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In the 1800s, Jersey Island Was Covered With 12-Foot-Tall Kale
- smackeyacky 5y ago
- JadeNB 5y agoThis does not seem to contribute much to an article that is not about the "modern obsession" with kale and that indicates, if anything, that kale is not a mere modern contrivance (though perhaps its use as a human food has become rather faddish—a fad which it is fortunately easy to avoid simply by not partaking).
- skeptical1 5y agoIt was a joke. Obviously. Jesus, this place is so humorless.
- xwdv 5y agoHumor is not allowed here.
- skeptical1 5y agoI read your comment profile, and know exactly what you mean about the "cancel culture." This is the first profile I've had here where I've actually managed to get a little positive 'karma' built up and avoid immediately getting downmodded into oblivion and run out on a rail. My very first account here a couple years ago, as a bright eyed noob, was literally shadowbanned within 15 minutes, which absolutely blew my mind. The moderation system here is seriously broken, and has the effect of creating a toxic echo chamber of humorless trigger-happy goons. I've read a lot of complaints about it in various articles over the years, by names who no longer seem to be around. The response always seems to be EWONTFIX.
- macintux 5y agoEvery now and then a truly creative, funny joke is upvoted heavily. The rest of the time, if I want shallow snark I’ll visit Reddit.
- JadeNB 5y agoIndeed. The issue I had here was not that there was a joke in a place of solemnity, but that it was an old and low-effort joke that also didn't add to the discussion.
- smackeyacky 5y agoSo you decided to go out of your way to point that out? Where's your erudite contribution to the discussion then?
- skeptical1 5y ago
- bigbillheck 5y ago> shadowbanned within 15 minutes I'm not about to defend any commentariat anywhere, but you really have to make a stinker of a post to get that kind of thing here.
- xwdv 5y agoNo you don’t, simply having the wrong opinion at the wrong time is enough to seal your fate.
- RC_ITR 5y agoSkeptical1 goes into a forum aimed at 'hackers,' is surprised when they are pedantic and obsessed with understanding rules. There's a punchline somewhere...
- skeptical1 5y agoI've seen enough of this crowd to not be surprised at any ridiculous thing that happens here. Like having a 50 page Very Serious argument back and forth about some minor, irrelevant detail, possibly having nothing at all to do with the actual article, but a simple joke gets downmodded because ZOMG HOW INAPPROPRIATE. Or lest we forget, the various articles about things this crowd clearly knows nothing about, like politics or economics, but everyone has an opinion about anyhow. By the way, given the frequent gasps of horror which are heard here when people are confronted with the horrifying suggestion that Microsoft is an evil corporation and people should use Linux or BSD instead, along the lines of "but I might have to compile my own wifi drivers tho! egads!", or those who are appalled at the idea of system startup using shell scripts ("the barbarity!") or the frequent snarky remarks that C is a terrible, horrible, no-good "unsafe" language that is unsuitable for any use (despite virtually everything else in the world depending on it), etc, etc, it's quite charitable to describe this as being a forum for "Hackers." In many cases, it's more like just a bunch of pretenders and wannabes. Now how's that for humor? hehe... Lynch mob in 3...2...
- klyrs 5y agoI make jokes frequently, and rarely get downvoted for them. They're rarely standalone. They're topical and non-obvious. Low-hanging fruit is punished here. Most jokes people happen to make are low-hanging fruit. It's like the reverse "lucky 10,000" effect: if you think something is funny, it's probably because it's novel to you. Meanwhile, the rest of us have seen that joke, on the internet, too many times already. Uninteresting comments go down. Also, delivery makes the joke: just like sarcasm, the medium isn't doing you any favors.
- willcipriano 5y agoThat's the sort of joke that you make and take your lumps for. Sometimes the feeling strikes you and you can't resist. Getting downvoted makes it funnier. The lowest you can go is -4 so it isn't even like you lose that many fake internet points for it.
- klyrs 5y agoIndeed, the absurdity is that HN wouldn't have a reputation for being humorless, if people didn't keep making jokes here.
- smackeyacky 5y agoThe article itself isn't really HN material is it? If it was about somebody writing a Lisp program that generated pictures of 2m high Kale growing on modern pictures of Jersey it might be more interesting. As it is, cows eat green things, news at 11. Even the author at Atlas Obscura seems bored by it.
- bewaretheirs 5y agoThe article had the more constructive suggestion of using it as cattle feed and for packaging. I don't understand kale culture either -- the only way I've found to make it edible involves combining it 1:1 by mass with bacon.
- brnt 5y agoTry stamppot: https://www.ah.nl/allerhande/recept/R-R7456/klassieke-boerenkoolstamppot https://www.ah.nl/allerhande/recept/R-R7456/klassieke-boeren...
- bpodgursky 5y agoIt's a better salad base than lettuce.
- lapetitejort 5y agoLettuce is my least favorite leafy green. It's outdone in every way by spinach, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts, or collard greens. It's one of the most American foods I can think of: in an attempt to eat healthy we found the most bland, nutrient free food possible.
- base698 5y agoThere was a place in San Francisco called Darwin Cafe that had the best kale salad ever. It used a lot (though not 1:1) prosciutto fried in garlic oil and tossed with lemon and balsamic with almost equal parts parmasen. The recipe called for the kale to presoak a bit tossed with the lemon and some salt to break down some of the kale fibers and make it more palatable. https://food52.com/recipes/26414-addictive-raw-kale-salad-with-crispy-prosciutto-and-parmesan-cheese https://food52.com/recipes/26414-addictive-raw-kale-salad-wi... It's just a good dish, even if you don't like kale.
- cjbgkagh 5y agoAh, that’s why I like kale. It is a great salad.
- 5y ago
- matthewmorgan 5y agoWhere's Jersey Island? Is it anywhere near the island of Jersey by any chance?
- JadeNB 5y agoThe actual title is "In the 1800s, This British Isle Was Covered in Groves of 12-Foot-Tall Kale"; it's not clear why it was edited.
- CoastalCoder 5y agoThe original title sounds a bit click-baity to me, so maybe that's why.
- pimlottc 5y agoYeah, as an American I assumed it was talking someplace around New Jersey. The original title is probably clearer for those less familiar with the UK.
- nmstoker 5y agoI'm in the UK but I was initially left wondering if it was something to do with New Jersey, it really isn't that clear. And I've been to Jersey in the Channel Islands (off France, not off California!) Before we annoy any islanders, Jersey is not actually part of the UK. More broadly, it's quite rare that things are this way round - usually when there's not much context the US interpretation applies more often than not.
- cameronh90 5y ago> Before we annoy any islanders, Jersey is not actually part of the UK. Jersey isn't part of the UK, but it's not exactly an independent country either. If international diplomacy and constitutional law interests you, it's quite interesting. Jersey is an autonomous, self governing Bailiwick and a Dependency of the Crown. It has an ISO country code and TLD, however the UK is responsible for representing the territory internationally in most cases, including at the UN. This is because the Crown delegates that responsibility to Her Majesty's Government. Jersey has no representation within the UK democracy itself and cannot sign international agreements independently, however it informally has relationships with lots of international bodies and other countries including the UK. Jersey has never been part of the EU and remains its own customs area. There are millions of other little warts and curious edge cases. As someone from Jersey, I never quite know what to answer when someone asks what country I'm from.
- nanomonkey 5y agoThese remind me of the tree collards that I grow in my garden. Just pull off leaves from the bottom for dinner.
- intrepidhero 5y agoHow are the leaves? I've let kale overwinter and it gets pretty tall but any new leaves in the spring are too fibrous and tough for my taste. I prefer collards in most cases. I'd be interested in what cultivar you grow.
- meristohm 5y agoWe let our kale overwinter last year and were impressed at how tense and sweet it was in the spring. Russian Red, mostly, USDA Hardiness Zone 7-8
- nanomonkey 5y agoThe leaves are great, as long as you harvest them while they are green. I'm not sure what the cultivar is as I usually let them go to seed, collect the seeds and start over when they get too tall. Brassicas tend to cross pollinate, as far as I understand it. They get super tall, but I usually stop after 5 ft. and start over.
- Havoc 5y agoLived there for years & never knew about this.
- panzagl 5y agoI saw an old documentary on this called 'Day of the Triffids'...
- FpUser 5y agoROFL. I did read the book.
- boffinAudio 5y agoAn amazing story that deserves a re-do, movies-wise. I'm pretty sure the underlying social conditions of the books' narrative are as relevant today as ever. Well, now I think of it, the blind enslaving the sighted might just be a tad on the nose for some ..
- m0llusk 5y agoWhy do they always go for the eyes?!
- buryat 5y agohow did it taste? i'd imagine horrible otherwise some pre-Sweetgreen would use them up for $15 salads
- madaxe_again 5y agoLike any other brassica leaf - really similar to broccoli leaves, if I had to nail it down. Nutty, savoury, hint of bitterness. The leaves are pretty tough though, and have some fascinating hydrophobic properties, so need chopping finely and then either frying or boiling until they’re soft.
- wil421 5y agoI have some of the seeds from this variety of kale. It’s called walking stick kale. I’ve been trying to find a place to plant it.
- 34679 5y agoI learned this recently from another post here on HN: "Brassica oleracea is a plant species that includes many common cultivars, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea
- ahazred8ta 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_cabbage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_cabbage
- erulabs 5y agoIf you look really closely at Broccoli, you can see the structure of the little buds are identical to Brussels sprouts just scaled way down. I don’t know why I enjoy that fact so much but I sure do!
- madaxe_again 5y agoThey’re really common here in the north of Portugal - everybody with a cottage garden, which is everybody, has a grove of them. They’re the principal ingredient in caldo verde (a soup that is eaten pretty much daily, by pretty much everyone) up here - further south they use collard greens, but here it’s all kale. When we moved here we were gifted a few plants, and two and a bit years on they’re going strong, and we’ve propagated them to a few dozen - ours aren’t 12 feet tall, more like 6, but either way, it’s a common home crop, and is mostly human, rather than animal, fodder. As to walking sticks, haven’t seen them used for that here, but people do use the dried stems as trellises for beans and whatnot.
- sbisson 5y agoI used to go blackberrying on the common above the cliffs at Portlet with my grandfather’s cabbage stalk cane to hold back the thorns…
- barathr 5y agoIf you'd like to grow tree collard / tree kale varieties yourself, check out Project Tree Collard: https://www.projecttreecollard.org/ https://www.projecttreecollard.org/ They grow great in California (and places with a similar climate), producing harvestable leaves year round.
- andrewfromx 5y agoThis is great. I have this vision we should all have two careers now. Our current M to F tech jobs and being farmers again. All of us. Like the industrial revolution has this last step. Back to farming but this time with tech.
- hjadal 5y agoWhy still work monday to friday then, monday to wednesday should be sufficient. There is farming to be done after all.
- heyitsguay 5y agoWouldn't this be inefficient, laborious, and dependent on a land distribution that's starkly at odds with the urban areas where this romanticized view of agriculture gets espoused by techies? (TBC: Love hobby gardening, community gardens are cool, I hear some folks are doing cool stuff with urban agriculture, just seems weird to imagine it as a ubiquitous second career)
- lopis 5y agoHome farming can make use of small spaces to farm some part of our diets. No need to transport the final product, o need to use a blanket of insecticides and herbicides because the manual labour of caring for each plant is very distributed. Regenerative farming is also trivial at this scale. Large scale farming is often as efficient as it is destructive.
- thrashh 5y agoIt only sounds good on paper But I’ve had a small garden for years and it’s 100% not worth it due to the small yield and extremely high labor. And just because you have a small garden does not mean agricultural pests are easily managed… in fact they are still absolutely a massive problem. Big farms are 100% better suited at growing crops. An hour I spend on my garden is probably only 30 seconds on a large farm if you compare on yield.
- chrisbrandow 5y agogot some 4' tuscan kale growing in the front yard right now in fact. Now I'm gonna see if I can make a walking cane!
- ofrzeta 5y agoIt seems to be specific variety called Brassica oleracea longata (mentioned in the article) although in some places (https://www.victoriananursery.co.uk/Walking-Stick-Cabbage-Seed https://www.victoriananursery.co.uk/Walking-Stick-Cabbage-Se...) it's called Brassica oleracea palmifolia which is a more widely known variety (cavolo nero in Italian). How is it with plant genetics / breeding and taxonomy? When do you assert that something's a specific variety and apply a name to it?
- ggambetta 5y agoAnd it didn't immediately become a tech hub? How???