Gaia

Oh, look here. Right there on my calendar I’ve noted that on the 27th of this month the planet Mars will be the closest to Earth that it will ever be again until the year 2287. Maybe we will have a happy and thriving colony there by then. Or maybe we will have turned this lovely, bounteous planet that we live on into an dead desert like Mars or Venus by then. Maybe we will have killed Gaia or, more likely, ‘she’ will have killed us.
Again with the Gaia! Some of you may be wailing. “We don’t cotton to that there ancient Greek religious stuff!”
The only relation to the ancient Greek religions in what I’m talking about here is the name Gaia. Go, Google 'Gaia Theory', I did. Yes, It refers to something much bigger and more powerful than us relatively simple humans.
Just let me try to tell you what Gaia is according to the Gaia theory. Then you can check what I said against what the experts say.

Gaia is indeed a being. NOT a humanoid being. Gaia is a huge, complex and as far as anyone knows, non-thinking entity. But it is a living thing none the less. A living thing that has evolved with the aging of this planet. A living thing that has been intimately a part of that evolution since a few chemicals came together in some primordial ooze somewhere and started making more chemicals just like them.
Those proto critters changed the area around them, the area around them affected them, changed them a little, they changed the area more and it steam rolled from there. Some of the critters changed the environment around themselves so much they had to move to ‘greener pastures’, but the ones they left behind liked it just where they were.
That kept happening. The critters kept changing the environment, the environment kept changing the critters right on up until today with a few exceptions like asteroid strikes and such.
Make no mistake, this is still happening. But the important thing is that one of these critters, us, the hairless ape, developed the ability to change the heck out of the environment around him, and change it FAST. This hairless little ape has developed the ability to change the environment so fast that other critters just can not keep up. Oh, a few sort of have. Critters that this little ape happens to like, or want, or need for various things are apparently keeping up. I’m talking here about critters like dogs, horses, cats, cattle, goats, corn,rice, (I’m calling any living thing a critter here) cotton, bananas or what-ever. They are ‘keeping up’ because this little ape is changing them himself.
Now here is where the possibility of us turning this beautiful Earth into an unlivable place like Mars or Venus comes in.
The continuity of Gaia depends on the smooth interaction of all of her various organs so that the air, the water and the relative abundance of various chemicals and life forms remain in a symbiotic balance.
If you were a Doctor looking over Gaia as a patient at this point in time I’m fairly sure that right about now you’d be worried because of her unexpectedly increasing temperature. An increase that is occurring when you expected a decrease to start. Then there is the fact that it is also a fairly rapid increase. Then you’d start examining the patient, Gaia.
At that point you would find this one little group of cells, these hairless apes, that had started growing out of all proportion. Cells that had spread all over and were changing other cells (remember the cats and dogs?) and altering the area’s around them in ways that, while these cells were doing well there, even they would soon be unable to survive there. Not only that but these cells were also giving off gasses and other by products that were starting to radically change the patient (Gaia) in ways that would make it impossible for many other cells (wolves, elephants, tigers, tuna, wheat, whales, tomatoes) to survive anywhere within Gaia. These little naked apes, these cancer cells, are not just changing their own environment they are upsetting the ballance that keeps everything else on the planet alive. They are killing Gaia, just like any cancer can kill one of them.

The sad thing is these particular cancer cells are supposedly intelligent beings. They can think, plan and even, if the mood strikes, cooperate with each other. The only things keeping them from opening their eyes and seeing what is going on is fear and greed.

Many of them pop up with the true statement that even we mighty Humans with our greatest weapons can not distroy the whole planet. Like I said that is a true statement. The rock will remain. The water will remain. Exactly as what I don't know. Hey, life may even remain. After all this planet and thus Gaia, has gone through some very large changes in the past.

Yes, the planet will survive. Even Gaia may survive, in some form. But it will not be the Gaia we know. It may not even be a planet we can survive on. We, those nasty little cancer cells that can, but refuse to stop reproducing, we won't be here anymore. And if there is something of us here, on this, the third rock out from a little yellow drawf star, it quite likely won't be what we consider human anymore.

Why do we refuse to stop reproducing at such a bodacious rate? Because some of our religions say we must 'multiply' and nature has equiped us with an almost insane urge to engage in sex. We will do anything to get it. We will risk the Hell that the religions warn us of, the often painful death that other religions threaten us with (not to mention the possibilty of aids, and other desieases), the ire of friends and families and the scorn of sociaty just to get a little nookie. Dispite knowing this, dispite it being obviouse in the gossip of friends and on the news about the scandals of politicians, we refuse to acknowledge this truth about ourselves and most insist that the only way they want their children to be taught to avoid pregnancy is by abstaining from sex.

Yeah, right.

Those 'little angels' are just like Mom and Dad. They are just as much sex crazed naked apes as the parents were. I'm not saying they shouldn't be protected from the nastyness that sometimes accompainies sex. The sleazy stuff. I'm not saying they should be hit up side the head with the whole idea before they are ready for it mentally and physically. (I mean when a really young child askes where puppies come from it's likely best to answer "Mommy dogs" than go into the whole birds and bees story.) But when the hormons start hitting? That's when parents, gardians, or SOME BODY really needs to set the little nympho's in training down and tell them A) About pregnancy, certine deseases and how they are spread, B) How to have the sex they crave with out getting either, and last but not least C) That no mater what their hormons are screaming at them to do they just may not be physically or even mentally ready for any of it yet and that this and that and this other thing are what they can do to find out about it for themselves with no risk for pregnancy, desieas, or physical or mental trama.

Why and how did I get onto sex ed from talking about the Gaia Theory? Simple the worst threat to this planets ecosphere (Gaia) is not, a fuel shortage or even global warming or pollution, but what is causing all of that. What is causing all of that is the way we humans are over populating the planet.

I wrote an earlier blog about the economy and why I see it as being unsustainable. That ties into this. Our world wide economy depends heavily on an ever increasing number of us to work in the factories and buy the products of the factories. But this planet, Gaia, can not support that ever increasing population. A population that religions and political groups (are they really that different from each other even here in the U.S.??) want to keep expanding so that they will have enough believers or votes to become the majority and make everyone else do as 'they' want them to. These things tie togather in that the politicians also want the economy to grow so they can get bigger donations to their campains and the religions want more folks to donate to thier 'good works' and follow their belief.

Sigh.

See. It is circular. A pattern that feeds on itself. (That sort of thing has a name. I read it somewhere, but I forget where and what it's called.) It's a lot like Gaia. Except that it can be stopped. All it would take would be for people, Humans, that happen to be in power to say, "Hey, look. This just won't work anymore" and change things.

Yeah, there would be disruption. Lots of it in fact. The economy would have to be compleatly overhauld. Most folks would have to compleatly change the way they look at themselves and the world around them. Political parties and Religions would have to give up this stupid idea that their particular view and only it should be accepted world wide. There would probably be famins as the economy readjusted, and people being only human, deaths in the famins and the ourtraged political and religious wars.

If we started depending on our individual selves to control the population instead of leaving it to plagues, war, and famin, maybe even decide that a place to sleep in safty, enough to eat and drink and a little safe nooky (with out the chance of having a kid later) now and then, and something worth while to do, was really all we NEEDED and in many cases all a lot of us ever really want perhaps all that disruption could be avoided.

But I doubt it.

The Weeds

By Betty Montgomery

We are the weeds.

We are the future

We are Feral Farmers,

Wild gardeners and

When we “blitz” an area

We leave behind swales, hugels,

Seed balls and newly planted trees.

Yes, we see problems, so many problems

But in the problems, we see the answers

For there is no waste, only product waiting to be used!

We care for the Earth, the People and

We Share the excess of our harvest.

For we are the weeds

We are the future

Come! Join us in the shade of our fig tree,

And share the fruit of our vines!

Why Some May Oppose Food Forests

          If you know what a food forest is you likely cannot conceive of anyone being against them. Those that are usually say “there’s got to be a lot of work somewhere!” The answer there, of course is, “Yes! There is a lot of work on the startup end!”  After all you have to observe how nature works in your particular area, research what kind of food plants and trees can replace any non-food plants in that mix or what plants you never considered to be food plants are already there!

          That right there can be a problem for a lot of people. They have to open their eyes and actually look at the world around them and then, horrors, THINK about what they are seeing. Worse they have to think, not about what they have always thought they saw but what is actually there to see. The weed choked field can suddenly become the open cornucopia of natural foods, herbs and even medicines! Many would prefer that it remain a weed choked, ‘useless’ field because then they can bulldoze it and put in a parking lot and maybe even a fast food franchise. Hey, what’s wrong with that, they make money and bring jobs to the area don’t they?

          Or do they? There will be a spike in employment for those who run the bulldozer (if any live in the area and get the contract). There will be a spike in the employment of builders (again if any live in the area and manage to get hired!). Then when it is all built perhaps . . . perhaps a few local teens can get jobs flipping burgers or dunking frozen fries into hot oil during the summer. Unless of course the local builders who are now out of a job after finishing building the place get hired first.

          Yes, I am being a bit down here. But hey, who else is going to read this, anyway.

          A food forest, once it is fully planned, and implemented will take three to five more years of care and tweaking before it starts giving a good return. It will give some return that first year as there will be annual plants in among all those perennials that can be harvested and either consumed on site or sold. Then, as no true forest is without some kind of ‘wild life’, there will have to be animals other than humans inhabiting it. Critters like chickens, doves, goats, rabbits, and maybe a cow to just name the large life forms. All those beasties (and here I do NOT leave out the micro-fauna!) will need human intervention for at least a while, some for as long as they stay there. That is where the human comes into the equation, as the planner and as the ‘gardener’.  However, with a food forest, one that is properly planned and arranged, the ‘gardener’s’ workload decreases over time to that of  simply harvesting unless he or she wants or needs an increase in production.

          That last I suspect is where a number of people have a problem. They simply cannot envision just walking out the backdoor and getting your breakfast, lunch and dinner while not working 40 plus hours a week just to pay for food, water, utilities and housing. If such a thing actually came about what in the world would they do with themselves? They might have to confront the  emptiness of their present lives and have to fill it up with their very own thoughts instead of the sound bites they hear around the ‘water cooler’ at work. On the other hand they could work on becoming whatever it is they truly want to be. Now is that a scary thought or what?

Why Permaculture?

            There are many folks here about who likely have never heard of Permaculture. Those who have heard only a little may not like what they have heard. My best guess as to the reaction of most folks here in the Lone Oak area to the very idea of Permaculture is: 1) Why do we need this, whatever the heck it is, anyway? 2) Isn’t that some hippy-dippy thing where you give up meat, join a commune, and give everything away? 3) Why change what’s worked in agriculture for ages? Haven’t American Farmers been feeding the world since WWII! We’ve even exported our way of farming to poor nations to pull them up out of poverty!

            Let’s start with #3. American Agriculture hasn’t been as it is “for ages”. I’m willing to bet that few farmers around here had a diesel or gasoline tractor before WWI. That would be your grate grand-dad, I think. Few if any at that time used artificial fertilizers and they certainly didn’t raise crops of plants that had been genetically engineered to resist pesticides as they likely didn’t have those either.

            Oh, a side note on those GMO’s. Those crops are being taken over by weeds that have naturally developed a resistance to the herbicide that the crops were engineered to be immune to. Hello!  Big chemical company I don’t dare name least I be sued! You can’t engineer around nature and you don’t own it, either.

            Yes. Thanks to modern fertilizers and pesticides the American Farmer has been feeding the world since about WWII. We’ve also been losing top soil at several inches a year, every year, at the same time. The soil in most fields now MUST have fertilizer on it or it can’t grow anything BUT weeds. So we have fed the world, at a price far greater than what we were ever paid.

            Yep. We did export our farming methods to poor nations. And now they are even poorer. Not because the folks there are lazy or incompetent, but because they used AMERICAN methods of farming instead of some method that would have fit THEIR climate, THEIR terrain, THEIR culture much better. They also fell into the same trap American Farmers now find their selves in. The farmers in the poorer nations just fell into it sooner. They fell into the trap of needing to buy fertilizer every year or even every crop. They must also buy fuel for those big tractors and pesticides to protect the mono-crops we taught them they had to grow. These are recurring costs that a poor farmer, a family or a subsistence farmer, just cannot bear. Which brings me back to American Agriculture being as it has “for ages.” The big Agri-businesses that have driven the family farm out of business then bought the land haven’t been in existence for ages. Heck, I don’t think they existed even in the 1950’s except, perhaps in an embryonic form.

            So much for changing what hasn’t changed in ages. Except, I happen to believe that Permaculture can change it for the better. It would result in the Family, the subsistence farm, the LOCAL farm replacing the big agri-businesses, while building soil and feeding the farmer, his/her family and the local community as well.  It would also be done without fossil fuels. It would have to be. There aren’t enough left to bother with, really and they add Carbon to the atmosphere that was sequestered long ages before some government hireling came up with the idea of trying to do sequester it all over again.

            I can see some out there reading this far and gasping, “But what about the poor and underprivileged in the big cities or in other countries!”

            Teach them Permaculture too. Permaculture is great in suburbs, and in big cities. A roof garden on a tenement building would insulate the building and provide food for the people in the building. Those better off could have at least a few fresh veggies from planters on their fire escape, their patio, or even just in front of a window. Earth worms can compost whatever left over’s you have, or even newspaper and cardboard in a pinch, into great soil for growing things. As for the poor in other countries, the same idea works. They can rebuild their land using the same (but different and specific to their needs) methods of Permaculture.

            Now for question #2 above, especially as I have probably started sounding just a little hippy-dippy with all the saving the world stuff I’ve written above. To refresh all our memories that was:  “Isn’t that some hippy-dippy thing where you give up meat, join a commune, and give everything away?”

            Well, you can give up meat if you want to. Or, as I plan to do, you can continue your carnivorous ways.  It’s just that with Permaculture you would know that there was nothing “extra” in your meat. In fact, in most situations you would have raised it, be it a cow or pig from your “back 40,” a chicken from your suburban back yard, or a pigeon from the coop on your tenement roof. As for joining a commune, once more, only if you want to and can find one that suites you. If you just plain don’t want to, that’s fine to. Though with Permaculture, once it gets going you might need help with the harvesting. Yeah, there is a part of the Permaculture philosophy that says something about sharing. That’s sharing the excess. It’s what’s left over after you’ve feed yourself, your family for the season and sold some off to pay land taxes or pay whatever other bill you might have. Maybe even bought that really great new whatever it is you think you need. Then, if you still have left over harvest, or money you find someone who needs it. Not to Joe Blow who would just buy another hit of his favorite intoxicant, unless you want to. But to old Granny Good gal who is too crippled up to work her own garden. In fact you might work her garden for her in your spare time. As for the poor in other countries; you could help them by going there in the off season or whenever you have the time to help them adapt Permaculture to their own landscape.

            Now for #1 above: “Why do we need this, whatever the heck it is, anyway?” I’ll do a quick rundown of what Permaculture is first. At least I’ll do the best I can as I have yet to be able to get to a Permaculture Design Course. I do plan to remedy that as soon as I can.

            Permaculture is a system of designing your home, your city, your country, your life so that it all works with and within nature rather than trying to impose our will and, possibly misguided, ideas on nature. It was developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren who was one of his students. There are three ethics and eleven principles at the core of this system. They may sound simple or even simpleminded to some. But, I don’t think they really are that simple. As for an exact, simple definition of what Permaculture is, there isn’t one. Even Bill Mollison can’t and won’t give one.

THE ETHICS:  1) Care of the Earth I know. It seems obvious. But I think it needs to be enlarged upon here. I’ll use my Peanut M&M © analogy. Get a Peanut M&M candy, preferably a green one, for reasons that will soon be obvious. Carefully bite it in half, through the peanut. Now, closely examine the remaining half as you savor that tasty bit of candy. (Yes, I am addicted to the things!) Note the relative sizes of the peanut to the chocolate to the candy shell. Now look really close at that candy shell. I said use a green one remember. You will note that there are actually two colors there. A white inner line and an even thinner outside that carries the green coloring.  Now consider this in relation to our home planet. The peanut can be seen as the inner and outer core of the Earth. Okay, technically it may be a little on the large side, but hey I’m working with a piece of candy here! The chocolate is the mantel. That part of the Earth, like the core, that science can know about only because of instruments that show how the energy of earthquakes bounces around inside it. To us it is so distant as to be of little or no interest, unless we happen to be students of the Earth Sciences. And like the core, both inner and outer, it really has nothing more to give to this discussion than the fact that it exists and is approximately of the same size relative to the Earth as the chocolate is to the peanut candy. Our focus must go back to that thin candy crust. That white line of sugar coating? That is about the same relative thickness of the sea floor and the mass of the continents below about one to two miles from the surface.  Are you starting to get the BIG picture here? That even thinner green line of dyed surgery candy? That is what we Earth Science nerds would call the BIOSPHERE. It’s where life happens. It’s where we live, breath, eat, and take care of business. It stretches from the sea floor, from about a mile down on land (I think that’s the depth of our deepest mine) to that point just below where the nearest artificial satellites orbit which is where our atmosphere ends. Now, here is the really scary part, folks. This lonely little M&M is the only one we know of in the knowable Universe. There might, MIGHT, be others similar to it out there somewhere. In fact it’s quite likely given what the telescopes keep finding. But first off those places are so far away they may have developed civilizations ten or more times over since the light we see left their star! They may be similar to Earth but also might be in no way livable for us. We also know for a fact that there simply is no other M&M enough like ours here in our own solar system for us to live on as comfortably as we do here. 

            So we only have this one Green M&M, and we just bit it in half. (Need I mention: Peak Oil, soil depletion, over population and pollution among other things!)   We really need to take excellent care of what we have left.

2) Care of People and all other species   we as humans must begin to recognize the place, use, and needs of all living things while remembering that we humans, People, are also part of the process. We stand now at the place of the parent or guardian on an airplane who is told to put on their own oxygen mask before going to the aid of the person they are to care for. If you do not care for yourself you cannot care for another. We humans are part and parcel of that thin green line on the M&M I used in the analogy above. We need to care for our own personal needs and uses, the needs and uses of our family and friends and for those more distant while also taking into account the needs and uses of all the other forms of life around us. Life is a web, after all where the “waste” of one is the “food” for another. Remember the old example of the plant breathing out oxygen while we breathe it in and exhale CO2 for the plant to breath. That is only part of the massive web of life on this world.

3) Limit Consumption; Share Surplus   we need to think about what is a reasonable rate of consumption of anything and everything and then live within that limit. Yes, that means trashing the old idea’s of ever more of everything. It means rethinking the ever bigger bottom line, asking if we really need that new pair of fancy shoes or do we just want them cause Joe Bob got a new pair, and frankly, do we really NEED all of this STUFF!? Couldn’t someone else use some of this “stuff” because they don’t have any, always providing that they even want it. Some might think they have nothing to share but there is one thing that grows when shared and that is knowledge. Information is often far more powerful a thing than any weapon. Oh, yes, by limiting consumption it is also understood that population would also have to be limited, preferably by personal choice.

The Principles of Permaculture:

            I’ve read these stated several ways. These are the last ones I heard, but they are all similar. Just remember that Permaculture is basically about how to design things from the small to the large inclusive.

1)      Relative Location:  There is value in the number of beneficial relationships between structures and elements. The chicken coop is near the garden so that garden scraps can be easily tossed over the fence and ‘fertilizer’ from the coop can be carted to the garden. The compost pile should be nearby as well so the chickens can be let out onto it to harvest bugs and turn it for you.

2)      Each Element performs multiple functions: A pond on your farm or in your front yard can be used for irrigation, habitat for useful critters, fire control, thermal mass, growing food (fish and plant) or bait to catch fish with or to sell.

3)      Redundancy or every important function must be served by multiple elements: This goes straight to leaving the foolishness of big agricultures mono-cropping behind. If you have one or one hundred acres grow as many different kinds of food on them as you can. Then if one crop fails you can still eat or sell the harvest of what’s left. And by all means learn what “weeds” are edible. Put in solar, and wind energy harvesting systems but don’t give up your wood fired stove or your connection (if it still works) to the grid.

4)      Plan to use energy efficiently: That goes for all energy. Electric energy, wood energy, animal energy and your own energy should be used as efficiently as possible. Depending on the conditions, would it use less energy, make you more tired (or less healthy) to walk into town to get a loaf of bread, or drive. Only you can answer that. This also relates back to the location of things. With the chicken coop near the garden you don’t have to move the stuff from the garden you want to feed the chickens as far or the fertilizer either.

5)      Where ever possible use bio or onsite resources: Use goats or chickens to mow your lawn rather than a gas mower. Use wood from your own trees to heat your house. Produce your own electricity, harvest your own food, energy, and water as well as you can with what you have. Just remember that all information you get on or about Permaculture must be adjusted to suit your own area!

6)      Energy and resource cycling:  Use everything more than once and for different things. Don’t toss that old t-shirt in the trash. Cut it up into dust rags, and wash cloths. When those get too raged to use, compost them, then use the compost to grow food or maybe some cotton to help make another shirt.

7)      Focus on small scale, intensive systems: Start small and build from there. At a small scale you can see if a specific design will work for you and tweak it until it dose before you scale up.

8)      Accelerate succession and evolution: Watch patterns in nature [including Human nature ;) ] and figure out how to accelerate them. Weeds take over a degraded pasture.  This is good! The weeds are deep rooted and will pull up moisture and nutrients from deep down to the surface. Cut the weeds before they go to seed and after you’ve spread the annual ground cover, soil building grasses and legumes of your choice. The cover of weeds will then protect and fertilize those seeds accelerating the recovery of the soil.

9)      Value Diversity!  Use poly-culture farming practices rather than mono-culture farming. Raise all kinds of crops at the same time rather than only one kind of crop at a time. Don’t limit yourself to “Just” being a farmer. You can be a writer, a philosopher and artist, even a scientist as well. Or you can stick to the one or two things you do really well and be glad that a friend, spouse or child can do others. Also realize that diversity can come in all shapes and forms and is always of value.

10)  Use Edge: It is at the edges of things where there is the most diversity and richness of life. Places like the sea shore, the river bank, the edge of a forest or the edge of a field. The more edges you have in your “garden” the more diverse and healthy it will be. This is also true of more than gardens.

11)  Attitudinal Principles: You can often find your solution in the very problem you face. You desperately want to garden and raise your own food but you live in a dying city with empty abandoned lots, are on social security and are in a wheel chair or on a walker most of the time. So. You go out to one of those abandoned lots near your apartment and start picking up the refuse and looking for stuff you can use to turn it into a garden. The local kids get curious and you tell them your plans and dreams. More than half snicker and leave the crazy old lady. Some stay to watch the nut case. A few feel sorry for her and start to help and end up learning. With luck their parents will soon come out to see what’s going on. Some of them will decide to help and then eventually there is a garden in that old lot, with raised beds that an old lady in a wheel chair or using a walker can tend and harvest along with everyone else. Don’t laugh at this little fable. It, or something like, has been happening all over. You should also go beyond trying to eradicate a problem. Use those pesky weeds! Some may have medicinal uses and if nothing else they bring nourishment, water and minerals up from deep underground for use by you in your compost pile and provide a resting or nursery place for good guy insects. Or, as in a quote attributed to Bill Mollison: “You don’t have a snail problem; you just don’t have enough ducks to eat the snails.” Some things seen as a problem can actually be a resource. The loud mouthed know-it-all student can be the teacher’s helper and fire ants are great at cleaning out greasy food containers for reuse or recycling.

If you want to learn more about Permaculture, even if it is just to find out how to say I’m full of it, you just have to do a computer search on Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, or Permaculture. You can also go to Permies.com to learn that we Permies don’t take everything as seriously as you might expect.

            So now you at least sort of know what this Permaculture thing is. But you likely still want to know WHY? Why do we need this stuff? We need it because it works. Mollison and others, such a Fukuoka, have been doing this sort of thing, without the fancy word, for a long time now. In the case of Fukuoka at least, since before WWII! They have lived by these principles and survived. They have helped others to survive. Some of Mollisons students have gone on to turn chunks of desert green and not just in the Australian outback. One took on a few acres just south of the Dead Sea.

            Yes. The DEAD SEA. That inland, super salty Middle Eastern, super hot hell hole of a place to try to survive and make a living off the land place.  He dug swales, he harvested what little rain fell, he planted deep rooted trees, then fruit trees suitable to the region, as well as bushes, vines and anything else native he could get to survive. Thanks to the swales a lot more survived than most onlookers expected. He nurtured this little piece of Eden with the help of some of the locals for about three years, until his funding ran out. When he left it was green and lush in comparison to the land around it. 

           Then he went back about five years later and despite a bit of mismanagement by those ignorant of how to properly use it, those acres were still much greener than the surrounding land. That was FIVE YEARS LATER! After being mismanaged! This without pesticides, without oil based fertilizers or even hauling in thousands of gallons of fresh water to flush out the salt naturally occurring in that soil.

          If that can be done there just think what we could do here! That is if we are willing to open our eyes. Heck we might even be able to save civilization. Maybe not civilization as we know it today, but hopefully something better to leave to the kids.

Moans and Groans and maybe some bitching

Sometimes I wonder about me. I mean, here I am seemingly pounding my head against a brick wall trying to get the folks around me to realize they really, really, NEED Permaculture and no damn body's paying me one whit of attention. The most feed back I've gotten from a local source is "Why do you have to be so negative all the time.

NEGATIVE? I haven't been any where near negative yet!! I've just been telling it like I see it. Yep, it dose not look rosy my friends. We will all have to make changes and choices. Some of them will be difficult to hard if we make them NOW. A lot of them will be choices you will have no option about in the future.

That future bit there is part of my problem I think as, in all honesty, I can't say "You need to get this done by Nov. 5th 2012 or July 13th 2014 or anything as definite as that. Why not? Cause I don't freaking know! I just can see the train wreck coming folks. The only thing that could save us from this wreck, as far as I know, is if some hardworking scientist or some new whiz kid working in his garage comes up with a really new power source that is cheap, plentiful, doesn't hurt the environment much and can run every thing the way it's been running. Now really. What are the odds of that happening? I'd say slim to nil and I wouldn't bet on it. But then there isn't much I would be willing to bet on other than the trends we can all see happening right before our eyes.

Gasoline, fertilizer, plastics and all things petroleum are increasing in cost. Yeah, yeah, I know. Some of that increase is because of some nation over in the mid east flexing it's muscles and saying "Do what I say you unbeliever heathens! Or I'll stop the oil!!" I also know that a lot of you out there are of the opinion that instead of raising the price of your gasoline, we should just yell back: "Go to Hell you un-Christian heathen! We'll just come in there and get it!!" Sigh. To which I can only ask, "Are you really willing to trade the lives of your children or your children's children if you are grandparents, just so you can drive two blocks to get a six pack of high fructose corn syrup laden soft drinks?"

There is a deeper reason for the rise in the cost of petroleum. A very simple reason I'll try to illustrate. Let's say that a while back, about the time that guy first drilled for oil on purpose and somebody figured out what to do with the smelly black stuff, your family won, earned or somehow acquired an unbelievable amount of money. Now, lets say everyone in the family immediately retired and started spending. Maybe a few invested the money but not with any study or help from experts. Basically everyone just threw that money around and never even  bothered putting it in the bank so it would draw interest. They kept it as capital and they spent it as capital and they have been living high on it every since. Only recently one of the odder kids in the family has looked in the vault and said, "Hey, y'all! Most of the money's gone! We need to start investing what's left and not spending so much!" Then everyone else laugh's at the young fool. There's money there. There's always money there in the family vault! So he takes pictures showing that while the money was piled 12 feet high at first it's only 5 and a half feet high now and suggests that maybe they all should learn how to work and live a little less extravagantly. But the Heads of the family just smile and say, "Junior! Haven't you kept up with the times! There's this wonderful new invention called a CREDIT CARD! It's not like we still have to spend OUR MONEY!" And Jr wanders away muttering, "That doesn't sound quite right somehow."

The moral of that little tale above is that oil is the capital we have all been depending on for a long time now. On top of that, it also is NOT sitting nice and easily available in a vault somewhere. It's down in the ground. WAY down in the ground hiding inside rock formations. It has never been in "pools" down there. Yeah, old wells are being reopened now. Wells that the oil companies gave up on several years ago. You know why they gave up on them? Because it cost to much to pull any more oil out. The oil had stopped flowing out of it'd own accord and now they had to suck really hard to get it out. Imagine a malt or shake you have to let set and melt before you can get it to come up the straw. Those tar sands up in Canada? I remember them being mentioned while I was taking Earth Science in College. A fellow student asked why we weren't using them. The Prof. answered "Way to hard to get the oil out. To wasteful too." Dose that tell you anything?

Now you may begin to see why the cost of petroleum is going up. "So we move to coal!" you shrug and say.
"Hah!" I reply. To get Gasoline out of Coal you'd have to processes it all kinds of ways which would not be nice for the environment. "So What?" you ask. My reply, "If  you think we have a lot of kids sick with asthma now wait til we start burning more and more coal. Especially the high sulfur content stuff. So we are back to the kids again. Do you want to trade the health and your kids or grand kids ability to breath freely just so you can drive that two blocks for the high fructose corn syrup stuffed fruit juice they want for breakfast? Or even for the electricity to watch that TV or play that computer game?

Then there is this odd little fact. What do you think all those big machines that are used to mine coal run on? Yep. Petroleum products! Is that a big "Gotcha!" or what?

I am not saying this stuff to panic anyone or even frighten them. I do think you should start to worry. Worry enough to at least start moving your house toward passive solar heating and cooling. Go ahead and get the solar panels and small wind turbines for active solar energy if you can afford them, just remember the process that creates them and gets them to you relies heavily on fossil fuels! So get the best  and longest lasting you can afford.

Setting up your house to gather it's own water from what falls on it's roof and your yard to survive from what falls on it should be your next worry along with scrapping that expensive and time consuming expanse of fake grass land. Put in gardens. Stuff  your front and back yards full of food plants, flowers, berries, nuts and even the odd small animal like chickens, rabbits, ducks, and such. Set up your own little ecosystem that will support you and your family with food, shelter, and dare I suggest it, entertainment. (Go to Google or some other search engine and check out the ideas in Urban Permaculture.)

Of course you can't do this alone. It takes a neighbors to really survive and be happy. The world dose not have to end up like that "Survivor Island" show. I wouldn't want to live in that kind of world where it's all about only one surviving to the end. The ideal is to see how many we can get to not just survive, but flourish!

And that's why I don't believe I'm being the least bit negative. Yeah. the world as we know it right now is rapidly headed for the crapper. I see nothing wrong with that, just as I see nothing wrong with using something called humanure in compost that will eventually be used on fruit and nut trees and other selected crops. What's this humanure? As it happens it's what you get out of a composting toilet, a crapper if you will.

I firmly believe that if we take some simple actions now, learn some possibly hard lessons now, that when the brown smelly stuff finely hits the fan we will be able to gather it up, compost it and turn it into a healthy productive garden we can live on for the rest of our lives. In deed, if we plan properly now we can start living the kind of healthy, earth friendly, emotionally, and mentally active lives I think we humans are meant to live.
Yeah, there will still be friction. But we can learn to use that to learn and grow, to improve and include new ideas.

So no, I'm not being negative! Not at all. Perhaps I'm just not being clear. There are big scary changes coming at some vague point in the future. It could happen ten or more years from now or it could happen next year. Some of it is already happening. But, oh my! What a wonderful adventure it will be!! Especially if we all prepare for what is coming.

Then there is this odd but quite possible alternative. We get prepared for the stuff to hit the fan and - nothing happens! Yet there we still sit. In our healthy, organic, continuously producing gardens, working not nearly as hard as you'd expect leaving us with lots of time for friends, family, reading, thinking or even working at some outside job we actually enjoy doing. Gee, wouldn't that be just a terrible outcome.

For idea's on what to do to prepare you can find a lot of Permaculture sites on line. My favorite is permies.com. Check it out. It's full of all kinds of information.

Goats and stuff

Guess it's about time for an update on the goat project. I started with three goats about two years ago. They were, I am told, half Nubian and Pygmy goat. All three were black with a few white and brown markings. There was the fully grown doe and her two female offspring. When the younger 'girls' were old enough I agreed to host a pretty fellow who was mostly brown with black and white markings who wouldn't stay in his owners pen. He stayed with my girls for a couple of weeks and then started trying to wander again so I assumed he'd done his duty and asked the owner to come get him.

After the usual interval I was presented with six more goats. Only only four were female. Those I kept, selling the males. I also traded off the oldest female goat and one of the young males for another pair of goats. A male and female goat that were all white. I eventually discovered that the male, at least, was one of those infamous 'fainting' goats. My house cat got out and startled him and he just fell over. Very odd.

In any event, I kept him separate until about 3 months ago when I returned him to the pen with all 7 of my does. The over all plan for now is to sell all the kids and re breed after the does have dried off. I have not trained the girls to stand for milking and I have no patience for cleaning, or keeping clean, a milking parlor.

Now, after a very busy and trying week that included loosing one kid despite buying all kinds of things I now don't need, loosing half a nights sleep two nights in a row, and helping one doe during a breach birth I can report that I have twelve goat kids. . . I think. The little buggers keep scampering around so it's hard to tell.

Now if you managed to keep track of the numbers above you should have figured out that I had 7 does, so you are likely asking: Only twelve? Well, it breaks down this way. Oreo had two, Baby had two, Star had two, Rose had one that didn't survive, Brown 2 had one (the breach) Brown 1 had three (that Rose stole from her as she is more dominant than Brown 1) and Cookie had two. At least that's how I think it is, but it's hard to tell as I did have other things to do and all of them except for Brown 2 refused to kid while I was watching.

This is a learning process for me. Last time they kidded I had made the mistake of  not taking the billy (ram, whatever) out before they started having the kids. I lost one kid then because he kept them moving so much the little thing got trampled. (I think. Once more I wasn't there when it happened so could do nothing to prevent it.) This time I took the Grand Wizard out and put him into exile in a separate pen. Next time I will have to have one of the stalls in what is now a horse barn set up to put the girls in with several smaller stalls for each doe. The idea being to keep them together but still somehow separate so there will be no stealing of other's kids and I will know for sure which kids go with which doe.

But that's a lot of work and I need to get some materials together for it besides. Meanwhile I need to
catch up on my sleep.

As for the naughty kid stealing Rose, if I can get a stall fixed up I plan to move every one around so that I can lock her up with at least one of the triplets leaving the other two with Brown 1. Unless of course Brown one has already started drying up. Sigh. You have to make so many decisions when you are a goat lady. Maybe I should just sell them all off and get chickens. I like eggs. I know I like to eat chicken (might even be able to kill one never tried.) But I've never tried goat meat and if I don't like cow milk I doubt I'll like goat milk.

Growing food without irrigation! Even during a drought!

Sound like a blurb from one of those "Buy this and Get RICH in just ONE DAY!!!" ads doesn't it. Only difference this is true and you don't have to buy a thing! Really. I'm going to be trying it, that's for sure. I've already got some tiny little mini versions snaking across my front yard. They may grow as more material presents itself.

Out back in the pasture however, I'll need some help. Big muscle type help or weaker muscles that owns some power equipment and won't mind doing something that will likely seem odd to them.

What is this Miracle that could let me grow food, even during a drought, without irrigation?  It's got a weird German name that means hill or mound or some such. It's spelled Hugelkulture and you can find out a lot about it at http://richsoil.com/hugelkultur/
That's where I found out about it.

All you need are some old, preferably half rotten logs, tree limbs or firewood so old it's no longer usable and a place on your land where you want a garden. You can dig down a little or just start right there with out even skinning back the sod. If you do skin back the sod save it and plop it grass side down on top of your newly built raised bed when you are done.

Next  you build that raised bed by pilling all that old wood, rotted and otherwise, within the outline of where you want your garden.Stuff it in there. Add in fallen leaves, sticks and other woody type things then cover it all up with soil and maybe even a little compost or manure if you want to give it a kick start. Then you plant some fast growing plants that grow tight soil holding roots on top of that to hold the soil in place. (It's a mound by now, preferably a fairly tall one.) There are more details of course. Just go to richsoil.com or permies.com and this fellow Paul Wheaton will tell  you just about everything you need to know about Hugelkulture, and iron skillets, and rocket stoves as well as a little bit about Permaculture. Real good stuff.

Man, I can almost taste the tomatoes already! I'd give more details on this but really Paul does it so much better than I and he's even got pictures showing how it's done. So just go to those sites I told you about, now. Go on! Shoo!!