Corona Virus

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For those who are worried about extended supply chains for toilet paper, it really does not apply. I was in the tissue industry for part of my career and keep an eye on the industry out of general interest. Toilet paper and tissue in general has a fundamental problem that its fluffy and full of air. Unlike most commodities the truck is filled up with volume long before its at its max weight. This raises the shipping cost and thus its very rarely imported as the shipping and handling makes imported product noncompetitive. If a company is trying to ship the maximum amount of product in the shortest possible time, shipping toilet paper is not high on the list. With a ongoing shortage of trucks and drivers, there is lot more profit per load shipping heavier product.


All well and good but it leaves me with a dirty butt.... Not good at all. I do have corn cobs available however..... :)
 
I do have to say, my wife bought a full case of Scott Paper towels on the .net last week, enough for 2 months and interestingly, all the printing on the wrappers is in French. I don'rtcare, just found that interesting. They came from Florida btw.

If we could swing that with TP, all would be good, here at the farm.
 
No, got a recipe?
Don't cut backstraps into steaks or chops, cut them into 1 1/2-2 pound chunks. Grill them both sides but you don't cook all the way through - sear & brown on the grill, put it on a plate and into the freezer for about 20 minutes to chill the outside, wrap in crescent rolls and bake. The original recipe called for filo dough, but I use the crescent rolls. Best venison ever! I make mushrooms & onions, hash browns and green beans to go with...
 
Don't cut backstraps into steaks or chops, cut them into 1 1/2-2 pound chunks. Grill them both sides but you don't cook all the way through - sear & brown on the grill, put it on a plate and into the freezer for about 20 minutes to chill the outside, wrap in crescent rolls and bake. The original recipe called for filo dough, but I use the crescent rolls. Best venison ever! I make mushrooms & onions, hash browns and green beans to go with...
Just printed it, I'll give it a shot... Thanks
 
Yep, I’m deemed essential too. I worry that everybody thinks they are essential but I wonder how true that is.
 
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I'm essential as well, essential to my wife, my dog, the cattle, her one nag and the 40 cats we have roaming around.

Went down the road to my buddy's seed operation and brought home 2 gravity wagons of corn I was gifted this year for next year. I can auger in 2 wagons full and that tops my grain tank off but there is more in supersacks so I'll bring them down and put them in the barn. Will be nice food for the mice and maybe they will leave my tractors alone. I have 3 cats that live in there but they aren't interested in the mice because my wife feeds them too much...oh well. Getting 14 tons total this time.

Home stuff is moderately boring but I'm working on farm equipment anyway. Getting ready for spring.

Interestingly, with the relaxed DOT regs (due to the virus), any hauler hauling foodstuffs is now exempt from the HOS rules, don't even have to log at all, just run, like the old days. Can run heavy too. weigh stations closed, just run the coops and hammer down.

The guy (farmer and very good friend of 30 years) I get the corn from has his own fleet of trucks and trailers and seed corn and soybeans are heavy. Normally, he loads 45,000 pounds in his trailers to be legal, now, he fills them up. Told me that if they don't look like they are going to break in 2, it's all good with him. seed corn and soybean seed is considered foodstuffs and is exempt under the relaxed regs.

I'll probably run hopper bottoms for him this fall if he's short on drivers. We always fill them up anyway, only going from the field (combine opr picker, seed corn has to be picked with a special and expensive machine) to the dryers on his property so weight is never an issue. You can get over 30 ton of corn in a 40 foot hopper (depending on RM) and 40 ton of beans. Nice thing about beans is you don't dry them. You take them off in the fall and they go directly in the grain tanks. From the tanks, they go to the sorting building where they are cleaned, sorted by size and bagged on an automated bagging line, dated and stacked on pallets or put in supersacks for shipment. Each supersack weighs 2.5 ton.

Seed corn is different. 90% of the time it comes off 'wet'. Wet is anything above 15%RM. It has to be dried down to 15 or less before you can tank it, or it will mold. Seed corn is taken down to 10--12%RM, sorted for size, cleaned and screened and some is innoculated and some isn't depending on end use. Then it is bagged and palletized or put in supersacks as well. I get the off grade stuff or the stuff that won't germinate. Corn in storage has to be 'germ' tested monthly. If it won't germinate above 95%, it's deemed unsaleable and it comes to me for my corn burner and his, he heats with corn like I do and there is always plenty to burn. The residual goes for animal feed.

Is there money in the seed business? I guess there is in as much as 1- 56 pound bag of hybrid GMO seed corn sells for around 300 bucks which sounds like a bunch but there is a lot of work and a lot of machinery expense involved. When you own 3 combines, 2 pickers, 2 de-tasslers, 10 tractors, numerous trailers and 3 road tractors, it all costs a lot of jack. He's not a millionaire by a long shot but he lives comfortably, but then, so do I.

I just run my hay every year and work for him on the side and call it good.

Way of life out here. We are removed from the urban sprawl and we like that. On a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (mud right now), 2 cars a day come by and I know who is in them.

The 'virus' out here isn't a big concern as we don't really have much contact with the outside world and all it's germs. We can pick and choose who we deal with and who we are friends with. best of all, out here, everything is on a handshake and a man's word is gospel. If it was like there everywhere, we'd be a lot better off. Sadly, it isn't, but it still is here.

Thought I'd give you a little insight as to what I (we) do out here. It's lots more complex but no point in getting into details except to say, when you buy your food at the grocery, the grocery fairy didn't make it appear. We did. Finally, all the hay I run every year goes to feed cattle, not just mine (I don't use but maybe 1/10th of what I make), the rest goes to one customer, a large feedlot operation that specializes in high quality steers for the food market. If you live out east and buy quality beef at your grocery store, there is a very good chance the beef you bought was fed on the hay I run. The operator that buys my hay sends his steers to slaughter in Philadelphia for East coast meat sales. We do our best to make sure you have quality, tender farm raised beef.
 
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Take 5 minutes to read through this posting. It explains how this is based on hard data and not speculation.

And then there is the simple fact of how woefully unprepared we are. One doesn't need tea leaves to see how this is evolving.
...and you were told how unprepared you were, five months ago.
 
Freezer is full of halibut, elk, venison and turkeys. Plenty of water on hand. Praying for expeditious resolutions to save as many lives as possible. Getting ready to plant the garden...need to be mindful of other's suffering and loss, but need some healthy distractions as well.

Now where did I leave that Midleton 32 Very Rare?
 
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Here is a good read on the subject:


Saw this data from Imperial College when it was published, mind-boggling. Yet we still have people saying we're over reacting. Hell hath no fury like a virus underestimated.
 
I do not know what people are expecting, but ammo sales are beginning to mimic TP sales. I had people from the coast in for ammo today. A good number of the sales were for several hundred dollars worth. People are starting to annoy me. One idiot pointed a Glock 17 at my chest this morning. I have just about had enough.
 
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Another good read here.

And maybe I'll dig up some of my old African copper bracelets.
 
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For those who are worried about extended supply chains for toilet paper, it really does not apply. I was in the tissue industry for part of my career and keep an eye on the industry out of general interest. Toilet paper and tissue in general has a fundamental problem that its fluffy and full of air. Unlike most commodities the truck is filled up with volume long before its at its max weight. This raises the shipping cost and thus its very rarely imported as the shipping and handling makes imported product noncompetitive. If a company is trying to ship the maximum amount of product in the shortest possible time, shipping toilet paper is not high on the list. With a ongoing shortage of trucks and drivers, there is lot more profit per load shipping heavier product.

By the way, the Koch family may be getting hammered due to their petrochemical empire but they also own the biggest private held toilet paper producer in the US, Georgia Pacific.
 
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I have family members that are convinced this virus was created in a lab to be a weapon. What do you do about this? Nobody can prove anything so I feel like this is just a mess. My wife is trying to explain global politics to family on the phone, it's not going well. I think the uncertainty and bad Intel about this virus is worse than what it's doing to our communities... The lack of understanding about microbiology among the masses is really frustrating.
 
I have family members that are convinced this virus was created in a lab to be a weapon. What do you do about this? Nobody can prove anything so I feel like this is just a mess. My wife is trying to explain global politics to family on the phone, it's not going well. I think the uncertainty and bad Intel about this virus is worse than what it's doing to our communities... The lack of understanding about microbiology among the masses is really frustrating.

Honestly I think that is a possibility. But the blame game can come later, right now we need to stop it first.
 
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Honestly I think that is a possibility. But the blame game can come later, right now we need to stop it first.
If this was created in a lab, it wasn't supposed to get out. This is not a tactically or strategically effective weapon since it destroys the user as well. We will also probably never know for sure if it was created. There are loads of websites out there claiming definitively that the virus is a weapon, but those websites are probably foreign propaganda hubs.
 
Nothing worse than a gloating prepper. While I am not a prepper I am supplied. I have my own well, I have wild game and farm raised meat in the freezer. I also have the ability to be self reliant.
Peppers aren't really prepared, they are just as scared as everyone else.
 
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