Geomagnetic chook whispering.
Captains Log - 0011/ 12th May 2024 / 1100hrs
For a time I was on an advisory panel. It was a pretty big deal actually and I quite liked saying the sentence “I am an advisor to the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy”. The five of us were the industry liaison for the document that sets the direction of focus for spending and attention on infrastructure for the two islands of Australia. There is a whole government department of folk that work on this every day. When I was on it (four years), we got distracted somewhat by some virus thingy that was going around, like everyone I guess. However, after all that madness, we began getting more involved in many projects across many channels of government. Defence, climate, trade coupled with heat maps of truck routes and ports etc etc - quite interesting stuff and something I enjoyed being a part of. I digress though, as during one “teams meeting” on one of the “teams” channels I was a part of, we had a briefing for over an hour from the Australian Space Weather Forecasting Centre. There were over a hundred people from all chapters of the supply chain (trucking, shipping, aviation, defense, agriculture, communications - you name it, they were all there watching, and if anyone was remotely like me, they were riveted by this somewhat obscure department of government that were tasked to monitor the sun. Over an hour of discussion around how 2024 and 2025 are the peaks of the sun’s activity cycle and what may happen if a giant solar flare erupted and fried our satellites, scrambled our GPS and basically shut down the internet. It was the stuff of science fiction movies, but with real science and real scenarios that basically ended with “if it happens we are all fu8k3d”. During this briefing I distinctly recall thinking “maybe we should speed up this buy land at Binalong Bay thing”. Well, now you know……the largest solar geomagnetic storm for twenty years hit the planet on the weekend and unless you are so engrossed in your tick tock screen and didn’t look up, then you probably saw one of those “once in a lifetime skies”…..or you live at Binalong Bay and the sky is covered with clouds and the “insta worthy” photos are obscured and all you have is a iridescent sky full of clouds…but that is still amazing in itself. And I saw it a month ago and took photo’s then anyway.
But this has now got me thinking. What does a “G5 magnetic storm - extreme”, red bar graph filling up the entire range of it’s percentile, do to a floating bubble of atoms three rocks away from a star that is sneezing radiation at us from 149,597,871 kilometers away. Beside of course fill up our Facebook feeds with those that figured out the settings on their iphone.
I have a theory.
Roula, Toula, Soula, Voula, Foula and Agape now live at The Ship - Bay of Fires. After a post on the St Helen’s Facebook notice page (love this page by the way) calling for chook whisperers, we had Craig from St Mary’s school contact us and say that he had Silver Wyandotte chooks that were ready for a new home - chicken equivalent teenagers really, won’t be laying eggs for another month. They were born at the school farm in St Mary’s and have completed their certificate three in “chooking” - so State educated chooks. Good looking chooks too (yep, I have reached that stage where what a chicken looks like comes into the mix). We have the Tag Mahal of chook yards and I had spent the week preparing for their arrival. It is quite the coincidence that season three of “Clarkeson’s Farm has just come out……I find myself say quite a lot lately that “I have done a thing”.
We headed up to St Mary’s school with a Heston Blumenthal empty barbeque box with holes cut out for breathing, in the back of the Volvo and rolled into St Mary’s school on a rainy Friday morning. After the digital sign in and “do you have a working with children government issued card” gateway entry to the school grounds, we wandered down to the school farm amongst the cows and chickens and sheds and general amazingness of St Mary’s school farm, to met Roula, Toula, Soula, Voula, Foula and Agape. Our new chooks. For those that were born past generation X, google “Con the fruitier” to see where we got the names from. Debi named them. It has stuck.
A cupla days!
With our new ladies in the back of the Volvo content in the Heston Blumenthal empty barbeque box with holes, and half a bale of hay, we left the school via the St Mary’s cafe that makes toasted ham and cheese with relish sandwiches and headed back down St Mary’s pass back to Binalong Bay. Roula, Toula, Soula, Voula, Foula and Agape are now in solitary confinement for three days as they come to grips with the fact that they have struck chook gold and are now part of the ecosystem that is The Ship. Blended made in Tasmania chook granola, St Mary’s school hay, Binalong Bay sky water and treats of dried worms and the occasional handful of fresh spinach leaves as well as the last of the semi ripe tomatoes from the vegetable garden is the menu for the ladies as they are introduced to their new home and egg laying world - another “cupla days” and they will be roaming the chook enclosure paradise and wandering back to their castle at night by themselves. At least that is what chook whisperers tell me as well as every algorithm that seems to be finely tuned to chookering on youtube, facebook and instagram - you just need to think something these days and Zuckerberg and his mates will provide an influencer with an opinion and a selfie video camera (I have one of those cameras!).
Back to the theory.
It’s been raining here. Coastal rain. Beautiful rain. The ground is soaking up nitrates and hydrogen molecules. Everything is standing to attention. The tree bark is black from moisture as the roots soak up this gift from the sky. The nature trails around the twenty seven hectares have come to life with dense mulched undergrowth exploding with different species of mushrooms is all their forms and colours (see photos). Everything is green.
I don’t care what any mushroom nerd says, this is created from Sun Flares.
Same as above
But now, all of this rain and air around us has been super charged by a “colossal X5.8-class solar flare that was followed by yet another X1.5 solar flare, the strongest types of flares there are” and have been recorded for over 20 years. It is still going as I write this. It has come from massive sunspot complex about that is about seventeen times the size of our planet. I mean, it is a pretty big deal.
So - Roula, Toula, Soula, Voula, Foula and Agape, who now live at The Ship - Bay of Fires, are part of the “bathed in the energy of the plasma and radiation by the biggest solar flare to hit earth in 20 years” generation of chooks. My theory is that this super charge in our atmosphere has very so slightly altered the DNA of Roula, Toula, Soula, Voula, Foula and Agape. From T Rex over the hundreds of millions of years to back yard chooks, this DNA change from the solar flare event of May 2024, will subtlety change the egg laying evolutionary curve and the eggs that will eventually come (in about a months time) will be the eggs of the new world. They may be the cure for one of the many things that keep trying to kill us. I have absolutely no doubt though, that the eggs from Roula, Toula, Soula, Voula, Foula and Agape, now charged by X5.8, will make the most amazing omelets on the planet. You will have to come to The Ship - Bay of Fires for the Captain’s Breakfast in Spring though to find out!
Thank you for reading my ramblings again – keep safe and see you next week.
The Captain.