Garden -- April

No jokes today, we don't do that.  Our time for jokes was almost a month ago.
Anyway, here are this month's jobs in the DC area.
Cornmeal gluten -- put it down soon.
Grass seed -- DON'T PUT IT DOWN.
The Scott's adds telling you to "seed it" are telling you to waste your money.
In the DC area, grass seed is a waste of money until about July.
Use your search engine to find Mike McGrath's articles on grass seeding.
Bulb plants and pruning:
See Mike's article from this past weekend.
Veggies: you should be able to plant green peas, snow peas, Autumn King carrots, roots, and leafy greens over this next week.
For potatoes, see if there's an oak tree near you.
It's in bud now and when the young leaves are "the size of a mouse's ear" that's when you can plant potatoes.
If you're going to start your tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other summer veggies inside, this would be the week to do that. 
If you've switched to CFLs for lighting, that would be useable lighting.
LEDs would not.
Remember to turn off the germination mat after the seeds germinate.

And of course, start mowing.  Keep your grass at 3 inches long
The shade of the grass will prevent Japanese beetles from laying eggs, preventing grubs.
If you get starlings on your lawn every summer, you're mowing too short.  The birds are there to feast on Japanese beetle grubs.
But 3 inches is short enough that the creeping charlie (ground ivy) won't get enough shade to encourage it.
For shady areas there's an iron compound that won't poison the soil.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Knitting -- cardigan

At last!  Why didn't I talk about cardigans sooner?
Because pullovers are so much easier.
With a cardigan, you need to know how to keep your bottom edge from curling up -- that's ribbing.
You can work faster if you don't do seams -- that's circular needles.
You can also work faster if you do steeking at the armholes and put the neck on as one piece with the body.
And you get a neater result if you knit off the shoulder seams which combines shaping and binding.
The problem with cardigans is those stupid buttonholes.
I don't think I know anybody who likes doing buttonholes, knitted or sewn.
So this cardigan doesn't use buttonholes.  Instead, you're going to knit a ribbed edging for the front opening, and you're going to use a purchased frog at the top to close it.

So cast on or knit on or cable on 334 stitches for Perly Perle or fingering weight Palette Peruvian wool.
Now do 10 rows of k2/p2 rib BUT don't worry about joining the round of the stitches.
You will find that you have knit rib on both ends; there's a reason for that.
The side of the knitting that shows knit ribs at the ends is the KNIT side of the fabric. 
The side of the knitting that shows PURL ribs at both ends is the PURL side of the fabric.
When you do the first KNIT side of the fabric, you will:
      Do k2/p2 rib twice.
      Knit 78 stitches and put your marker yarn for the underarm.
      Knit 162 stitches and put your marker yarn for the other underarm.
      Knit 78 stitches and do p2/k2/p2/k2 rib before you finish that row.
      NOTICE that you do the 2 purl stitches as stitches 8 and 7 from the end of the row, then
you do k2/p2/k2.  That's the only way it comes out correctly.
Then you come back, doing p2/k2 twice for the rib, PURLING the row, and finishing with what?
       k2 as stitches 8 and 7 before the edge, then p2/k2/p2.
Read that again and realize that knitting one row and purling the next is the classic stockinette stitch.

Do this for 140 rows, which will give you a nice rib edge for the front of the cardigan.
When you get to the underarms, work the 90 rows of steeking as on other patterns.
When you get to the shoulders, knit off as in other patterns.
You will notice that you can't work the neck as before.
When you knit off the other shoulder,  work down to the front opening and then work the neck rib.  Make sure it comes out identical with the rib at the open edge. 
When you bind it off you will have a neat neck edge.
Now cut the steeking and pick up the 194 stitches around the armhole, and work your short or mid-length or long sleeves as desired.
And put a frog at the top to close it.
Or, and this will feed into the next Knitting post, you could get a sweater chain/guard/clip.  This you can remove from any sweater and use it with another one.  That's a pretty good buy.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Fact-Checking the Torah -- pop quiz answer

Here’s the answer from last week’s puzzle.

As far as I can make out, the odds are that the next time the farmer marks sheep for tithes, one of the ten lambs will get a mark. 

When it comes to firstlings, however, the general principle that applies is, whoever wants to take property from his fellow bears the burden of proof.

The facts of the case as stated allow the possibility that the farmer has no idea whether the one male of the twins was born before or after his female twin. 

If the priest wants a firstling from that farmer, he bears the burden of proof that the male was born before his female twin.  There is nothing in Torah that punishes the farmer for not keeping a sharper eye on which sheep birthed which lamb(s), and nothing in Mishnah or Gemara either.  A careless farmer doesn’t have to suffer any punishment.

Now another twist.  The facts of the puzzle say the farmer did know that the male was birthed by a primipara.  If the farmer doesn’t know that, the priest doesn’t get that lamb before proving that the mother was a primipara, even if he can prove that the male twin was born first.

It’s entirely probable that out of a lambing season that produced 10 lambs, the farmer only has to give up one to the priests.

This explodes the urban legend that priests could go around designating just any animal as tithe or firstlings.  The procedure documented in Mishnah for tithing animals, is that the farmer prepares a pail of red dye and a sort of brush or mop.  He sets up hurdles to run the sheep between, which allows only one at a time to come out of the pen.  He counts the sheep as they come out and brushes the tenth one with the red dye, and that is the tithe. 

There are rules about whether he got mixed up in his count and what to do if he accidentally swipes two of them with the dye.  It’s also true that if he didn’t have any dye to use, the mere count alone is enough.  I won’t go into all of that.  You can study it in detail if you want.

Now, what if the sheep that was number 10x is especially good – gives especially large amounts of wool.  The farmer is prohibited from giving a lesser quality sheep to the priest in exchange for sheep #10x.  He has only two things he can do: give both that sheep and another; or give money to 125% of the value of the sheep he wanted to keep.  But that requires a court case evaluating the sheep.  And it’s not economically beneficial.  He’s far better off just giving up the sheep that came out as #10x.

And since the priest cannot simply pick which sheep he wants as tithe, he can’t take all the farmers’ good sheep leaving them the bad ones.  He has the burden of proof that each sheep he wants to confiscate was actually #10x.

Next week I’m going to explode possibly two urban legends.  Read Deuteronomy 8:8, Leviticus 19:9-10, Deuteronomy 24:19, Deuteronomy 14:23-29, and Numbers 18:21, 26.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Bit at a Time Biblical Hebrew -- Genesis 2:24

Genesis 2:24

 

כד עַל־כֵּן יַעֲזָב־אִישׁ אֶת־אָבִיו וְאֶת־אִמּוֹ וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ וְהָיוּ לְבָשָׂר אֶחָד:

 

Transliteration: al-ken yaazav ish et aviv v’-et imo v’-davaq b’-ishto v’-hayu l’-vasar echad.

Translation:    Therefor a man shall abandon his father and his mother and stick to his wife and they shall be for one flesh.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

יַעֲזָב	Shall leave, abandon
אָבִיו	His father
אִמּוֹ	His mother
דָבַק	Stick to

 

“One flesh.”  This phrase had legal consequences in cultures that claimed to take a stand on the Bible, making the woman a non-person.  Beating your wife with impunity, stealing all her money and letting her starve and go naked, and restrictions on divorce, were some of them.

 

Jewish law held that the wife was still a separate person.  Her husband had the responsibility of feeding, housing and clothing her, and if he didn’t, any money she made was hers to use for that.

 

She could also get the court to force him to give her a divorce, not only if he beat her or tried to isolate her from her family and the community (for no valid reason), but also if she simply realized that he had habits she couldn’t stand. 

 

The issue of wives and husbands not testifying against each other in court did, however, apply in Jewish law.  They were considered to be each other’s relatives and relatives could not testify in each other’s cases.  This rule also applied to parents and children, brothers, and even uncles and nephews.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

I'm just saying -- how does a leaf become a rock?

I love green stuff.
So I was reading material about the Nissan Leaf.
It's the greenest vehicle there is.
There's one small problem.
It takes 5 hours to recharge at home.
Nissan's website doesn't say how long it takes to recharge at a specific recharging station.

I take a trip every year that uses $30 of gas and six hours of time each way.
If I tried to make that trip with a Leaf here's what happens.
The web shows that I have to take a specific route to get there. 
If there's a wreck or road out (has happened) I have no alternative route with charging stations.
None.
I have to charge three times before my destination.
I have to stay near the recharging station,
At least once in a hotel.
Same thing on the way back.
Has to be within walking distance of the recharging station.  Better yet, has to be close enough to the recharging station to shlep my suitcase back and forth.
Has to be within walking distance of a decent restaurant.
Costs at least 5 times as much as my current trip, for just getting there and back.
If the station is closed, the Leaf becomes a Rock.

I don't have the parking space for two cars.
Besides, it's a waste of money to maintain one gas car (registration, gas to keep the battery charged and the fluids from gelling, etc.) for this once a year trip, plus the Leaf for trips around home.
And if I fly in and rent a car, that more than doubles the price of the trip.  Besides making me hang around the airport for at least 4 hours each way.  And maybe not get there at all in bad weather.  Happened in 2014 (to somebody else).
I'm all for planning ahead but there's no way to plan this trip without way too much spending.
The closest charging station to my house is 10 miles away.
I need to install a special connector to my electricity and run a cord down the front walk to the car to recharge at home.

Don't just go by the reviews.  They may have a lot of detail in them, but they can't take into account the details of the lives of over 300 million Americans.  It's called "logistics" and almost everybody stinks at it.  The only reason I thought of it is that it used to be my job when I was a civilian DOD employee.  I know people I worked with who would fail to apply it, because they never learned to use in the rest of their life, what they had to use to keep their jobs.

I'm just saying...
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

DIY -- perfect example

Lectures aside, I have to walk the talk.  Perfect example: dairy products.
If I want to get beyond yogurt cheese, I have to make some purchases.
I also have to follow instructions.
All the online instructions for cottage cheese, ricotta, paneer, and cheddar start with at least a gallon of milk.
I don't have a pot big enough for that.
Except my blanching/bagel boiling pot.
But to blanch vegetables, I can't put milk in that pot.
Otherwise, in my kosher kitchen, I would have to eat my frozen vegetables only with eggs, fish, and dairy products.
So I would have to buy a huge pot.
If I had a family, it might be cost-effective to buy the pot.
But it's just me so it's not.
Cheddar cheese is more extreme.
At some point, you have to press the cheese fragments with up to 50 pounds of weight for 24 hours.
The pressure has to be even all over the cheese.
They sell presses for this, and the presses cost about $300.
The alternative is standard weights for a dumbbell set, but again, that's buying something for the project.
I might save $2 a pound but I only eat 10 pounds a year so the press won't pay for itself in less time than I have left to live.  YMMV.
Butter is even more extreme than cheddar cheese.
It's illegal to sell raw milk in my state, even if the cows live in the state.  The state has not set up protocols for dairies to follow if they want to sell raw milk, probably because the cows would practically have to live in a laboratory and that's too expensive.
I would have to buy 20-40 acres of land and a couple of jersey cows and a bull and equipment for haying and make sure there was water on the land and have a kosher butcher on call if I didn't want to keep the two calves the cows would have to drop every year to keep producing milk and....
Oh, yeah, and a churn.
I'm not asking for crowdfunding to start a dairy farm.  When I was a teenager we lived in a dairy area and watched from a distance; I have some idea how hard dairy farmers work.
I'm saying that I'm walking the talk.  I got into DIY to save money, not spend it.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Fact-Checking the Torah -- pop quiz

This week I’m going to pull a switcheroo. I’m going to give you some verses in the Bible to study for next week. Then I’m going to give you the facts of a case. What I want you to do is combine the Bible verses with the general principles I’ve put together in the last year and a half for you, and see what falls out. I don’t expect you to get the specific answer that Mishnah or halakhah arrived at. I just want you to see if you can figure out which principles apply. Then we’ll explode another urban legend.

The verses are: Exodus 13:2, 12-13, 34:19-20; Leviticus 27:30 and 32; Numbers 18:21-32; Deuteronomy 14:23-29, Deuteronomy 15:19, and Deuteronomy 18:3-4.

Here are the facts of the case. A Jewish farmer had a flock of sheep. Sheep are prone to drop twins. Sheep come under the law of firstborns. The farmer had eight sheep that gave birth in the same spring. Two of the sheep birthed twins. One sheep that dropped twins was a primipara; it was her first birthing, and she birthed the sole male among all four of the twins.

How many of the lambs does the farmer have to give up to the priests and how do you know?

I know you will have questions about more details but the details as given allow for a definitive answer even just on general principles, and the answer is documented in Mishnah.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved