3/17/2020
(Above: First pizzas made at the Jacobhouse. Success. )
Active Summary: Today began with a normal early-morning regimen and was ensued by my performing a little bit more writing, a couple Macroeconomics assignments, and kneading together some pizza dough for lunch. This was followed by my venturing outdoors and tending to the bag garden for about one minute before I was summoned once more to Oldhouse to contend with another bout of stuffluenza.*
After departing Oldhouse, I helped place various paraphernalia in the milk-room before visiting the old TV I had disassembled yesterday. There, I took out another lens that my brother told me about. This one was a large square sheet of plastic which at first seemed somewhat lackluster until I realized that it was directing all of the sunlight it absorbed into a single condensed beam. This lens is called a Frensel Lens (more in TIL).
(8:09 PM Update:) It is well past my regular post-time, so I am going to attempt a quick summary of this afternoon’s events. They included: baking a couple delicious pizzas for lunch, writing this entry, tending to a number of cattle-related activities (cow-catching, feeding, and etc.), filling moo-magic bags, putting up a shelf in Jacobhouse, and repairing a fence in the bull-lot. Now, I’m typing up this entry before eating dinner and engaging in some much-wanted leisure time.
TIL: Though this Frensel lens technology has been around since the late 1700s, it was not until the 1820s that it acquired its name from French engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel who built this type of lens to utilize at the top of lighthouses. The first Frensel lens used in such a manner was able to magnify a lamp’s light to such an extent that it was able to be seen from over 20 miles away. Since that time, Frensel lens have become much more common, being utilized in: projectors, traffic/warning lights, solar cookers (solar ovens), solar cells**, and they have even been used to create steam for powering a Stirling engine (similar to a steam engine).
Commentary: Apparently it was not quite time yet to sign Oldhouse over to its new tenants, so there was no sushi lunch this day. However, I will say that the substitute – Jacobhouse pizza – was fantastic. I used the baking steel for the first time in my oven today. It was already a quick process before, but with the new oven and its digital temperature reading I was able to more accurately determine the amount of time needed for cooking. It ended up being 5 minutes of broiling on high for the brisket / mozzarella / BBQ pizza and 4.5 minutes for the mozzarella / butter / garlic pizza. I took them over to the studio afterward, and there, ate them with a salad that Padre had prepared and which Madre dressed with her tasty vinaigrette. It all made for an excellent meal.
Here are some interesting pictures I took today on my ride around the beef pasture:
A mother cow displaying some oddly intuitive behavior. She was shading her calf from the day’s hot sun. 
A Mexican poppy I found growing in the field. It is well-equipped for a dry environment, and its thorns protect it quite aptly from passing bovines. 
An ironwood tree putting on new leaves for spring; it has adopted a similar form of protection as the poppies. 
A young bovine with some very long legs. I guess they don’t call them ‘calves’ for nothing.
Final Note: Tomorrow and/or later today, I intend to begin planting some seeds in the bag/bucket garden.
*Hey I didn’t make it up!
**Frensel lenses these days, such as the one I found today, can be made out of plastic. This is much cheaper both in material and in production costs than it is to make glass lenses, and it is much easier to work with.