Suppose, we want to we start with the simplest thing possible which is try to calculate the kernel for a free particle. So, we return to the sorry this nodes are written in terms of classical mechanics terminology q rather than x. So, I will not try to change back to. So, we had this p q dot minus h, but what I am going to do now is to write the Lagrangian version of the thing directly. However, the p slice p integrals are there and that is what this unknown n is for it is actually not an unknown you can calculate it exactly. So, exercise calculate n. So, ignore all this technicality right now. What I want to demonstrate is that this thing can be calculated from an expression like this and the key trick is to use or rather abuse the Gaussian integral many many times. So, and note that this is equal to i over h cross one half m velocity square which would have d t square, but there is integral d t. So, that cancels one delta t. So, this is what we have now what we are going to do is to this looks somewhat easy to do because instead of q I should use differences of q then it is just of a Gaussian form right. It is exponent d say suppose it is q j plus 1 minus q j as the integration variable then it is integral d y e raised to y. So, y j etcetera we should have this kind of integral y j square times half m and that is bit like the Gaussian integral if between friends we imagine that i is actually a minus sign. So, we say that oh that is minus sign times a minus i. So, I will treat the minus i as some constant and just do a Gaussian integral. So, if we do this Gaussian integral what answer do we get? So, let us do this right you understand we agree that that is what will come out of this we just have product of these lots of these. So, let us do this elementary Gaussian. So, recall that we have e raised to yeah. So, is square root of pi over sigma. So, in this case we should get and let me write this quite clearly minus infinity to infinity d what do you can write y j d y j e raised to and now I have i m and there is a delta t as well y square m over delta t. So, i m over 2 h cross delta t times y j squared should become equal to square root of pi and then divided by. So, times 2 h cross delta t over minus i m. So, that is what we use as the basic tool and there is yeah. So, if there is t j then you put t j. So, we go here and do this, but there is one minor technical problem which turns out later to be interesting. It is that the number of differences is one larger than the number of integration variables right because you have from 0 to n. So, if I have 3 differences, but then there are 4 points. In other words this integration goes over only 1 this and this, but then there are 3 differences. So, there and also I am sorry to say yes. So, there is also q j plus 1. So, this is actually right. So, this is actually n plus 1. So, if this is i and this is f then it is 1 to n in between that is right. So, the number of slices and the i and f are fixed. So, the number of intervals is one more than the number of integration variables.  So, you will get the right. So, 0 is equal to same as q i which is x. So, I should probably be writing yeah because of that yes ok. So, that is actually not an integration variable, but in summation you have to put it because otherwise you will not get the thing. So, what we do is that we introduce one more auxiliary y. So, the first one will be. So, we define like this y j is equal to q j plus 1 minus q j. So, there will be a y 0 and we put a delta function to show that that extra one is actually not genuine. So, let y 0 be equal to. So, firstly let y j be equal to q j plus 1 minus q j i e y 0 is equal to q 1 minus q i right. And now we got n plus 1 y j is to integrate over. So, j goes from 1 to n no sorry 0 0 to n that is how I get right I have to have j go from 0 to n. So, we also insert and how are the constraint well if you add all of them then you will get q f minus q i right sum over all the y's is just q f minus q i. So, minus q f plus q i. So, we insert an auxiliary p and this we write as equal to the delta function we write as an exponential representation. Yes. So, for the delta function we simply wrote the well known formula well known representation what is this? This is sum over sum over y good. And we inserted a gratuitous 1 over h cross and divided by 2 pi h cross. So, that we match up with all the other h crosses that are occurring here. So, this has to be inserted and once we do this we get this. So, ignore the limit n going to infinity part, but we write integral product over instead of i to n I now write 0 to n and write d y j right I traded the q's for this by and I need to put the Jacobian of this transformation. So, that we can calculate here Jacobian of transformation from d q i's to d y j's is 1 actually if you do it because if you take. So, which is inverse of d y by d q this is what I am putting because I am going to insert it here. So, that Jacobian is 1 because well. So, it is inverse of d y j by d q i's and that is easy to compute because d y by d q d y j by d q j is equal to minus 1, but d y j by d q j plus 1 or any other j is equal to 0. So, you just get a product of minus 1's actually which does not really matter because that is an overall because Jacobian is after all modulus of this. So, it is equal to 1. So, the Jacobian of transformation is 1. So, that is not needed here oh I am. So, sorry not infinity very good thank you thanks right. So, all you have to do is start writing y n equal to q f minus q n y n minus 1 equal to q n minus q n minus 1 and going up to y 0 equal to q 1 minus q 0 q i, but if you add then these things will keep cancelling and. So, you accumulate that sum of 0 to n of q of y j is equal to simply q f minus q i. So, that is what that is and here again you can see directly how the Jacobian will work out because the derivatives are all either plus or they are all minus signs, but you do not have to worry about accumulating minus sign because Jacobian is always modulus of that thing Jacobian as the interpretation of a volume. So, it has no sign. So, thanks for pointing out the errors ok. So, let us just see. So, we have this integral and then we have integral. So, that gets all of this including this then we can put a 1 over 2 pi h cross and then we can put an integral minus infinity to infinity d p then we can put in that expression. So, exponent of i over h cross sum over 0 to n. So, in this sum over 0 to n I will try to include this piece as well. So, we put 0 to n m over 2 and 1 over delta t j's which is just t j plus 1 minus you know it is difference of the successive time values times y j squared and in this summation we also have p y j and finally, outside the summation we have i over h cross p times q f minus q f plus q i.   So, we can write it as 1 over 2 pi h cross and we have forgot the big n outside and unknown n is lurking there, but not to worry about it or you can write it as minus i p q f minus q i right. Now, we have a product of various integrals this d y j and then this Gaussian integral. So, let us just call them i i j's product over j i j and i j is equal to integral minus infinity d y j x i over h cross and we need to write only 1 j term. So, into m over 2 1 over delta t j y j squared plus p y j. Now, this we do by completing the squares and converting it into a Gaussian right there is a y j squared and there is a y j. So, yes now to do this we need to add and subtract no sorry m over 2 will have put a 2 there anyway. So, I do not need anything here good right and minus p j square multiplied by t j over 2 m. So, now, what we have to do is to shift in this in this integral we have to shift the y j by this amount which is some constant, but the integration range is minus infinity to infinity. So, it does not matter and we get a Gaussian with this as the 1 over sigma squared we had written somewhere yeah sorry equal to sigma we put sigma x squared yes. So, if there is sigma here 1 over square root sigma occurs. So, here this is what is sigma. So, 1 over square root of that will occur and this will just come out because it is not in the integration. So, i j is therefore, equal to e raise to just the minus p squared t j of delta t j over 2 m and there is an i of course, i over h cross in front of everything p j squared over 2 m sorry p squared over 2 m we like that expression because it looks familiar minus i over 2 p squared over 2 m times delta t j and times square root of a pi factor and this is the sigma squared. So, 1 over that. So, 2 delta t over and then there is the i h cross multiplying it. So, h cross over and we have to put a minus i. So, that is what i j is. Now, we do not have to be frightened by all this because all this masala will cancel that n in front. So, if you do the p integral in the exercise correctly then you will exactly cancel this strange accumulating factors. Remember that this is going to get a product an infinite product of delta t j's in the limit that n is going to infinity, but it is all because it is just an overall factor and actually you will find that if you have done the exercise correctly that the first p integration generates exactly these things and they just all cancel ok. But we are left now with a nice piece e raise to minus i over h cross p squared by 2 m times a delta t j in the numerator and then there is a product of these. So, there is a summation in then. So, it will just become t f minus t i and. So, the answer is so that you do not form the impression that like a genius we are writing the answer here. It is equal to n times this product over 0 to n 2 pi h cross delta t j over i m there is a minus i was it minus required yes yes we should put minus i m, but that does not matter because it is ok. So, this strange factor, but we are going to read these two together and as I told you it will go away most of it will go away if you do this n times a very nice integral the integral is minus infinity to infinity d p over 2 pi h cross e raise to minus i over h cross into p f into p times q f minus q i that is that one right e raise to minus i q f minus q i and then from the summation of the n delta n's we get plus p squared by 2 m and this is the answer. This is the answer in the form I like it you can because now you have become experts at doing this do this one last integral one it is just one more Gaussian there is d p there is p squared and there is a linear term.  So, actually this answer amusingly is given in so, can be so, exercise number 2 this part as I am telling you will become 1 if you do exercise number 1. So, if you do this exercise number 2 you will find an answer which is given in Schiff's book as an exercise ok, but not through path integral. So, Schiff is a very clever very very clever book it has a lot of hidden gems in it. Schiff and Merzbacher these two books are really very nice books for theorists to read.


Everybody forced here up in a box of 2022 leaf exotic multi-sport for Matthew D Matthew one metal card number to 10 or less one metal auto number to 10 or less Let's see a crazy name here Come off. Oh, that is a pretty young player Yeah, numbered five out of nine. It's travion Henderson Travion Henderson current Ohio State running back There you go, Matthew pretty cool one there that one could go up in value for sure. We will get that right out to you Thank you again


Stock market drops 600 points today are we headed to a recession? That's what everybody wants to know and that's what we're going to talk about, but it's going to be totally different because we're going to pull up actual data to back up what we think and what we're going on and try to make your own decision. So stay tuned. Once again ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and children of all ages, this is your host, the Prince of Investor coming to you guys and girls live all the way from a beautiful state of Denver, Colorado via Haluahua, Hawaii. We're coming to you guys live today and if you're just catching a playback, just catching a playback, listen to the podcast. Don't forget to hit that like, subscribe, comment, share button, but as always stay tuned as we get to some great information. So as we've seen it, last week, this week was a crazy rollercoaster week. Down 500 points, up 600 points, down another 500, up what is going on, right? All this volatility of the market moving over and all you see is the media sensationalized, whoa look are we headed to another recession? Are we headed to another recession? That's the number one question that everybody wants to know, right? And how to prepare this? What is going on? So the question is, are we headed to a recession? So the first thing I'm going to pull up, I'm not going to sit here and talk about what I, my personal opinions are what the case should be. We're going to talk about actual data. So if you participate in the show, you follow it pretty well, you will know that I talk about something called leading economic indicators, LEIs. That's what I'm going to go for, right? The leading economic indicators, there are 10 of them and they are managed, not managed, but they're reported by mostly by the conference board. That's the most recognizable name out there. I guarantee you, how about everybody's been listening to, they've been talking about Donald Trump's tweets, they've been talking about what's on Twitter, what's on Facebook, what somebody say, whether they heard no economical data to back up or not, you know, much of what they're saying. So we already know the market is controlled by fear and greed. When there's fear in the market, 600 points in one day. I'm just upset that I spent my whole day in meetings and I didn't get the chance to buy anything. So I'm hoping that the downside continues to Monday so I can take advantage. So anyway, but in the meanwhile, my dividends are still paying me. But the thing is, I want to look at the leading economic indicators and see if we hit it through the recession. Because guess what? Of course, we're going to eventually have another market slide, like 2008. This is the longest running bull market that we've had in history. Since March of 2009, until the day, which is August 2019, we're still in the bull market. The market is up, up, up, up, up. And everybody's wondering where the downturn is going to be. Is the downturn going to come? And I'm not going to be one of these people that's going to sit here and say, yes, the market is going to crash, the market is going to crash. And when it does, I tell everybody, look at me. I predicted a market crash. It's like somebody predicting the rain. We all know it's going to rain somewhere. And it's going to rain in the future here in Denver. We know it's eventually going to snow. And I keep saying it's going to snow. And guess what? It's going to snow. So let's get me on that. Let's get into the actual data, the leading economic indicators. So there's 10 of them. I wrote a couple of them down here for you. Some of them you probably already heard of. So the first one is unemployment. Unemployment is leading economic indicator because guess what? If I lost my job today, I will go and file for unemployment tomorrow, just hypothetically speaking, I will go file for my unemployment tomorrow. And I will start to get, you know, maybe some, you know, unemployment benefits. But the thing is, this hasn't affected the economy yet. So these leading economic indicators are things that start to happen to give you a good idea of where the market is heading. So the first thing is unemployment. So we watch unemployment rates. The second thing is housing starts. How many people are building houses? Before you build a house, guess what? You got to have a building permit, right? So are we going to slow down and people building houses? Because most times, if I'm building a bunch of houses and these houses are not rain, or these houses are not selling, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to slow down on building houses, which means that this is a great indicator of an economical slowdown to come together. Number three, gross domestic product. How much stuff does this country make in America? How have we done? Have we started to slow down on what we started to make? Number four, I think we're in, right? S&P 500 houses stopped market doing in the last month, not today, not where the case may be. Everybody's saying, Hey, the market's crashing, the market's crashing. Come on. The Dow Jones at 2,600 points, it went down like 1% today. In order for it to be considered a correction, it needs to go down 10%. In order for it to be considered a recession, it needs to go to 20%. So to say that we're sliding into a recession as of now, not really, you know, 20%, one on one 1%, I would say slow down to just a little bit for worrying about it. Number six, manufacturing and trade inventory, right? This is when they start to look at manufacturers hours. How many hours are manufacturers clocking? Why is that important? Because if manufacturing or people who work in manufacturer workers, if manufacturer workers are working less hours, that mean they're making less stuff. If they're making less stuff, that means that people are buying less stuff. So that could be a great indicator of the economic slowdown. Another one, retail trades and forces, right? Retail trade, sales and forces. This is pretty much where they take about 5,000 retail and food restaurants, which make up two thirds of our gross domestic product. And they look at this to see how people are spending. Are people going on to eat and are people buying new clothes, right? Because guess what?  Maybe at McDonald's or maybe eating at home.  So when they watch, these are kind of considered consumer discretionary spending, which means that when people have a little extra income, they may eat out a little bit more, they may buy a little clothes, right? So we like to watch those things in retail and also in the food industry because if they start to have a slowdown, then that could be a great indicator of an economical slowdown getting ready to happen. Another one we're going to get into is I don't really like this one. I don't understand why it's just one consumer confidence survey is where they put out a survey and like 3,000 people take a survey and imagine their confidence in the economy. I don't believe that. I like to see what you call it. You like to look at money supply, how much money is in the system is another one. Also another one, consumer price index, which is considered AKA inflation. How is inflation moving? Is inflation going very high? Is inflation going too slow? Or is inflation going to steady pace? So by watching inflation, how do they manage inflation? They take a pool of products and imagine their movement against the money that people making. So boom, there you have it. Those are some of the leading economically indicators. Now we're going to go over. A lot of people don't know. Just happened yesterday. It just came out called the by the conference board. The conference board put out the am I think they put out every month. It comes out every month. So he just did the month of July. The conference board just put out the leading economical indicators. So we're going to read it straight from it, right? It drew it, you know, it drew into positive, you know, it increased by 0.5% instead of my words there. But it went up 5% mostly due to building permits went up. Initial unemployment claims went down. And the downside was the yield curve that they saw that I already spoke about or whatnot. But they said unemployment went down and building permits went up, right? So that caused a slight moderate push into economic indicator. The positive contributors were the building permit, unemployment, stop prices for July, the leading credit indicator, inverted, less people use credit, and the average consumer expectations for business conditions also went up. The downside, the negative indicators were new orders, you know, they always watch new orders, average weekly manufacturing hours. So manufacturing hours kind of dropped. That was downside. The interest rates, you know, we've seen cuts in interest rates and the manufacturers new orders are non-defense capital goods, including excluding aircraft. So they're saying that orders coming into manufacturers kind of slowed down. Those are things that happen. So when we look at this, they're saying that, hey, we don't see an economy booming in the future. We don't see it slowing down in the future. They see it moving in the near future. They see it moving slowly at a modest pace. So yes, you're going to see ups, yes, you're going to see down, but according to the economic indicators, we're going to move slowly at a modest pace due to, we can't stop the volatility. A lot of the volatility is coming from fear and greed. Now people like to get into the talks of trade war. Oh, what's going to trade war? Nothing has happened economically. That's just fear, greed, and emotions, right? When someone has a lot of emotions, they go in, they buy, and they sell, just do all for a tweet or oh my god, the price of this is going to go up or go down or whatever the case may be. That's just fear, which brings a lot of opportunities into the market. So I don't see any, I'm looking at raw economic data to back up what I'm seeing. They say, hey, it's a trade war. I haven't seen the tariffs go into effect and like I told you, if tariffs go into effect, America's going to win. America is the customer. China is the business owner pretty much. They own the restaurant and when the customers gain together up on the business owner, users business owner is going to lose point blank because the customers can take their business anywhere else. So the business owner is going to confine or go out of business. If the customers say, hey, we don't like, we don't like your service and the business owner say, hey, I don't care. The customers stop coming, business owner collapses, right? So right now, you know with President Trump, when he's going through with these whole deals, I think it's going to come up positive in the long run, but in the meantime, it's going to cost a lot of fear in the market and you're going to see a lot of volatility. So he gets on there, he tweets about something or he says this or he does this or whatnot and he creates fear. Nothing financially, it just creates fear, right?  That's kind of what I like to see it as and would it kind of come down again? Yes, and I already made a video on how to take advantage of those market dips. So my conclusion is by looking at the economical data, looking at the leading economical indicators, I think that I don't think we're in the near future. I don't see a recession. I can see volatility due to fear due to people are scared already because when the long running bull market, we got the potential trade wars going on. We got the inverted yield curve with a two-year inverted 10-year which could be assigned towards a recession. So it's creating a lot of volatility and fear and unexpected seeing the market. I think that's a lot of emotions. I haven't seen anything as of yet that's telling me, hey, you know, because I remember 2008, when we hit it towards the recession, guess what? Unemployment slowly rose, rose, rose and rose.  Right now the stop market is bouncing. It's just very volatile. It's not going in one direction and keep going in one direction. So unemployment, I don't see any unemployment claims going crazy. People may be underemployed but they're not unemployed. So I don't see any unemployment indicators. I don't see people losing jobs, that's the right people stopping to spend, companies going bankrupt, filing for bankruptcy, layoffs, all those type of things are what you usually see when economy is headed to a recession or is in a recession. Right? So I don't see any of that as of now. So in the near future, I think that we're going to grow modestly slow but it's going to be a choppy ride. That's what I said. So I don't see a recession in my personal opinion and that's going off of economical data. Right? So and this is the next leading indicator report by the conference board. It's going to be out on September 19th which is my anniversary Thursday at 10 a.m. But we just got this one yesterday and this one just came out to the economy is doing and it's watching those indicator and they have the indexes and they're paying attention to the indexes. So I turn off the TV, pay attention to the indexes and most importantly, I'm not a short-term investor. I'm looking for a long-term anyway. So who cares if we're going to a recession tomorrow? I'm just going to buy buy buy buy buy. It's going to give me more incentives to buy for the long term. So I've been waiting for a good sale. So you know this is where when you look at the most successful people in stocks, you're looking at people who are long-term. So people who are long term and consistent over people that are short-term in and for the quick way in for the quick buck. But anyway, happy trading. I hope they help you out. I hope they let you know how to get ready for a recession and also are we headed for one and give you some tools for the two days. But until the next video, podcast, cartoon, book or whatever else crazy you seem to do around the globe, peace, be safe, I'm out and thank you.


Okay, good morning everyone. My name is Audrey Gamble. I am soil scientist for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, and I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Crop Soil and Environmental Sciences at Auburn. And so today I'm going to be giving a webinar on cover crop systems for specialty crops. I primarily work in the area of row crops or agronomic crops, but I think a lot of the information related to cover crops for row crop systems relates very well. So hopefully this will be beneficial to you all. So to get started, I want to talk about why we plant cover crops. So cover crops are crops which are grown when our cash crops are not actively growing, and we typically are planning them to provide some benefits to the soil. And there's an array of benefits that cover crops can provide, and it's up to the producer to determine which of these benefits are most important to them. So at minimum cover crops typically help to protect against soil erosion and run off of nutrients. They also can help to conserve soil moisture, improve organic matter storage, which is very important for improving nutrient holding and water holding capacity and overall health of the soil. They can also be to press early season weeds. They can help improve water infiltration, provide supplemental nitrogen, in the case of legumes. They can scavenge for nutrients and break up soil compaction. So today I'm going to be going over just some basics of implementing cover crop systems, and as I go along I'm also going to try to point you in the direction of additional resources that you can use to get more in-depth information. So this is kind of my outline for the presentation. First I'm going to start with how we select cover crops to sit in with our cash crop rotation. Then I'm also going to go through some basics of cover crop planning and cover crop management as well as cover crop termination, and lastly planning into cover crop residues. So to get us started about thinking how we're going to select our cover crop species, I first want to talk about the amount of residue that a cover crop can provide, because the amount of residue or biomass that a cover crop provides is very important for achieving certain goals. So as I mentioned before, even at low levels of biomass as seen in these first two pictures here, we can at least help protect against erosion and nutrient loss to an extent. We can also help with water infiltration. But some of these other benefits that we achieve through cover crops such as increased organic matter storage and suppression of weeds actually take very high levels of biomass. And so it's important for producers to think about what benefits they're trying to achieve as they select their cover crops and decide how they're going to manage their cover crops. So these are some of the considerations that I think are very important for cover crop selection. And typically the first questions I would ask a producer if they may be asking for advice on which cover crops to implement. So the first question is somewhat obvious, but what cover crop planning dates work with your crop rotation? Obviously if you're using, if you're planting summer cash crops, you're going to implement a winter cover. And conversely, if you're planting a winter cash crop, you're going to be looking at summer covers to implement. And so but we can get a little bit more specific with that too and I'll talk about that in coming slides. One of the most important considerations is what benefits are am I trying to achieve? I have a picture above this here of a brassica. Brassicas have a deep tap root which can go and scavenge for nutrients deeper in the soil profile and bring them up. They also, certain brassicas have the ability to suppress certain nematodes and so in plant parasitic nematodes specifically. So these are some of the considerations that you may have is what are you trying to achieve with a cover crop? And then lastly, what cash crop will follow in my cover crop? And so this is important because certain covers can actually negatively impact the growth of a cash crop and that's not what we want. So for example, if we're growing a legume cash crop, we don't want to plant a legume cover crop before that cash crop because planting a legume in rotation with a legume can promote disease cycles and it can also inhibit those rhizobacteria that help legumes fix their own nitrogen. And so that's a specific consideration. And then in certain cases, there can actually be allelopathic effects of a cover crop residue on a following cash crop and that just means that the plant itself may cause harm to the following cash crop. So an example of that would be planting corn following ryegrass. Ryegrass as opposed to cereal rye has an allelopathic effect on corn and so those are some considerations as well. So kind of going back to that first question of what cover crops work with your crop rotation. These are some typical planting dates that we would use for fall and winter cover crops. And this is taken from the Southern Cover Crops Council, which I'm a board member and I'll point this out in future slides, but this is a great place to go for additional information on cover crops. So we put together these planting guides for dates at which specific cover crops should be planted. You'll notice that a lot of our winter covers such as oats and rye, they do best when planted particularly in October and then can be beneficial as well in November. But as we start to move down to our brassicas like daikon radish, these really have to be planted a good bit earlier in order to really produce. So brassicas like daikon radish like to be planted as early as August and on 30th September and once we get into November in Alabama this is typically too late to plant brassica. This is the same type of graph but showing early spring and summer planted cover crops. So again most of these covers you can plant them in May and June. This includes our summer grasses like millet and sorghum sudangrass, legumes like cow peas and sunhemp and some of our broadleaves. But these same species can some of them can be planted through August whereas others such as cow peas we sorry such as buckwheat we may not want to plant that late. So the next consideration when it comes to cover crop selection that I mentioned was what benefits are you trying to achieve and we can kind of group cover crops into these three categories when we're thinking about benefits. The first category and our most prominent category as far as cover crops planted in Alabama would be small grains such as rye and oats when we're thinking about winter cover crops or millet and sorghum sudangrass when we're thinking about summer cover crops. These are excellent at producing a very high biomass especially when they're planted in a timely manner. This high biomass can serve to help with weed suppression in the early season, conserve soil moisture and improve soil organic matter. They also of course can help with nutrient scavenging with their root systems as well as help prevent erosion. Legumes such as clovers, betches, sunhemp, these are are excellent for fixing nitrogen for the subsequent cash crop and brassicas or other broadleaves. Some examples being brassicas being radish and canola. These have deep tap roots and in some cases they can help to break up soil compaction and they can also scavenge for nutrients deeper in the soil profile. And this is just to go a little bit more in depth with the legumes. This gives an example of nitrogen production per acre. So a lot of our clovers, betches, they'll produce approximately 150, 100 to 150 pounds of nitrogen per acre depending on the stand that you have. Of course not all of that nitrogen is going to be available to the subsequent crop but we can typically get about a 30 to 50 pound nitrogen credit on the subsequent crop per acre when we follow their legume. A very obvious consideration when selecting cover crops would be where you can get seed. So we we have on the southerncovercrops.org website. We have some seed sources listed by state. You can see we have a few listed in Alabama. If you have any that you would like to add to this list please feel free to contact me. I'll provide my contact information at the end of this presentation. But you can go to this website to access websites and phone numbers for some of our local seed sources. So moving on from cover crop selection to cover crop planting. Cover crops can be planted in a variety of ways but the most uniform stand is going to be provided with the drill because that ensures good seed to seed to soil contact. We can also broadcast seed on top of the soil surface but we're typically going to have to increase seeding rates by approximately 20 to 50% when we broadcast. So on the southerncovercrop.org website we do have information sheets for each for a variety of cover crop species which tells seeding rates or drilled planting as well as recommended seeding rates for broadcasting as well as seeding depth and some additional information on those specific cover crops. And we also have resource guides for setting up and calibrating drills and spreaders and this is the link to find those. This is just an example of the types of information sheets that we have. So in this particular case I selected the information sheet for cereal rye. So you can see we have some information about specific varieties. We have planting information including depth seeding rates and then we also have some information on how to terminate that cover crop and just some some of the specific traits of that crop and such as the relative cost, the typical amount of biomass that it produces and some specific cautions that you may need to follow. So these are an excellent resource for finding out information about a specific cover crop and also whether the specific cover crop will provide the benefits that you're trying to achieve on your farm. Moving on to cover crop management I want to briefly cover fertilization of cover crops. For pH phosphorus and potassium we're going to want to maintain soil test recommendations. So of course you can always take a soil sample and send it to the Auburn University soil testing lab to determine that. Typically as long as we're maintaining our pH phosphorus and potassium for our cash crops they should be an adequate supply for our cover crops. However when it comes to nitrogen we're going to have some different considerations. So nitrogen management is going to depend on the type of species as well as the amount of biomass that you're trying to achieve. Specifically with small grains which we're often planning for that high biomass we may have to supplement some nitrogen. So supplemental nitrogen of 30-50 pounds will be necessary typically to get that additional biomass and if we delay planting past the optimum window we may even have to apply more nitrogen to meet our biomass goals. And so this graph that I'm showing here this is some research that was done at the U.S.D.A. soil dynamics lab in Auburn, Alabama. It just shows rye biomass according to nitrogen rate and this was done at one of our research stations in Alabama and it's showing here in the red line we can see early to mid-December planting dates for rye and then we have in green mid to late November in yellow we have early to mid November and in blue we have mid to late October. So you can see the earlier we planted our rye the more biomass we achieved but we were able to make up for it a bit when we put out nitrogen. But this highlights the importance of getting your cover crop planted in a timely manner so you don't have to add more cost to your system by applying more fertilizer. So here when we compare an early to mid December planting date to the mid to late October planting date you can see it took us 90 pounds of nitrogen to achieve approximately the same amount of biomass that we achieved with no nitrogen at our earliest planting date. So again you can can work around your nitrogen, nitrogen rates according to how much biomass you're trying to achieve and when you planted and that applies to our small grain covers. When we have a legume in a mixture we typically do not need to apply that additional nitrogen as long as we have approximately 30 percent sand cover of our legume cover crop. So it is important though to make sure you inoculate legume seed this helps promote nitrogen fixation and you can look up for instance on those fact sheets what specific inoculant is needed for a specific legume. Moving on to cover crop termination so termination is just when we kill the cover crop in preparation for planting of the following cash crop and timing of termination is it's critical for optimizing that biomass production. We want to allow enough time for our cover crop to grow to really produce a good bit of biomass typically but we often want to terminate two to four weeks prior to planting to help ensure that we have good soil moisture since actively growing cover crops can deplete soil moisture and this also helps to prevent nitrogen immobilization which is important with small grain. So when we have a lot of small grain residue on the soil surface it has a high carbon and nitrogen ratio and it actually can tie up the amount of nitrogen or it can tie up nitrogen as we apply nitrogen for our cash crop and terminating ahead of time can reduce the risk of some insect pests as well as seedling board diseases. There are producers who are able to plant into standing cover crops or plant terminate directly at planting or right after planting. However we recommend that if you're attempting to do this you start out on a very small area because it is a little bit more risky to terminate that late in the season just because of these these reasons that I have listed on this slide but there there can be some benefits to that but but we suggest that if you're interested in terminating you know right at planting or planting into an actively growing cover that you do that on a very small area or acreage to to try that out and make sure you can learn to manage it appropriately. There's several different methods for termination and I'm gonna go through three of those right now. Chemically terminating means that we're spraying with herbicides and I don't have time to go through specific herbicides to use or tank mixes to use for specific cover crops but we do have information about that on the southerncovercrops.org website I've got the link to that here so you can check that out. The advantages of chemical termination are that we can leave the residue on the soil surface and this is very important when we're trying to achieve weed suppression and improve soil moisture storage in our fields. So additional options for terminating cover crops is roller crimping and you can you can also crimp without that shouldn't actually not say whether without rolling but rolling and crimping is another method to terminate small grain cover crops specifically. When it's not as easy to kill legume covers or our broadleaf covers through rolling and crimping and it often takes three to four passes with a roller crimper to kill those those covers but small grains as you can see in this top picture here this is a picture of a roller crimper it's just basically a bar that has these kind of blades soldered on to them that will cut into not actually cut through the cover but will crimp that cover and kind of kill the vascular or cut into the vascular tissue and prevent that crop from continuing to grow but again this is is not as effective for legume cover crops so when crimping small grain we typically crimp at soft dough stage or later and soft dough is kind of intuitive it's when that grain that's being produced when you push into it with your fingers that it kind of feels like a soft dough and the ground should not be soft at the time of rolling and crimping because in order to to crimp into that residue we need to have a little bit hard ground in order to effectively crimp. Mowing and incorporating is another option for cover crop termination and this is more frequently used in organic systems this when you're when you're mowing and incorporating there's some considerations so cover crops are easier to kill with mowing when they've reached maturity whether that be you know grain fill with a with a small grain cover crop or full bloom with a legume cover it's easier to kill them when they're at maturity and mowed cover crop residue should be incorporated with tillage as soon as possible but you want to keep in mind that you you don't want to have more residue than your tillage equipment can handle turning under the soil so that's a specific consideration for mowing and incorporating. So mowing and incorporating it has has the advantage of the you don't have to use chemicals to terminate but then you don't have that residue on the soil surface to help with with moisture storage and wheat suppression. So moving from termination to planting into your cover crop residue these are just some considerations for setting up your planters of course when you have a residue that hasn't been turned under and you just have it laying on the soil surface in order to plant through that you're going to need a sharp culture to ensure that residue is cut and doesn't wrap with whatever type of planter you're using. So I've got a picture here this all this is a on the bottom here we've got a no-till vegetable transplant and it has cultures that are cutting through the residue that's shown in this photo in order to to create an area that we can get good seed to soil or transplant contact with the soil. Also important cultures going back to cultures these perform best on firm ground so anytime you're using culture to cut through residue you want to avoid try to avoid that wrapping so put it far enough in front of any tillage conservation tillage equipment to avoid that. Wheel cleaners are also important to help ensure seed to soil contact these basically just sweep residue out of the way as you're planting you can see a picture of that on this top picture here this is a row cleaner that just kind of sweeps that residue out of the way while planting and it's also important to maintain correct down pressure and use closing wheels so that you can if you're planting seed that you can ensure seeds of soil contact as those wheels press back down and you can't see it in this picture here but there's actually some closing wheels on this vegetable transplant or that helped to kind of put pressure on the soil around around the transplant. So that's a brief introduction to cover crops for more information I've mentioned several times the website southern cover crops.org again this is a group of scientists university scientists government scientists farmers from throughout the southern region of the United States who put together information we have this is some examples of fact sheets such as how to terminate herbicides how to ensure good seed to soil contact should you fertilize your cover crop we've got a little schematic for that so I encourage you to check this website out another website will is alabamasoilhealth.org this is on the Alabama Cooperative Extension System website and it was sponsored by the Alabama School and Water Conservation Committee so we've actually tried to put together some information on just on soil health and how cover crops can improve soil health on this website we've also tried to put all of our research related to cover crops both from Auburn University and Extension as well as the USDA soil dynamics lab and we tried to update research on here and we have it divided into row crops specialty crops and pasture and hay soil conservation and so there's some some information on cover crops on here as well so that's all I have today thank you if anyone has any questions please send them to agamble at Auburn.edu I've also listed my phone number here so again thank you for for your attention and I hope you all have a good day


Hey guys! I am just up here in my chair in the art room crocheting. I have been most of the day. Bob is off taking a class with some of the kids and yeah, I am just here working on my blanket. My goal is to get it done this week and start on a new project or two or three. Yeah, anyway. So yeah, it's just a nice quiet Sunday and I'm okay with that. Yeah, all right. That's it for the minute. I might make myself a cup of iced coffee because I'm kind of feeling like I'm in the mood. And yes, if you remember a while back I made this dress and some bloomers to go underneath it. I have that outfit on today of course with a sweater because it is like in the low 50s outside and yeah anyway. Yeah, you know, the more I think about it, a cup of iced coffee sounds like a good idea. Anyway, I might just be addictive caffeine but yeah, there's that. I'll be back. It is Monday morning October 30th I think and it is just a few minutes before noon. Mr. B is headed to California for work. His ride is picking him up in a few minutes. Again, I have no problem telling you all that because about the time you see this he's gonna be back so there's that. Anyway, as soon as he's off I'm gonna go run a few errands. I usually do errands on Wednesday but there's gonna be a lot of stuff going on around here Wednesday before he gets home so it's better.  It's been not really raining a whole lot but it's been windy and the trees are pooping pine needles everywhere. Driving is gonna be interesting. Anyway, that's it for the minute. I am gonna while he's gone my goal finish the Afghan and I cut out another carpet bag. I have one more frame and I want to make another carpet bag so yeah. Anyway, we'll see if I manage all that. I'll be back. Okay, Bob is off to the airport. I have just mailed a couple of bills. I've got to call one more bill in and then we're off to run a couple of errands. Of course one of them being Joanne's but you know. Alright, I'll be back.  Actually I'm almost done with this one and then I have one more in a dark gray color that we're gonna use for the edging. I think I'm gonna do a half double crochet around the entire edge until the ball's used up kind of. But I think I'm gonna give my hands a little bit of a break.  Of course he's out of town. He did some of them on the plane. I'm going to go ahead and do mine now and sort of do this with my hands. Stretch them out. You know all of that. Really hoping I can get this afghan done tonight. That would be really cool. Junior comes tomorrow for babysitting. I think I'm gonna forego editing the vlog today and try to finish the blanket. I can edit the video before he comes or after he goes home. So I think I'll do that. I also have to make a point of making myself some lunch either before he gets here right after he gets here while he's quiet because Bob's not here to like have me text him. Hey honey, can you get me a glass of water? So anyway, it's too quiet now. I thought you know COVID happened and he started working at home full-time which is something he said he never wanted to do. We both really got used to it. Liked it and now when he's gone in the office just for a couple of days, it's just too quiet now. So that's okay. I'll get over it. I'll be back. Chores are done. We're downstairs on the sofa. I've made myself some iced coffee because why not? I never sleep well when Bob's not home anyway. So what's the difference? And I started the half double crochet around the edge of the blanket. So let's find some YouTube to watch or listen to and get it done. All right, I'll be back. The blanket's done. Hang on a second. It's yeah, this is the master bedroom and the lighting is not super good in here. We've never found a light fixture to replace the one the house came with that we both can agree on. But anyway, this is a queen-sized bed and it fits on here but it would probably fit better on a double. It is just a giant granny square with a couple of rows around the edge of half double crochet. You guys hold on. So there we go. That's a little better. We'll use the light on the camera. So each one of these colors is a different ball of yarn. Approximately 22 balls, skeins, leftover bits, thrifted, gifted, a few purchased not too many. Most of it was thrifted or gifted and yeah, I'm pretty pleased with how the blanket turned out. What do you all think? Anyway, on to the next project now.  It's an easy pattern to do on the go and traveling or at home and to use random yarns on. It's also a really great stress relief to just sit and crochet, turn some music on or a podcast and yeah, I really enjoyed myself. So this won't be my last afghan not by any stretch. Alright, I'll be back. Vlog is edited and rendering. What do I do with the other half? Half of this. If it was a spider, it would have bitten me.  Anyway, vlog is rendering right now. So it's all edited and I had to update some videos that are coming out soon with links for my other partners. So I did that and I've had two cups of coffee and some breakfast. Junior is coming today so I'm trying to get some stuff done before he gets here. I'm trying. I have a million projects lined up. I have to get through some of them. I have things I want to clean and reorganize. Like the list is endless, you guys, as it always is. So anyway, I am going to finish getting this saved and loaded to YouTube and I think I need one more cup of coffee. You know, mister's not here so I didn't sleep super well last night. So yeah, it's gonna be that way till he gets home. Anyway, that's it for the minute. I'll be back. By the way, it is Halloween. It's Tuesday, October 31st, which means I get to pass out candy by myself, which is okay, I guess. We don't get tons of kids, but it's a really Mr. Bob's thing. He was supposed to be here. Just saying. All right, I'll be back. Okay, so far we've had quite a few kids for Halloween. We do only have one bag of candy so I need to make that stretch. They all look so cute and so happy. Anyway, I started another sweater for myself out of some Madeleine Tosh yarn. I will link her website of her yarns down below and if I can find the one that I'm actually using, I'll link it. In a pattern I've done already, which I'll put a picture here. I really love the fit of this sweater. It's simple and it was easy to make and it fits me pretty well. So this yarn, of course, that I'm using is very colorful bright because, you know, so yeah, I did that. We're passing out candy. Mr. Bob's not happy. He's not here. I'm so tempted when he's not here to drink all the coffee. I used to drink two pots a day by myself. I'm not going to do that. I'm boiling some water, going to make a cup of tea. Caffeine-free herb tea. All right, and I didn't even turn the kettle on. We do have one. I just used the microwave because, you know, I'm not the frugal crafter. That's Lindsay Weirich. I'm the lazy crafter. Emphasis on the lazy. So there's that. All right, that's it for the minute. I'll be back. Okay, it's already been an interesting morning. Our friend and cleaning lady, Leti, is here. She's upstairs. Gardeners here. I've paid them both. I asked the gardener to take care of some blackberries that are coming through the fence in the back. If you've never been to Oregon, we have a wild blackberry problem. Anyway, and yes, they're edible as long as they haven't been sprayed. Anyway, I also had counseling this morning. Bob's still not home.  And I have two main YouTube channels. Well, I have three. One is for patrons and supporters only. One is my broadcast channel that you're watching right now. And one is my watch channel that I watch everything on. And my watch channel, I barely comment on anything. I just watch, have things playing in the background while I'm crocheting or painting or something. I watch it instead of TV. I don't really watch TV. So anyway, I barely comment on anything. But somehow I got a violation for spam, spam, and a bunch, a list of other things. I'll include a screenshot right here. I don't know what that's all about. I can't get through to anybody at YouTube to tell me what's going on. I barely comment on anything. I think in the last month I've commented on two crochet videos. So I don't know what they're talking about. And anyway, I'm banned from commenting on anything for 23 hours, 24 hours. I don't know. Anyway, oh joy. The automatic algorithms caught me on something. I don't know, what did I say? I have no idea. Anyway, as soon as everybody is done, I'm going to go upstairs. I'm going to rearrange a couple things that I've been wanting to rearrange.  And hopefully I don't come across something I want to comment on because I can't. I'll be back. Hey guys, I did a mini rearrange, rework. Okay. All the paint is now in this corner. Watercolor paint. Let's see, wait. There we go. Watercolor paint and pigment powders and some ink. Of course, the painting station. Acrylic paint, regular acrylic paint to use on canvas. But also there's a basket down there of matte acrylic paint, which if you've been following my channel, you know I prefer to use returnally. I moved some stuff off at the back of the table. I have my journals and things up there at the ready and things I need at the table when I'm doing various kinds of projects. The things I didn't need to have on the table but did have on the table are now over here. For the most part, things are relabeled and reorganized. I really don't have to buy anything for a while because paint or tool-wise at least because I have a lot. I got to work through what I have. In fact, I think I have a couple of tubes of golden paint that actually smell bad, which means they've gone off. Yeah, so anyway, oops, missed a paint palette. Yes, it's an egg plate. I have too many paint palettes. I don't need any more paint palettes. Anyway, all right, I'm going to go sit and chill, have a snack, have some water, watch some YouTube, enjoy the quiet in my house right now. And hopefully I don't come across anything I need to comment on because I can't and I don't know why. I'll be back. Okay, I have no idea what time it is. Let's see, just before six. Besides doing a mini rearrange of the art room and making the flow work a little better for me, I have one more of fixing the flow videos to film. I will do it at some point, I promise, soon. But anyways, once I was done with that, I made another carpet bag. I had one more of the frames and I had enough leftover material. Now, this is the same material I used on the other carpet bag, it's just this is the wrong side. But I thought it was interesting enough to make a bag out of and that tan color is something I just had left over. I didn't buy anything for this one, others in the frame, I had the frame. So yeah, I got a spare, not mad about it. All right, I think I'm going to, I don't know, Bob doesn't get home until we're very late. I'm not super hungry. I may make a cup of coffee, but I have to stay up anyways until he gets home. So somebody's got to let him in, he doesn't have a house key. All right, that's it for the minute, I'll be back. Hey guys, if you hear some murmuring in the background, I left my tablet on downstairs and it's playing a video. I was gifted today via our local Buy Nothing group some wool and I have the three skins here. Now, when I first opened the wool bag, it smelled very dirty, sheepy. If you know, you know. And so the first thing I did was give it a wash. And then the more I thought about it, you know, it's all soaking wet. It's soaked for about 20 minutes in a tub of hot water and some soap. It smells still slightly sheepy, but fine. I'm going to try dyeing it. And I've got some rit dye here already mixed up. I've got dark brown, teal, pearl gray, petal pink and lemon yellow. I'm going to set you off to the side somewhere where you can see what I'm doing. And we're going to try this. Yeah, I'm pretty excited. I'll be back. Okay, I think I like it. It's darker when it's wet than it's going to be when it's dry. We have no idea how it's going to turn out. I am probably going to go downstairs and grab a bucket and put it into a bucket. It's going to have to be rinsed off. I was thinking about just leaving it overnight, but I don't think I'm going to do that. So yeah. All right, let's get to it. Choose to do this on a day when I've got a white shirt on. I'm really lucky so far. I haven't gotten anything on myself.  I'll be back. Okay, let's rinse off the yarn and see what happened. It's looking pretty interesting, you guys. Hold on. Let's go get this laid out on the drying rack. Okay, it's going to take a little bit for things to dry. And then I'm going to wind them up into cakes, but they're looking pretty good. For my first time, I'm not mad about it. Did they come out more brown than expected? Well, yeah, but I did put a lot of colors in there. So I kind of knew that probably would happen, but very hints of teal and pink and yellow and green because blue and yellow make green. I don't know how I have any idea how many yardages, how much. I do have the skein labels and there is, do I have my glasses on? No. It's 100% fleece and shetland wool, which is probably why it smells like wet dog. And they appear to be new unused skeins each weighing about two ounces. So that's not a whole ton of yarn. I don't think it says on here how many yards or anything made in the USA. Botany yarns. Of course, I'm doing this without my reading glasses on because that's smart. Nope, doesn't say how many yards. Just says two ounces. I don't think it's a lot of yards. Like there's maybe 300 yards there. Maybe if you're lucky. I doubt there's even that much. So, but maybe enough for a beanie and or a scarf. There should be enough for that. So that's probably what'll happen with it, but it's pretty cool. So anyway, botany yarns. Thank you to my buy nothing neighbor. I appreciate the yarn. We're going to let it dry. Yep. And I'll be back. I have so many pairs of reading glasses. Most of them on cords and I still put them down and misplace them.  Like I'm not complaining, but Jesus, I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached. Got them. I'll be back. People of the internet, there is actually a list of discontinued yarns and the specs on the discontinued yarns. Anyway, found it. It's botany yarns Scotty and two ounces, approximately 170 yards per hank. And that's 500 and something should be plenty enough to make a beanie and maybe a scarf. So there's that. We're good. Okay, now I can sit down and relax. It's like my third or fourth time upstairs. I don't think I'm going to have any problem getting steps in. I should say just in like the last hour, third or fourth time. Anyway, good morning everybody. It is Friday morning, November 3rd, just before 10 a.m. I got to go run and get some stuff for family dinner night. And Mr. Bob's got to make some phone calls. We're going to go out at about lunchtime. He doesn't have any meetings today. We've got to go pay our property taxes. You generally in the U.S. don't have to do that in person, but we do. We just find it fun. I don't know. We're twisted that way. Anyway, I have moved the yarn I dyed downstairs to the laundry room sink with a rag underneath it to let it drip dry.  I like using it, but I don't like that it takes up so much room. Small problems. I need to make some bread today, but I'm going to do that after we get back from paying our taxes. And I think that's it. I think it's a pretty quiet weekend. I think the only other thing we have going on is Sunday evening, going up to Portland airport and picking up my dad. He comes home Sunday from his trip to Italy. And I can't wait to hear all about it. He looks like from the pictures that have been sent out on social media that he's having a great time. So good morning everybody. It is Saturday morning, November 4th. We are headed out in a minute to go for a drive, run some errands, all the things, and hang on. Outfit of the day. Some patchwork pants, a blouse, one of my sweaters. It makes me happy. So we're all good. And yes, I'm carrying a bag today because it's just, sometimes it's easier. I do love pockets and no bag, but you know. All right, let's go get to it. I'll be back. Okay, Mr. Bobby is downstairs napping on the couch with the TV on. It is almost 10 o'clock at night and I've almost forgot to close the vlog. I came so close. I took some of my mixed media bits off of the peg board wall and hung some yarn because why not? I like having it there, at least for the minute. Anyway, and I got done enough with my current sweater project that the whole round, it's crocheted in the round with no seams, but the whole yoke is done. So now it's time to do the body of the sweater and then we can progress to the sleeves. And I want to, it's a pattern I really enjoy making and I like wearing. So I'm going to keep making it because why not? Yeah, I still have my blouse on from today, but I've got sweatpants on because again, you know, yeah, anyway, it's been a good day. It's been a good, we got a lot of errands done, but we also did a lot of fun driving. We drove all the way down to McMinnville. We didn't really need to go that far to run errands, but you know, it's just such a nice drive. Why not? So it was a good, nice, quiet day. Mr. Bob cleaned all the gutters out. I didn't even know he was doing that because he didn't like tell me or come get me to help him, but evidently he did it all by himself. I was just in here futzing around doing the crocheting.  We got all the chores done here at home and all that stuff. And it's just nice, quite relaxing weekend. Tomorrow we have to go pick up my dad at the airport. He's coming home from Italy, but that's for next week's vlog. Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun rediscovering my love of crocheting and needlework. And the past few months, I've been really focused on that and not on painting and drawing or journaling.  And you can't really see it right now because the lights aren't on, but I did rearrange this corner a little bit. And I think it is working much better. I'm going to go over a few changes I've made to enable me to sort of sit in my chair and crochet or come over here and paint or be over here and cut out a project or do some journaling. The ironing board is like right here. It's not going to get put away. It's just right here. The more I work in the space, the better it gets. I am a person that definitely needs to be in a space for a while. It's been almost five years since we've been in the house or it has been five years, I think. I don't know exactly. But anyway, I need to be in a space for a while and I'm living it before I can really refine the workflow in the room. And we've really gotten to a really good place where the big pieces are perfect and they're good. And other than a few minor changes here and there when my focus shifts to something else, like the crocheting in the yarn, it's good otherwise. And that's perfect for me. Anyway, and the rest of the house is kind of the same too. Every now and then things get out of hand, but that's life, right? I mean, you know, anyway, we've had a good week. We've really enjoyed ourselves and life and I'm enjoying all the crochet projects and working on the new sweater. And it's I'm using a Madeleine Tosh yarn. I'll link their website down below. It is a wool blend yarn and it's hand dyed and it's beautiful, beautiful to work with. So I'll link them down below. It's not budget friendly, just FYI. The next one I'm going to do is budget friendly. And it's a beautiful acrylic yarn, so soft. And I'll talk about that when I start that project. Anyway, I hope you've all had a great week and have a great day. Don't forget to please like, share and subscribe. Check out the video description for relevant links, ways to support the free content here on YouTube. Myself and many, many, many others on YouTube have ways you can support the free content, whether it's joining Patreon, buying merch. I'm a designer over at ArtFomies. You can go support them and me at the same time by buying an ArtFomi. I'm not sponsored by them or anything. I just do work for them, but they're a great USA based company and I know they'd appreciate the business and they make some great stamps, you guys. Also, any relevant links will be down in the video description. If you're in the Beaverton, Oregon area, check out for yarn and you like yarn. Check out for yarn's sake. It is a great little yarn shop that has some beautiful designer yarns and I think you'd really like it. All right. That's it for the minute. I think I can't think of anything else, but it is kind of late. It's possible I miss something, you know. Anyway, don't forget to go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. I'll see you all next week. Love you all so much and if you want ready access to me, by the way, with a Messenger chat and a private YouTube channel with many, many, many videos that you will never see here on the public channel, join my Patreon and I'll hook you up. All right. All right. I'll see you next week. Bye guys.


Hi, I'm Katina Clarke from the Department of Foreign Affairs' Cults with Appliance section and I'm here today with Ms Nicole Rawson-Harris to speak more about the Ronnie Ellis Indigenous Study Awards. Hi, Nicole. Hi, Katina. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you. I was just hoping you could tell us a bit more about the Ronnie Ellis Indigenous Study Awards. So, the Ronnie Ellis Indigenous Study Awards is named in honour of my mum. It commenced in 2001, initiated by Phillip Bell and it is a scholarship award to students of the University of Canberra who are participating in the Foundation program. So, I understand that your mother actually worked in the department. She did indeed. She commenced work with the department in 1991 with the cultural relations branch. Her job at that time was promoting Australia's cultural image both within Australia and abroad, so her job involved promoting Indigenous culture in particular through art exhibitions, dance and music tours and she also undertook to compile a collection of Indigenous authors. That's actually pretty much my job in the department at the moment, so it's interesting to see that it started in 1991 when Ronnie was in the job. Fantastic. I understand she also served overseas. She did indeed. She was posted to Paris for a time. She was the alternate permanent delegate to UNESCO living in Paris there, which was the fulfilment of a very special dream for her and she certainly embraced her time and enjoyed it there. And I'd like to end with what your thoughts are on the Ronnie Ellis Indigenous Study Awards. Oh, it's a wonderful award. It's a very special tribute to my mum, so obviously I imagine she would be enormously proud of it and her family are of course very honoured to have this named for her. And it's a great award to assist students in their path towards their future careers and hopefully giving back to the Indigenous community through what they've chosen to do with their lives. Well, thank you very much for being here, Nicole. And presenting the awards today. Once again, that was Ms Nicole Rawson-Harris speaking about the Ronnie Ellis Indigenous Study Awards that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade currently has in place with the University of Canberra. Thank you.


Welcome to this talk about federated learning all in one box. This presentation was developed by my colleague, Huamin Chen and myself, Ricardo Noriega. We both work at the Red Hat's Office of the CTO in the Edge Computing team as part of the emerging technologies group. In this presentation, we are going to showcase a machine learning architecture called federated learning, and it will be running in a cloud native. First of all, what is federated learning? What does it mean? Federated learning is a distributed machine learning process in which each participant node or party retains data locally and interacts with the other participants via a learning protocol. The main drivers behind federated learning are data privacy, regulatory requirements, as well as avoiding the risk and cost of moving data to one cell trial location. For this project, we have used the IBM Federated Learning Library that provides a basic fabric for federated learning use cases. It is not dependent on any specific machine learning framework and supports different learning topologies and protocols. For example, it supports deep neural networks, as well as classic machine learning techniques, like linear regressions, k-means, etc. The figure in, so in order to understand the benefits of a federated learning architecture, we need to compare it to a more classical centralized learning architecture. In a centralized learning scenario, each entity or party is sending data to where the machine learning model is running, so it can process this data locally. Federated learning is an approach to conduct machine learning without centralizing training data in a single place for reasons that I mentioned before, of privacy, confidentiality, or data volume. However, solving federated machine learning problems also raises some issues. This can include setting up communication infrastructure between parties, coordinating the learning process, integrating party results, understanding the characteristics of the training data sets of different parties, etc. So as you can see in the slide, while the centralized learning architecture shows how the different parties send data to the cloud or where the machine learning model is running, the federated learning example shows how this data is processed in each party and only the already trained machine learning model is sent out to the central location, where usually the aggregator is running, and then it will perform fusion algorithms to have. So I mentioned before that for this project, we have used a federated learning library developed by IBM. In this slide, I'm gonna show you how its architecture looks like. In the center of the slide, we have the aggregator. The aggregator is in charge of running the fusion algorithm. A fusion algorithm queries the registered parties to carry out the federated learning training process. The queries send very according to the model or algorithm type. In return, parties send their replies as a model update object, and these model updates are then aggregated according to the specified fusion algorithm. Each party holds its own dataset that is kept to itself and used to answer queries received from the aggregator, because each party may have stored data in different formats. The IBM Federated Learning Library offers an abstraction model called the data handler. This module allows for custom implementations to retrieve the data from each of the participating parties. A local training handler sits in each party to control the local training happening at the party side. IBM Federated Learning has a library. If we want to run the IBM Federated Learning Library in a cloud native fashion, we need a platform that supports our edge computing use cases. We are presenting here a new Kubernetes distribution optimized for edge devices called MicroShift. MicroShift is a small form factor Kubernetes distribution that provides a minimal open shift experience. For those who don't know, OpenShift is the Red Hat's Kubernetes distribution. To give you a little bit of context, the edge devices deployed out in the field pose very different operational, environmental, and business challenges from those of cloud computing. These motivate different engineering trade-offs for Kubernetes at the far edge than for cloud or near edge scenarios. MicroShift was designed to make frugal use of system resources like CPU, memory, network storage, tolerate severe network constraints, update securely, safely, and seamlessly to build on an integrate cleanly on an edge optimized operating system like Fedora IoT and real for edge while providing a consistent development and management experience with standard OpenShift. So we designed MicroShift to keep the mantra of develop once and deploy anywhere. So any application that you have developed for to make use of OpenShift APIs, you will be able also to deploy it on MicroShift. We believe these properties should also make MicroShift great tool for other use cases such as Kubernetes application development on resource constraint systems like maybe your laptop or small devices, scale testing and provisioning of lightweight Kubernetes control planes. It runs as a single binary that can be deployed as an RPM package or as a container in many different environments such as Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and on this slide explains the end-to-end deployment workflow of a device. In a production environment, this all starts with our hardware vendor imaging an edge optimized operating system like real for edge that we provide. Usually the SSDs are image at scale prior to connect them to the motherboard of the devices. The devices then are boxed and located in storage warehouse. It's important to highlight that the images are not associated with any given deployment site or location. They are just generic. Then, each device or set of devices will be shipped to their own location. Once there, a technician will screw the devices to the wall, plug the power, plug the network cable. It will probably be power over internet and the work is done. The operating system on the device will start and usually it would have baked a device management service endpoint in it. There are two ways to authenticate our devices into our own management system. The traditional approach where once the the second way to authenticate our devices into our own management system is making use of security device on board project. The Fido Alliance is working on the SDO specification and Red Hat is participating on that project too. SDO supported devices will have a keeper per device and an ownership voucher given by the manufacturer. SDO will automatically authenticate the device based on those vouchers and keys. The goal is that the edge optimized operating system such as rail for edge will use SDO as the foundation for this registration process. Once the device has been authenticated it will receive configuration stored in a Git repo. If we take a look at the example, the device will be configured based on this repo with config files, binaries, SSH keys, system disservices, et cetera. MicroShift will be one of the elements to be deployed and configured based on this repository. Finally, once the device is configured and MicroShift is up and running the cluster will appear in what we call Advanced Cluster Manager. It is a fleet manager for Kubernetes clusters and it will appear as a new imported cluster and ready to be used for deploying applications on top. Now that we have all the pieces to run a cloud native federated learning workload, let's see how this demo looks like. In a production environment all these pieces will be distributed in different sites but as promised we are going to run a federated learning model all in one box like a laptop or a server. In the base layer we have of course an operating system like Relfarage but it could be any other. The next layer above represents the container runtime. We have developed MicroShift and this demo to work with our reference runtime that is Cryo. Then in order to provide cloud native capabilities we deploy MicroShift as our Kubernetes distribution. MicroShift not only runs the basic control plane and Kubernetes control plane and not components but also provides OpenShift APIs. MicroShift will be able to schedule and orchestrate our application components as pods. The IBM Federated Learning Project comes as a Python library. We have packaged this library in container images and created Kubernetes manifest to run different entry points for the aggregator and the different parties. In this demo we will run two parties. Data will be ingested through MQTT to the parties. We use an MQTT publisher to simulate sensors to inject data to the parties. Party pods connect to the MQTT broker AKA Mosquito and subscribe to a topic there. As a curiosity we have used the MQTT broker as well as a control plane for MQTT subscribers to wake up the parties. So when the subscriber accumulate enough data it publishes a message to a control topic. The parties subscribed to the topic wakes up and registers with aggregator and starts training. Once the training is performed by both parties the train model is sent back to the aggregator to execute its fusion algorithm and start the cycle once again. Now it's time to move to our terminal and see this live demo. I hope you enjoy it. So during this demo we are going to show you how to deploy MicroShift which is a very easy process and how to run on top our federated learning library components in a cloud native fashion. We are starting here from a fresh environment. It is a Fedora 34 environment and what we are going to execute is the install script. The install script allows you to deploy MicroShift and prepare the environment in a very easy manner. It detects what Linux distribution you're running on. It detects what architecture because MicroShift supports not only x86 but also ARM and other architectors. In case you're running Reset Enterprise Linux it will register your subscriptions, apply a Linux policies, dependencies, it will install dependencies, download and install our container runtime, configure it, et cetera. Right now it is getting the latest packages from the Fedora 34 repository. It is installing contract, firewall D, et cetera to make it more secure. Right now it is establishing some firewall rules and installing Cryo. Cryo, as mentioned during the slides, it's our container runtime. MicroShift will interact with Cryo to deploy our applications, our infrastructure services and so on. For your information in order to run MicroShift you will need at least two CPU cores, two gigabytes of RAM and 2.6 gigabytes of free storage space for the MicroShift binary. And it seems that the installation has finished. The installation script performs a very handy task which is to create the kube-config file into the default location so the kube-ctl binary will grab that configuration by default but in case you have already an existing configuration it will merge both files and you will have access to all your contexts, your clusters, your users without erasing any existing pre-configuration. Now we check the status of MicroShift which is running as a system disservice and we will read the journal to see some of the logs. MicroShift has an internal service manager framework that controls the boot up of the different Kubernetes and OpenShift components. So it has some dependency graphs that will make, for example, HCD to start first then kube-api server and then the rest of the components like the controller manager, the scheduler, finally the kube-let as the node component and kube-proxy. And once the binary services are up and running then it will start applying some manifest to the kube-api server that will deploy our infrastructure services. These infrastructure services will give you some capabilities like DNS, service certificate rotation. We use the hostpath provisioner in order to be able to mount volumes into the pods and deployments. And we can see that now all the services are up and running and MicroShift is ready to deploy our federated learning library. As we mentioned during the slides, the different parties will grab data from an S3 bucket. This S3 bucket is stored in AWS. And as you can see here, we are applying a Kubernetes secret with our AWS credentials stored in it. This way, this secret will be mounted into the aggregator and the parties pods or deployments and they will be able to access that S3 bucket. Now what we are going to look at is the aggregator Kubernetes manifest. The aggregator manifest is basically a Kubernetes deployment. It has one container that runs the aggregator entry point, the Python script with some environment variables to be able to configure it and it will mount a couple of volumes. One volume is the AWS credentials and the other one is basically our working directory to store some data. So what we are going to do now is to apply this manifest and wait for the deployment to be created. We have modified the aggregator and the party from the library in order to automate the initial boot up because otherwise you would have to type and execute some commands in order to start the aggregator, the training process and we have automated all of this. So if we take a look at the logs of the aggregator, we see that the aggregator has started successfully. Now we will check the party manifest, the same way that we have done with the aggregator and it's basically the same. Another deployment with a container running the party entry point, the Python script with some environment variables and the same two volumes with the AWS credentials and a working directory. We have applied the party manifest and we are going to check the logs of this party. Once the party starts, it will detect that the aggregator is running and it will try to register against the aggregator. So they have communication and once the party has grabbed enough data it will start training. We can see here that the training has started. This will take a little while but we can check also what kind of information the aggregator has received. We check the logs of the aggregator again and we can see that one party has been registered and that the training has started. If we keep watching the party we will see that at some point it will complete the training. As you can see now the local training performed by the party has finished, it's already done and now the party will generate a model update. This model update will be sent to the aggregator. The aggregator will run its fusion algorithm and send back the result to the party so it can train again and the model will be improved and improved at every cycle. If you have enjoyed the demo please scan the QR code and you will find the GitHub repo and all the assets to run the demo by yourself. Thanks for watching.