Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 13 July 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good evening from Free Missouri! We had another heat advisory because the heat index was 106. Thankfully, it rained overnight and again this morning. We may even get more rain tonight. The top pic is the green grass as it recovers from the last grazing. The left side of the pic, just under the edge of the trees is where we are going to put the chicken tractor with the beef chickens. We plan to move them out of the brooder and into the tractor in the next day or so. The animals are doing well today with nothing significant to report (NSTR). Well, maybe except for the kitten that rode in the engine compartment with Rebekah as she went to work this morning. She heard it this afternoon after she got off of work and stopped at the gas station. She was able to get it out of the engine and put it in the front with her for the rest of the ride home. Notice the pic with the kitten snuggled under the front tire of the F-350? What could possibly go wrong? Shelley and I preserved veggies and basil from the garden last night and today. We blanched, vacuum sealed, and froze green beans last night. Today we chopped, vacuum sealed, and froze squash and zucchini. We made jars of refrigerator pickles with our cucumbers and fresh dill and jalapeños from mom’s garden. We also put loads of basil in the dehydrator but ran out of room before we ran out of basil. I asked ChatGPT for some recommendations for how to preserve basil. The one we chose was pesto. I asked it for a recipe and then asked it to adjust the recipe because I didn’t have pine nuts. It gladly obliged and following the recipe, I made and froze in an ice cube tray, pesto with the remaining basil. It was nice to have inside things to do to stay out of the sauna outside. We still need to preserve lots of cucumbers…with lots more on the way.
We had a pretty good crop of cucumbers last year. We love pickles and would buy them at the store weekly...until we made our own. We pickled and canned quite a few gallons of cucumbers last year. I’ll pause for a moment so that you can guess how long it took us to eat all of the pickles… … … Those of you that guessed that we still have last year’s pickles in the pantry are correct. We stopped eating pickles. Not just we stopped buying pickles because we were eating those we made ourselves, we stopped eating them. We have had a few, here and there, but we still have a lot of last year’s pickles. Curious as to what the psychological causes might be, I described this situation to ChatGPT and asked for its opinion. Here’s its response:
“This phenomenon could be explained through several psychological perspectives:
1. **Scarcity Mindset**: This refers to the mentality of not having enough. In your situation, though you have an abundance of pickles, the fact that they are homemade may have given them a certain "value" in your mind that makes you feel as though they are scarce or precious. This scarcity mentality can cause people to hoard or save things instead of using them.
2. **Loss Aversion**: People tend to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. In this case, the "loss" of the pickles, even if they're not being used, might feel more significant than the "gain" of enjoying them.
3. **Effort Justification**: If a lot of effort was put into making the pickles (growing cucumbers, preparing, etc.), they might be perceived as more valuable, leading to the tendency to save them. This is based on the cognitive dissonance theory which suggests we value things more when we've put effort into them.
4. **Endowment Effect**: This is a cognitive bias where people tend to overvalue things merely because they own them. In this case, the pickles you made at home are now perceived to hold more value than those bought at the store, hence you might feel more inclined to save them.
5. **Delayed Gratification**: This is the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward and wait for a later reward. You might be subconsciously waiting for a "right" time or occasion to eat those pickles.
Overcoming these patterns may involve intentionally using and enjoying the homemade pickles regularly, to break the cycle of scarcity mindset or other mental barriers that have been established. You can remind yourself that the purpose of making the pickles was to enjoy them, and you can always make more if you run out.”
I think of the 5 potential phenomena ChatGPT offered, Effort Justification comes the closest to describing our situation. Shelley's explanation of the situation: "We just forget about them." No matter, I believe we will take its advice and intentionally use and enjoy all of the things we preserve this year instead of hanging on to them until next year.
Local Farm Report for 12 July 2023:
Harvest:
23 Chicken eggs
15 Duck eggs
0 Goose eggs
6 1/2 Gallons of milk
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
I'm with Shelley...Occam's Razor! You simply forgot about them!
Glad you guys got some rain!