Cat Tree Photo Addendum

No doubt, your burning question following last Friday’s blog post, Cat Tree Construction, is how did the cats respond to the custom-made cat tree? First, however, I have to report that our mid-April, 800 mile drive was made longer by ice, snow, numerous accidents (not us) and closed state highways. But we made it!

As soon as we set down different parts of the unassembled cat tree in Noah and Cassy’s apartment, Henry and Timothy were all over them. We expected that of Henry, but young Timothy had been neutered that morning and was functioning on pain killers.

These photos, taken by Vicki and Noah, will give you a pretty fair idea of what transpired.

Timothy rests atop the bottom section
of the unassembled cat tree.

Henry inspects the partially assembled cat tree.

Unable to wait for Vicki to complete the cat tree, Timothy
climbs up and Henry tries out the lower house.

Yes, this cat tree will be fine, Timothy decrees,
with Noah in the background.

Noah and Cassy dine and discuss
where to move the cat tree.

Henry’s aerie atop the cat tree.

Cat Tree Construction

Welcome back. Don’t worry; I’m not writing about cats again. This is about cat trees--structures that cat owners might offer their cats in place of the drapes, closets, refrigerator tops, kitchen cabinets, tables and counters, and all those other places cats go to climb, explore, play and loaf, especially but not exclusively when the owners aren’t around.

Blame the topic on my wife Vicki. Two months ago, our son Noah mentioned to her that he and his wife Cassy were thinking about buying a cat tree to entertain and contain their two cats, Henry and Timothy. (Yes, it’s the same Henry that used my head as a launching pad to leap after a flying bug, Cat and Man--Henry and Me.)

When Vicki realized what Noah meant by a cat tree, she advised him, Don’t buy; we’ll build one. By “we,” she was thinking it would be a fun project for her and her father Muns. She assumed that Muns, who thinks cats belong only in barns to ward off rodents, would by now have forgotten or forgiven that, when Vicki was quite young, she hid a kitten in her room for days before he found out.

“We” did not include me. Unless there’s a requirement for my services, I don’t always hear about Vicki’s projects. I didn’t learn about the cat tree until I saw it in the shop, nearly complete, when I attended the Saturday Coffee Hour.

Vicki’s initial cat tree design. Different
colors are different sections for
assembly and disassembly.

That’s too bad, because I could have helped. I’ve known about cat trees since an advertisement for one was appended to one of my blog posts three years ago. In fact, that post introduced Henry, Time for Pets--Henry the Cat, which is rather prophetic, no?

Community Project

Anyway, as Vicki related the happenings to me, she found photos of cat trees online, selected one and used PowerPoint to design a tree with dimensions that would fit through most doorways, provide ample space at the top for a cat in an eight foot ceiling room, and be assembled and disassembled in parts for transport from Wisconsin to Virginia in our little Honda Fit.  

The nearly complete cat tree and
Jay, who stepped forward as
project lead. Mauve-colored parts
are those covered with carpet.
Uncarpeted vertical posts are
wound rope. Catnip toys would be
 hung strategically.

Vicki’s initial design was refined at various stages based on available and procured materials (wood, carpet, rope, etc.) and consultations with Muns and several Saturday morning regulars. Although Muns and the other consultants have much more experience building aircraft and cars than cat trees, each is more than capable at carpentry. One, in fact, had just finished making cribbage boards for family members and was about to start on bowls fashioned in layers with different woods.

Wrap Up

There was no attempt at cost accounting for comparison with commercially available cat trees, and there was no serious consideration of--or even the slightest interest in--a cat tree construction business. 

A trial run to check if the disassembled
cat tree would fit in the Fit and leave
space for luggage and Warren.

Once the tree was complete, the consultants went back to airplanes, cars and wooden bowls, Vicki advanced to the next project on her list (not that there’s any real order), and I was given her photos and permitted to blog about it.

Oh! What happened with the cat tree? How did Henry and Timothy respond? I’ll show you on Tuesday. Thanks for stopping by. Bring a friend next time.

Indoor Farm Barn Addendum

In last Friday’s blog post, Indoor Farming, I revealed my nascent idea to convert the long inactive, former dairy barn on the farm here to an indoor vertical farm. Although I’ve yet to prepare the business plan and propose the idea to my wife and her father and sister, I’ll take this opportunity to show you the “before” so you’ll be dazzled by the “after” should we proceed. Although you may be anxious to invest in the venture, please do not send checks; not yet anyway.

The roadside view of the barn in case you don’t remember earlier photos.

The rear of the barn has separate entrances for the cows that gave whole, 2%, skim and either 1% or chocolate milk. (Just kidding.)

A view of the lower level of the barn where the cows lined up for milking twice a day. The edible insects and snails could go here.

A view of the upper level of the barn. Most of this space would be for vertically stacked vegetables.

No doubt, it’s going to take a lot of work to get the barn ready for year-round indoor production.

At least the barn roof and ceiling still look good.

Indoor Farming

Welcome back. Ever since my GPS led me here to my wife’s family’s farm, I’ve been wondering what they could do with the barn, which hasn’t been used for years. My latest idea would require loads of information before I hand them a business plan, but I’ve been thinking about renovating the structure to begin Warren’s Indoor Farm Enterprise. (I’m willing to consider other names.)

Along with the major push to boost the consumption of edible insects, which I served in an earlier blog post (Entomophagy), there’s been a…what? 20 year?...movement gathering steam to expand indoor farming beyond mushrooms in your basement and broccoli sprouts in your kitchen.
 
I had some notion of indoor farming. Then, over the past six months I started seeing more articles on the topic, especially vertical farming, which I had thought was growing crops in tall buildings, though I learned the label is being used for growing crops stacked vertically in any structure. What really captured my attention was a video broadcast by Aljazeera America.

Plantagon’s design illustration of a planned vertical farm
in Sweden--177 feet tall with18 levels of vegetable gardens
whose trays would revolve around a helix system.
(www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/11/06/164428031/sky-high-vegetables-vertical-farming-sprouts-in-singapore)

At the risk of telling you everything you already know or less, I thought I’d devote today’s post to indoor farming.

Why Farm Indoors?

The impetus for indoor farming, in particular vertical farming, is much the same as that for edible insect consumption–increasing global population with limited opportunities to increase the production of food from land or ocean. One additional incentive for indoor farming is urbanization. Over half of the world’s population is concentrated in urban centers, that’s expected to increase and that’s where indoor farms could be established and do the most good.

Among the advantages of farming indoors are year-round production of higher value crops--vegetables, herbs, fruit-bearing plants; protection from adverse weather; no need for herbicides or pesticides; reduced use of land, water and fertilizer; and reduced environmental impact from runoff, farm equipment and, if located in or near urban centers, from transport to market.

How is Indoor Farming Implemented?

Various approaches can be adopted, however, indoor farming is an ideal setting for hydroponics--growing plants in water with mineral nutrient solutions, with or without some inert medium (e.g., perlite, pumice, gravel, coconut husks) and no soil; aquaponics, which is a marriage of aquaculture--producing fish, prawns or other aquatic animals in tanks—and hydroponics, such that each contributes to the other; and aeroponics, growing plants in an air or mist environment without soil.

The structures employed for indoor farming vary, but the trend toward vertical farms, long envisioned by Columbia University’s Dickson Despommier, would occupy high-rise urban buildings, constructed or renovated for the purpose. Assorted designs have been proposed and some have been or are being built.

One variant, operating in Singapore since 2012, is essentially a 3-story greenhouse. Plants are grown on racks of A-shaped frames that rotate to expose the plants to natural light and provide nutrient solution and irrigation.

The Singapore vertical farm has multiple “A-Go-Gro” rotating frames inside each 30-foot tall greenhouse. (photo by Singapore Ministry of National Development, www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/farming-grows-up-the-worlds-first-commercial-vertical-farm-opens-in-singapo)

There’s a hybrid vertical farm in Tokyo, where Pasona, the company that occupies the building, is using different methods to grow vegetables in every nook and cranny of its office space.

The Pasona office building in Tokyo shares 20% of its office space with growing vegetables. (www.archdaily.com/428868/in-tokyo-a-vertical-farm-inside-and-out/)

Green Spirit Farms recently opened a single story indoor farm in Scranton, Pa., and can grow up to 17 million plants on rotary planters, stacked six high. The facility makes use of artificial light, as does a Green Sense Farms facility near Chicago, which occupies a 1 million cubic foot growing space. The latter operation partners with Philips, which provided LED lighting, whose wavelengths (color) can be optimized for the plant and stage of growth.

Green Spirit Farms installed vertically stacked rotary planters in its Scranton, Pa., indoor farm. (www.harborcountry-news.com/articles/2013/07/03/features/doc515c56f5491c8195014129.txt)

The Green Sense Farms indoor farm near Chicago relies on variable wavelength LED lighting. (greensensefarms.com)

As for the Aljazeera video that motivated me, I have the link but the video is gone. Not to worry; there’s ample information available about “The Plant,” which is establishing indoor aquaponic farms as sustainable food businesses and educational facilities in a converted industrial building in Chicago. The Plant is promoting the concept of closing waste, resource and energy loops. Its renewable energy system, for example, is built around an anaerobic digester that diverts tons of food waste from landfills to meet its heat and power needs.

Wrap Up

Field and grain crops are generally not going to be grown indoors, and non-leafy crops that require pollination will require special treatment, which might include hosting bees. While the jury is still out on the economics of indoor farming given the present availability of land and cost for artificial lighting, much will be learned from the initial ventures.

My primary concern about converting the barn for Warren’s Indoor Farm Enterprise is the market, though I expect little competition for my edible insects and perhaps snails. Actually, if we can’t find a digester, I might be able to use the snails for power (see Snail Power). Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

-Dickson Despommier’s website with a wealth of material on vertical farms: www.verticalfarm.com/
-Examples of recent articles on vertical farms:
www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/06/vertical-farming-explained-erik-murchie
www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129524.100-vertical-farms-sprouting-all-over-the-world.html#.UtremLRMGJA
-Examples of vertical-farm designs in Esquire Magazine:
www.esquire.com/features/vertical-farms
-Video on Singapore vertical farm: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY7O5YNxKuI
-Article with video on Tokyo vertical farm:
 www.archdaily.com/428868/in-tokyo-a-vertical-farm-inside-and-out/
-Article with video on Chicago area farm and LED lights:
www.newscenter.philips.com/main/standard/news/press/2014/20140509-philips-and-green-sense-farms-usher-in-new-era-of-indoor-farming.wpd#.U35RoCiCV8F
-The Plant website: www.plantchicago.com/

Placebo Sleep Photo Addendum

I had a hard time coming up with an addendum to last Friday’s blog post, Placebo Sleep. Walking didn’t generate any super ideas (see: Walking for Creativity) so I started searching photos online.

I began with perception and almost went with optical illusions.

Stare at the circles and they appear to pulsate. One of many
optical illusions developed by Prof. Akiyoshi Kitaoka.
(www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html)

It didn’t take long to remember that I’d already included similar illusions in an earlier photo addendum, Spotting Mistakes Addendum. I strive for originality.

I came across an air-guitar photo that I thought was great but decided it was a stretch to tag it perception--at least the perception covered by the research--unless you could convince passersby to reach for one.

Free air guitar. (multiple websites)

I scanned through placebos and placebo effects and found lots of pills, sugar, graphs and diagrams. I thought I had something with the power of suggestion if I focused on advertising. That was disappointing. 

Then I switched to fake machines, trying to come up with something like the one the investigators said could determine the participants’ previous night’s REMs. There wasn’t much there besides a wide variety of perpetual motion machines (e.g., www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm) and the fake chess-playing machine, operated by a hidden chess master, which was used to fool Napoleon and many others from 1770 to the 1820s. 

A reconstruction of the Mechanical Turk
 (aka Automaton Chess Player), a fake
chess-playing machine. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk)

I considered older exercise machines, which looked cool but probably shouldn’t be labeled fake.

Mechanotherapy exercise equipment invented in the late 1800s by Gustav Zander. (www.theultraviolet.com/wordpress/2014/02/how-to-workout-without-ever-having-to-actually-workout/)

Then I arrived at machine art forms, such as a flash drive (aka thumb drive).

Steampunk-style computer flash drive. (multiple websites)

And I found what I thought was an excellent fake machine, though I doubt it would have fooled the undergraduates.

Hannah Pearson’s “Make Believe Machine.” (hannahpearsonart.wordpress.com/)

With that I stopped, having run out of time, and I went for a walk to think about the next blog topic.