Rosa rugosa

Several years ago I planted some of these roses with the idea to harvest the hips for their vitamin C.  They are reputed to have a high amount of C.  The plans haven't worked out too well, the roses grow good and look nice.  They are about 3' apart and have grown to about 5 or 6 feet tall.  They have some bloom all summer long.  The problem is the little grub that ends up in the hip.  I am a confirmed beef eater, not a grub eater.  We could probably cut open the hip and scoop out the contents, removing the grub, and that would probably work fine.  We just haven't got that desperate for vitamin C yet.

Most are this beautiful pink, while a couple of bushes produce white flowers which you can see in an earlier post.


Immature hips.


Ripened hips.


An opened hip with the intruder and his excreta.


The bushes are set in BOBBs. Buried Open Bottomed Buckets.  This method of planting has worked fine for the roses.  It limits, although doesn't totally eliminate, suckers.  Helps to control weeds in amongst the branches, have you ever tried to pull grass from among a thorny cane?  It also helps to deliver water right to the roots.  The tayberries are also set in BOBBs and are doing good in them.  Not so good are the raspberries.  I don't know if it was the raspberries that failed or just the execution but I will probably pull them out and try just planting them in the ground sans the BOBBs.

Way-Back: Taxes

You would truly have to be a hermit and a non-participant from the current wage/tax model not to know that taxes in 2012 take a significant portion of the average income, and even then you might have to be mighty ignorant not to realize that.  Online sources estimate that the average wage earner will pay about 30% of income in the form of some type of tax.  If you are above average then you may pay as much as 57%.
The various taxes would include: Federal income tax, State & local income taxes, sales tax, Social
security and Medicaid, property tax, fuel taxes, estate taxes, fees, licenses, etc.
This is a long way from the estimated tax burden in 1900 of 5.9%.  Most taxes of this time were ad-valorem taxes, that is to say, they were in the form of excise taxes and tariffs.  These type of taxes would already be part of the price of the goods purchased and would nearly be invisible.   In 1900 60% of the Federal revenue came from alcohol tax and 20% came from tobacco tax.  So if you were a heavy drinker and smoker you would be paying more in taxes than someone who neither drank nor smoked.
In our little calculation to determine what the purchasing power of the average wage earner was in 1900 to 2012 dollars I am going to make this simple.  I am not going to subtract anything from the 1900 wage for taxes because we are buying goods already with taxes in the price, this may not be entirely true in all cases and all taxes paid but I think it is close enough.  For 2012 we will have to subtract 30%. So...
1900 average wage = $438
2012 average wage = $43,633 - (43633*.30) 13,099 = $30,534 after taxes.
Our ratio then would be 30534/438 = 70.
To apply this ratio to the lb of coffee that we looked at earlier that sold for 10.5 cents, 10.5 * 70 = $7.35 per lb in 2012 dollars, after taxes.  That brings it a lot closer to the $4 per lb that we can buy the cheap stuff for at the local Walmart.  Of course, if you pay more in taxes than 30% that would bring the purchasing power even closer.  Keep this ratio in mind as we look at other goods from the 1901 Sears catalogue in future Way Back posts.

Garden

A cold and wet spring has put the garden behind schedule.  It is looking pretty good but with some of nights dipping into the low 40's and high 30's it's likely some of it will not mature.

There are lots of pumpkins.


The beans are producing well and we expect to pick them until frost.


There are a handful of arctic kiwi fruits.  There are two plants, a male and a female.  They both grow to beat the band early in the spring only to get pruned back by late spring frosts.  It's a yearly ritual.  These vines are reputed to bear 100 lbs of fruit a year.  I think I would be happy to pick 1 lb. 

There is no chance of getting a covering on the greenhouse this late in the year.  Cow cumbers and pumpkins on this side and tomatoes and cantaloupes on the other side have outgrown the boundaries by yards.  There are pumpkins growing to the far left in amongst the Zucchini.  In the foreground left are the radishes gone to seed, these are being given to the chickens.  Also the several varieties of lettuce just past the radishes are still producing and providing for good salads.


I am not sure what variety these cow cumbers are but we call them ghost cumbers because of their very light colouring.  They are not quite as good as regular varieties, the peel being a little tough, but are a novelty.


Some of the Early Girl tomatoes have turned orange since this picture was taken.  Crossing my fingers that we will get tomatoes.


I culled the old apple trees that never were able to mature fruit before winter weather.  I will replant come spring with trees that ripen fruit in August or September.  This one, a variety of McIntosh, I think, just barely makes it in time.  It is heavy laden and looking good right now.


We picked the Lodi apples yesterday and got about 6 boxes.  A very nice harvest that will go for applesauce and pies.


The Dolgo crabapples are looking good, as they do every year.

Adding to the wood pile

Slowly the wood pile is growing.  I know it is a little late in the year to be cutting green wood for the coming winter but promptly cutting and splitting it will maximize the drying process.  Much of this pictured is well dried.  I have burned half-dried wood before and believe me it is not worth it.  You still put the same effort into it and you are constantly tending the fire to keep the wood burning, you don't get as much heat from it and you creosote your chimney.  Just in case this wood does not reach the proper dryness I have quite a few standing dead trees that I will cut a little later and we may also buy a cord or two of seasoned wood.
Once upon a time I was cutting wood in the fall for the following winter, that's a nice way to do it.  For several years we did not burn much wood instead we used alternate heat sources but slowly depleted our wood pile and didn't bother to replenish it.  More on our $2500 folly in another post but suffice it to say we are back to burning wood now and I am just getting into the wood cutting groove.  My goal is to have two winter's wood cut and split come next winter.  Well, that's the stuff dreams are made of.



Some wood is just too much to split.  This piece, and there are others, is just to knotty, or should I say too naughty, to split.  I might be able to cram it into the stove but why bother, it will burn nicely in the outdoor fire pit.  Another month and it will be time to have a few outdoor fires with hotdogs and toasted marshmallows.


Some land just west of and below the orchard and garden area is the prime woodlot this year.  I hope to clear about a quarter acre.  Doing so will allow more late afternoon sun to reach the garden and once we have the stumps dozed out and the the land smoothed we can plant it to a small pasture.

This picture shows a portion of the pasture-to-be before cutting.  Once I have the triangular piece cut over I will post another picture.

Green Beans

Home canned green beans.   While both Mrs. Waggs and myself grew up eating our share of home canned goods, doing the canning ourselves is somewhat of a new experience.  Getting back to our roots and being self-sufficient.

Tayberry cordial

We won't have to wait 6 months to try this out.  It is ready now, but will taste much better once the weather turns colder.  There is just something warming about it when there is ice and snow outside and cordial inside.  Sorry I couldn't get a picture of a full glass, I felt a chill in the air.

Way-Back: wages

Trying to get an understanding of what people were paid and what it was really worth to them around 1900-1910 can be confusing.  A great deal has changed in the last 100-110 years and there is a plethora of websites that tell us how much better off we are today than they were then.  I am not so sure that we can buy more today with our wages than we could then.  For sure we have have lot more goods to choose from and probably have a lot more available food stuffs both in season and out of season but I am mostly talking about purchasing power verses earning power.  The formula for this seems simple enough, how much did a person earn for the hours worked and how much did goods, services and other expenses cost in relation to the hours worked.  I see no reason to make the formula much more complicated than this but we must include in 'other expenses' the taxes paid because they play a more significant role today than they did, that is my opinion although it seems simple enough when you consider that they did not pay social security, medicare/medicaid or income tax.  Sure, maybe we are getting our money's worth for those taxes paid and maybe we aren't.  I am not trying to make political commentary but only do a wage comparison betwixt the two eras, today and 1900-1910.
Wages seem to be about $250 to $600 per year around 1900.  Average of all industries was $438.  By 1910 they increased to a range from $325 to $750 per year, with the average of all industries being $574. It appears 10 hour days were fairly common although the trend toward 8 hour days was starting.  In the 1800's 12 hour days were the norm as it had been for centuries.  At least in this respect I think we are better off today, I much prefer the shorter days.
Construction workers seem to be toward the higher end as well as government workers.  Textile and farm workers toward the lower end.  Health care/medical services workers averaged $256/yr in 1900. 
In an earlier post I mentioned that $750 dollars (the upper end of wages in 1912) would be worth in silver about $16,000 today, that's 577 ounces of silver x $28.  Silver and gold were part of the money then.  In gold, the value today would be much more, about $58,700.  There was about .048375 ounces per dollar.  750 x .048375 x $1620 = $58,775.  Not really relevant to what we are looking at because in 1900-1910 gold and silver dollars were equal in purchasing power buying the same amount but interesting none-the-less how their relative values have changed over time.  If you were a working man in 1900 and saved one gold dollar every year (about 1/2 a day's wage at the time) for the next 33 years (1933 was the year gold coinage was removed by usage by gov't) you would have had $33 (about 16 days labor at $2 per day) in gold, not much changed.  If you hid away your 33 gold dollars instead of turning them in you would have had $55.83 dollars worth of gold when it was revalued a year or so later.  There the value stayed until 1971 when it was allowed to float free against the dollar. Today that 1.596 ounces of gold would be worth $2,586 (a little more than 15 days labor if you are making $168 per day, the current average).  So what has retained its value better, gold or the dollar?
For 2010 the SSA lists the average national wage as $41,673.83.  This was a 2.36 % increase over 2009.  Since there were no figures more current than 2010 we will extrapolate for 2012 by using the same percent of increase for each year, giving us $43,663.  I think this is close enough to say that the 2012 wage is 100 times the average 1900 wage and would be suitable for calculating the price of 1900 goods by also multiplying it by 100 or simply moving the decimal over two places.  For 2012 equivalent of 1910 prices we can multiple the 1910 prices by 76, a little more complicated but easy to do with a calculator.
So in the example below, clipped from the 1901 Sears catalogue, we have the prices of coffees.  The best price shown is when you buy 10 lbs, the price is 10.5 cents per lb or the 2012 price equivalent would be $10.50 per pound.  You won't have to look hard to find coffee now for about $4.00 per lb and that is in a 33 oz can.  You can certainly find coffee for $10 a lb if you want to pay that much but remember we are looking the at the cheapest 1901 price not the most expensive which goes for the 2012 equivalent of $28 a lb.  Even with the today's taxes figured in, 2012 offers the better price.  Chalk one up 2012.


In the next Way Back we will take a closer look at taxes then and now.