Keith's specific digestive architecture shows up.

Keith showed up. The east ditch is clear. The south bank has red campion where the bramble was. Dave's net outcome column is full.

Keith is not just a goat. Keith is the browse pressure the British countryside lost when wild ungulates disappeared, which no conservation programme has yet found a cost-effective way to replace. Dave replaced it with Keith for £387 in gate reinforcement and counting.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2032377521153491452

 

[drstratton]

Gas at $4 a gal today

I paid $4.74 a couple of days ago.

 

[fuzzi]

I'm really enjoying Sama Hoole on X.

He also writes about exercise and nutrition.

And Gerald...

 

[fuzzi]

A friend of mine uses DMSO for his bad knees. He said it also helped his tinnitus!

I can ask him how he applied it if you're interested.

@RR Homestead @drstratton @SageHill

I apply it inside the ear canal, as well as behind the ear. I use very little, and none in the inner ear.

 

[drstratton]

@RR Homestead @drstratton @SageHill

Thank you! It's worth a try.

 

[RR Homestead]

@RR Homestead @drstratton @SageHill

Thank you!! Going to give this a try. Please thank your friend as well