State of the Farm, July 2025

This is coming out late since I’m writing it in July. We’re going to WorldCon and so I wanted to get this in the pipeline before we left.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

Things have been… interesting for the last month. We’ve had a significant problem with vermin. Wendy has caught several chipmunks, voles, and three rats. There may also be a gopher involved. Part of this is global warming—the rat problem in cities has been linked to temperature. I have no reason not to think it’s affecting us, as well. I also think that other rodents may well have the same response to warming as the rats. Not to mention that with milder winters, we have less winterkill. 

 

We lost nearly all the climbing beans but—for reasons that passeth understanding—they left the bush beans. I replanted a bunch of bush beans but today I think they may have taken them as well. Of course, it may not be rodents. It could be cut worms. The manure we bought in the spring (for much more money than it was worth) was full of cut worms and low on nutrition. 

 

Today, also, it looks like something tore into one of the sweet potato hills. Yay.

 

The main garden is flat. But the raised garden is doing fairly well. When I got the sweet potato sets, I split them: three in the raised bed and three in the main garden. Not only did they do better in the raised bed, they (and other things) were relatively safe from the ground dwelling pests. Not squirrels. Nothing stops squirrels. 

 

But we’re getting zucchini. There are melons on the vine. Some of the bush beans are surviving. Many of the carrots are doing well. And the daikon radishes look great. 

 

The squash have largely taken off. (Finally!) 

 

In the raised beds, we went through a very nice strawberry harvest back in June. The potatoes (and sweet potatoes) look good. We’re trying some long carrots in one of the beds but this was one of the first we tried. We did not bury the bottom in six inches of gravel. Sure enough, some moles may have taken out a few. We’ll see how that goes. 

 

One of the quinces succumbed to what appears to be black knot. We have a set of quinces that are where we used to have espaliered plums. The plums got black knot, starting from the south and going north. We tried for years to control it but then it spread to some peaches so the plums had to go. The worst infected was the southernmost prune plum. We planted quinces, thinking, well, these aren’t stone fruit. But we got something that sure looks like black knot. 

 

We were assured that this was cedar quince rust—which would not have been surprising. We do have a cedar tree nearby and we’ve seen cedar apple rust. But it marched south to north like Lee’s advancing army. 

 

We cut off the affected limbs and sprayed. The prune plum spot quince looked good for a couple of months and then bang! All over. So we took it out. The others still look rot-free. The quince in the prune plum spot most severely affected. Hm. Coincidence? I. Think. Not!

 

The new peaches produced peaches this year. Small and sweet. But still very young. The pears are producing like mad. The apples… well, we removed several this year because they were losing to the cedar apple rust. The remaining trees are producing but not well. We might have to do something drastic this winter.

 

That’s it for now regarding the garden.

 

Now, about the news today. One of my two readers asked me why I’ve been including bad news from the new administration. It’s a fair question and deserves a fair answer.

 

I want to start by talking about what norms are. Norms are traditions, practices, and behaviors that are an example of the overlying culture. They are agreements we’ve made that are intended to operate without challenge. 

 

Sometimes, those norms are derived from legal cases. The idea of being able to speak one’s mind or take a point of view differing from the administration without legal challenge is a good example. It was a norm that a person coming into this country legally had a right to their opinions, whether or not those opinions agreed with the administration. It was a norm that due process was the right of anyone residing in the United States. That the law would be administered as it was written and adjudicated. Norms are those behaviors we take for granted—being able to say something bad about politicians without repercussions. That both sides would take advantage of this—one news service or another. Each had the same right to speech.

 

While norms can (and sometimes should) be challenged, it should be a thoughtful process. Segregation was a norm that we disposed of—or tried to, anyway. Disrupting norms means disrupting the behavior people have relied on.

 

I, for example, thought the norm that preserved clean water and air was a good thing. Or that politicians should not enrich themselves at the expense of tax payers. Or that our leadership in science was a good thing. Or that the single most effective mechanism of preventing disease in the history of mankind—vaccines—should be continued and expanded. Or that preventing the unnecessary death of thousands of Americans by making sure there was good, strong information rather than succumbing to charlatans and con men was something to pursue. 

 

I’ve been alive, paying taxes, and voting for mumble-mumble years. In that time, I thought we had been building towards a fair, just, equitable, clean world. We were not succeeding for everyone—that was obvious. But we were succeeding at many things. We needed to succeed at more things. For everyone. 

 

The current administration appears to be in the business destroying all that. Making rich richer. Making air and water dirtier. Making children hungrier. Torturing more prisoners. Vilifying anyone that disagrees with them. Applying all that indiscriminately to both their supporters and their detractors. They don’t care. They just want the money.

 

In my small way, I want to point this out. The Emperor not only has no clothes, he is trying to demolish anyone that speaks up. 

 

So, here’s a Korean scientist with a green card working on a vaccine for Lyme disease that’s been detained after returning from his brother’s wedding.