#farmer success stories.

[farmerstrend]

The Future of Coconut Farming: Why Coastal Farmers are Being Advised to Embrace Hybrid Varieties

Farmers in the coastal region have been encouraged to adopt hybrid coconut farming to boost yields and meet the growing demand of the crop. Stakeholders in the coconut subsector, led by the Micro Enterprise Support Programme Trust (MESPT), are urging farmers to move away from the traditional African tall coconut tree varieties, which have low yields, and start cultivating new hybrid varieties…

[apexkeepers]

A Pawsitive Impact: Igniting Hope, One Dog at a Time

At Apex Keepers, we believe in the power of second chances. We’re dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, and rehoming herding dogs, giving them the love and care they deserve.Our Mission:Rescue: We rescue dogs from shelters, neglectful situations, and overcrowded homes. A dog is not just a pet, but a loyal companion and a member of the team. Rehabilitate: We provide top-notch veterinary care,…

[iakshaysrivastav]

Revolutionizing Farming: Radheshyam Ratheewal's Polyhouse Success

🌱 From Tradition to Innovation: Rajasthan’s Radheshyam Ratheewal embraced modern farming with polyhouse cucumber cultivation, transforming his life and inspiring his community.

Raisinghnagar’s Radheshyam Ratheewal didn’t just embrace farming; he revolutionized it. This farmer turned entrepreneur transitioned to polyhouse cucumber farming and became a symbol of agricultural innovation. What motivated this shift, and how did he overcome the challenges? Here’s his story, enhanced with insights and implications for modern agriculture. A Career Redefined: The Spark of…

[theformulaforsuccess]

Leadership Lessons from a Farmer

Douglas Vandergraph continues his journey of teaching others how to accomplish their dreams and goals by talking about leadership. Douglas grew up on a family farm in Nebraska. One of his favorite memories is that, as a young child, he loved to listen to the men talk. These men were farmers, young men who had just returned from the Vietnam War and were taking over the family farm from their fathers. Douglas believes that the leadership lessons he learned as a young boy from these men/farmers have assisted him in building not only a business empire, but a life worth living. These are the lessons Douglas now shares with you. Douglas states, "A farmer is a great leader as they exhibit patience and care, two essential qualities for effective leadership. By emulating these qualities, we can cultivate leadership within our organizations and create an environment that fosters growth and success. This involves leading by example, selecting the right team members, nurturing and supporting growth, removing obstacles, and preparing for good and bad seasons. As leaders, we can learn from the farmer's practices and apply them to our leadership styles, ensuring we continually improve and adapt to better serve our teams and organizations." Douglas is putting himself out there as an example to others so they can see how anyone can take a chance, improve daily, and make a difference in the lives of others. What is it that you want in your life? Douglas can show you how to get it! This is a video series Douglas is completing in the hopes he can help just one person. Dr. Suess once said, "To the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you may be the world."

Follow Douglas on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Relevant Keywords:

#leadership #leadershipdevelopment #leadershipskills #farmer #farmers #farmerlife #lifeadvice #business #selfhelp

[banglakhobor]

টমেটো চাষ করেই কোটিপতি! কর্ণাটকের দুই ভাই দেখাচ্ছেন পথ, কীভাবে লক্ষ্যে পৌঁছলেন

টমেটো চাষ করে কোটিপতি হয়েছেন অনেকেই। গত দু’এক মাসে এমন অনেক ঘটনার নজির উঠে এসেছে সারা ভারতে। একদিকে টমেটোর মাত্রাছাড়া দামে নাভিশ্বাস সাধারণ মানুষের। অন্যদিকে সেই টমেটো বিক্রি করেই লাভের মুখ দেখা চাষি— এই দুইয়ে মিলে গত কয়েক মাসে সংবাদ শিরোনামে থেকেছে টমেটো। আবারও এমন চাষিদের কথা জানা গেল, যাঁরা টমেটোর ফলন থেকে রোজগার করেছেন কোটি টাকা। এবার জানা গেল কর্ণাটকের চামরাজানগর তালুকের দুই ভাইয়ের কথা।…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How lock-in hurts design

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you've ever read about design, you've probably encountered the idea of "paving the desire path." A "desire path" is an erosion path created by people departing from the official walkway and taking their own route. The story goes that smart campus planners don't fight the desire paths laid down by students; they pave them, formalizing the route that their constituents have voted for with their feet.

Desire paths aren't always great (Wikipedia notes that "desire paths sometimes cut through sensitive habitats and exclusion zones, threatening wildlife and park security"), but in the context of design, a desire path is a way that users communicate with designers, creating a feedback loop between those two groups. The designers make a product, the users use it in ways that surprise the designer, and the designer integrates all that into a new revision of the product.

This method is widely heralded as a means of "co-innovating" between users and companies. Designers who practice the method are lauded for their humility, their willingness to learn from their users. Tech history is strewn with examples of successful paved desire-paths.

Take John Deere. While today the company is notorious for its war on its customers (via its opposition to right to repair), Deere was once a leader in co-innovation, dispatching roving field engineers to visit farms and learn how farmers had modified their tractors. The best of these modifications would then be worked into the next round of tractor designs, in a virtuous cycle:

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

But this pattern is even more pronounced in the digital world, because it's much easier to update a digital service than it is to update all the tractors in the field, especially if that service is cloud-based, meaning you can modify the back-end everyone is instantly updated. The most celebrated example of this co-creation is Twitter, whose users created a host of its core features.

Retweets, for example, were a user creation. Users who saw something they liked on the service would type "RT" and paste the text and the link into a new tweet composition window. Same for quote-tweets: users copied the URL for a tweet and pasted it in below their own commentary. Twitter designers observed this user innovation and formalized it, turning it into part of Twitter's core feature-set.

Companies are obsessed with discovering digital desire paths. They pay fortunes for analytics software to produce maps of how their users interact with their services, run focus groups, even embed sneaky screen-recording software into their web-pages:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dark-side-of-replay-sessions-that-record-your-every-move-online/

This relentless surveillance of users is pursued in the name of making things better for them: let us spy on you and we'll figure out where your pain-points and friction are coming from, and remove those. We all win!

But this impulse is a world apart from the humility and respect implied by co-innovation. The constant, nonconsensual observation of users has more to do with controlling users than learning from them.

That is, after all, the ethos of modern technology: the more control a company can exert over its users ,the more value it can transfer from those users to its shareholders. That's the key to enshittification, the ubiquitous platform decay that has degraded virtually all the technology we use, making it worse every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

When you are seeking to control users, the desire paths they create are all too frequently a means to wrestling control back from you. Take advertising: every time a service makes its ads more obnoxious and invasive, it creates an incentive for its users to search for "how do I install an ad-blocker":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

More than half of all web-users have installed ad-blockers. It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But zero app users have installed ad-blockers, because reverse-engineering an app requires that you bypass its encryption, triggering liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law provides for a $500,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for "circumvention" of access controls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Beyond that, modifying an app creates liability under copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets, noncompete, nondisclosure and so on. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why services are so horny to drive you to install their app rather using their websites: they are trying to get you to do something that, given your druthers, you would prefer not to do. They want to force you to exit through the gift shop, you want to carve a desire path straight to the parking lot. Apps let them mobilize the law to literally criminalize those desire paths.

An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it (or do anything else that wrestles value back from a company). Apps are web-pages where everything not forbidden is mandatory.

Seen in this light, an app is a way to wage war on desire paths, to abandon the cooperative model for co-innovation in favor of the adversarial model of user control and extraction.

Corporate apologists like to claim that the proliferation of apps proves that users like them. Neoliberal economists love the idea that business as usual represents a "revealed preference." This is an intellectually unserious tautology: "you do this, so you must like it":

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/hp-ceo-says-customers-are-a-bad-investment-unless-they-can-be-made-to-buy-companys-drm-ink-cartridges.html

Calling an action where no alternatives are permissible a "preference" or a "choice" is a cheap trick – especially when considered against the "preferences" that reveal themselves when a real choice is possible. Take commercial surveillance: when Apple gave Ios users a choice about being spied on – a one-click opt of of app-based surveillance – 96% of users choice no spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

But then Apple started spying on those very same users that had opted out of spying by Facebook and other Apple competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Neoclassical economists aren't just obsessed with revealed preferences – they also love to bandy about the idea of "moral hazard": economic arrangements that tempt people to be dishonest. This is typically applied to the public ("consumers" in the contemptuous parlance of econospeak). But apps are pure moral hazard – for corporations. The ability to prohibit desire paths – and literally imprison rivals who help your users thwart those prohibitions – is too tempting for companies to resist.

The fact that the majority of web users block ads reveals a strong preference for not being spied on ("users just want relevant ads" is such an obvious lie that doesn't merit any serious discussion):

https://www.iccl.ie/news/82-of-the-irish-public-wants-big-techs-toxic-algorithms-switched-off/

Giant companies attained their scale by learning from their users, not by thwarting them. The person using technology always knows something about what they need to do and how they want to do it that the designers can never anticipate. This is especially true of people who are unlike those designers – people who live on the other side of the world, or the other side of the economic divide, or whose bodies don't work the way that the designers' bodies do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Apps – and other technologies that are locked down so their users can be locked in – are the height of technological arrogance. They embody a belief that users are to be told, not heard. If a user wants to do something that the designer didn't anticipate, that's the user's fault:

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

Corporate enthusiasm for prohibiting you from reconfiguring the tools you use to suit your needs is a declaration of the end of history. "Sure," John Deere execs say, "we once learned from farmers by observing how they modified their tractors. But today's farmers are so much stupider and we are so much smarter that we have nothing to learn from them anymore."

Spying on your users to control them is a poor substitute asking your users their permission to learn from them. Without technological self-determination, preferences can't be revealed. Without the right to seize the means of computation, the desire paths never emerge, leaving designers in the dark about what users really want.

Our policymakers swear loyalty to "innovation" but when corporations ask for the right to decide who can innovate and how, they fall all over themselves to create laws that let companies punish users for the crime of contempt of business-model.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/#is-prohibited

Image: Belem (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Desire_path_%2819811581366%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

hayloft

a/n: so…. i watched twisters…………

summary: “so what you’re saying is that you just came in here seeking shelter from the rain?” a smirk dazzled his features, “out of every shed and every other barn you passed on your way back to the house, you conveniently chose this one which I just so happen to still be in from when you poked your head in earlier,” his gaze briefly dipped down to your soaked through, and now sheer, t-shirt.

warnings: farmhand!tyler owens x farmer's daughter!reader, smut, farmer au, secret relationship, established relationship, bull rider!tyler, rain, sex on a hayloft, kissing, dirty talk, oral, facesitting, manhandling, impact play, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, wrote this in the middle of the night oops, click here for the prequel to this story

word count: 1673

∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽

masterlist | join my taglist

Rain splattered against the barn door as you fought to tug it closed, droplets whipped your face until the very last second when you finally managed to latch it shut. 

“Hey,” a deep timbre crackled from behind you, causing you to whirl around. 

“Oh, hi Tyler,” a smile couldn’t help but creep up on your features as you spotted the painstakingly handsome farmhand, “what are you doing in here?” 

A chuckle then bubbled out of him as he leaned the long pitchfork in his grasp against a nearby wall.

“My job, ma’am.”

“Of course, right,” one of your hands shot up to wipe your wet face, though without much success as your palms too were completely drenched. 

“Better question is,” he took a step closer to where you stood, dripping onto the dusty barn floors, “what are you doing in here?” 

“Oh, well, I was just coming home from a ride on Blue when the rain came pouring down, so–” 

“So what you’re saying is that you just came in here seeking shelter from the rain?” a smirk dazzled his features, “out of every shed and every other barn you passed on your way back to the house, you conveniently chose this one which I just so happen to still be in from when you poked your head in earlier,” his gaze briefly dipped down to your soaked through, and now sheer, t-shirt.

“Hm,” you hummed through your smile, “yeah, that really is convenient,” neither denying nor affirming his accusation as you then teasingly twisted away from the close proximity his slow stride had created.

Catching the ladder that led up to the open hayloft, you slowly began to climb it. 

“Just what are you doing now?” you heard from behind you. 

“You said you were working,” you glanced over your shoulder, successfully catching Tyler staring at your ass through your jean shorts, “so I’m getting out of your hair.” 

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?”

“That’s right,” you reached the top and plopped yourself down on the planks, “I’m kind that way. So now, just go back to whatever you were doing, lifting heavy things or whatever,” you waved a vague hand down at him in hopes that he would put on a show for you and let you ogle the way his muscles flexed beneath his tight shirt. 

But he didn’t pick the pitchfork back up. 

Instead, he simply blew out a soft chuckle, gazing up at you as a light shake found his head, staring up at your drenched visage just a moment longer before he began to climb the ladder as well. 

A giggle rolled off your tongue as he reached the top, a gentle sound that he then swiftly smothered as he leaned in and pressed his lips to yours, still balanced on the ladder, clutching onto the sides as he reached you, sitting cross-legged on the floor before him. 

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” 

“Me?” you tilted your lips out of his reach, “I am an angel. I’ve never done anything wrong in my life,” a grin accompanied your jest. 

As he climbed the rest of the way up onto the loft, you didn’t shift away to make room for him, only leaned back on your forearms as he blissfully crawled to settle above you. 

When you raised yourself up to kiss him once more, you only got to taste him for but a moment, only shyly managing to sink your fingers into the hem of his shirt, before he denied you of any more. 

“I swear to god, it’s like you want your daddy to catch us with the way you keep throwing yourself at me.”

Letting out a light-hearted scoff, you said, “excuse me? First of all, it’s raining and even if it wasn’t, he’s not coming down here, not this time of day, and second of all, talk about yourself, sir,” you hooked your legs up and over the small of his back, “you’re the one always stealing kisses from me even when you know he’s around,” you counted, “oh, also that one time in the tool shed? It doesn’t matter that you covered my mouth, he for sure knew something was going on in there,” Tyler’s smile only brightened at the recollection, “and don’t even get me started on the way you’re always looking at me.”

“How do I look at you?” 

“You know how…” you laughed, melting under his gaze, “you’re doing it right now.” 

“Oh, am I?” he acted as if it wasn’t completely on purpose how his eyes undressed you, “I’m sorry, I hadn’t noticed.” 

Leaning down to capture your lips once more, a light squeak then escaped your lungs as he suddenly rolled over onto his back, onto a low pile of loose hay, dragging you along with him.

But as your body rested atop his, completely plastered against one another as his broad hands took their time raking down your curves, a soft chuckle rumbled in his chest and vibrated against your tongue. 

“Oh my god, you’re so fucking wet,” he laughed, playfully giving the drenched denim clinging to your ass a swift tap. 

Pushing yourself up a bit more, you spotted the splotchy stamp you’d transferred all down Tyler’s front. 

“Yeah well, I was just caught in the rain, what do you want me to do?” 

“It really did get you good, didn’t it?” you felt his hands shift and nimbly undo your shorts.

“Mhm,” you nodded, blinking down at him as he yanked your soaked shorts down and tossed them off to the side, onto a hay bale. 

“You mind if I check something real quick?” he playfully asked, scooping his grasp down to curve securely around the plush of your bottom. 

“Not at all,” you smiled before a sharp yelp then suddenly erupted out of you.

Tyler knew he could toss you around like a ragdoll, a skill of his he wasn’t at all shy to lean into, especially now as he yanked you closer, all the way up his frame till he settled you just above his face.

“Tyler!” you laughed, squirming lightly as he pulled you further down against him, letting his nose nuzzle against the sliver of your underwear before he placed a sloppy kiss against them. 

With his wide palms still glued to your butt, a few of his fingers stretched out to catch the hem of your panties and tug them to the side, granting himself the full access he desired. 

As he began to eagerly lap you up, he briefly murmured against you, “yeah, you really are completely soaked,” conjuring a hazy laugh to rip through you as your head tipped back at the pleasure. 

Teasing your little clit till your thighs began to shake on either side of his face, you felt his hands briefly migrate up your back and guide you to collapse entirely above him, bending you forward and letting your forearms land in a soft pile of hay for support. 

His strong arms then scooped back down to your ass, blanketing them around your hips as he brought you even closer to him, evidently not that desperate to let himself breathe any time soon as your all-consuming presence above him was the one and only thing he desired. 

With the way that he devoured you whole, not long passed till you were cumming all over his face, whimpering and trembling against his unyielding efforts. You barely let yourself catch your breath before you crawled back down his form, lazily kissing the taste of you off of his tongue as you worked at freeing his hard cock that strained in his jeans.

Your frame stayed plastered against his own after you sank down upon him, your tits in the soaked shirt smooshing against his chest. With your panties still clinging just off to the side of your cunt, you only let yourself shutter at the stretch a shy second before your trembly thighs raised you back up to find a slow rhythm.

“Fuck…” he groaned, tilting away from the breathless kiss, “ride that cock–, shit, you’re so good,” he nearly hissed at the way you rolled your hips, your silky walls clinging around his girth, “that’s my girl.” 

“Yeah, well I partly blame you for finally explaining to me how exactly it is you ride those crazy bulls,” you spoke about his daring side gig, “how you stay on, tame them.”

“Yeah,” an airy chuckle slipped out of his lungs, “you might just give me a run for my money if I ever get you up on a real one.” 

“I thought that’s what I was doing now,” you smirked down at him as you rocked your hips even further down against his, grinding the length of him dizzyingly deep inside of your pussy. The comment however also earned you a slap across the ass, causing the laugh hiding just behind your lips to finally break free, “hey, I’m not wrong, you are an animal!”

Burying one of his hands into your hair, he uttered against your lips, “well, if I’m an animal, then you’re one too,” nearly growling as he held you close and let himself buck up into you, meeting your slow bouncing halfway, “we’re cut from the same cloth you and me.”

“Yeah,” you moaned, digging your weak hands into his shirt and surely stretching the cotton out, “you and me…”

Tilting your head just far enough back so that he could catch sight of how your eyes began to roll in your skull, he groaned, “fuck, you’re so beautiful… so fucking perfect and warm, tight, fucking squeezing around me so good, and so fucking wet…” a chuckle slipped out of you both at the double entendre, “you messy girl… my messy little fucking girl… you’ll never get to dry off if I have a say in the matter… let you stay just completely soaked for fucking ever and make it so easy for me to just do anything I want…”

© 2024 thyme-in-a-bubble 

[swa-kavyankur]

गांडूळ खत निर्मिती व उत्पादनाची यशोगाथा

A farmer success story in Marathi

[farmerstrend]

The Rise of Pigeon Pea Farming: How Festus Muthoka Transformed His Farm with the New Mituki Variety in Machakos

Discover how Festus Muthoka transformed his farm in Machakos County by adopting the Mituki pigeon pea variety, achieving higher yields and income in challenging farming conditions. Learn more about this game-changing crop. Explore the benefits of the Mituki pigeon pea variety, a drought-resistant crop that matures quickly and offers multiple harvests per year. See how farmers in Kenya are…

[apexkeepers]

A Pawsitive Impact: Igniting Hope, One Dog at a Time

At Apex Keepers, we believe in the power of second chances. We’re dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, and rehoming herding dogs, giving them the love and care they deserve.Our Mission:Rescue: We rescue dogs from shelters, neglectful situations, and overcrowded homes. A dog is not just a pet, but a loyal companion and a member of the team. Rehabilitate: We provide top-notch veterinary care,…

[semisolidmind]

What about an eyeless monster who's love has to lead them around like a guide 🥺 something something putting their entire trust into their partner to control where they go safely

(this one ran away from me story-wise)

a woman, a prisoner of war and disgraced concubine (as in, wouldn’t let the prince lay a hand on her willingly), is sentenced to lead the blind god wherever he is needed. though he sent the last king to his death, the god gives good advice to those not of the royal bloodline; farmers, merchants, and others of humble origin and noble intent may seek his counsel and receive good luck.

a god of foresight of wisdom was captured by an evil king to aid him in his conquests. in a vulnerable moment, the god was forced into shackles and dragged to the capital like the cattle he resembled.

the god, after gaining the king's trust, advised the ruler to go to a peace negotiation with a rival nation, promising that he’d be successful; it was a trap, and the king was slaughtered. the kings' son demanded the gods' sight be taken, though he couldn’t afford to outright kill the old beast lest a curse fall upon him.

bound to the creature by holy brand and magiked golden lead, the woman learns of every misdeed and injustice the rulers of the land are guilty of, and plans to help the god regain his sight and power in order to overthrow them. she becomes his high priestess, and as his most loyal follower, the key to his re-ascension. he’s among the very few who will speak to her in her native language; she’s the only one who knows of his true name, and he of hers.

together, they will bring the kingdom to its knees.

[newspatron]

Co-operative Ministry of India & the Extraordinary Vision of Amit Shah

The Co-operative Ministry of India is a critical government agency that plays a vital role in the country’s economic development. Under the leadership of Amit Shah, the ministry has made significant strides in strengthening the cooperative movement and empowering farmers and other marginalized communities.This article will explore Amit Shah’s vision for the Co-operative Ministry, his key…

[latenightdaydreams]

Cowboy!König x Farmer (fem pov)

MDNI🔞

Master List ✍🏽

>cw: fem/afab, mention of death (widow), p in v, spanking, oral

2.3k word count

Set in 1890's America

🤠

.

.

It has been exactly four months and seventeen days since your husband, Henry, passed away. The two of you decided to leave your dull city life for the excitement of the untouched wilderness. Everything had been going perfectly. In only five years the both of you were able to build a beautiful home, a big barn with animals to fill it, and enough crops to feed yourselves and sell. Success to the point of needing to hire extra hands. It was the American dream.

It’s just you and a failing farm. The work just continues to pile up and you never seem to be able to catch a break. With no other options, you set off into town looking for help. You hang fliers in the local stores and on street posts, hoping someone reliable will respond. All you can do is wait.

Only just two days later while you’re outside feeding your chickens, you see a black draft horse approaching. You place the bucket of feed on the floor, wipe your hands off on your blue jeans, and adjust your cream-colored button-down shirt before walking towards him. As you approach you notice that underneath the cowboy hat is an odd t-shirt like mask covering his face.

“I hope you’re not here to cause trouble.” You rest your hand on the pistol resting on your hip as you continue to approach him.

“Nein, no trouble, Fräulein."

His thick Austrian accent takes you by surprise. Your eyes look over his body as he gets off of his horse, taking note of how massive this man is. He looks down at you with his pale blue eyes squinting from a smile.

“I’m König,” he holds his hand out to you, “I saw your fliers in town.”

“I’m, y/n. Have you worked on a farm before?” You weakly shake his hand, your body so exhausted from hours of work and no rest.

“I grew up on one in Austria.”

You cross your arms keeping your defenses up as you two speak. There are so many questions running through your mind about his mask, but you decide to not ask. Never in your life did you think a 6’10 giant would be the one to show up.

“Well, as the post states; I can’t pay much but I can offer food and a room to compensate.”

The fact that you can’t afford to pay the standard rate to a farm hand makes you feel ashamed. There used to be three workers and now it’s only you. You can feel the heat in your face begin to build as you wait for him to reject your offer. Without him, you might not be able to keep the farm past this coming harvesting season.

“That sounds like a good deal to me, Fräulein.”

A small smile cracks at the corner of your lips as he agrees. There is a wave of relief that washes over your body. The possibility of getting the farm back to its glory days lingers in the back of your mind.

“Come with me, I’ll give you a tour.”

You turn and start with showing him the farm land before walking inside the home. It’s a two-story farmhouse, well taken care of by your husband. On the walls there are two photos; one of you and your late husband and the other of your parents. You notice König eyeing them, but he doesn’t ask about it.

Up the stairs and around to the left is the spare room. It was supposed to be a nursery, but those hopes of a family died with your husband. In the corner is a single bed and a wardrobe on the wall. It’s not a must, but it’s all you could afford.

“Here is where you’ll be sleeping.” Your eyes follow König as he walks past. His muscles are so big the ripple though the tight blue shirt he’s wearing. His thighs would be so nice to sit on. Henry was a skinny little man. You didn’t know men could be this big. “There are some house rules. No parties, no drinking yourself dumb, and please clean up after yourself.”

König places his small bag on the bed; clearly, he travels light. He nods as he looks around and then his eyes land back on you. The beautiful shade of light blue is only accentuated by the black mask covering his face.

“Ja, I promise to follow the rules. When do I start?”

“You can help me now. All of the animals are fed, but the stalls need to be cleaned out.”

“I’m on it.” König says as he walks past you. You get a whiff of his musky smell from his travels. Deep inside you feel wrong but, on the surface, you can’t help but to be aroused by the man.

You wait a moment before going outside to tend to the crops. Right now, you just need to remain focused on the farm and Henry’s vision. There is no time for men in this life.

You march down the stairs and head to the barn to grab your tools. Once you enter the door you see König with the pitchfork shoveling the animal manure, just as you asked of him. Except his shirt is now off and resting over one of the hooks on the wall. His body is glistening with sweat as his muscles flex with each movement. Trying to not get caught staring, you turn and grab what you need quickly and leave. The sound of your heart beat echoes in your ears, what is wrong with you?

The day passes until the sun begins to set. You’ve noticed that König took the liberty to go around the barn and fix things that have been broken for a while. His work ethic only makes you feel even worse for not being able to pay him more.

A few days pass, the both of you have slowly begun to build a routine. It has been nice to have him around the house, the chores no longer seem unmanageable. There hasn’t been much conversation, but you steal glances of his body everyday when he’s outside.

Today as you’re bent over planting seeds, you feel a warm hand rest on your lower back. You can feel a tingle crash over your body as you stand and turn to him. Your bodies are so close that you can feel the heat radiating from him. All you want to do is rub your hand down his chest and feel his sweat on your body.

“I can finish up; you should go inside and rest.” His eyes flicker back and forth between yours causing your heart to flutter.

“No, it’s okay—”

“Bitte meine Liebe, let me finish.”

You nod slowly. His hand drifts from your back to the curve of your rear before dropping off. The look he gives you melts you completely. Thanking him once more, you walk forward and towards the house. You turn back to look at König and see his eyes following your hips before he continues working.

As you turn the corner, you realize that you forgot your jacket in the barn. You walk back and see it lying next to König’s shirt. With your jacket in hand, you look around before grabbing his shirt. Bringing it up to your face, you take a deep breath in, savoring his scent.

“Liebling, I thought I told you to get some rest.”

König’s voice causes you to jump, accidently dropping his shirt on the ground before turning around to face him. You can’t seem to find the right words to attempt to talk yourself out of this situation; it’s embarrassing.

“I’m so sorry, I know this must look—”

“Like you were smelling my shirt.” König says with a certain cheerful tone in his voice.

All you can do is nod, you’ve been caught; the thought of him quitting makes your heart drop. Words escape you; how does one apologize for this? You pick his shirt back up and hand it to him.

“I’m sorry.” You repeat in a meek tone.

König looks at you for a while before slowly approaching you. His massive hand ups the side of your face and tilts your head back for you to look directly into his eyes. A chill travels over your body.

“That’s…very naughty of you.” His voice is almost a whisper as his other arm wraps around the side of you, pressing you against his chest.

You look up with wide eyes at his response; it isn’t what you were expecting at all. Before you can say anything, his hand squeezes your soft plump ass through your jeans. He gently grinds his hips up against you, making sure you feel how aroused you make him.

“You are simply stunning, Liebling.” König growls in your ear, goosebumps travel all over.

Both of his hands move down to unbutton your shirt, every button felt like it was taking an eternity to undo. The way he looks at your bare breasts like a hungry beast causes your pussy to tingle, a rush of desire pulsing throughout your body. He gently pulls his cowboy hat off and places it on the wooden stable behind you, pulling off his mask as well.

You see a long and deep scar that travels down the right side of his face. It isn’t a turn off for you, he’s still a handsome man. With one hand you reach up and caress the right side of his face gently, König presses his face into your hand as he relishes your touch.

He leans down and wraps his lips around one of your nipples while he unbuttons your jeans. The feeling of his wet tongue swirling around your nipple causes you to let out a soft moan. Your fingers comb back his messy blonde hair as you watch him with closed eyes enjoy your body.

The fabric of your jeans brush along your legs as he pulls them down off of your body along with your underwear. His large hands caress your legs from your calves up to your thighs. He pulls away to look at your full body; your eyes drop to his hands to see his erection straining against his jeans. Your eyes follow as he stands up, towering over your much smaller frame as his hands undo his pants. In this moment you didn’t feel like a widower or even the stress of the farm. It’s just you and König.

A tiny yelp leaves you as he lifts you up and holds you in his arms. Your legs wrap around his waist while he walks with you to the barn wall. His lips crash into yours in a passionate kiss. You pull him to you, deepening the kiss. He tastes strongly of tobacco and smells like sweat from working in the hot sun all day.

König pulls away from the kiss, leaving your lips wet and craving more of him. His eyes look hazy, drunk at this moment. Then you see the head of his cock press against your sopping wet pussy. His once pale blue eyes are now blackened by his pupils.

With one harsh thrust, König shoves himself inside of you. A loud moan leaves your lips as your face scrunches with pleasure. König is such a strong man that he so effortlessly holds you and moves you down on to his cock to meet his thrust.

“Y/n.” He huffs your name.

No words can even be formed as your body experiences new heights of pleasure you’ve never felt before. His cock is monstrous, bullying itself inside of you. Your short finger nails dig into and drag across his pale skin, reddened from the blistering August sun.

Animalistic groans leave König as the most pathetic mewls leave yours. His body leans against yours as he presses you harder against the barn wall, his hips bucking up rapidly like a man in heat. You feel a way of electricity as his tongue licks across the side of your neck. He covers your pulse point with his lips and begins to lightly suck.

Beads of sweat begin to drip on your body, both of you growing increasingly slippery. He gently puts you down, but quickly grabs you by the back of your neck and walks you over to a stack of hay. Not being too rough, he bends you over the stack and presses your face into the hay.

You form goosebumps across your body as he gently caresses down to your hips, grasping them firmly. His pace continues, but you feel his heavy balls slapping against your swollen clit. Your eyes flutter back as one hand reaches behind you to push his chest.

“Too much.” You whimper.

König doesn’t listen, grabbing your arms and folding it behind your back instead. He reaches for your other arm to also hold it that way, one of his hands wrapping around both of your wrist to keep them together. Your ass ripples with every merciless thrust only bringing you closer to orgasm.

You can feel your pussy clenching around his cock, a low moan leaving him in response. This is just too much. The strong build up of ecstasy radiates from deep inside of your core throughout your whole body. In response to this sensation you tremble, König’s name being the only thing you can say as you cry for him over and over again.

“Can I—” König begins to ask, but before he finishes his sentence you can feel his cock begin to pulse deep inside. His heavy body leans forward and rest on you, pressing you more into the hay. He gives your marked neck soft kisses as your body takes every single drop of his cum.

[extinctionstories]

Two hundred years ago, the wetlands of Japan rustled with pink-tinged feathers. Tall, pale birds stepped carefully through reeds and iris, hunting small fish, crabs, and frogs. 

Nipponia nippon, it would be dubbed by the national ornithological society, a bird emblematic of its country. The Crested Ibis. The Toki. The Peach Flower Bird.

Marshes slowly changed to rice fields, with farmers who resented the toki for ruining crops; to kill the birds was outlawed, so children chased them from the fields, singing warnings.

The doors of the country were pried open. Laws changed. Farmers bought their first guns, their sights set on birds who were no longer protected. The toki, the red-crowned crane, and many others began to suffer. But the worst was yet to come.

Pesticides are indiscriminate killers. The poison sprayed to kill a beetle can travel up the foodchain, toppling a cascade of larger animals, or affecting their ability to reproduce. It was reckless pesticide use that nearly wiped out the Bald Eagle. In the rice fields, the peach-flower-bird had little chance. 

In 1981, Japan’s last five living toki were removed from a wild that had become too dangerous for them.

I tell a lot of sad stories here, about mistakes we’ve made and animals we’ve lost. This isn’t one of those. This is a story about one of those precious times when we were able to fix the things we’d broken. 

A joint effort between Japan & China, and the discovery of seven more birds in that country, led to a successful breeding program, which in 2008 saw the first ibises fly free again in Japan. Today, at least 5000 toki exist in the world.

The last wild-born toki, one of those captured in 1981, lived almost long enough to see her species’ return. Reaching the equivalent age of a centenarian human, she died in 2003—not of old age, but injury after throwing herself against her cage door. 

Her name was ‘Kin’. ‘Gold’. 

Mended things can never be as whole as they once were. There will always be cracks that show, weak spots that remain vulnerable. Yet, like the shining seams of a kintsugi piece, these scars speak an important truth: here is a thing that someone chose to save; handle with care.

The title of this painting is ‘Restoration’. It is gouache on 22x30 inch watercolor paper, and is part of my series 'Conservation Pieces', exploring the effort to preserve endangered birds.

[reasonsforhope]

For the first time in 100 years, Atlantic salmon are once again spawning in the upper waters of the River Derwent. 

The return of spawning salmon to the rivers of Derbyshire is a real conservation success story. After centuries of intensive river management by the county’s burgeoning factories, the fish were driven extinct in many of its waterways.

Since then, the health of some of the rivers have improved to an extent that salmon can once again spawn. But the routes for the fish to return are still blocked by the remnants of the industrial boom, with numerous dams and weirs still blocking the migratory route of salmon attempting to swim upstream.  

Dr Tim Jacklin is a Conservation Officer for the Wild Trout Trust who has worked on river restoration projects that encourage and helps the migration of fish such as the Atlantic salmon. He was involved with the removal of a weir at Snake Lane, Derbyshire, which allowed the salmon to recolonise the headwaters of the River Derwent.

The catalyst for this work was seeing salmon making it all the way up the River Derwent, but then being stopped from exploring the upper reaches where the river becomes the Ecclesbourne.

“We’d started to see large salmon turning up in the Derwent in winter,” explains Tim. “They became sort of local celebrities really. People were going out with their head torches at night and looking into the river, because it’s not a particularly large watercourse and these fish were quite literally as long as your arm, without it being an angler’s tale.”

“So they attracted quite a lot of attention. But it also highlighted the fact that Snake Lane Weir, which was a concrete structure that had been built in the 1970s to replace an old mill, was a complete barrier to fish getting upstream.”

This prompted the work to remove the Snake Lane Weir and replace it with a boulder rapid that the fish would, once again, navigate over and continue on their journey.

“It’s very rewarding,” says Tim. “We opened up a good ten kilometres of spawning habitat upstream, so that translates into hundreds more juvenile salmon that make their way downstream and hopefully to come back and spawn.”

Putting the river bends back in

A little further upstream on the Ecclesbourne River, the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is working to continue the work started at Snake Lane. At the edge of a farmer’s field a deep, straight channel rushes along under the trees. This was created by diverting the river to increase its flow to power a mill using a weir. This has formed yet another barrier for the migrating salmon.

But not even 20 metres away the ghost of the river’s original route perseveres. Nothing more than a shallow, muddy ditch with a few scraggly trees overgrowing it, the bends and curves of the river’s natural path can still be seen forming the boundary of a field. 

The wildlife charity is now trying to undo the centuries of harm that bypassing the river’s natural route has done, with the hope that the salmon will travel even further up into the headwaters and spawn once more in the gravel of the restored river. 

“A lot of our rivers across the whole country have been straightened,” explains Jenny Kril from the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. “Unfortunately, what that does is remove any sort of natural habitat that we would expect to see in a healthy river.”

“What we’re doing is re-wiggling or re-meandering the Ecclesbourne, which is essentially just putting the bends back into it. What that does is change the speed and flow of the water. It creates nice beaches and different habitats for a whole host of different species and just making the river more natural.”

It is hoped that this work will create a greater variety of habitats, which in turn will encourage a greater variety of plants and invertebrates, and so boosting the overall biodiversity seen in this section of the river. But the cherry on the cake would be if the salmon start nesting.

“Over the next few years, we’re going to see this whole area just continue to develop naturally,” says Jenny. “We’ll get some sediment being deposited on some of the beaches creating more habitats, and we’re going to do tree planting to further increase the biodiversity of the area.”

“We’re just going to hopefully watch it become the brand-new river and as it should be again.”

There is a long way to go to safeguard the future of the UK’s rivers, but the work on the Ecclesbourne is showing that with the resources and right interventions change can happen and improvements made.  

“I think we’ve got some huge challenges ahead of us, but you know, they’re not making rivers anymore,” says Tim. “So we’ve got to look after the ones that we’ve got.”

-via UK Natural History Museum, April 8, 2024