Phriendly Phil's Velociraptor Pharm n' Pettin' Zoo

Hahaha

phillip — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:19:52 +0000

Without further comment:

Thanks to Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings.

Hops Update

phillip — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:16:17 +0000

They’re chugging along. Three bines (Cascade, Sterling, and Willamette) appear to be flowering. If the Japanese beetles don’t do too much damage, the others should be well-established next year.

Note that the poles in these photos are about 6 1/2 feet high.

Puterbaugh Farms blog

phillip — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:04:46 +0000

Puterbaugh Farms has recently started a blog about the hop-growing business. It’s very interesting if you grow hops, with photos of the bines, what powdery mildew looks like, and how to tell that your burrs are turning into cones.

I bought from Hops Direct last year, and was mostly pleased. The experience was a bit rocky due to the shortage-induced chaos, but they made things right rather quickly once the problem was noticed.

Overheard at home after watching The Iron Giant

phillip — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:32:31 +0000

Mr. Man:

Can we watch Dave and Becky now?

Daddy:

I don’t care what we watch as long as Daddy doesn’t have to struggle not to bawl.

Because I know you’re wondering…

phillip — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:54:23 +0000

The fermentation chiller project is on hiatus until I know whether getting a chest freezer makes sense. Now hop off those tenterhooks.

I didn’t want to believe it…

phillip — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:13:05 +0000

The Michelle Obama “Whitey” video:

Hop Farm Report

phillip — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:15:06 +0000

The Great Hop Shortage of 2008 convinced me to take up hop gardening this year. It’s something I’d always wanted to do when I had space, but it took five-dollar-an-ounce hops to give me the real kick in the pants I needed.

I ordered a half-dozen hop rhizomes from The Thyme Garden but, due to the strange weather this Spring, waited until April 19 to put them in the ground.

Some of them took longer than others, but they’re all up and doing pretty well. The varieties I planted, and photos, below the break:

Cascade

Centennial

Magnum

Oh, wait…

Mount Hood

Sterling

And the undisputed champeen of the growth competition, Willamette

They’re doing about as well as I expected, mostly. I’m a bit surprised to see the Sterling outpacing, well, anything, as it was the runt of the litter, and the Magnum looked like it was going to take off a little better than it did. Otherwise, the state of the bines is roughly reflective of the state of the rhizomes as they went into the ground.

Note that the rod in all these photos is around a half inch in diameter.

This post brought to you by my assistants:

Maybe “cornhole” isn’t such a bad name.

phillip — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:35:57 +0000

I saw a similar game in Meijer a couple of days back called “Tailgate Toss.”

That sounds like the title of one o’ them “behind the counter” movies.

OpenID enabled

phillip — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:50:26 +0000

I’ve just set up OpenID sign-on for commenting. What this means is that if you have an OpenID login (which you already have if you use AOL, AIM, Yahoo, Blogger, Flickr, Livejournal, Wordpress.com, and some others) you can login using that.

AOL/AIM users, for example, would use openid.aol.com/screenname as their logon. You’ll be briefly whisked away to an AOL logon site that will ask for your passowrd, and when you’re done with that, you’ll come back here.

You don’t have to use OpenID, but it’s there if you want to.

It’s always 1978 in my brain

phillip — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:07:38 +0000

My inner 13-year-old must be alive and well, because I find it funny as hell that the game where you toss beanbags at a hole in a slanted board is called cornhole.