political interlude

"The current crisis facing the euro is the biggest test Europe has faced in decades. It is an existential test and it must be overcome ... if the euro fails, then Europe fails," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Finally, a leader says something honest. Or more honest than anything any other leader of anything has said. No surprise she's from the least socialist country in the EU, while the "bailout" went to the most.

And it is more than an existential test; it is an existential crisis and the truth of the matter is that the existence has shifted, changed, never to go back, so all the looking for "the recovery" and "getting back to the way it was" are whistling past the graveyard, covering the ears and singing "lalalala". The currency almost has no option but to break what with all the printing going on.

So the questions to ask yourself are these: what will I eat, where will I live, how will I keep warm?

Husband and I were out yesterday. I couldn't believe the building going on, with empty building right beside, but it was the new cars on the lot that got me. "I can't believe they still make new cars," I said. "We could go twenty to forty years without a single new car being made."

"And imagine all the jobs there would be," husband chimed in. "Mechanics and machine shops."

"And people to paint and upholster," I said.

And in real estate, four or five families could live in a McMansion and again, people could be employed gainfully, doing something real, making those monstrosities into functional and efficient living spaces. And every yard, and every median, could grow some food.

It isn't a grim thing, this existential crisis.

Greece: coming to an economy near you. Soon.

While I am on a rather more political bent than homesteading one, I have this word to say: Greece. You think you are owed a pension? Greece. You think you contributed to Social Security? Greece. You think that government job of your is secure (and it is the only sector with job growth)? Greece.

I am attentive to the tendency to protest instead of, say, grow food, or produce something that might help that GDP. I am attentive to the fact that Greece is the most socialist country in the EU, and Spain next, and that's the order in which they will fall. I am attentive that our rate of debt is about as bad as theirs (and that when people decide to be personally financially responsible in this country, it is seen as "holding back" the "recovery").

oil spill

So, do you get the idea that this BP spill is a really really big thing? Affecting food and environment for years and years? But swallow that it is the result of getting more and more fringe oil to feed the oil addiction. If you go places, you caused it. There will not be a leader willing to say it evidently, but life must get smaller and we need to not mourn that but find the joy in that. We need to seek stability and contentment rather than growth and change and happiness and the thrill of the week.

Bourgeoisie: word for the year

I am no defender of Marx. In the parlance of “how’s that workin’ for ya,” it hasn’t worked anywhere. His overwhelming mistake was in the motivation of people -- from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs is not motivation to have more abilities than needs. And look at me even, and even in my state now which I think is a pretty productive, one of the reasons I was very opposed to the idea of Hillary becoming president was that I could see her coming to me and saying, hey, you have a degree in social work, you have to move to the city and use it, do the work of the state. Social work was dismal as it was and that would have only made it so much worse. No thanks.

The truth is, I’m not a student of Marx, or of economic theories in general. However, some of my thinking on the subject seems to be in line with some of Marx’s thinking. Like the alienation of the worker from his product. As a society now, we’re so far removed from our product that the whole d*mn country no longer produces anything real, and so almost no one is connected by work to his product because there isn’t a product to be connected to. Throwing bits and bytes around isn’t real, derivatives aren’t real, humanistic feel good groups are not real, even art is not real (more on that later). None of this “not-real-ness” means these things aren’t or can’t be valuable but they aren’t in the realm of “needs” and therefore also not in the realm of “abilities”.

Buying labor by the hour is simply another form of slavery. Marx talked about it in terms of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie had a very negative connotation in his thought, exploitative, but in the social structures he was familiar with, it was basically what we’d call the middle class today. In this country we’ve come to almost deify the middle class -- so much so that people who make $20K/yr and people who make $250K/yr all consider themselves to be “middle class”. But basically, if you are selling your labor, you are proletariat; and if you are buying someone else’s labor, you are bourgeoisie. In this country, there is pretty much no one who doesn’t do more buying of labor than selling of it (especially if you take into consideration the “real-ness” of the labor selling vs. the labor buying).

There is this thing, you see, the difference in value-in-use and value-in exchange -- that water is very valuable in use but not in exchange, and a diamond is not very useful but very valuable in exchange. I have chosen personally to deliberately place more value on things that are valuable-in-use and to largely disdain those things that are only valuable-in-exchange. Valuable-in-use essentially feeds people, keeps them warm, allows them their lives with which to do as they please. Valuable-in-exchange essentially exploits people, steals from them, asks them to look outside themselves and their own abilities for value. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I mean when I differentiate between real work from non-real work. And, as I said, it is even worse in the US because most people don’t even have a product to be alienated from.

Obama said in last night’s speech, and I quote: “As hard as it may be, as uncomfortable and contentious as the debates may become, it's time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth.” He used some term that included “grow” eleven times, and at least six of those times he was talking about the economy or jobs growing. Jobs jobs jobs growth growth growth is all either side spouts.

Growth is the problem people. The jobs are slavery, the growth is cancer. Our standard of living is the problem. We have to get smaller, rein in our ambitions, learn contentment, the value of satiety, the meaning of enough; the environment needs that, social justice demands that, combating terrorism requires it. Do you fear mountain top removal or the possibility of another massive terrorist attack? Do you care about sweatshops in Indonesia or the children of Haiti? Then less consumption (that is, a lower standard of living, less traveling, doing without in general and reveling in the abundance of that) is the only thing that will help any of them.

So what then of art? What then of music, of fine food, of literature? There may be a few musicians and artists and authors who are so outstandingly good that, without coercion, with little exploitation of others, they might be fed and kept warm through the exchange of their art. But better is the tradition that we all materially support ourselves with our direct use of goods, and also all engage in our own form of artistry. When the artistry is not paid, it is not corrupted. When it is engaged in by everyone, it is appreciated by everyone.

It is hopeless of course because in the end it requires that people get really honest. Health care reform means many things but at bottom it does mean less health care. And it means financially poorer doctors. And fewer scans. And a LOT less drugs. Weird people are gonna have to be let be weird instead of being medicated into submission. Restless legs may have to remain restless. Many diseases will actually be cured by this, like MRSA. Ironically there will be a lot less anxiety when people have something real to worry about. People who are lazy, or unlucky, or stupid, may actually be hungry, and may actually see their children go hungry. People who would rather consume than secure for their family the means of production, well, I won’t cry for you Argentina.

We have to remember who we are. If we could do that as a country, we really could lead the world. To peace. To abundance. To cooperation.

A Reed Shaken with the Wind

Matthew 11:7

We’ve been without power for 13 days in December . . . so far. Four different times the power has failed.

And here is why the electric power grid has failed so often this winter: The infrastructure is crumbling.

The thing about infrastructure is that you don’t think about it so much. Well, unless you are an industrial recruiter or a doomer/thrivalist . Infrastructure just is. It is what you take for granted and notice only if it isn't there and fuss about if it isn't perfect. I would say that many different sorts of infrastructures are crumbling right now; that the financial infrastructure, for instance, has already collapsed. The electric grid infrastructure is a favorite of many people -- those people who’s ideal is to live “off the grid” for instance -- and the reason people have the idea to live off the grid is because people are so dependent upon the grid. They cannot heat, they cannot cook, they cannot store food, they have no water to drink or flush with without electricity. And because the grid cannot even begin to “stay up” without coal fire generated electricity, and I don’t care where you think your personal electricity comes from, in reality the grid would not be there at all without coal. There is no solar grid or wind grid or hydro grid (and I have my environmental issues with each one of these alternatives -- they are not “clean” in reality) without dirty & dangerous, mercury laced, acid rain producing, mountain top removed coal fired power plants.

Anyway.

We are connected to the grid in some really vital ways. But we know how to live without it -- and we have the means to live without it. So the power failures are inconveniences to us, not tragedies. We can enjoy our freezers and our Wii, and we can do without them.

But these power failures are the canaries in the coal mines . . . the first signs of what is there already but not yet recognized.

The infrastructure is crumbling.

It is a simple thing to maintain power lines, and cheaper than fixing them four times in one month. But that hasn’t happened. Sure right now it is way out here in the boonies and on a power circuit that serves only a handful of customers. It is nothing big, certainly nothing that would affect people in the cities, nothing that will require a priority other than if it feels good, do it.

Except that it will. Just like bad (not poor but downright bad and evil) financial choices are catching up with the world. Just like peak oil will catch up (and did, in a small way, when prices peaked then demand fell).

Go ahead. Think that I'm crazy. The infrastructure is collapsing no matter what you think about it.

Go ahead. Read Kunstler's forecast.

And be brave in the new year.

There is this thing that is a given in my head but that other people don't seem to get is that TEOTWAWKI is an opportunity, a gift. Shiva's dance of destruction is also the dance of transformation. Think, What do you want your world to look like? and then create it. Of course, true creativity requires more than a dram of marrow.

Against Artifacture

The Contrary Goddess’ condensed version of a passage from Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire: a season in the wilderness, the chapter called “Cowboys and Indians Part II”:

There are lonely hours. How can I deny it? There are times when solitaire becomes solitary, an entirely different game. To escape I live more and more in the out-of-doors.

Strange as it might seem, I found that eating my supper out-of-doors made a difference. Inside the trailer, surrounded by the artifacture of America, I was reminded insistently of all that I had, for a season, left behind; the plywood walls and the dusty venetian blinds and the light bulbs and the smell of butane made me think of Albuquerque. But taking my meal outside by the burning juniper in the fireplace with more desert and mountains than I could explore in a lifetime open to view, I was invited to contemplate a far larger world, one which extends into a past and into a future without any limits known to the human kind. By taking off my shoes and digging my toes in the sand I made contact with that larger world -- an exhilarating feeling which leads to equanimity. In the midst of such a grand tableau it was impossible to give full and serious consideration to Albuquerque.

“Albuquerque” there obviously being a symbol for a more universal “civilized” human state of being. And I must say that I love that word, “artifacture”.

In another place, a different chapter called “Industrial Tourism and The National Parks”, Abbey says:

A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches -- that is the right and privilege of any free American.

“Free American”, that is me. It is not the western desert for me, but the wild southern highlands and the cussedly independent culture that this land requires. I resent the artifacture, I do, and the never relenting pressure to buy into it, even just some of it, a little of it. I don’t care if that artifacture is the corporate uniform or the make-up and blue hair and dog collar of the rebel against the corporate, I dislike them both equally for they are the same coin.

I look forward to the end of the world as we know it, I do. I do that without being a doomsdayer for I do not see it as doom or as salvation. I cannot look out into the broader world, off of my mountain here, without seeing the seed of destruction growing in the fertile ground of degradation. Rome is burning. It simply is.

But that does not equal unhappiness or destruction for me and mine and the things I hold as holy (family, community, earth/air/fire/water, spirit). I dig my toes into the manure and touch a much larger world, a non-artificial world, where community and hair color are not manufactured out of pretense but simply exist as they are; where getting together with others means that something is accomplished at the end of the day, something tangible, something additive, something like supper; where looking past what is easy to what is good is actually, really, truly valued; where if you are idle, or deliberately stupid, or too terribly hard to get along with, you are likely to be hungry and this is not a tragedy or something that anyone but you needs to do anything to fix. In other words, I choose not to fiddle while Rome is burning.

In another section of “Cowboys and Indians Part II”, Abbey says, “The Navajos are people, not personnel; nothing in their nature or tradition has prepared them to adapt to the regimentation of application forms and time clock. To force them into the machine would require a Procrustean mutilation of the basic humanity.” The adaptation to the machine has mutilated all of humanity.

There is no way out of the machine while you are in it. The only way out is to step out. There are steps to take to be ready (to think you are more ready), to get closer (to believe you are closer), but there is no way out but to step out. And there is no way back in except to fail. And there is no reason to fail except to not be free, and to not want to be free. The artifacture of symbolic Albuquerque is intoxicating and some people like being intoxicated but it is that world that is failing and that I do not mourn.

We stepped out, onto this farm on the side of this mountain. We stepped out and made our own ramada under which to eat our supper.

The Calculus it is a-Changing

aka CG as Benign Dictator

aka Stop and Pick the Berries

I listened to W’s talk on energy today (thus “the calculus is changing” -- it was my favorite line), as oil shoots up to another new high, as does corn. I’ve also listened to our candidates vying to replace W. None of them, none, speaks the truth, or anywhere near to the truth.

Here I give you my plan for energy and the future of the US.

• Stop all, that is ALL, subsidies. None to energy, none to agriculture, no more EIC, none to green anything, none to big business, no highways to nowhere, no around the bend mountain cooperatives, nothing.
• Re-start government stockpiling of commodities, including energy but mostly food. You may be unaware that there are nigh unto no stockpiles currently. Last source I saw for it said there was enough wheat for ½ loaf of bread per person in the US and that’s all.
• Once we have some commodities in, stop food stamps and start commodities. At a minimal level measured in calories. And make people work for them. Everyone can do something useful.
  
• Stop the freaking mowing. And road building.
• Ok, I’m going to try to not say “stop” anymore. Just assume stop everything.
• By executive order I allow any direct consumer of anything (that is not otherwise illegal) to buy it from the direct producer. So milk and cheese and meat and such is legal, period, on a direct level. Buyer beware, but the buyer only need beware his neighbor, not a multinational corporation trying to stick it to him.
• So is all health care legal and non-regulated on a direct level. If you want to see a quack and can afford to, go for it. But government needn’t pay for your high tech stuff either -- it is as much quackery as the other. And besides, we have to die of something.
  
• But vaccinations and teeth cleaning, toothbrushes and soap are government provided.
• As are “funeral home” fans -- cardboard on a wooden paddle. This replaces the “cooling assistance” program. That is a joke. The fans will once again be advertisement for funeral homes and churches, no doubt. Government should not do anything that can be done privately.

You get the idea. Don’t encourage anything except personal responsibility, and thus community responsibility.

What individual people have to do is, one, garden. Two, use less energy. Three, start seeing the possibilities.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that this will wreck our economy. Yes it will, so long as we are talking about the economy powered by oil in particular, and fossil fuels in general. But (and this is where “see the possibilities” comes in), it doesn’t have to be that way. People could take the economy and turn it to subsistence , manual labor based, human scaled, stable, community based economy, choosing to make things of real value. They could choose to stay home and pick the berries.

Thunderdome or Eden?

Wendy over at Home is asks “What would you be willing to give up.” While I applaud what she’s doing, I think the question itself is telling. What would you be willing to give up? I’d ask, what are you willing to give up, today? and what have you given up already? That’s why I applaud the 90% folks in so far as they really reduce stuff, which can pretty much broadly be lumped into consumption. I prefer that the question be out of the hypothetical and about what you are willing to do right now to meet the challenges as you see them. Because for sure, we also see the challenges differently.

One thing I don’t see how people can not see is that there is a crash and it is going on now. So this isn’t going to remain an intellectual exercise even for people who think themselves very well off indeed.

What would I be willing to give up? In the hypothetical the thing I would most LIKE to give up would be cars. How would this happen? A Kunstler type crash, maybe. If there is no gas, there are no cars. But also, as prices rise, public transportation (private businesses that transport the public, not government boondoggles) should become feasible. I should be able to walk about three miles and catch a bus which would be totally cool by me. Also, there could be bulk delivery services for those of us in the boonies like this -- most probably someone who lives out here who goes to town every so often and brings back everything everyone needs for a little cut of it. Another favorite of mine is horses of course. I think with our geography, saddle and pack horses make more sense than buggies by and large. I am ready to be wrangler there. Trains could provide efficient transportation for places like Lowe's, Wal-Mart, and Southern States (feed store), all of which happen to be directly on railroad spurs already. Of course, just in time marketing wouldn't work anymore. And Wal-Mart might become a mom-&-pop again and storekeepers would live in their shops. Whatever it is, it certainly won’t be what it is now. But my point is there wouldn't have to be no gasoline for no personal passenger vehicles on the road to be a reality. As it is now, however, we must maintain a vehicle, and occasionally fuel it.

What I have given up, the one thing that I think makes absolutely the most difference in the most dimensions is personal income. Last year our income, for a family of six, was about $6K. That is very little, let me tell you, and hopefully this year it will be a bit more than that. At that level there simply isn’t even the temptation to consume. Still I’ve maintained a stockpile of food, and we’ve increased substantially our every day eating off the place. Money has had an artificially high value for far too long and in its devaluation we find that real skills really are valuable, far more valuable than cash.

There are, of course, tons of other things we’ve “given up” -- but the truth of it is that it is embracing a positive way of life rather than giving up a negative one.

Maybe I’m just the Klingon on board the ship that is disintegrating, saying, “Invigorating, isn‘t it?” Yes, that’s it, CG is a Klingon. It is like the Olympic games, except for real. The tsunami, the cyclone, is coming and what you choose right now will make a difference in how you make it through. Or don’t. If you are going to trust the government to look after you, you are going to end up in the Superdome. But for those who got themselves back to the garden, it could be a post-industrial utopia. Or something quite like it.

Doctor My Eyes

Oh but I had the best day at work. My boss came through the barn with one of her Friesian mares on long lines and said, hey, if you want to, come out to the arena and play with me. And then she explained what she was working on with this horse and why and how and then let me long line her too. I always feel like I screw up, like I kept saying GO! which sounds too much like whoa and I wasn’t real good keeping up with the lines as I changed directions . . . but at the same time I can see what is going on and I know with some practice and some thought I could do it better.

So there was that. And I rode and despite some resistance to the bit, I got one really good transition from trot to walk and a couple of passable transitions from halt to trot which I don’t believe this pony has been asked for before. And I got a helper to work with me for a couple of hours each day I’m there so that I’ll have the time to ride.

Later my boss and I talked about the price of gas. I said, we have to use less. And she said, I already use as little as possible -- I only drive to work, I do all my errands on one day just like you do, I can’t use any less. And a light bulb went off in my head, that that’s what people think, that they can’t use any less. And I looked with those eyes at my life and wondered at the changes that could be wrought. When would it be not worth it for me to drive to work? And if it isn’t worth it for me to drive to work, that means even less money. Which we could live with almost no money. Almost. But is there a point at which we collapse back onto this farm and don’t leave again, hardly ever? And if that’s what happens to us, what happens to everyone else?

Because in order to use less gas, people’s lives have to change dramatically. It just made me see it more starkly. I took that job knowing that that barn is not a sustainable venture. I love it, I am grateful for it, but there is nothing about it that is sustainable. But I may be the only person there who knows that.

Of course, we are all just guessing at what it will look like. I think there will be more room for horses in the future, not less, but they won’t be stall kept horses doing nothing. My goodness, it was just my grandfather’s generation that grew up with horses and trains being the only transportation. It is still within living memory -- the fellow at the produce stand told us just the other day, there were twelve of us growing up and my brother and I used to ride seven miles to the mill every other week with a sixty pound sack, one time of corn, the next of wheat, that’s how much it took to feed our family. But mills existed back then. As did the knowledge to grow enough caloric food to survive. And the patience to wait at the foot of a hill for enough wagons to back up to have enough teams to take them all, one at a time, to the top.

I swear I still can’t for the life of me imagine what it will look like. But I swear just as strongly that it is happening. Now.

But I worry about a society that already thinks it is using as little energy as possible. Because a society convinced of that won’t see any other way of being -- and too many people even now who, if they do imagine anything different, think it is a bad to be avoided rather than a good to be embraced.

Through a Glass Darkly

I stopped by the local food store to pick up a pack of bologna. Ok, some beer too. Beer and bologna.

I was standing there in front of the selection of bolognas trying to discern the best buy, having waited for another working man to make his selection (I later met him again in the beer isle), when a old, scruffy man missing one foot (I couldn't tell how much of his leg was gone with it) rolled up to me in a wheelchair.

"A body can't afford to eat anymore, can they?" he said by way of introduction.

"Every time the dollar goes down, prices go up," I reply.

"It's gettin' bad, prices goin' up every day," he said.

"Yep," I said, "people are going to have to grow a garden if they want to eat. Like they used to."

"Lawd, people are too sorry to do that. I have children that are too sorry to pick a piece of bread up off the floor," he said.

"Well, your children and those other people are going to be hungry then, aren't they?"

"Huh, I guess they are. You've been working," he says as he eye's my muddy boots, my dirty jeans, "working in the mud. What do you do?"

"I've been working with a barn full of horses all day today," and I went on to explain my situation a bit -- a boarding barn, a mother, working part-time, milking a cow, growing most of our food.

"Your husband helps you, don't he?" he asked.

"We couldn't do any of what we do without all of us working at it," I answered. "But when I talk about people needing to grow some food, I know what that means. Corn and 'taters and meat and milk and hard work. And the occasional pack of bologna!"

"Ha, it's gettin' to where a body can't afford it," he says again.

"It sure is," I say, moving away after touching him on his shoulder first, a gesture of almost kinship, "so tell those kids of yours they better put in a garden!"

I'd been thinking about how energy intensive the horse business as I'm working in it is. It *could be all recycled and renewable and fertilizer, but as it is, the sawdust for the bedding is hauled from a couple hours away, and to get good sawdust is a four hour haul bill. Then the manure hauling away is more gas, although that is at least more local. We have a load of hay coming in from New York, but that is only because of the crop failure due to drought this year. A lot of our hay, even in this year, is local. But again, there's gas and oil in it, from tractors to hauling to the hay elevator (a device to put hay up into the loft with).

And yet, it wouldn't have to be. I guess recreationally it would have to be, but if we were talking practical horses, it would have to find its practical outlet. I think a lot about what transitions might look like. I think the people with the money to pay so much to keep a horse recreationally will continue to do it for a relatively long time -- to burn that oil until it is all gone. And then those horses will become draft horses again, or pack horses, or something. They could be put to hauling their own sawdust.

I would love to gallop a cross country course again. I would love to ride a dressage test. But today, I'm going out and walking my own big guy up a hill just to begin starting to put some muscle back on him because I've let him get way too out of shape. And doing that will put my own riding muscles to use so perhaps they won't be totally atrophied away.

I love my job. I love going there, I love taking care of the horses, talking to the people. I love my farm, milking my cow, doing the home economics of maintaining everything, finding the baby goats to cuddle. I have a lot of plans, I always do. A lot of hopes and dreams and schemes and readiness to see what might work. I am excited to look toward finding my way, and helping the others in our family find their way, in the post-oil world.

Because the answer is not to find alternative sources of energy, other ways to be industrial capitalistic consumers. It is to embrace the change. Because life will be different. Soon.

Life will be different. Is it climate change? Is it peak oil? To me, and I can get pretty passionate about this, it is neither. They are both convenient shorthands for talking about getting "right" with "livelihood".

Western civilization, industrialization, and probably right back to the agricultural revolution, has produced a way of living, a way of life, a way of death, that is exploitive. It is dependendent on exploitation of the earth and her people. Great works of art, great music, great achievements are not those that are dependent on patrons, on exploitation. Just like history isn't really the history of wars and conquests.

Really great works of art are those that have gone unremarked. Like history is really the story of hearths but no one has thought it remarkable enough to write much about it, or to call it history.

The way I read current events, life will be changing, in this direction, whether you make right livelihood changes or not. It is a time when having gone to the right schools won't matter. Growing a garden will matter.

And perhaps you understand that growing a garden is, for me, a shorthand. It also means being able to take what you get from the garden and make delicious meals from it. And it means being able to entertain yourself and not depend on your cellphone and ipod to do it for you. Play an instrument, tell a story, whatever. It is so much of everything. Grow a garden. Be independent in a real way. It is not only a non-exploitive way of life, it is not only salvation for yourself and your fellows and the world, it is fun. Sure it is hard, but it is rewarding too.

Oh, gawd, I feel like John the Baptist or one of the OT prophets. "LOOK PEOPLE. You can see it at the grocery store, yeah, in the bologna bin, repent of your evil exploitive ways, repent and sin no more. Grow a garden. Salvation does not lie in spending your money, in saving your standard of living, in making the world trade oil in dollars. Salvation depends on how you get your money, and not getting much of it to begin with because much money means much exploitation and this you cannot do. This is how you kill your fellow man and the world and call it giving back. As the prophet Eleutheros says, you break their legs and give them crutches and call that virtue. You must not break legs to begin with. You must not kill to begin with. You must repent and take a step back, one step at a time, step back to a real life, consuming only what you yourself produce. Consider a pack of bologna to be opulent, and consider ostentatiousness to be the worst of vulgarities."

And you know what I really like the most about this vision? That it doesn't matter if a person has both his feet or not, he can grow a garden. An old woman descending into Alzheimer's can be useful shelling the beans. There is a place for everyone, a real place, not a PC manufactured sheltered job sort of place. Not a "we'll send you a check every month so we really don't have to deal with you barking obscenities" sort of place. A real place. Useful. A retarded boy or girl can keep chickens, or raise goats, or get the kale through the winter. A teenage boy can find his balance chopping the wood and he won't need to shoot up a shopping mall because he won't be a burden and won't see himself that way. No matter what you can think of, that person can be productive, with the exception of the very few first years of a kid's life, and perhaps the very last few days or months of a person's life. What a joy that is!

It seems to me that this is love. We can love each other but only if we are not stockpiling stores.

But that is only possible outside of an industrial oil intensive consumerist paradigm. I think that paradigm is ending but you can step out of it anyway.

If you are strong and brave enough. To love.

And make no mistake, love will mean allowing someone who is too sorry to pick a piece of bread up off the floor to starve to death.

Ever Where ya Go, There ya Are

Well, I didn’t get to ride this weekend at the barn. We meant to but it just didn’t happen.

My first day home after a couple days there is always a catch up day. My family does a remarkable job making everything run smoothly while missing a member of their team, but I have a role I play here and without me here there are some things that just don’t get done. The day I’m back home is the day to catch up on those things.

But this week that didn’t quite happen. We meant for it to but it just didn’t happen.

When the girls went to find the equines to take them to graze, our queen goat came to get them and asked them to come with her so that she could show them her new baby! And I swear that is the way it happened. She doesn’t usually come and “baa” at you, and when she does you pay attention. She knew she was due some corn for having that magnificent baby. Sorry I don’t have a photo yet, maybe later. We were trying to figure out how old she is -- I remember seeing her born and I think this year she will be nine. She used to always have triplets, as did her mom most usually. The goats we are due to eat this year are hers and were triplets (we ate one last year so there are only two big boys left). Then one year she had quads, they were small, and it was raining, and they all were dead the next morning. Since then she’s had singles, which is fine with me. She looks good, is in good shape, and the baby had probably been on the ground at least 24 hours when we found him. He has his father’s speckled ears.

So we just got kind of settled down from getting a new goat, which it doesn’t matter how many times it happens, the thrill of holding such a small perfect thing is overwhelming. The equines went to the front to graze and I tried to catch up in the kitchen. But I got a call on the radio -- “there is something wrong with the horse, you better come here now” -- that had that strain of emergency in the voice.

I went to find a hole in my horse’s side. Well, flank, just on the underside of the flank. A literal hole. It was quite alarming at first. But then I got it cleaned up I determined it probably wasn’t so bad. So long as he didn’t get an infection. I don’t like to give prophylactic antibiotics because I want to know if there is an infection, I don’t want to cover it up. It was very scary because it is the sort of injury that could be more serious. He’d evidently found something sharp to scratch on and had scratched this hole in himself. His other flank was scratched too. So we found what we think was the object and removed it. And I cleaned him up and covered his wound with black salve (I went to the black salve school of medicine as I am of the opinion that it is often the treatment of choice, human or equine, although the jar clearly says not for use on humans) and took his temperature and his pulse (both normal) and turned him loose. He was waiting for supper as usual. He ate with his usual gusto. He was waiting for breakfast, impatiently I might add, this morning. His temp and pulse was still normal, as was his gusto.

So there I was, dealing with all that instead of doing much in the kitchen. When it comes down, my family got some supper and I consider that a victory. Life just isn’t always what you plan. Today, I got mostly caught up, and even got to write this, so I’m not doing badly.

And I’ll get to ride eventually. But I’ve thought about what if I don’t. If I don’t, I don’t. When I’m cleaning out a stall, it may be a bit of drudgery by the 10th one or so, but I get to take a break and kiss a horse’s nose instead of a person’s butt and I like that difference. It is also a great chance to think through some things.

Like how no matter how much is going on, it is always possible to add another thing. Eventually I guess something “suffers” but I think more accurately, things get re-prioritized. I remember a woman I knew who started milking goats and the first thing she said to me about how it was going was, “Gee, that’s an hour out of my day, and it isn’t like I don’t still have everything else I had to do before I was milking.” I knew what she meant because milking and handling the milk does take some time. That I’m not by myself in doing this helps a whole lot. But when the horse started losing weight and I needed to add feeding him to my list of things, that was more time out of my day that just didn’t exist. And yet, I’ve been feeding him, morning and night, for some time now and that’s become one of my favorite times of the day. He makes noises like a dinosaur, he minds so well, he is so personable. The goat tries to come and steal his grain and he doesn’t mind at all. He bonded with her when he first came and she was the only other hoofed animal we had and she was scared to death of him and he would follow her around. But he will chase the cow out. The cow will chase the donkey. And I sit there and watch and keep the goat from eating too much and thoroughly enjoy myself. I don’t have the time to do that, but I do it anyway. I still make all the bread, all the cheese, we still cook from scratch, we still do dishes by hand, we still don’t have any water. When I am away, we plan ahead, I make ahead, my family takes magnificent care of me making sure I get fed. I milk but they take care of the milk. That sort of thing. I sit and watch the horse eat, at least sometimes. I know how precious a baby goat is so I sit and hold him while his mamma eats some corn.

I guess what I’m saying is, it is ok if everything doesn’t happen NOW. Because everything is happening now anyway.
------
In a complete change of tone, did you notice the Saudi’s didn’t increase production again? It is because they can’t. The age of oil is over. What are you going to do without your own personal oil? Three dollar gas hasn’t changed people’s behavior. I suggest that that is a measure of addiction. What will the DTs be like? I can solve the mortgage crisis too. Folks, you bought insane McMansions you can’t afford. Get together in your neighborhood and two of you who can’t afford your houses, move in together and make that one mortgage payment instead of the two. I'm so tired of the whining. And for gawd’s sake, grow a garden.

TGD Meme

Where is the stock market today? Why? What does the interest rate cut mean? What does it affect? Why is the dollar falling? What is oil trading at today? How much have housing prices really fallen (perhaps “really” in relation to the price of gold)? What would you do in a hyper-inflation economy? I do not understand why people don’t know the answers to those questions. And so many more.

I fully believe that we’re going to have to be a world of gardners and husbanders. That no matter who you are or where you are, you yourself are going to have to grow some of your own food -- have a garden, have a hutch of rabbits, hunt, wildcraft, etc. I believe that food will be how the global warming and peak oil and general economic collapse will be felt because people will not quit driving until the gas stations are empty and food is scarce.

I am not an advocate of “going back” but I certainly think there are things to be learned from the past. I think the most recent period of the most learning for us right now would be the Great Depression. I’m old enough that my parents lived through the Depression and I got to talk with them and their parents about what it was like. My husband even had a great-grandmother to give her perspective on it. What was it that happened? How did people get through it?

First I think it is important to understand that all of my family, and all of my husband’s family, were in the mountains of Southern Appalachia, in fact, within about a four county area of extreme southwestern Virginia, the coalfields, not more than forty miles from where we live now. None were professionals, none had “investments”, but all owned land. In fact, in talking with them, the thing that stands out to me was what little difference "the Depression” made to their every day lives. They didn’t have money before the Depression and they didn’t have it during the Depression. It didn’t matter. They had all grown food before and grew it during. When asked they say something like, “Well, nobody had anything, no money, no nothing.” But when asked, “Well, did you have food?” they say, “Sure, we had food. We weren’t ever hungry.”

Of course, the food they had you might not recognize as food -- beans and cornbread formed the backbone of it, and it was grown and cooked at home. Beans and any grain would do as well. They kept cows and milked them but as far as I can tell no one made cheese. They raised pigs.

These next observations are not specifically Depression related but are specifically how my great-grandparents lived. They had children from the late 1890s to the early 1920s, sixteen of them and they all lived to adulthood. They started out on some land on top of the mountain but eventually moved into “town” but this would have been a “town” like on little house on the prairie or something, maybe a few hundred people, and they still had acreage. Grandpa never had a wage paying job, ever. Grandma sold butter. Once a year they took the butter money and outlines of the children’s feet to town and bought them shoes. Grandma did some midwifing and was generally a healer. She would have rarely been paid for this but it is part of what hold communities together, how people look out for each other when they aren’t blood relations.

Another grandfather had extensive gardens. By the time I knew him, that’s what I knew about him -- that he loved to garden.

All these people had land. I don’t know how they got it but obviously owning land was more important to them than having the latest gadget (they didn’t, for example, have cars for a long, long time). Land was the first thing, instead of the last thing (and no 30 year mortgage either), that they took care of. I am sure that having some land, and some experience growing food, is vital to surviving.

Some years ago a cousin of mine said something about us living like our grandparents. Until then I really hadn’t thought about it that way. I think it is more that we value the same sorts of things our grandparents did. And while I don’t aspire to “live like them”, not exactly and not for exactly the same reasons either, I do think we can learn a lot especially from the Depression experience. That’s why this is a meme. How did your family that lived through that time, say 1930 to 1940 -- where were they, what was life like before the Depression, what happened and how did life change, how did they manage, who lived and who died and who moved and where, and what lessons can you bring to tomorrow from their experience yesterday? How will you change your life? I really hope that people will participate in this meme, that it may grow well beyond here. If you don’t know already, ask someone in your family the questions, and if they are dead already, what can you find out anyway? Please leave a comment so we too can learn from your family’s experience.

Life Isn't Landscaping

back creek drought
Originally uploaded by Contrary Goddess.

I want to tell you about the drought. But what do I say? It didn’t rain in June at all, and it was dry then. In July we had about normal rain, as I remember it anyway. At least we had some rain. And since then, almost nothing. And temperatures in the 90s most every day of August and September and even into October. We’ve had a mist a couple times in October, and maybe one sprinkle. There was water in a puddle after one sprinkle.

Our big huge creeks are trickles now, but we’re thankful they are still flowing. A lot of them aren’t. People have ponds to water their cattle . . . and they are dry. Virginia farmers (and the state through grants) spent a lot of money in the last few years fencing cattle out of creeks and putting in water systems based on either RAM pumps or springs . . . and they are dry. In some places, it is so dry the roots of the grasses are dying.

We’ve kept some things going in the garden by watering. Our corn and potatoes, staple crops, made before it got so bad. But there are no fall seedbeds because it was too hot and too dry (even with watering) for them to germinate.

Our springs have stopped flowing. One isn’t entirely dry. We haul water from the creek. We bathe in the creek and have for months now. We take a load of laundry when we visit the in-laws and bring it home to hang it out. We don’t flush. We don’t mop the floor . . . well, unless we first haul water up from the creek. You might can imagine how this adds time to tasks like washing dishes, even if you have the water already up here -- you have to heat it and set up the dish pan and two sinks and wash them from cleanest to dirtiest. I can do pretty much a whole day of dishes on about 3 gallons of water but it takes some coordination. And we still cook from scratch because with food going up so much, who could afford not to? But we aren’t above resorting to the occasional use of paper plates.

Our animals are on the pasture we usually use in January. We’ll buy our first bale of hay this week and feel lucky that our supplier, a good old boy neighbor, is keeping 300 head of cattle on his other farm and says that as long as he has hay, we’ll have hay. Of course, it’ll cost about half again as much as it did the last few years. And that's if he's easy on us. I’ve never actually seen the goats hungry before. They are now. As soon as it is cool, we’ll start killing them.

It is so bad that some people are cutting trees so their cattle can eat the leaves. Of course, the leaves are about gone now. They say they try to cut a good tree so they can get a saw log out of it, and some firewood from what the cows don’t eat.

People do not understand. Hell, I don’t understand. I just know. I know that you just deal with it and you don’t complain and that life is always about change. You aren’t owed anything.

And you might starve to death.

I don’t believe anybody but me realizes that because if they did, they’d live differently. Ok, maybe there are one or two other people who get it too.

Which, it started raining, ever so lightly, Monday. Today there is a little more vigor in the precipitation. It is supposed to continue through Friday at least. This is very good. This is more rain than we’ve had in four months. We’re still at half what is normal for the year, and we were already behind then. Still, it is good. With a little water and warm temperatures, the grass will grow still. So will radishes and spinach and the like. Beets and turnips for late greens and early roots in the spring.

And tomorrow we will finally get to visit with my best friend and family!

Cinco de Julio

After the revolution, then what? Good ole Ben said, "Gentlemen, we give you a republic -- if you can keep it."

I happened upon this concept, Riot for Austerity. Seems preposterous, doesn’t it, to riot for less. But in some ways, isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Role models really do help, and that’s one way I’ve seen this blog of my life on the farm, one way to do it, one way to have a good life, an example.

So, over at the Simple Living they have a goal to reduce consumption/emissions by 90% (from American average) within a year’s time. I’m not participating in that, but it has been a wonderful jumping off thinking point, and a way to see where I am, however imperfect the metrics.

What I am going to do here is to repost their rules for their 7 categories, along with my household’s current standing therein, perhaps comments about that standing, and perhaps comments about the metric itself. At the end, I’m also going to add a category.

1. Gasoline. Average American usage is 500 gallons PER PERSON, PER YEAR. A 90 percent reduction would be 50 gallons PER PERSON, PER YEAR.
No reduction in emissions for ethanol or biodiesel.
Public transportation and Waste Veggie Oil Fuel are deemed to get 100 mpg, and should be calculated accordingly.

This works out to 25/month for my family, and we use about 30-35/month on average from the past year.

We have reduced gasoline usage mostly by not going much. There is no possibility for us of public transit (at least, not yet -- within my lifetime there were buses that I could have caught within three miles or so of my extremely rural home). We would actually be game to bicycle or use a horse and wagon/buggy for the occasional 20 mile trip (wouldn’t it be great to not have a car at all?) but at this time that is waaay too dangerous. Driving is too dangerous too -- yet another reason to reduce doing it.

One way I’d tweak this metric is to add a penalty for newer cars. Maybe no penalty for cars over 10 or 15 years old, and then an ever increasing penalty for each more recent year. Why? Because of the consumption inherent in new goods. Hybrids are even worse, very high polluters in life-cycle terms and only economic if you take only the MPG and not the creation and waste (batteries in particular).

2. Electricity. Average US usage is 11,000 kwh PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR, or about 900 kwh PER HOUSEHOLD PER MONTH. A 90% reduction would mean using 1,100 PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR or 90 kwh PER HOUSEHOLD PER MONTH
Solar Renewables are deemed to have a 50% payback - that is, you get twice as many watts.
Hydro and Wind are deemed to have a 4 to 1 payback over other methods - you get 4 times as many.

This is my worst metric. We use the US average now. I do know lots of reasons why which are areas we could reduce. For example, our freezers are in another building. We wired florescent lights into that circuit and leave then turned on so we are alerted if the power goes out to them. We could use LEDs instead maybe. We have an electric hot water heater, one of the worst electric appliances you can have. Still, I’m not getting rid of it, at least not yet, and we don‘t even have hot water hooked up to the washing machine. I think/rationalize that my other metrics are so low that it makes up for this one.

Plus these other things. Most people go to work, ship their kids off to school, where they also use electricity. Other people buy food, even low processed foods, that nevertheless have some cost of electrical use priced in them. We stay home, so our “work” electricity is here. We run our business here, producing real (concrete) goods, which also consume electricity. So part of what I’m saying is that not all our electricity usage would be “household” to more average Americans.

To comply with this metric, I live in the TVA service area, so a lot of our electricity is hydro. Personally I don’t care. That type of hydro is just as destructive as the coal fired plants. I think probably all grid electricity (electricity that is distributed in its use and concentrated in its source) is equally destructive at this time so I wouldn't give the paybacks unless it is coming off your own solar or hydro/wind system (which may well be what she had in mind, I‘m just not sure).

I have to note that I do not believe this metric would be accurate for all electric households. Pretty much every household uses some electricity -- fewer than 100% would use any one of the other heating methods, so this metric is probably low for the all electric households. These households should probably be allowed the same amount of electric energy equivalent to therms or gallons of heating oil below.

3. Heating and Cooking Energy - this is divided into 3 categories, gas, wood and oil. Your household probably uses one of these, and they are not interchangeable. If you use an electric stove or electric heat, this goes under electric usage.
Natural Gas (this is used by the vast majority of US households as heating and cooking fuel). For this purpose, Propane will be calculated as the same as natural gas. Calculations in therms should be available from your gas provider. US Average Natural Gas usage is 1000 therms PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR. A 90% reduction would mean a reduction to 100 therms PER HOUSEHOLD PER YEAR
*Heating Oil (this is used by only about 8% of all US households, mostly in the Northeast, including mine). Average US usage is 750 Gallons PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR. A 90% cut would mean using 75 gallons PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR. Biodiesel is calculated as equivalent.
*Wood. This is a tough one. The conventional line is that wood is carbon neutral, but, of course, wood that is harvested would have otherwise been absorbing carbon and providing forest. There are good reasons to be skeptical about this. So I’ve divided wood into two categories.
*Locally and sustainably harvested, and either using deadwood, trees that had to come down anyway, coppiced or harvested by someone who replaces every lost tree. This is deemed carbon neutral, and you can use an unlimited supply. This would include street trees your town is taking down anyway, wood you cut on your property and replant, coppiced wood (that is, you cut down some part of the tree but leave it to grow), and standing and fallen deadwood. You can use as much of this as you like.
*Wood not sustainably harvested, or transported long distances, or you don’t know. 1 cord of this is equal to 15 gallons of oil or 20 therms of natural gas.

This might be the metric we’re best on. We use some propane to cook in the summer, I’m pretty sure under 50 therms/year (propane has 1.1 therm/gallon, a 20# tank is 5 gallons, to help others with the calculations). Should we get to building the patio area with its own wood cook stove and earth oven, we could do with a lot less propane. It’s in the plans but not on the horizon.

We heat and cook other times of the year with wood, mostly deadwood. Furthermore, and I think this is a BIGGIE, we do not use IC engines to do this harvest but saws, real saws. If it needs to be hauled, mostly we haul it by human or horse power. There is no power more efficient than human muscle power. To those who say they couldn’t do it, I say simply, it is like reducing your consumption by this much, it is just a matter of trying and isn’t nearly as hard as you think. Plus it has lots of personal benefits. Like health and safety. But also, a bow saw and a series of blades for the winter costs a lot less to buy than a chainsaw, and nothing at all to maintain. It weighs less, has a smaller footprint of manufacture, use and disposal, doesn’t produce any emissions.

4. Garbage - the average American generates about 4.5 lbs of garbage PER PERSON, PER DAY. A 90% reduction would mean .45 lbs of garbage PER PERSON, PER DAY.

Another good one for us. For my family, this works out to 19#/week. Last week, during which we forgot to put the can out so I can weigh it now, we generated 4# of garbage total. Our household trash is nearly always that low. If we’re cleaning some farm accumulation out, that is more.

I think trash is very much a measure of excess consumption.

5. Water. The Average American uses 100 Gallons of water PER PERSON, PER DAY. A 90% reduction would mean 10 gallons PER PERSON, PER DAY.

I understand why water is on this list, but I don’t think it applies to us at all. Water “pressure” is a function of living in high density and low rainfall areas. It might be appropriate to want to cut down treated water usage even when there is no water shortage just for the energy used, but to be obsessive about it if you don’t live in a water short area seems a . . . distraction at best. Of course, more and more areas are short on water, so there ya go.

Anyway, for us, our water is from a spring, and goes back into the same watershed after we use any amount we want to and doesn't pollute in any way. Our household water is currently pumped with an electric pump but the water we use on the garden does not consume any energy at all.

6. Consumer Goods. The best metric I could find for this is using money. A Professor at Syracuse University calculates that as an average, every consumer dollar we spend puts .5 lbs of carbon into the atmosphere. This isn’t perfect, of course, but it averages out pretty well.
The average American spends 10K PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR on consumer goods, not including things like mortgage, health care, debt service, car payments, etc… Obviously, we recommend you minimize those things to the extent you can, but what we’re mostly talking about is things like gifts, toys, music, books, tools, household goods, cosmetics, toiletries, paper goods, etc… A 90% cut would be 1,000 dollars PER HOUSEHOLD, PER YEAR
*Used goods are deemed to have an energy cost of 10% of their actual purchase price. That is, if you buy a used sofa for $50, you just spent $5 of your allotment. The reason for this is that used goods bought from previous owners put money back into circulation that is then spent on new goods. This would apply to Craigslist, Yardsales, etc… but not goodwill and other charities, as noted below. This rule does not apply if you know that the item would otherwise be thrown out - that is, if someone says, “If you don’t buy it, I’m going to toss it.” Those items are unlimited as well, because they keep crap out of landfills.
*Goods that were donated are deemed to be unlimited, with no carbon cost. That is, you can spend all you want at Goodwill and the church rummage sale. Putting things back into use that would otherwise be tossed should be strongly encouraged.

I don’t disagree with this metric, I just find it difficult to calculate. I looked at everything I’d bought in conventional stores in the past month to get an idea, but this included “wet goods” in the food category, plus some bulk goods in the food category which is coming up next. I am glad consumer goods has a dollar amount, which I think is far more useful than the percentages used in the food category. Anyway, just based on our income (lowlowlow), I think we’d have to be close to being inside the $1K/year figure because our total income is so low.

We do save a lot of stuff from the landfill, like this computer I’m writing on, like the shirt I’m wearing. We’re in the beginning stages of experimenting with making our own wool socks because cheap socks suck and we can’t afford good ones, and I don’t know about you, but I just haven’t come across good socks on their way to the landfill. I don’t know when we’ve bought any clothing item new, even boots this past winter.

But I have to say, we do get some consumer goods without a hint of apology. We’ve saved almost enough for a Wii. I’d like to get a new camera. Etc.

I might add to this metric a penalty to any spending on credit. Or I might add another category to penalize credit. If you can’t pay cash for the car, or see your way to paying it off inside of one year at most, you can’t afford it. Nothingnothingnothing consumable on credit. A mortgage is ok only because most people have to have one but they should endeavor to pay that off early and never borrow against it.

7. Food. This was by far the hardest thing to come up with a simple metric for. Using food miles, or price gives what I believe is a radically inaccurate way of thinking about this. So here’s the best I can do. Food is divided into 3 categories.
#1 is food you grow, or which is produced *LOCALLY AND ORGANICALLY* (or mostly - it doesn’t have to be certified, but should be low input, because chemical fertilizers produce nitrous oxide which is a major greenhouse contributor). Local means within 100 miles to me. This includes all produce, grains, beans, and meats and dairy products that are mostly either *GRASSFED* or produced with *HOME GROWN OR LOCALLY GROWN, ORGANIC FEED.* That is, chicken meat produced with GM corn from IOWA in Florida is not local. A 90% reduction would involve this being AT LEAST cle70% of your diet, year round. Ideally, it would be even more. I also include locally produced things like soap in this category, if most of the ingredients are local.
#2 is *DRY, BULK* goods, transported from longer distances. That is, *whole, unprocessed* beans, grains, and small light things like tea, coffee, spices (fair trade and sustainably grown *ONLY*), or locally produced animal products partly raised on unprocessed but non-local grains, and locally produced wet products like oils. This is hard to calculate, because Americans spend very little on these things (except coffee) and whole grains don’t constitute a large portion of the diet. These are comparatively low carbon to transport and produce. Purchased in bulk, with minimal packaging (beans in 50lb paper sacks, pasta in bulk, tea loose, by the pound, rather than in little bags), this would also include things like recycled toilet paper, purchased garden seeds and other light, dry items. This should be no more than 25% of your total purchases.
# 3 is Wet goods - conventionally grown meat, fruits, vegetables, juices, oils, milk etc… transported long distances, and processed foods like chips, soda, potatoes. Also regular shampoo, dish soap, etc… And that no one should buy more than 5% of their food in this form. Right now, the above makes up more than 50% of everyone’s diet.

Thus, if you purchase 20 food items in a week, you’d use 14 home or locally produced items, 5 bulk dry items, and only 1 processed or out of season thing.

Well, I understand the difficulty of this metric because . . . there is no simple way to figure it, like there is for gasoline consumption per person. I really don’t know if wet goods constitute more than 5% of our diet. We splurge sometimes, and other times we will eat nothing off the place for a long time. We have a LOT of “dry bulk” because we do eat a lot of whole unprocessed grain -- that is, I process it. We have bulk wheat, rice, grits, oats, flax seed, popcorn, probably others. This metric would put my meat in this category, but I would put in the first category because we raise it and process it here. But it is fed some commercial feed. I did know some people who were driving 2.5 hours one way to pick up organic feed and that’s just not what I’d call sustainable myself. Or organic in the spirit of the term. I’d count what little animal feed we buy in the bulk category and the meat, milk, and eggs we consume in category one. They travel zero miles.

Although I still can’t believe she said “whole grains don’t constitute a large portion of the diet.” They are the base of the food pyramid. Bread, rice, potatoes, barley, wheat, oats -- what do people eat if not these things? I mean, it really does make me wonder what is the base of their diet. We also buy coffee, tea, spices, yeast, baking powder, salt, those sorts of ingredients, mostly in bulk.

Our own food is produced in quantity here, and very sustainably. We’ve husbanded our soil, our pastures, our water. We don’t use IC engines for anything (the last mower gave up the ghost and we sharpened the scythe, swearing off them forever). But our brooding of the chicks, and our canning/freezing of the food would increase our fuel consumption counted elsewhere.

Oh, and chocolate should have its own category.

Just kidding on that one, but I do have some very politically incorrect additions to this list.

Food has to, at some point, include calories, and there has to be a limit per person of caloric content of food. Fat/gluttony is yet another form of over consumption. With lots of consequences.

Another complete category that I think needs to be added is income. If you have the money, you spend it. And there is an energy cost to every dollar earned as well as to every dollar spent. I would personally add penalties for income from the government (whether job, grant, or handout) because of what that money cost someone else. I subscribe to the Nearing’s ideal of bread labor -- every person produces his own bread, and then does his “professional” work separate from that bread labor. Bread labor is direct and productive work.

Another I’d be tempted to add would be medical care/medicine. We could use a good 90% reduction in this, imo. I’m always amazed at how few un-drugged people there are in the world.

I would thank the folks who put this together because I think it is an excellent thinking tool. I acknowledge that my take on the whole thing comes from a slightly different corner -- I don’t think enough people will cut consumption, and I don’t think you can make ‘em (or that it is ethical to try to make them). My best hope is that the gas runs out and soon. Anyway, I encourage you to run through this with your figures and see what your consumption says to you. And to look toward reducing it. For a better life.

Silent Summer

Chickens through the Gate
Originally uploaded by Contrary Goddess.

I always say that I can't draw a straight line. Husband says I can't draw flies. And the paint program is, I think, particularly difficult to draw in anyway. And yet it is so easy, so there, so I can share it if I've a mind.

And when I saw the scene that I drew, I was of a mind to share it.

My family used to have a big huge family reunion third Sunday in August. After they built the church, I didn't stay for the preaching anymore. Too loud. I did sit on the tombstones and under the apple tree and eat apples and listen to the singing though. I loved Noad's singing the best because, really, he couldn't sing at all, it was terrible, and I loved it so because I loved him so. And he would always wonder if he was going to sing at JJ's funeral, or would JJ preach at his.

Eventually my wanderings around during the interminable preaching and waiting for the singing and dinner on the ground took me down the road behind the outhouses, further, further. There was a gate to climb over, and it was not much used but definitely a road. I knew it led to the old cemetery, where my great-grandparents and others, were buried; to the ruins of the old cabin where my grandfather was born at the turn of the last century. There were still a few cows in the fields, and a few hewn stones that had been doorsteps, and a sty to climb across to get into the graveyard.

But mostly here there was silence. A deep kind of silence that I don't think many people these days know. You could see no one, you could hear nothing. Except cows and birds and wind on leaves and sometimes grass growing.

One would think we live way out now but when I think of way out I always hear that silence of my ancestor's home. I always wonder if it would have been even quieter then, when they lived there, with no cars anywhere in the county, and no planes -- or would the trains and horses have traveled the way they sometimes do here. I live at least 20 miles from any train tracks and yet sometimes we can hear the train. I can't see anyone's house from mine, but I can hear when the neighbor toward the back is hammering on his barn, or when the neighbor to front is feeding his dogs.

But the thing that I have most noticed that this land is never without is plane traffic. There are always contrails, usually at least three. There are most little planes that fly over here than anywhere I've ever been. I think this is an area that several local instructor's use for students learning to fly, because they go round and round in giant triangles. There are helicopters, the black unmarked kind, the business kind, the forest service kind, even, occasionally, the armed services kind.

I had decided that I would not do much today. I went outside and sat in the sun. A cat joined me. I saw the push me pull you rooster and hen through the gate. And when I listened I heard the chickens talking, and a cat stalking, and the chicks with their adolescent voices, and even some geese flying. I could hear, barely, the back creek. And some air in the leaves. Regular calm children sounds. The large animals were somewhere far away and I could not even hear a bell from them (they were probably asleep at the back creek). There were a few other birds, small birds, but the noisy jays have fledged thankfully.

And then I realized I was not hearing even a single plane. Not a small one, not a large one. I searched the sky and there was not a contrail, not even one. Not event a whoop whoop whoop from a helicopter.

If This Doesn't Give You Pause

Went to the horse auction. Saw most of the people I normally see. Plus one. Fell in love with at least I don't know how many horses. Bought two lead ropes. Took with me photographs of my own draft in action to give to his harness maker and his former owners who I always see at the auction.

Went by the feed store. Ogled plants and seeds and various chemicals. Learned that bulk hard corn that used to cost less than $3 per 50# now costs $6.25 per 50. And that is just the beginning. If that doesn't give you pause, I'm sorry, but you are now officially stupid. Or maybe you just need to get your head out of your own a**. Something. Because that is a big thing.

Like a Phoenix Approaching Its Burning Day

It is raining. Hooray. Lots was transplanted from the seedling beds to await the rain and it came.

It has been a rather eerie spring. April brought two snows, which itself would be ok and not even all that unusual, but it also brought about three nights with temps down to 19 or even lower up here on the mountain. There are always leaves by my birthday. Always. But this year there weren’t really. They had started, then the cold came and they got burned off. The tops of tall trees even now are largely without leaves, so if you look out into the understory, everything looks normal, but if you look up, or look at the folds of the mountain vista, it is not normal. Not barren but not lush either. Just plain weird.

I suppose everything will come back out and recover. I wonder what it will do to seed crops. The poplars were particularly hard hit it seems. Of course, they can do without seed for a year. But what about the mast, the acorns and hickories and such, that the deer and squirrel depend on? I don’t know. I don’t think we will have a speck of tree fruit, but then our trees needed a lot of work so in some ways that makes this a really good time to work on them.

We have chicks coming next week. And the spring version of the traditional fall draft horse auction is this weekend. I’m testing out milking the newly fresh goats. The cow’s production is back up to 3 gallons/day. I need a pig, bad. For supper tonight we’re having soup made from salt pork broth from roasts we had earlier and salad from the garden. Gosh but I do love that. Nothing like it. And the wild foods that are available now -- we’re past fiddleheads and haven’t found any morels, but we’ve had terrific young polk and the nettles are ready and the lambs quarters are almost ready and the locust blossoms won’t be far behind.

And it occurs to me that I currently have an obsession with proximate vs. ultimate causes a la this Jared Diamond character I’ve been reading. And just off the top of my head, this is what I think: Industrial agriculture is the ultimate cause which caused the excess population which itself is a cause for other ills. It still shocks me but doesn’t surprise me that people don’t get that GMO, specifically RoundUp Ready, was an improvement and that no till ag IS an improvement -- in industrial agriculture.

And folks, industrial organic is only an improvement of that same scale -- a little better in that paradigm but doing nothing about the real problem which is industrial agriculture. Everybody needs to be a farmer, everybody needs to understand soil mechanics, everybody needs to know the chemistry needed to safely preserve food, everybody needs to speak the language of at least one non-pet animal. That’s the only thing that might be improvement enough to stem the tide of massive starvation.

Double Oh Seven

Welcome to 007. Do ya reckon they will figure out how to migrate me to "new" blogger this year?

Now to get on with it.

How to Save the World, part 1

Don’t do anything. Nothing. Not a thing. And I don’t mean that it is hopeless. Just that you can’t save the world by anything that you do. Only by what you don’t do.

You can’t save the world by driving a car (much less a hybrid car). You can’t save the world by using a more efficient dishwasher. Or buying Big Organic. Not by anything that you buy, even locally. Not by recycling either. Not by composting even.

If you want to accomplish something positive, all you have to do is stop doing something.

And mostly that boils down to not consuming.

It’s pretty easy really: Every time you start to do something, don’t. Every trip a body can NOT take to town is a step toward saving the world. A leg not shaved, there ya go. From the big to the little. Every dollar NOT spent is a dollar that you do NOT need to earn (or exploit or extort from someone else, depending on how you get your cash) and thus another step out of the stream of world exploitation and environmental degradation and war and death.

So here’s the Contrary Goddess’s “How to Save the World, step one, Challenge” -- see if you can go a week, one week, without buying anything. And no, it doesn’t count to just buy double the week before.

And here is the Contrary Goddess’s hint on how to make it really worthwhile instead of a stupid and empty exercise: Always take a step out of the process and reclaim it for yourself -- whether you are eating (bake your own bread, grind your own grain, grow your own grain) or entertaining yourself (pick up an instrument or sing or paint or write) or whatever. Don’t just “not buy” but actually consume less. Feel a little gnawing consumption pain deep in your gut.

How to Save the World, part 2

Feel a little gnawing consumption pain deep in your gut. Embrace it. Become friends. Then reach for . . . even less.

Because if you are looking for hope, it is in the joy of without. Many will die, but they were going to die anyway. They will be replaced by fewer who will live with less and if the fewer hate living with less, what sort of future is that? Quit rationalizing why it is impossible to do without. Just do without, and practice joy. And hope it is catching. Develop skills and pass them on. Value what is really valuable, not what is fashionable, or what is easy, or what feels good.

How to Save the World, part 3

If you manage to do little enough, you might actually have to start doing something. Real. Like growing food. Really, I don’t care where you are or what you are doing, grow (and gather wild) some significant portion of food and eat it. You can do it. If you aren't doing it, you just don't think eating is important enough.

How to Save the World, part 4

The only chance you have to save the world is to save your self by which you save, maybe, your children by what you didn’t teach them.