Old Time Knowledge
Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2012 1:49 pm
I was hoping to start this thread so that people can share information that has been passed down from Generations befor us. Sharing wisdom that their Grandfather or Grandmother passed down to them. Too much of that has been lost to us. It is Aug and the leaves are already falling here, but they have not turned color yet, just dried up and fell off. Is that because of the dry summer, or does it mean a heavy winter, or maybe a light winter, I truely do not know, but I wish that I did. A heavy mast crop of acorns seems to predict a heavy winter around here. The Amish will not tap a Maple tree to get the sap on a foggy day because the sap will not run. Why is that, I do not know, but having that knowledge will help you if you plan on making Maple surup. A good friend of mine owns a feed mill up in the mountain and deals with alot of Amish farmers. One day he was visiting one in the fall and his son came walking back to the barm with 10 or 12 ears of corn tucked in his sweat shirt. Dale asked the guy what he was doing. He said he was checking the moisture content of the corn to see if it was ready to pick yet or not. Dale asked him how he was going to do that, he said just throw the corn into the water trough and see if it floats, if at least 3 out of 10 float the corn is dry enough to pick. The corn floated and was ready, Dale said give me some of that corn to check. He had a fancy machine that he had spent thousands of dallors on to check moisture in corn. He took it to the mill and the moisture content was right on. That is the kind of information that I hope we can share with the group.