A new friend was visiting yesterday and arrived shortly after I have taken some blood, fecal and water samples I collected shortly before into my little lab for testing and examination. I do this about once per month. So I invited him into the back of the 20' container that is my new lab location. The blood samples need worked pretty quickly after collection. He seemed a bit disturbed that I have a fairly decent Biological, soil and water lab set up in a dedicated space reserved for the lab. I also keep all of my vet tools and supplies on overhead shelves..... that involve a lot of one use scalpels, needs of various gauges, syringes of various sizes and disposable gloves that range from wrist to shoulder lengths And the sample bottles and vials. One table has all of my meters, boxes of test strips, and some of the more advanced computerized auto testing units for things like heart worm, E Coli Salmonella, a centrifuge, petri dishes and a 6 dish warmer. It probably does not help that I play this on a loop when I am working in the lab LOL Anyway the entire visit ended up being in the lab and talking about everything that I can test and analyze in the set up from simple parasite loads in fecal samples to E Coli in tissue or blood samples to being able to break down water and soil chemistry to culturing and growing bacterial and fungal colonies. And there are test strips for almost anything you can imagine and charts to tell you what the rainbow of colors mean in PPM or %. I guess wanting to know is a fetish I have as I could just as easily send samples to soil and water labs for testing or tissue and blood samples to the State Biological Lab for testing. And take blood and fecal samples to the vets office for parasite load testing. LOL it started out with a microscope, some slides, and PH meter and just kind of grew from there I do have a chemistry table that I primarily use for refining raw sulfur into sulfa based antibiotics and Extracting the toxins in Hemlock for to make my own mouse poison........... I don't keep that big patch of Hemlock growing on the NW Corner just because it is pretty So after the visit on the way to the friends car, he says "When you told me to come on into the lab and have a seat...... I was expecting to walk into a Meth Lab...... This is Southern IL after all LOL" Sadly I could easily make meth on the chemistry table.... It ain't that hard but I only make useful and beneficial things not addicting people poison. Something I love are all of the test strips available now days. It makes it so much easier to determine micro/macro nutrients and oddball things like Boron or Selenium content in the soil and a whole host of chemicals and compounds in water. I can say the ponds and lakes are field residue runoff free because I can test with strips for all of the chemicals used in agriculture. Sorry I will never share pics of the lab as some of the stuff in it is not exactly legal for private citizens to posses, Not exactly illegal either and open to assumption, discretion and interpretation. Does it save me any money having the lab in the long run? No not really Vet Charges $10 to do a fecal or a heart worm test. Water and Soil labs can range from $15-$1500 depending on how detailed you want the analysis. State Lab Charges $180 for tissue sample testing. Between the lab equipment, vet supplies, chemistry table, test strips and various compounds, I have around $15,000 into the lab. If I had just stuck with the basic biological microscope and the basic soil and water test kits It would be closer to $500. It is handy though as I don't have to take samples, package them up and get them delivered to a lab 50-300 miles away in 24-48 hours depending on what the sample is. I can't do viruses that would require a much more powerful and Expensive microscope than I am willing to spend the money on. And 99.99% of the issues I run into on the farm are bacterial, Fungal or parasitic which my mid level microscope sees with no problem. Although the older my eyes get the harder it is for me to see and I am seriously considering getting a microscope that displays on a computer screen instead of looking through the glass! To see viruses you need a Electron Microscope it is possible see the larger viruses at the extreme limit of a light microscope using a green light but the viruses are so small that the larger wave length light just does not make them visible in general. Is a lab needed? Nope it isn't but it opens a whole range of doors to understanding the environment you live, play and work in
Impressive. I do agree with your reasoning in doing it yourself,, you can do it when you want , get the results as soon as you do the test . And start any treatment as soon as the results are finished. And being able to diagnose some of your own ailments, without time and trouble of seeing a doctor,, is a win, win situation .
You know...the more I get to know KK, the more I realize how friggin dangerous he is....LOL!!!! "...opens a whole range of doors to understanding the environment you live, play and work" Exactly! It certainly makes sense to me, especially given all the different things you are doing.
Everything starts and returns to the molecular level to start again. Amazingly simple yet so complex in the cause and effect. I am not anti science, I am just anti bullshit science that seems to be dominant species of science now days. One of my degrees I picked up over the years is in geology specifically paleo geology. One of the things geological history teaches us is that for the last few million years the Earth has gone up and down in temperature in regular cycles with peaks that level off for several thousand year stable and comfortable temperatures globally. The things change and the temperature spike up rather rapidly before dropping off into a rather fast period of cooling and either period of exceptionally cold in the Northern Hemisphere or a extended ice age.The Rocks and Sediment do not lie. Right now we are at the tail end of a warm period that has generally been very stable since the last ice age when NYC was under a mile of ice and just North of where I am sitting was a towering glacier wall. In other words climate change is real and it has changed regularly hundreds of times just in the last few million years (Geologically Speaking the time humans have been on the Earth is not even a blip on the timeline screen) Industrialized and agrarian humans only a few thousand of those years. Yet climate has changed far more rapidly in the past than it is currently changing. We are at the phase of a upward trend to the peak before the fall. It may last 5 years or it may last a thousand years before the fall. A couple of things happen during the spike the Ocean currents slow and the oceans themselves become less salty (Lower Density) and grind to a stall or complete stop, at the same time vulcanism increases globally initially speeding up the rising temps but ultimately creates a thick ash layer in the atmosphere, between the ocean currents being at a crawl or a dead stop the Rapid Cooling begins turning the Northern Hemisphere into a snow cone. And all of those Southern Hemisphere 3rd world Countries will be holding all of the cards as the Northern Hemisphere First World Nations are literally buried under the snow and ice. No amount of green new deal, taxes or carbon credits is going to change that course. The wild card is the Vulcanism, we don't really know what triggers it. All we know is what the Ash Layer tells us in each cycle. And that is there are massive volcanic eruptions all around the globe over a relatively short time period. The last time the Yellowstone Super Volcano blew big was preceding a ice age (2 Ice ages ago) 70,000 years ago. The Ring of Fire tends to go super active prior to pretty much ever cooling period. Lots of speculation about the trigger including solar activity and our orbit around the sun, a magnetic pole flip and spring back, Continental Shift and some way out there not really plausible theories. Perhaps man made pollution is speeding the climate change up but if it is it is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Not saying we should not clean our act up, no good bird shits in its own nest What I am saying that speeding it up by 50-100-500 years is nothing in the time line. LOL there is absolutely no possibility of humans destroying the planet via climate change. Yep it is going to get a lot warmer before it gets very cold very fast. WAY TOO MUCH Peer Reviewed JUNK SCIENCE out there, while the credible science gets buried. If you follow who is funding which study you know what the results of the Study will be long before it is published based solely on who is funding the study Funding for Climate Fiction has infinitely deep pockets In the meantime I like digging down and looking at the layers of my local geological history. And dicking around in my little lab
Long Night Here but it looks like all of the storms are past us and all of the tornado warnings cancelled. I have never seen so many Mrs Krap would not agree with you She calls me walking chaos and TBH I never know what time it is, what day of the week it is and very often don't know what Month it is. She is the one that keeps me on time for everything.
