Living Simply
- Rainwater harvesting
- Chickens in the garden
- Humanure composting
- Food preservation and storage methods such as drying, fermenting, smoking and canning
- Bee keeping
- Wild plant identification, use, and preparation
- Candle making
- Woodworking
A Life in Transition
My niece Emma wanted to contribute a story and I told her I’d happily post it.
I come down to the Lake about every other weekend. It is a great place to be. Sometimes I here my mom talk about the memories that she had at the Lake. In the summer my family and I go swimming in the Lake. My dog even went swimming (she didn’t like it). My great grandpa makes pigs in a blanket. They are tasty.
I live in Barnhart, with lots of chickens. We are thinking about moving to the Lake. I say It’s a rough life. Sometimes I even cry in my Bathroom. Any how, I have only been to Cowboy Coffee once and, when I took a sip of there coco I felt that I belonged in the Small Town. I’ve always wanted to go to the museum. I wonder what is in the museum. All the people that I saw were all very nice. Sometimes I think if we are going to get a sheep for the Lake. If we did, I would shave it and sell some of the wool at the Farmer’s Market. The first time I went to the Farmer’s Market I saw bunnies! I wanted to cuddle with one of them so bad.
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Living Simply, Small Town Life
A Boy and his Chickens
My 13 year old nephew is home from school today. He’s not sick, he’s observing his first batch of chicks as the hatch from their eggs. Actually the first one hatched late last night. The remaining four will probably hatch today. I adore my nephew. I mean, how do you not love a kid that not only has the most amazing and crazy blond hair, but one who defies the norm so naturally and with no effort. He just is. He is a gentle soul that not only loves animals but is truly curious about them and investigates to understand what’s going on. The animals that he takes under his care really do get cared for and get close attention many times a day.
The story about the chickens began 11 months ago and I’m happy to say it was actually my idea. While visiting a local farm supply store for bird food and clover seed I was, as expected, drawn to the cheerful chirpings of the spring chicks being sold. I called my sister up and asked her why the hell they did not have chickens. A week or so later they had chicks. It was so obvious that I think sooner or later they would have done it anyway. The entire family cared for the chicks as they matured into beautiful and entertaining hen laying chickens. One of the hens, ironically named Chip, turned out to be a rooster. The fun and adventure of raising chickens got even better in the late fall when, as expected, they started laying eggs.
As winter rolled on I began talking of getting my own coop and chickens set up here on at the permaculture homestead and before long Jake started talking about getting an incubator so that he could grow any new chicks we needed. To be honest I wasn’t sure it would happen but then they found an incubator on Craig’s List and within a week or so he’d done his research and had the eggs on the incubator. Twenty one days later and last night the first chick broke free.
Chickens are one of the easiest and most productive additions to any garden in any setting. Country, suburban, urban, having hens is usually legal. Only a small space is needed though of course a larger space is nicer and the greater diversity of forage food probably results in optimal health. But really, practically anyone with any kind of backyard can have chickens. For gardeners they will add manure while they till the ground looking for insects to eat which lessens the amount of store bought food needed. Not only will they eat your kitchen scraps but you can grow much of their food right in your garden. They’ll eat any damaged or rotting fruit or veggies in your garden as well. If you’re in a setting where your garden is very small you could supplement their food by asking neighbors for their kitchen wastes in exchange for a few eggs now and then.
Given the arrival of peak oil and economic depression I have little doubt that keeping chickens will become much more common place. Ask Jake and he’ll happily talk your ear off about just how much fun they are and just how well they integrate into any family.
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Winter Business
In these cold and beautiful days of winter I spend most of my time gathering, moving, chopping or burning wood. When I’m not doing that I’m usually reading, cooking or playing ball with Talula. But I do have a few relatively new and unexpected activities that have spiced up life in the winter woods.
I’ve mentioned here before that a few months back I had wandered into Cowboy Coffee, a coffee shop and restaurant in town. This has turned out to be a great discovery for a number of reasons. I initially made a habit of going in once a week during my usual supply run for food, straw, and chainsaw blades. Not only do they have good coffee but also great brownies and pie. Even better, thanks to the free highspeed internet I could download any large files I needed. Of course I’ve felt for many years that coffee shops are perhaps the best place to meet and get to know the most interesting folks of any community. This has turned out to be the case.
Thanks to my visits I first discovered the a great little community newspaper, The Madison County Crier which then lead to meeting Karen and David which led to Thursday night craft nights at the coffee shop which meant meeting even more very nice local folk. Even better, thanks to Karen who publishes the above mentioned newspaper, I’m also getting a chance to do bit of writing and page layout, both of which I enjoy. Local newspapers are essential to community culture and democracy so I’m very happy to be involved with this. The Crier reminds me of our short-lived community newspaper effort in Memphis, Mid-South Voices which we published after the FCC shut down our beloved Free Radio Memphis.
Karen and David as well as all of the other very interesting and active folks I’m meeting at the Coffee Shop: Juli, Ruth, Roger, Kyle, Bill, Shannon, and Katie (to name a few) have all been incredibly kind. I left my active community life of Memphis nearly five years ago and have spent most of those years feeling somewhat confused and depressed. Really, that is another very long story, bits of which I’ve written about before. The real point is that when I moved to the lake to start this homestead I did not expect that I’d be getting involved outside of my own project but that has changed and I’m very happy about it.
As spring approaches I’m also making plans for the garden. Of course there is the usual seed buying frenzy but this year we’ll also be adding in chickens and, hopefully, a hive of bees so I’ve been doing a good bit of reading on bee keeping. I’m very confident about the chickens, less so about the bees but I’m fairly certain I can handle it. Given the serious problem of Colony Collapse Disorder which is affecting bees across North America I’m beginning to think keeping a hive or two of healthy bees might be more of a responsibility than an option.
Two other projects for spring and summer will be the processing of both cultivated and wild plants for our use as food and medicine. While I know the basic ideas and processes I don’t know the details.
I’ve spent a good bit of my past five years in Missouri learning about the native plants that grow here and have gotten fairly good and identification. The past summer I began an informal inventory of the native plants around our homestead with particular attention to medicinals. I’ll be putting together a much more detailed inventory this summer and will also begin to harvest, process and store those things which seem most useful. To that end I’ve ordered Making Plant Medicine by Richo Cech. I’ll also be planting those essential medicinals that I have not yet discovered here, namely Purple Coneflower and Goldenseal.
In regards to food, the goal is to not just can, but dehydrate, smoke, and ferment. The simplest of them would be dehydrating, canning and fermenting. The more complex is smoking which is more about meat and specifically fish because that’s currently the only meat I eat. I’m most interested in fermenting and will likely focus on that first. I’ve ordered Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz.
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Time stands still
We had a very nice surprise a couple days ago: snow. A light but steady snowfall that began midmorning. Not alot, but just enough to cover the paths and the frozen lake. After enjoying it through the window most of the afternoon I stopped resisting the urge and took Talula out for a short walk. I wanted to go half way around the lake so that I could take a picture looking back across the lake at the cabin.
The birds were, of course, very busy as they often are during snow fall. The usual cast of characters could be seen or heard as they went about their business of food gathering. While I love and appreciate them all, it is always the plain and simple Juncos that seem to bring the biggest smile to my face. I’m not sure why. Just a few hundred feet from the cabin we came across five or six deer that were just a few feet into the woods.
At fifteen degrees it is cold enough that my thin work gloves only seem to keep my fingers warm for a brief few minutes so by the time I’d gotten my photos I was starting to really feel the chill in my hands. I was eager to head back to the warmth of the wood warmed cabin and yesterday’s leftover vegetable soup that I left heating up on the stove. My pace was quick.
I’m not sure what prompted it, but as I walked back I slowed, then stopped under a cluster of cedar trees. I stood still. I looked into the woods and then up into the sky. Time seemed to slow. I was suddenly very aware of each breath. I had the sense that my vision had both widened and narrowed at the same time. I was aware of the larger sky but also of a field of focus just inches above my face in which the crystal structure of each passing snowflake became unbelievably clear. What came next was an amazing sense of calm and my body relaxed. I was warm. I then became aware of this heightened sense of awareness which was comforting and strange.
This is the pure and simple beauty that comes from a life lived in deliberate connection with nature. I’ve had many such moments of awareness before and consider them the most beautiful moments of my life. All of them have happened while I was “outside” in the natural world. I’ve come to believe that these moments can happen every day and with practice that they can become anchor points that deepen our connection, our relation with the living force of the planet all around us.
I suppose such moments are similar to or the same as the daily mindfulness that Buddhists such as Thich Nat Han advocate as a form of moment-to-moment, breath-meditation that leads to an over-all increase in awareness and thus, peacefulness. Based on my own experience I tend to agree with the approach and the result. But a general sense of well being and peacefulness is not the end. It is far more meaningful if combined with the active cultivation of ecologically sustainable human community.
I can’t help but think that the deliberate, cultivated sense of being in the moment, of being connected and aware of the life around us when combined with the meaningful and needed work of social ecological activism can only lead to a more realized and evolved humanity.
An animal walking in the woods
Me.
Ha! I wrote that line and almost stopped because I liked the title and the simplicity of that one word in answer. But really, this post is prompted by something Greenpa over at Little Blog in the Big Woods wrote. It is something I have meant to write about for a long, long time but never did: that we have let the conveniences of modern day life come between us and the direct experience of nature. It has softened us and dulled us. I suppose I have written about it in a round about way when I’ve discussed living without an air conditioner, fridge, or running water but I’ve not written about it in quite the same way that Greenpa
puts it here:
‘You set up your house so you HAVE to walk at least 100 yards to get to your car?! On PURPOSE??! And the worse the weather, the farther you have to walk??!!!?'
Yes I did.
Why?
Because I’m lazy.
Seriously. I’d rather not walk that far, particularly in lousy weather. If I could avoid it, I wouldn’t do it.
That, however, is something I see as an increasing problem in our world; our ever growing insulation from nature. In my lifetime, we’ve seen air-conditioning invented; then become an absolute necessity. There are loads of kids out there who cannot conceive of summer in the city without full air-conditioning.
Besides all the energy load of the machines, and the ozone destroying refrigerants; all the heat pumped out into the city so that meteorologists now see them as ‘heat islands’ on their maps; these kids do not know what it is to be HOT. And to have to deal with it.
Or cold. In winter, we go from our heated houses into our attached garages, get into our pre-warmed cars; drive to the underground parking ramps, scurry to the elevators (heated) and shiver into the offices, complaining about how miserably cold it is, without actually having been outside more than 30 seconds at a time.
As a biologist, I can assure you, we can tolerate a lot of heat; and adapt to a lot of cold, and human skin does not melt in the rain. But more and more, kids are genuinely unaware of that.
I don’t think that’s a good idea. And I doubt it’s good to be so comfortable, all the time, even for folks who DO know it. I really think humans are a part of nature. And I really think we need to stay in touch with the rest of it.
Anyone that knows me or who has read this blog knows what I think about climate change and peak oil. Not only are they very real but they have come to our front door and stepped into our homes. They are here right now.
I’ve chosen do what I think must be done on a mass scale right now (though I’m certain it won’t be) and that is DRASTIC change in how we live our lives. I have chosen to live directly and deliberately with nature as a part of nature. Ultimately I think more and more of us will be forced into this but I’d much rather make the changes by choice. In fact, I relish the intensity and beauty of it. The other night is was sitting in our unheated outhouse at 8 degrees F. Not only did I survive but as I did my business I enjoyed looking out the window at the star filled sky and it was perhaps the most fantastic shit I’ve ever taken. The very next morning I was out there doing the very same thing only this time I was watching and listening as a variety of birds went about their morning business in the branches just a few feet away. Yes my ass was frozen but thanks to the beauty surrounding me this too was a great start to another day.
The fact is that these are the conditions that many all over this planet still live in every day. As Greenpa says above, humans are much, much more durable than we in the “civilized” world realize. Not only can we survive the greater intensity of a life lived more directly, but the experiences deepen our appreciation of the simple comforts that we do have. In truth, if we truly value the ideas of justice and fairness it seems to me that we really should live in such a way that limits our resource use to a level that will allow our fellow humans to live better. Our very survival depends on it.
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Want hands on experience with ecological gardening and permaculture?
Are you interested in learning the skills needed to live a more self-sufficient and sustainable life? Concerned about climate change and peak energy? Ready to get your hands dirty?
Come for a visit to our permaculture homestead amongst the woodlands of mid-Missouri. We’re looking for energetic folks interested in a cooperative, hands-on learning experience.
You’ll learn about ecological gardening while you help us expand and maintain our food forest. As we implement the various elements of our permaculture design you’ll also learn about:
Other activities that we hope to explore and are still learning about ourselves include:
Perhaps you have a skill to teach? We’re always looking for new self sufficiency skills!
Our project is less than a year old so our accommodations are a bit rough at the moment. While we can provide a beautiful campsite in the woods or near our lake you will need to provide your own tent and other camping gear. You’ll also have easy access to our well for water and solar showers. We also have an outhouse.
While you will have access to produce from the gardens and surrounding woodland we cannot provide other meals. We can provide you with a weekly ride into town for food shopping as well as a lake full of fish.
While we hope and expect to work hard we also take plenty of time off for rest and relaxation. With over one hundred acres we have more than enough land for a long walk or nestle in the shaded nook of a cedar tree and read a good book or nap!
We currently have three openings for stays of 2 to 6 weeks, possibly longer. If you are interested in learning more or would like to sign-up please get in touch: geekinthegarden at gmail
You can also download a pdf of the fancy flier I conjured up!
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Climate change and the need for drastic action
Rob Hopkins of the Transition Town movement has an excellent post: about the need for fairly drastic 9% cuts in carbon emissions that we need to avert climate change. His post reminds me of something I wrote nearly a year ago, namely that we need a global recession. Humans have thus far proven incapable of dealing with this issue in any meaningful way. A recession or depression, though very difficult, will force the solution.
From Hopkins' post:
Last week a friend sent me a stunning, thinking-shifting powerpoint by Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre’s Energy Programme entitled Reframing Climate Change: from long-term targets to emission pathways. If you want a sobering and, frankly, deeply depressing, update on the implications of the latest climate science, this is as good a place to start as any. It looks at the scale of the year-on-year emissions that we need to make, and it is quite something. Given that we need to aim to stay below 450ppm in order to have any chance of avoiding runaway climate change (and even that, as the Climate Safety report, issued last week, and the recent testimony from Tim Helwig-Larsen and James Hansen at the House of Commons set out, is almost certainly not enough), what does that actually mean in terms of emissions cuts?
If , Anderson argues, we were to aim for 650ppm with global emissions peaking in 2020, we would need 3% annual cuts starting today. A huge task in itself. If we want to aim for 550ppm with emissions peaking in 2020, we would need 6% annual reductions (which means 9% reductions in emissions from energy generation). If we go for the 450ppm target, which is, realistically, the one that has any chance of preserving a stable climate, we need 9% reductions, every year, for the foreseeable future, starting now. 9%.
9% is just a number though, and as one wades through the climate change literature one is bombared with numbers… but having studied this presentation, 9% is clearly an important one, perhaps as important as Bill McKibben’s 350. What might it actually mean in practice? Anderson goes on to look at the rare occasions in the past when reductions have actually been achieved by ‘developed’ nations. Annual reductions of greater than 1% p.a. have, he argues, quoting the Stern Report, only ‘been associated with economic recession or upheaval’. Interesting.
I have little doubt that we have entered a greater depression or what James Kunstler calls the Long Emergency. The landscape of the United States is changing by the day and by the end of 2009 it will be very different place. We can waste resources fighting this inevitability or we can embrace it. I have chosen to embrace it by shifting to a greatly simplified life based on permaculture. I’ll do my best to become self sufficient and to share my surpluses.
What does a simple life like this look like? In the first 8 months of living at my homestead I’ve happily lived on 2-3 kWh a day (the U.S. average is around 31 a day) with no refrigerator, microwave, or other major appliances. I use a couple of compact fluorescent lights, a laptop, and, on occasion, a television. I haul water from a well and use 3-5 gallons a day. I cook with propane or wood stove which is also my heat in the winter. All humanure is composted for use on fruit trees after 2 years. I drive to town once a week. Next years expanded garden should produce much of my year’s food. If I can preserve it properly maybe most of my food. When the food forest has matured I’m hoping to be able to produce all my food for the year except for the rice and wheat.
Having lived a similar life at the deCleyre co-op in Memphis, TN I have little doubt that a great deal can be done on any suburban or city lot. Striving for a smaller carbon footprint and greater self reliance can happen anywhere though certainly those with more land can grow more. Washing clothes by hand and hanging to dry can happen practically anywhere as can food preparation from scratch.
The key is to take a hard look at what we use and assume as the normal, needed appliances. We often don’t need them, but have gotten used to them. The 9% reduction discussed in the article above is a very large cut from what we currently use. It will require that we all garden, reduce driving to only essential or emergency trips, and drastically reduce our consumption. In other word,s 9% is not accomplished by the easy stuff like changing light bulbs. It means little or no air conditioning, heating in the winter to 55 or 60 rather than 72. Imagine cutting your electrical use by half and then cut that in half again. Now cut it in half one more time. Anyone can do these things but it will not be easy and it will require commitment to drastic change. It really is that simple.
One last thought. For those that want to believe that we can solve this problem with technology. It is NOT going to happen that way. Sure, we can build out solar and wind power capacity and we should. But that is only part of the answer, probably the smallest part. The largest part will be the drastic conservation that we can all do RIGHT NOW without any government legislation or infrastructure change.
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Coming together
Well, the cabin is very nearly finished. As of early November the kitchen was finished with re-used/recycled sink and cabinets. The sink drains gray water to a woodland water garden. No running water just yet, that will come in the springtime. Until then I’ll be carrying it from the well and storing it in water coolers which I don’t mind. In fact, using the coolers has really gotten me into the habit of very careful water conservation. I’ve been averaging about 4 gallons a day. I also do not have hot water nor do
I plan to. I can heat water up on the wood stove in the winter if I really need it but generally don’t. In the summer I can use the sun to heat water.
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The right way to burn wood
An excellent site for those that use wood as a primary source of heat. Actually, good for anyone using a wood burning stove but especially important for those that burn alot. Wood Heat.org provides all the details for burning wood most efficiently. If you’re concerned about climate change and I hope you are this is a site worth reading through.
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This small town
I spent many days every summer at the lake. When we weren’t fishing or in the woods we would sometimes take a ride into Fredericktown. Not my hometown but I feel connected to it more than any other Missouri town. Now that I’ve moved to the lake I’m making new memories that blur and blend with those of my childhood. This past spring I went back to the Dairy Bar and had a vanilla cone, the first I’d had from that place in more than 20 years and it was delicious. Each trip into town reminds me of my grandpa and our trips into town together. I can still hear his voice and picture him waving to the many people he seemed to know.
It’s strange, though I did not grow up here, did not go to school here or spend most of my time here, this town is the constant. Other towns or cities have come and gone at different times, but not this one. This is the town that I’ve known my whole life. I see no reason that I would leave my cabin on the lake. For the first time in my life I feel at home and so I hope that I’ll begin to develop a deeper connection to this town that lives so strongly in my memories. As I connect to the town and its people today I look forward to learning more about its history which I imagine to be very interesting.
This past summer I made quite a few treks into town and not just for the vanilla ice cream cones. Jimmy Thal’s hardware store is the best hardware store I’ve ever set foot in and the prices are great. The Madison County Farm Supply is my steady source of straw bales and staffed with very friendly folk. The locally owned “Town and Country” grocery store has everything I need outside of the other shops so I won’t need to set foot in Wal-Mart. The little garden park just east of the town square is a great place to sit and eat the above mentioned ice cream. There are two farmers markets in town, one on Saturday morning and another on Tuesday evenings.
This past fall I discovered Cowboy Coffee which quickly became one of my all time favorite coffee shops. The folks working there are very friendly as are the customers that visit. Thus far I’ve only bought coffee and brownies, both are very good. I don’t usually eat out so I’ve not tried any of the food though the pies sitting on the counter tempt me every time I visit. It’s a very comfortable place, decorated with bits of history, photographs and crafts along the walls. Sitting on the counter in the coffee shop I discovered a new community newspaper, The Madison County Crier.
After a few trips into the coffee shop and reading through this little newspaper I realized that I’d found something I had not expected. In the newspaper I was finding articles about the importance of supporting (and growing) the local food system, recycling, and the details of the goings on in the town council as well as a calendar of local events. In the coffee shop I was seeing the familiar signs of community life and connection that I was a part of when I lived in Memphis. Lots of folk on a first name basis, a meeting of the board of the farmers market, even a few folks sharing an impromptu dance lesson. I can’t help but think that locally owned coffee shops are, universally, community building blocks. They offer public space necessary for the development of the relationships that form the foundation of community and civic life.
I’m really just beginning to get a sense of this wonderful little town but I know that there is no place I’d rather be in times like these. A small town with locally supplied and supported farmers markets, thriving local businesses, an active citizenry, not to mention a pride and self-awareness of its history, is a great place to call home.
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Quiet days
Still here. Enjoying the still days of early winter. The wood stove is now burning every day. The lake is beginning to freeze over in places. The full moon shown through before the clouds rolled in last night and it was beautiful. There is nothing better than the calm of the woods in the winter.
Last week I hauled up a bunch of moss covered rocks to border the mulched pathway in front of the cabin. I’ve got two Paw Paw trees to plant in the forest garden. It’s supposed to warm up to 50 or so on Sunday so I’ll plant them then. I’ve also got 5 or 6 basil plants going in a pot in the south facing window. Nice.
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Understanding the Greater Depression
Want to get a better foundational understanding of the Greater Depression that we have now entered? Here are a few blogs I’d suggest you read every day or at least a few times a week.
Sites which focus on the economic system specifically:
Chris Martenson
The Automatic Earth
The Market Ticker
Sites which discuss a broader range of issues (peak oil, self reliance, homesteading, climate change, suburbia…) related to the current collapse and what will follow:
Casaubon’s Book
The Archdruid Report
Club Orlov
James Kunstler
Here’s a little sample from November 7 post from
The Automatic Earth: Debt Rattle: Hocus Focus:
Obama’s chief of staff is a former Freddie Mac board member and fervent supporter of the invasion of Iraq. Many of the ‘experts’ are, or have been, Goldman and Citigroup execs. These people like the power and the money they have gathered while driving the economy into the ground. They’re not going to give that up just to build a financial system that would better serve the people. They’ll build one that best serves them.
Sure, some loose ends will be tweaked, but mostly they’ll spend the nation into a depression by attempting to salvage corporations that would have long since died if it were not for America’s 21st century version of Mussolini’s corporate fascism, and the unlimited access to the public trough it provides.
The broke man in the street will be broker, until he’s broken, until he lives in the street, his last hard earned penny squeezed from his hands and dumped into banks, insurers and carmakers that have zero chance of ever turning a profit again.
The taxpayer will be taxed, and will be forced to pay until (s)he can pay no more, if need be at the barrel of a gun, until (s)he no longer has a job, a home, dignity or a future. And then the growth machine will spit her out. Whoever can’t produce or consume is a write-off.
We’ve spent too much, and now we’re broke. Let’s spend more, and lots more, ‘cause then we will be whole again. Double or nothing, it’s all we know.
The dice will come up nothing.
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Climate change, global depression and consumption
Apparently there is talk that Al Gore might be head of the EPA in the Obama administration and just over a week ago Gore wrote up a dream list which was published in the New York Times.
One of my current favorite authors, Sharon Astyk, in her post A New Deal or a War Footing? Thinking Through Our Response to Climate Change wonders why there is no mention of lowering consumption. This is something I’ve written about before. Earlier this year I wrote that, in fact, a global economic recession was exactly what was needed as a way of forcing the lowering of consumption and thus a lowering of climate impact. From Sharon’s blog:
Quick - what’s not on this list? I bet you noticed, too - there’s no mention of consumption, either as an economic issue or at the personal level. Rather like coming out of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ we’re left with the message that there’s nothing for us to do other than lobby our fearless leaders.
What’s wrong with that? Addressing climate change manifestly requires policy solutions - but again we see ourselves trapped in the false dichotomy I discuss in Depletion and Abundance between public and private. There is no question in the world that consumption is a policy issue - 70% of our economy depends on consumer spending and personal consumption. Yet again we are being told that ‘personal action’ is something you do in the dark that makes no difference, while the really important stuff happens at the government tables.
In fact, in reality, we know differently. At US government tables we’ve seen exactly 0 major policy shifts so far - yes, we had the worst president imaginable, but that doesn’t change the fact that under Clinton, when Gore was vice-president, we saw the same zippo. At the same time, as consumers have slowed their spending, we’ve seen projections of world oil use fall dramatically - for the first time in decades, we are expecting an actual contraction in the use of oil. Earlier this year, actual driving miles fell dramatically - as much as 6% year over year. Now these things were in reaction to high prices - but they were consumption decisions made by private households that in the aggregate made more real difference in the impact of our emissions than all the treaties we’ve violated or refused to sign.
The assumption, of course, is that we make changes for economic reasons, but that we’d never make them for ecological reasons. My answer to that is simply this - no one has tried asking Americans to make major shifts in their lifestyle for the good of their country and their ecology in 30 years. We assume we know that this would never succeed - in practice, we don’t have the slightest idea what would happen.
Consumption is not simply accidentally left off the table by people who underestimate its power or prefer only to focus on legislation, it is left off because thinking about consumption undermines some of the presumptions of wholly technical and policy solutions. In fact, if we addressed consumption, we might have to change our basic assumptions about what we can accomplish.
Think about Gore’s list above in relation to consumption. The first thing, of course, that jumps out at you is the claim we have to bail out the car companies, even though, as Deutsche Bank announced, GM is worth nothing - its stock is worth absolutely nothing. Think about that one for a second, and consider what has to underly our presumptions that we should bail out a car company - underlying it is the assumption that we will all be buying cars again fairly soon - shiny new electric ones.
That is, underlying the assumptions of a Gore-style New Deal is the idea that we can do temporary bail outs because our consumption is going to go back up - only this time we’ll be consuming green products, including our electric cars. There are several problems with this - the obvious one being that it isn’t clear what will fund our ability to buy these new cars in the coming years. The assumption is that the new green jobs will do so - and perhaps that’s true, but there’s a ‘turtles all the way down’ quality to this analysis - the new deal will give us the ability to make these shifts, and the money will then only be spent for good (despite the fact that historically, the more we spend, the more we consume)….I’m not convinced anyone knows how that might happen.
Sharon offers many details in her thought provoking analysis of the energy input vs return in the massive renewable energy program that the Gore approach entails. I encourage you toread her post in it’s entirety.
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Homesteading Self-reliance
Thanks to the folks at Irreguar Times for their mention of our permaculture project. Something I wanted to respond to was this excellent point:
Most of us will choose not to move to the woods like Denny (and given the size of our population, most of us can’t), but we can try to apply his lessons wherever we are in the world and in our life course as we brace for the human impact of a looming economic catastrophe. I encourage you to read his account and ask yourself what you can do.
For those that will not or cannot move into a rural area there is plenty they can do in an urban or suburban setting. In fact, most of what we are doing is on less than an acre. The main limitation for those on a smaller bit of land would be the number of fruit trees but even a few of those can be planted.
Back in 1998 I helped co-found the deCleyre Co-op in Memphis, TN and the intent was almost identical. We wanted to create an example of, and resource for, those interested in living sustainably and cooperatively in an urban setting. We dug up our front yard and planted a vegetable garden, raspberries, and blueberries. We also put in two small ponds and many native plants for habitat. We typically housed 6-9 folks who participated in a weekly house meeting and several shared meals a week. We also sponsored monthly community potlucks, workshops, study groups, and more. Living in a co-op lowers monthly living costs dramatically and provides a sense of connection, comfort, and security. I would not hesitate to recommend this kind of living, especially in the greater depression we are now entering. The importance of pooled resources, skills, and the comfort of community cannot be overstated in times such as these.
Even if you choose to live in a more traditional setting, practically any home or apartment provides the opportunity to grow food. Any south facing area with full sun or light shade, even an apartment with a balcony, can be place to grow food. With good design using both horizontal and vertical space it is often possible to grow more food than you may realize.
Another aspect of simple and efficient living is the wise use of money. Don’t waste it dining out!! During spring and summer months it is often possible to buy fresh produce at farmers markets for much less than grocery store prices. If you come upon a good deal buy extra and learn how to can it for later use. Many foods can also be easily dehydrated using a home made solar dehydrator made for less than $10. For many just learning how to cook at home is the starting point. Very healthy meals are easy to make and will save you both time and money. A meal for 2-4 people can be made for $2-4 and often takes less than 30 minutes. Compare that to a fast-food or regular restaurant meal that will cost $5-30 and requires time to drive to and wait for the meal which will likely be less healthy than what you make at home.
My suggestion is to stock up on 4-6 months (more if you are able) worth of canned goods and learn how to use them. With times as they are food prices are going up constantly so a nice supply of food bought today at $500 will likely cost $600 just a couple months from now. The same food purchased six months later may have gone up to $700, possibly much more. Given the state of the economy and the growing possibility of a dollar collapse investing in non-perishable food with a shelf life of 2-4 years may be the best investment you can make. If the economy stabilizes (it won’t) then you have not wasted a penny because the food is there ready to cook.
Here’s a sample of what I have stocked (1 person):
Mixed Veggies 50 cans
Corn 30 cans
Green beans 30 cans
Peaches 15 cans
Pinto beans 20 cans
Garbonzo beans 20 cans
Crushed tomatoes 20 cans (28 oz)
Diced tomatoes 20 cans (28 oz)
4-6 boxes macaroni (48 oz)
6-8 boxes spaghetti (48 oz)
1-2 5 lb bag bread flour
1-2 5 lb bag whole wheat flour
5-8 48 oz tub of rolled oats
5-10 lbs of brown rice
10-15 lbs of various beans, dry: black, black-eye pea, garbonzo, etc.
several pounds sugar and brown sugar
several tubs of salt
1-2 gallons canola oil
LOTS of onions and garlic
10 lbs of regular and sweet potatoes
5-10 lbs of apples
I only have to go shopping once, maybe twice a month to replace used stock rotating the old to the front. I buy as much as I can afford each trip to limit my time in the store which is a place I prefer not to be. Now that the garden is better established I’m hoping to can much more of my food supply in the future.
The above list can fairly easily be cooked, often with little to no prep time. Breakfast of rolled oats with sugar and cinnamon can be made in 1-2 minutes three to four times a week. I alternate that with eggs and fried potatoes which takes 30 minutes or so. A tub of rolled oats is $2.75 to $3 so a big bowl of that with sugar and cinnamon is a pretty cheap breakfast at about twenty cents. Pancakes with a bit of fruit topping are also pretty cheap and healthy if you mix in a bit of whole wheat flour, maybe some nuts too.
For other meals I usually make soup, beans and rice, or pasta. Red sauce is easy. Start with a sautéed onion and garlic then add a large can of crushed tomatoes, 2-3 tablespoons of sugar, salt to taste, basil and oregano and you have a yummy red sauce. In the summer months sautéed yellow squash, zucchini, or eggplant with your onions for added nutrition and yumminess. Soup is very easy to make using a can or two of mixed veggies, potatoes, onion, garlic mixed in with crushed tomatoes and macaroni. Use whatever cheap veggies you can get at the farmers market to supplement the canned veggies. A nice fall variation of the above tomato-based soup uses pumpkin instead of tomato. Cut up and cube a pumpkin and boil for 30 minutes. Blend the cooked cubes and use that as a base rather than the tomato. Add in coconut milk, cinnamon, salt, curry and cayenne pepper for a super tasty and spicy soup. One medium pumpkin makes a pretty large pot of soup. You can bake the seeds on a cookie sheet or low heat on a covered frying pan with a bit of oil and season salt for a snack.
Soup, pasta, beans and rice… all these are fairly easy dishes to experiment with. Try different seasonings and mixtures or get recipes… I generally prefer to make up my own.
My favorite sites for learning the skills necessary for homesteading and self-reliance:
Sharon Astyk
Homegrown Evolution
Rachel’s Tiny Farm
Red State Green
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Living with a wood burning stove
Now that it has gotten colder I’ve started to use the wood burning stove a bit. My general rule of thumb is to only use it when I must which means nights at or below 40 followed by days with a high of 55 or less. If I can I’d rather not use it and just bundle up with extra layers thus saving the wood for another day and minimizing my carbon output. But, on the days that I do use it I have to say that it is a real pleasure! There’s nothing like the blended smell of a wood burning stove and coffee or fried potatoes or home made bread. In such a small space (my cabin is 192 square feet) the aroma of cooking food blends perfectly with that of burning wood. There is also the great benefit of having a warm surface to warm up left over food or coffee without using the propane.
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Forest Garden Update
This is the second food forest which is just 60 feet from my front door. Trees and bushes planted thus far: 1 peach, 2 plums, 2 red currants, 2 black currants, and 2 gooseberries. Also planted a few native bee balm. Next spring I’ll be expanding it with an apple and a couple paw paws as well as perennial and annuals such as Good King Henry, chives, and nasturtiums.
I’ve just about finished putting in a path using various half rotted logs and branches for the border. For the bottom of the path I’m using big chunks and strips of bark that I’ve been gathering from downed trees as well as the wood I’m chopping up for firewood. Bark does not burn too well so I think using it as a pathway is a much better use. Not only will it decay and add organic matter to the soil but the lizards and frogs love to eat the insects that the bark attracts… you can never have too many lizards and frogs!!
The outdoor shower you see in the back right corner will be moved soon and we’ll be putting in an arbor with hardy kiwi, grapes, and wisteria, possibly a few other vines as well.
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Autumn Olive Update
Back in early September I discovered that we had Autumn Olives on the land and wrote about it. Since then they have ripened up a good bit so I’ve been eating several handfuls a day for the past couple weeks. I harvested about 1.5 pints of Autumn Olive berries in about 5 minutes from one bush, the largest I’ve found, which still has at least another 50 pints of berries on it. I’ll be experimenting with different uses. They taste great and are highly nutritious.
Plants for a Future, an excellent plant database, has an entry for Autumn Olive.
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Garden and Harvest Update
I’ve been enjoying a continuous stream of tomatoes, yellow squash, lettuce, arugula and cucumbers since early August. I’ve also had a few zucchini but not nearly as many as I would have liked. The same goes for bell peppers… I’ve gotten a few of those, maybe 10 or so but not as many as I would hope for. I’ve also been getting a good bit of basil for pesto and will be drying some too. Today I harvested black-eye peas, probably a half pound or so. My first attempt with those and a bit of an experiment planted very late so I’m very happy to get a crop. Next year I’ll definitely be planting them again but in much greater number and much earlier. I’ve also harvesting a small handful of potatoes, also an experiment. Many, many more of those will be planted next year.
I’ve also been foraging a couple of handfuls of kinda ripe Autumn Olive berries and eating them fresh every day for the past week. They are getting sweeter and are probably about ripe now… very tastey indeed! I may try to harvest a bucket of them for preserves or maybe pancake syrup.
Comfrey!!! I was disappointed that the packet of seeds (12 or so seeds) I planted only produced one plant but that one plant did very well this summer. A couple weeks back I harvested about half the leaves and put them in a bucket of water which yielded a nice, stinky bucket of tea which I’ve just applied to the remaining garden plants. Waiting to let it go to seed and then will harvest the remaining leaves. I’ll definitely be putting in comfrey clusters around the kitchen garden and forest gardens. A great plant!!
I’d have to say that I’m fairly happy with the garden given the lack of prep time and lateness of planting. I’m very happy with the results of the straw/cardboard sheet mulching. I should have a great compost pile (or 2 or 3) this fall and lots of leaves left over for more sheet mulching. Combined with the addition of chickens and many more comfrey plants next year I think we’re on our way to improved soil fertility.
Gas/oil used? Not much. We used the tiller for maybe 20 minutes and against my better judgement. I thought it would help us get the soil quickly loosened up for the tomatoes. Lots of rocks! I’ve never used a tiller until this year and I’ve confirmed that as a good decision. I finished the job by hand with a pitch fork and was much happier with the results. All future garden space will be prepared in advance using sheet mulch.
Cardboard and straw certainly require energy to obtain and the straw costs money. Most trips to get those ingredients involved the need to get other supplies as well so at least they were not special trips. Next year I’d like to try replacing all or part of the straw layer with leaves though I I’m not sure how well that will work out. Leaves are not so neat and tend to move around. I may use leaves as the bulk of cover and then a much thinner layer of straw on top just to tidy it up and keep the leaves in place. We’ll see.
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Chainsaw
I finally have a chainsaw that works thanks to a my dad who has loaned me his. It really works. It does not stop running every 2 minutes and with a sharp blade/chain it cuts through logs like soft butter.
Anybody that knows me or anyone who has read this blog for awhile knows how I feel about peak oil and climate change. People that know me personally also know just how much I detest the unnecessary use of gas, especially in lawnmowers, weed eaters, air blowers, etc. These machines are loud, stinky and unnecessarily used to impose order where order is not meant to be. But let me tell you about the chainsaw.
Yes, the chainsaw is also loud, stinky, and equally as polluting. But it is one gas-powered tool I will use because it is a smarter use of the fuel and unlike the others listed above, it serves a very real purpose: winter survival. While the other devices are about trying to force nature into something it is not, aesthetically ordered and neatly groomed, the chainsaw is a tool that will help me keep warm in the winter.
I’ve never used them much because I’ve always had other sources of heat. I’ve never been very fond of them because I do love trees and would rather they be planted and left standing rather than cut. We need more trees on our planet, not less. That said, I do understand that sometimes they do need to be cut down and sometimes they are blown down and need to be moved. In both cases one possible use of a downed tree is to cut it up for firewood. Yes it is possible to use a hand saw and I actually have used one quite a bit this summer for smaller branches. But for cutting through tree trunks a chainsaw is orders of magnitude faster and it is one of the very few times I have thought to use such a tool because I think it is a much wiser use of the energy.
My goal here is to build a homestead based upon the principles of permaculture which, greatly simplified, means a life which is sustainable. There’s no room in such a life for the wasteful use of resources. All of my gardening is done with hand tools, most of it is no-dig. Any area that I determine must be cleared of grass is cleared via sheet mulching or hand tools and a gass-less reel mower. My point is that the use of gas-powered tools is the exception to the rule and is a last resort.
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Autumn Olive!!
Very cool! We’ve got Autumn Olives (Elaeagnus umbellata) all around here. The downside is that they can be invasive. The upside is that they are an incredibly good bush to have. The red berries are great tasting and highly nutritious consumed raw or cooked. They are nitrogen fixers as well which is, of course, a great contribution to the forest garden. I’m glad I am in the habit of not cutting plants and bushes down until I’ve identified them. I discovered long ago that far too many plants are likely to be useful and that cutting them down without knowing is usually a mistake. My forest gardens just got better and I didn’t have to do a thing!
Plants for a Future, an excellent plant database, has an entry for Autumn Olive.