Chicken Ranch Central
Friday, January 26, 2018
Friday Night Videos
I stopped in to a grocery store this morning, and what do I hear playing, but that 70s nugget "Saturday Night" by the Bay City Rollers. Believe it or not, I never heard this song on the radio when it was a hit, because we only got both kinds of music were I grew up (Country and Western). I discovered them via their 1978 Krofft-produced "Bay City Rollers Show which I thought was great, but turned out to be so great it lasted but eight episodes. In the video below, only four members of the band perform, with lead singer Les McKeown inexplicably on drums. There's no sign of regular drummer Derek Longmuir, which is fine with me, as he was convicted on child pornography charges in 2000 and has no place on my blog.
Previously on Friday Night Videos... Herbie Hancock.
Now Playing: Blondie Best of Blondie
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Winter plantings
A couple weeks ago, just before the latest Arctic Express blew through and sent temperatures plummeting, I went out into the backyard and did some of my annual horticulture stuff. I'm not planting as much as in previous years, because I had fewer trees already in the ground back then. Makes sense. I also have less disposable cash this time around, so I'm being a bit more selective in what I spend it on (hint: It's mostly tiki bar stuff). One of my main projects for the coming year is landscaping around the swimming pool. The palm trees are nice, yes, but the grounds beneath them have gotten a bit feral. Last summer I planted an "Aphrodite" Rose of Sharon, which is a type of cold-tolerant hibiscus originally from Asia. The idea is that this will grow up to offer some privacy screening for the pool. It didn't get planted until summer had already begun, so it struggled mightily. In fact, at multiple points I thought it had died, but it proved a durable trooper. Desiring more hibiscus for the tropical flair they offer, last month I ordered a smaller, shrubby type with massive crimson flowers known as "Lord Baltimore." This one only grows 3'-4' tall and will make a nice accent plant in an area where I'd cut back a bedraggled, half-dead growth of rosemary (I like rosemary, but this part was seriously unhealthy and in terrible shape). I just received notice that my Lord Baltimore will be delivered today via USPS, and am looking forward to getting my hands on it.
Another project I have going is the germination of about 20 sabal minor dwarf palmettos. These are shrubby, trunkless palms that I've wanted for a while to add as understory plants beneath our big sabal palms. They lend a very tropical look wherever they're planted, and the "McCurtain" variety I've received originates from Oklahoma, where they survive harsh winters as well as heat and drought. In short, they're very hardy and should do well for me. Saba Minor is a Texas native, and can be seen in Palmetto State Park. I'm germinating the seeds in a plastic baggie filled with moist vermiculite and peat moss, resting atop a seed germination heat map. The other day I found one had started putting out a tap root, so I'm hoping I'll have an over-abundance of seedlings in another week or so.
Below is the only real "new" tree I've planted thus far this year. Three years ago I bought a Galaxy Peach from Fanick's in San Antonio. That's a type of flat, donut peach. Well, it fruited for the first time last year, and guess what? The peach was elongated and not a Galaxy at all. So the folks at Fanick's, being the kind of upstanding people that they are, offered me a replacement. I planted this Galaxy across the yard from my others. I hadn't intended to get more than two peach trees, but hey, I roll with the punches.
Although the tree had been pruned back by the nursery, I thought the root system under-developed for even that smaller tree size, so I pruned it back even more. Being no stranger to losing first-year trees to the Texas summer, I took those pruned branches and made several grafts to my already-established mystery peach across the yard. If this one turns out to be Galaxy, I'm in great shape even if the new tree dies (which I hope it doesn't).
Next up was leftover business from last year. I'd ordered a che, otherwise known as Mandarin melonberry, a small tree that is related to Osage orange. In fact, they're grafted onto hardy Osage root stock. It was fairly small when I got it and I worried it wouldn't survive the summer, so I potted it up instead. It hardly grew at all through the first half of summer, then put on a crazy spurt of growth to end up with a several willow-floppy branches, the longest being nearly 5' long. Needless to say, I was happy to get this one in the ground, although I'm going to prune it back for sanity's sake.
In the front yard I'd originally envisioned a row of small crabapple trees lining the driveway, and planted two Blanco crabapples to start, since they're attractive natives. Floods and deer and eventually cedar apple rust conspired to do one of them in last year, and I picked up a replacement from Madrone Nursery but got to thinking that maybe it wasn't worth the trouble to grow crabapples in the front yard. I could easily see someone accidentally backing into one whilst trying to park, and the potential for flooding and deer wasn't ever going away. So instead, I decided to put the new Blanco crab in the back yard, and did so a short distance from the peach, above. In fact, I'm seriously considering digging up the remaining crab in the front and relocating it, since it is not so very big yet. I've never moved a tree before, so we'll see how that goes. I also planted a Hewe's Virginia Crabapple in the spot where I lost an Arkansas Black apple tree late last summer. The Hewe's was originally one of four bench grafts I received last spring--two Wickson's crabapples and two Hewe's. Sadly, the Wickson's grafts failed, period. The Hewe's grew very well, but my beagles snapped the graft on one and my emergency re-grafting efforts failed. So I'm left with the one. Before bud break this spring, I'm going to take some cuttings and graft it onto other apple trees I have already established, to hedge my bets.
Finally, I'm doing grapes again. You may remember I tried this last year, getting several cuttings of rare T.V. Munson varieties from Grayson College. Of those cuttings last year, only Vahalhah survived to my embarrassment. Elvicand had several cuttings root, but I lost them all when I forgot to water them for several days. Ben Hur leafed out and grew well before abruptly dying. Turns out this one never developed any roots! The final type, Wapanuka, never did anything. It just failed completely. So, I decided to try again. This time, Grayson only sent Ben Hur and Elvicand cuttings, which makes me wonder if there's a problem with Wapanuka in general. Regardless, these two are in my refrigerator to stay dormant until the weather starts to warm, at which point I will attempt rooting once again.
As it stands now, I think I have all the trees I'm going to try and get, outside of a couple of cold-tolerant avocados, and a kumquat or two, perhaps. The rest of the way, I'm going to focus on grafting to what I already have and adding bushes and shrubs--I have space for more pomegranates (Kajackik Anor is one I hope to obtain) as well as at least one mulberry bush (not tree) and additional figs.
Now Playing: Electric Light Orchestra Face the Music
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
So, the blog...
This hardly seems worth a dedicated blog post, but then again some explanation is in order. Long-time visitors to my blog may notice something of an aesthetic change here. The look is decidedly different. Since 2009 I've run this blog as "Chicken Ranch Gibberish" with the notion of promoting my then-in-progress book Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse. Which is all well and good, except for the fact that the book came out in August 2016 and here we are in January 2018. I've moved on to other writing projects, notably
Sailing Venus, and the Chicken Ranch-centric design had lost its mojo, so to speak.
I've always felt green is an under-used color online, and my pre-Chicken Ranch blog was primarily green in design, so it seemed natural to go that route once again. Plus, I could incorporate some (subtle) tiki elements to go along with my other current obsession. Never fear, I'll still post the same dumb content I always have, and keep everyone up-to-date on any Chicken Ranch goings-on. But all good things must come to an end. Chicken Ranch Gibberish is dead. Long live Gibberish!
Now Playing: Julie London The Very Best of Julie London
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Friday, January 19, 2018
Marooned: A Texas Tiki Podcast
Last week, during a welcome, sunny respite between arctic blasts, I had some guests over to the Lagoon of Mystery. David Phantomatic and Jennifer Tarte dropped by to interview myself and Lisa for an episode of Marooned: A Texas Tiki Podcast! We talked about my Lagoon of Mystery tiki bar build-along that has taken up a good part of the last year, our various tiki experiences--both the joys and disappointments--around the state and country, as well as the state of tiki in Texas in general. We also touch on Lisa's boudoir and pin-up photography with Secrets By Miss Lisa. It was a tremendous amount of fun, and I encourage everyone to give it a listen.
I made everyone cocktails, starting out with an old Don the Beachcomber's recipe, the Port au Prince, which has become one of my favorite mixed drinks. Then we had a round of Mermaid Water, which is dangerously close to being an over-sweet "Boat Drink," but everyone agreed it had potential and could likely be with bitters or additional sour to bring it into balance. After we finished taping, Lisa teased me that I never actually answered David's opening question: What books are in my cocktail library? D'oh! To set the record straight, my tiki cocktail recipe books currently consist of Beachbum Berry's Potions of the Caribbean, Beachbum Berry Remixed and Martin and Rebecca Cate's Smuggler's Cove. Just three books, but I've only managed to sample a tiny fraction of the recipes they contain. Here are some behind-the-scenes photos from the afternoon:
Now Playing: Various Artists The Calypso Calypsonians
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Friday Night Videos
I am embarrassed to admit that it would be at least two decades before I realized that Herbie Hancock was a legendary jazz innovator, and not just a one-hit wonder who struck gold with the insanely catchy "Rockit" supported by the even more insanely insane video. Hancock long resisted having any of his work available online, or at least on YouTube. He has since relented, and we are all the better for it.
Previously on Friday Night Videos... Combustible Edison.
Now Playing: Ray Charles Ray Sings, Basie Swings
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Tiki build-along, pt. 17
Unseasonably wintry weather had driven me indoors this winter, so I've not had a lot of opportunity to work on my tiki bar. No in large ways, that is. However, I have taken my work indoors--the garage, to be specific--to work on crafting an actual, for-true sign for the Lagoon of Mystery. I've been calling my tiki bar that for a while, but it felt like something of a cheat. A sign would change all that, right? Make it official, or something like that.
Unfortunately, I started working on it before I thought about making a blog post, so the earliest steps were missed. I picked up a 1" thick board from a local lumber supply yard. It was 12" wide and something along the lines of 4' long. I took half of it and routered out a sign directing clients to The Wife's boudoir and pin-up studio. I kept the remainder for myself. I noodled around in Photoshop off and on for ages, tinkering with a design for the sign. I tried all manner of retro fonts, different tropical motifs and whatnot before I settled on an illustration that incorporated a stylized version of our pool with palm trees and hibiscus, because that's literally the Lagoon of Mystery. There are actually more passion flowers than hibiscus, but passis are so delicate and complicated a flower there was no way I was about to try and router out one of those. I printed the design out in segments on legal-sized paper then tiled it together with tape. I overlaid the design on the wood, then used an Exacto to slice out the pattern. Then I traced over it with a pencil, ultimately transferring the design to the wood. Got it? Good. I then used a router to carve out all the large sections, and my Dremel to work the details, such as the outline of the letters, the palms and the hibiscus. Very time-consuming. That brings us to the image below.
That conjoined oval blob in the middle? That's the lagoon, aka our pool. I'm doing this whole thing as a kind of bas relief, right? So I'm thinking the pool area needs to be lower than the letters. What's more, it needs texture. I am dumb in so many ways. This is one of them. I used the Dremel to carve out textured waves in the "water." This took a very, very long time to complete. Did I mention I'm carving the sign into both sides? No? Well, I am. A very, very long time.
At some point, I finished. I assume. It's all a blur to me.
I had one really big screw up with the trim router, gouging out a not-insignificant section of the pool under the Y. I repaired it by resorting to my favorite do-anything fix-it, wood putty. After letting it dry overnight, I took the Dremel and carved texture into it. Problem solved.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
I scorched the entire sign to foster that vintage Witco look. The black is all carbonized wood, which means it is burned.
After attacking it with a wire brush and much vigorous scrubbing, all the burned soot is removed leaving a deeply textured wood surface. The wood grain forms peaks and valleys, with the softer wood having burned away leaving only the harder, denser grain. Amusingly enough, this also removed much of the "texture" I'd carved into the water.
I applied my go-to stain, Minwax Special Walnut. Eventually, I'd add a coat of Minwax Dark Walnut as well, to give the color more texture and depth.
The stained wood forms a frame for the sign. The stain also colors the palm tree trunks.
For the water, I used the same blue I've been using for the patio ceiling. It's even got the paint glitter in it to give that occasional shimmer. The green of the palm trees is the same paint I used for the directional sign, as is the black. I had to buy some red and yellow for the hibiscus flower because I didn't have any. Still, I'm trying to keep costs as low as possible.
I attached eyehooks about 4.5" from either end of the sign for hanging.
The black lettering? That took a lot more effort than I expected. Getting the edges of the letter painted without blotching up the other paint, or the raw wood, was maddening. Tiny, tiny detail work. Eventually, I had to remind myself that the sign was meant to have a rustic, almost makeshift feel to it. It didn't have to be perfect. In fact, perfect would probably go against the intended aesthetic. That was very difficult for me to accept and internalize, but eventually I did. Thank goodness. As The Wife says, I can be way too anal sometimes.
Finally, I applied several coats of water-based spar urethane to weather seal it and add protection from the sun. I chose to go with the water-based spar rather than the oil-based because the water type dries clear, whereas the oil type has a warm, sepia-kind of finish. That actually looks pretty good on plain wood, but I didn't want it muddling the colors of the paint. Also, I don't know if anyone else has shared this experience, but I've found the water-based spar urethane does not have much of an issue of bubbles forming and drying to mar the finish like the oil-based urethane does. I can get as sloppy as I want, but the water-based type will dry perfect every time.
And here's teh sign in situ. It looks good. It'll look even better once I come up with some way to tikify that beam. There are two small hooks holding the sign up, which the eye hooks set into. But you'd probably figured that out already. I don't think the sign's likely to blow off the hooks even in the strongest wind storms, but we'll see.
And here's the sign, full-on. It feels good to get this finally up. It might not be as slick as some other home tiki bar signs, but it fits the mood in the Lagoon of Mystery.
Now Playing: Les Paul & Mary Ford Lover's Luau
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Jackfruit-infused rum
You might want to stand back a little for this one--it's liable to get messy. Oh, who am I kidding? It already has.
See that big, watermelon-sized fruit thing there with the knobby skin and the large butcher knife sticking out of it? That's a jackfruit. Jackfruit grow in the tropics. They're really cool, and HEB has started carrying them locally when in season. They cost around $1.25 a pound, and that one clocked in at around 11 pounds. For the record, this was one of the smaller ones available. One there was at least twice the size. They're big.
Okay, you may be thinking, but why are they so cool? Thanks for asking! This is the fruit that the Juicy Fruit Gum flavor was inspired by. Some people mistake them for the other big, spiny fruit from the tropics, the durian, but they aren't closely related. And the durian is notorious for stinking. Jackfruit smell wonderfully tropical when cut open. See those yellow seed arils in the photo above? That's the good stuff. Think of them as a non-juicy pomegranate and you get the idea. Jackfruit has a fantastic, strong and pleasing tropical fruit flavor. I first tried one about two years ago and was blown away. Almost immediately, I started thinking about how to incorporate this great tropical fruit into some sort of cocktail. Surprisingly (or not) there are very few recipes online. One said to muddle several of those yellow arils in a glass before adding the other ingredients. When fruit is "muddled," what you're doing is mashing it up to release the juice and flavors. Trouble is, jackfruit has an unusual texture. It's firm and rubbery. That sounds awful, but is kinda cool to eat. Sort of like fruit leather that's really serious about being fresh fruit leather. Great for eating, but it resists muddling like you wouldn't believe. Fine. So I looked for another recipe, and found one that suggested blending it into a smoothie. No dice. I ran the blender on liquify for five minutes and the jackfruit remained grainy bits suspended within the overall liquid matrix, decidedly unsmooth. Completely unacceptable for cocktail use. Was I out of options? No! If I couldn't use the jackfruit directly in a cocktail, then I would do so indirectly--through an infusion!
When you harvest the arils from a jackfruit, it's best to wear gloves. See that white, milky substance welling up where the fruit was split open? That's raw latex. Jackfruit's lousy with the stuff. The riper the fruit is, the less latex there seems to be, and this one wasn't quite as ripe as it should've been, but I got impatient. The latex isn't harmful (unless you have an allergy to it) but is super sticky. Best to use gloves.
Collecting the arils is simple, but time-consuming. They have to be pulled from that fibrous pith. You don't eat the white stuff.
This is an aril removed from the mother fruit. Bright yellow, rubbery and tasty. They smell very nice.
Slice it open to remove the seed. Guess what? Jackfruit seeds are edible. They're not entirely dissimilar to chestnuts. I found a recipe for sliced, sauteed jackfruit seed the last time I did this, and that was delicious, but time-consuming. This time I'm thinking of trying a boiled jackfruit seed recipe, kinda like boiling peanuts.
This is the results of just one quarter of that jackfruit I started with. That's a huge mug overruning with arils. I had switch to a much larger bowl. I ended up with 4 pounds of arils from that 11 pound fruit, once all was said and done. I didn't weigh the seeds, but that's at least another 1.5 pounds. The waste went out to compost.
Here's where things get interesting. Those rubbery arils, I wanted to encourage the separation of the juice from the pulp. As I've pointed out above, this rubbery fruit does not give up its juice willingly. So I threw it in the deep freeze. Froze them solid to rupture the cells within, which is an old homebrew trick to liberate more juice. It worked, to an extent. The arils never got mushy like a peach or strawberry that had been frozen, but they lost their stiffness and were much more floppy. And also wet and juicy. The aromatics of the released juice were pretty strong. The infusion was looking more and more encouraging.
For the liquor to be infused, I chose Castillo silver rum. This may cause some to recoil in horror, because Castillo is not a top-shelf rum by any measure. It's produced by the Bacardi company as a budget rum, which many associate with trash can punch and/or rotgut. But here's the thing--Bacardi filters their top-tier rums of much of their flavor so as to compete with vodka in the market. They don't filter Castillo so much, which results in a liquor that some consider superior to Bacardi's "good" rums. It certainly has more flavor, but remains a light, Puerto Rican-style silver rum that has little to no aging. I used to use Castillo as my main mixer quite often until I discovered Cruzan rums hit those same notes in a much more polished fashion despite being only a dollar or so more expensive. So now I use Cruzan. But for this infusion, I wanted a flavor bomb. I didn't want a lot of subtle rum notes to get overwhelmed by the jackfruit flavor, but at the same time, I wanted an infused rum and all that implies, so vodka was right out. Castillo struck me as a good compromise, in that it was a decent but cheap silver rum that would serve as a host for the jackfruit. Some may argue with my run selection for this, but damned if I'm wasting the qualities of a good smoky demerara rum on this infusion, setting up a major clash of dominant flavors by using a funky dark Jamaican, and I don't see how something like a Don Q Crystal would yield any real advantage. So, Castillo it is.
That's a 1.75 liter bottle of Castillo, by the way. I added a cup of the rum and just shy of a pound of jackfruit arils to the blender. I repeated this three times, using not quite three pounds of jackfruit arils in total. If you're thinking "Holy moly! That's a lot of jackfruit!" you would be correct. It is a lot of jackfruit. I'm going for a flavor bomb, remember?
And the blending has begun. Encouragingly, I heard none of the chunky, crunchy, grinding sounds that resulted from my attempting to puree the non-frozen jackfruit from before.
I did not attempt to make a smoothie. Instead, I just wanted the fruit chopped and pulverized enough to release more juice and accelerate the infusion process.
I poured the resulting slurry into a gallon-sized jar. The consistency was pretty much exactly what I was going for.
The end result is a silver Puerto Rican rum with a heck of a lot of jackfruit sharing the same space. I'm keeping the infusion in the back of my refrigerator, taking it out every day to agitate the mixture and keep those juices flowing, so to speak. After several days, the rum's already taken on a bold, fruity characteristic and is sweeter as well. I hadn't thought forward enough to consider the fruit sugars would have that effect, but I shouldn't be surprised. In homebrew, when I add fruit to beer or mead, the sugars get eaten by the yeast to make alcohol, leaving only the fruit flavor behind. That's how you can have fruity wines that are dry. But with this liquor infusion, there is no yeast at work, so the sugars as well as the fruit flavors are absorbed and released by the rum. That should work well for mixing cocktails, but I'll have to pay close attention to balance. I want a flavor bomb, not a sugar bomb. I expect a little of this stuff will go a long way.
This weekend sometime I shall strain the infusion through cheesecloth to remove the solids, and commence to experimenting with new cocktail recipes incorporating this new creation. I will report any notable discoveries here. Cheers!
Now Playing: Talking Heads Little Creatures
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Friday, January 12, 2018
Friday Night Videos
I've never seen the movie "Four Rooms." If I had, I wouldn't be such a latecomer to the weird, neo-lounge genius that is Combustible Edison. Their contributions to the "Four Rooms" soundtrack, "Vertigogo," is a catchy, scat-inspired piece of audible attitude. The interspersed movie clips are as dull as one would expect, but the original video sequence by the band is nicely off-kilter and suitably trippy.
Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Kinks.
Now Playing: Martin Denny Exotica
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central
Monday, January 08, 2018
Winter variations
The extremes of climate can really be madness-inducing. The area I live has long been classified as in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 8b, but over the past decade I've seen new maps that place me just within the borders of Zone 9a, due to progressively warmer temperatures. For those of you confused by this "Zone" talk, let me offer this summation: Some fruiting plants need specific amounts of cold weather in which to go dormant and build up energy reserves to flower and produce fruit. Other types of plants cannot tolerate temperatures that drop below a certain point. Hardiness zones are a general attempt to classify the temperature environment of a region to aid in selecting appropriate plants to grow. It's not perfect, as it doesn't take into account annual rainfall, maximum summer temperatures, etc., but it's a good starting place. Got that? Good.
Several years ago, we moved from the south side of New Braunfels to the north side. The move was approximately 10 miles north, as the crow (or grackle, around here) flies. It also involved an increase in elevation of close to 100 feet, as we went from Blackland Prairie to the edge of the Texas Hill Country. That doesn't seem like much of a change on a global scale, but I've noticed that during the winter, our lows are consistently 4-5F degrees lower than those predicted for New Braunfels once the mercury dips below 40F or so. That means predictions of 38F or thereabouts can result in freezes for us. What's more, predictions for hard freezes can mean we're in store for some seriously cold weather. Case in point--last week, January 1-2, our overnight low was predicted to drop to 23F. When I woke up, the actual temperature was 16F! That is the lowest temperature I've recorded at the new house in the three-plus years we've lived here.
It also offers an opportunity to contrast this winter with last year's. The 2016-17 winter was unusually warm for us. We had one hard freeze in December and a bare handful of light freezes the rest of the season. We ended up recording in the neighborhood of 390 chill hours, that is, 390 hours in which the recorded winter temperature was below 45F. By any measure, that's a very low number, sufficient only for extremely low-chill cultivars of peaches and other fruit to produce. That kind of winter is more common to the Rio Grande Valley or Florida than Central Texas. Contrast that to this winter, where I've already logged 514 chill hours, with the traditional heart of winter--January and February--still to come (at this rate, we could easily exceed 1,000 chill hours, which is plenty more than any plant I grow needs in order to fruit). Needless to say, I'm hoping for some nice plum, pear and even apple production this spring.
But the overall amount of cold isn't the whole story--it's how the cold is delivered that has an equally powerful impact. Last year, after an unusually warm autumn, an arctic blast hit us, driving temperatures down to 22F. That cold weather killed all the fronds on the mature Mexican fan palm out front, killed the satsumas in my backyard down almost to the roots (despite their being covered by frost cloth), killed an Austin pomegranate down to the roots, killed a fig tree down to the roots, froze the buds and fruits off my Loquats, etc. My banana plants survived, but I'd wrapped them in C9 lights and frost blankets. That cold just hammered everything I had. Because of the damage done by 22F, one might expect this year's 16F to be much worse, right? Wrong. I know--I'm surprised myself. The Mexican fan palm took no damage. My pomegranates lost their leaves, but had no stem die-back. Ditto the figs. The re-grown satsumas are fine. I even had in-ground Bird-of-Paradise and plumeria survive unscathed (with cover and lights). What gives? Acclimation, that's what. The run-up to that 16F plunge consisted of a week of 40F weather, then another week of light freezes progressing to generally harder freezes. Essentially, the plants had plenty of time to adapt and prepare themselves for the cold, and weathered the low temperatures surprisingly well. The previous year, the hard freeze came out of nowhere--the weather was warm and mild, and as far as the plants were concerned, they were still enjoying the last days of summer (we were swimming in the pool until mid-October, it was so unusually warm).
The takeaway is that while plants may not have intelligence, they've still evolved ways to prepare for extremes of weather. The catch is that they need environmental signals to trigger those protective, physiological changes. The trouble is that climate change fosters more extreme weather--higher highs, lower lows, and unpredictability in between. That wreaks havoc on plants that've evolved over the centuries to thrive in a particular type of climate, or been bred for high cold or heat tolerances. If low-chill peaches are breaking bud in early February because temperatures have hit 80F for the previous two weeks, a sudden freeze in March is devastating to that year's crop. This kind of wild weather has manifested occasionally in the past, but I fear it's now well on its way to becoming the new norm.
Now Playing: Hilo Hawaiians Honeymoon on Hawaii
Chicken Ranch Central
Chicken Ranch Central