Well, we lost a chick. We don't know why, so obviously we were more than a little worried about disease and so on, but so far two more days have passed without incident and I'm feeling hopeful. Certainly there's nothing particularly unusual about one out of 27 chicks dying. It was one of the phoenixes, though, and they are a very beautiful bird, so that's too bad. On the up side, I was pleased to note that while I was worried and a little upset by the loss, I wasn't at all what you'd call sad about it. No "oh, the poor little baby!" It was alive, and now it is not, and the other chicks clearly don't give a damn, so that's pretty much that. Which is obviously reassuring if you're in the process of raising birds for meat.
I think that this is actually a pretty big advantage of just diving right in and getting a lot of chicks like we did. It would be difficult, to say the least, to make pets out of 27 chickens. I know that another woman who got six female chicks just for laying at the same time as we got our chicks has already named them and clearly regards them as pets. I'm not saying there's a dang thing wrong with that, but it was not our intention at all, and so far we're obviously on track. Killing them--that I expect to be difficult to do, emotionally. The actual killing, I mean. But I don't expect to have any lingering emotional trouble afterwards, and no guilt unless we botch it and one suffers.
I know that a vegetarian would doubt me on this, but I have thought about this a great deal, and I'm quite confident in my decisions on this point. I intend to let me chickens live as their nature suggests, as safe and "happy" as a chicken can be, and then to kill them in such a way that they won't ever know what hit them. I have read many reports that it is entirely possible to do so. The other chickens won't miss the goners (the dead chick, in fact, was trampled into the litter by its fellows, who regarded it much as they would any rock in their path), and frankly, I just don't see the advantage to growing old for a chicken. Chickens don't make plans for the future and they don't dream of raising a family (indeed, most modern chickens are not broody and would never "raise a family" given all the time and opportunity in the world). They have a choice between living a while and then dying quickly and painlessly, or living longer and dying of disease or injury. They live day to day, and I really can't grok how it could matter to them how many days they live.
Actually, I have to say that most vegan comments on chicken and egg eating just seem poorly informed to me. That is, they're well-versed in the horrors of factory farming, but apparently haven't gotten past that. A lot of them don't seem to grasp, for example, that cows readily make more milk than their calves need, and that being milked is not inherently unpleasant at all (a fact I can personally testify to, having been milked mere minutes ago). They're not clear on whether chickens lay eggs without fertilization or other outside encouragement (they do). They attribute emotions to animals that, in most cases, are simply not there. They don't seem to understand that well-managed livestock can perfectly well be content and provide useful product at the same time. The honey bee is a great example--beekeeping, ideally, consists pretty much entirely of giving the honey bees a dream setup, protecting them from negative outside influences, and, with a little careful management, harvesting the plentiful surplus they create. The bees are of course completely incapable of emotion, but properly managed, they are unstressed and free to live as their nature dictates. Personally, I think that this sort of livestock management is completely ethical and that animal products are a valuable part of a health diet and a sustainable society.
I don't eat factory farmed foods--I'm quite in agreement with the vegetarians and vegans on that. But I really think that the leap from "no factory farming" to "no animal products" is usually logically immature and/or ignorant, and when it's well-thought-out, it's just based on basic premises about the rights and nature of livestock animals that I just plain don't agree with. For example, the oft-heard complaint about the "exploitation" of animals just really goes over my head. For one thing, we created chickens. They are what they are because of literally millenia of human tinkering. Same goes for the modern dairy cow, the sheep, etc. Some animals are closer to their wild roots than others, but the livestock animal that could successfully revert to the wild is a rare beast. If we stop raising them, they will stop existing. That's not hypothetical--it's already happened to a lot of breeds. Frankly, I don't think the chickens care either way, but I, for one, think that would be a great pity. I also don't think that the chickens care or indeed even know whether we benefit from their lives. For another thing, I think it's pretty self-evident that human beings have evolved to consume animal protein, and I believe that it makes us healthier to do so, although obviously opinion varies on this subject. Healthier or no, people have been consuming animal products since before we were "people", as far as anyone can tell, so whether you think god or nature made us the way we are, I'd think that should carry some weight.
I personally feel that by eating only ethically-raised meat, I'm delivering a double-whammy to the factory farms--not only am I depriving them of revenue directly by not buying from them, but I'm supporting and encouraging their competition. or, in the case of chickens, I guess I actually am their competition. So much the better.
I do feel that it's important that people face these issues head-on, each person for themselves, and make decisions based on complete information. If I thought I couldn't kill a chicken, I'd have to stop eating them--it would definitely be unethical to just pass my moral burden to someone else out of sight. So far, though, I think that my theorizing is correct, and I'm happy to recieve confirmation, however small, in the form of my unfortunate dead chick. Put another way, I love squirrels--they're a totem of sorts for me, and I call myself Squrrl online sometimes. But I have sat right next to a hawk messily devouring a dead squirrel and had a conversation, and had no problems with it--both hawk and squirrel were living (so to speak) in accordance with their natures. I think all animals have the right to do so, including humans.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Feeling optimistic
Not about the state of affairs at large, let me hasten to add. That looks more terrible by the day. But I am feeling optimistic about our little homestead and our family preparations.
To sum up: The garden is on schedule and in good shape--just harvested my first kohlrabi bulb last night and enjoyed it in salad. The front herb garden is doing well, and I'm excited at the prospect of selecting and learning to use new culinary herbs now that I have space. Our chicks are now 4 1/2 weeks old, and all 27 are still alive and apparently healthy. Our food stores could use some work, but they're a whole lot better than nothing. Our medical stores are, I think, pretty durn good. Our durable goods could, no doubt, use re-upping here and there, but are on the whole pretty well-thought-out and taken care of. The chicken coop is really only one good weekend away from done...I can't wait to paint it; it'll be SO darn cute.
Now I'm daydreaming...I hope the chickens will keep the mid-yard area under control without denuding it completely. I think we've given them enough space that I have cause to be hopeful. Be pretty awesome to have that much less to mow...between digging up the back yard and digging up the front yard, that'd leave not very much at all to mow.
I wish we'd kept closer track of expenses with the chickens, but honestly, I could probably go back and record everything we've bought. A great deal of stuff has been scavenged, from the brooder box to almost all of the chicken coop materials (indeed, the only exceptions I can think of are some hardware cloth to cover the droppings pit and a single sheet of plywood). Between that, free ranging, and at least attempting to grow some food for them, I think we can at least keep the chickens at the break-even point, assuming the cost of free-range eggs and meat (which is fair, since that's all we buy).
This may seem funny, but I daydream Jacob's shop, too, even though I personally spend hardly any time there and don't plan to. I do love a nice clean, organized shop, and that's just the sort of shop Jacob would run if he had half a chance. He's very tidy-minded. I love the potentiality of it all, and the smells of oil and lingering coal smoke, and the wonderful Jacob-ness of it. I love to think that by the end of summer he'll finally have a shop he can be proud of, after all the careful thought and hard work he's put into it. And it's not just idle hobbying, either...that shop is a potentially very important source of future income and productivity for us.
I'm dreaming of jars full of beautiful dry heirloom beans, rare-breed chickens in the yard, dinners flavored with new and wonderful herbs, and that wonderful glow of security and accomplishment...
To sum up: The garden is on schedule and in good shape--just harvested my first kohlrabi bulb last night and enjoyed it in salad. The front herb garden is doing well, and I'm excited at the prospect of selecting and learning to use new culinary herbs now that I have space. Our chicks are now 4 1/2 weeks old, and all 27 are still alive and apparently healthy. Our food stores could use some work, but they're a whole lot better than nothing. Our medical stores are, I think, pretty durn good. Our durable goods could, no doubt, use re-upping here and there, but are on the whole pretty well-thought-out and taken care of. The chicken coop is really only one good weekend away from done...I can't wait to paint it; it'll be SO darn cute.
Now I'm daydreaming...I hope the chickens will keep the mid-yard area under control without denuding it completely. I think we've given them enough space that I have cause to be hopeful. Be pretty awesome to have that much less to mow...between digging up the back yard and digging up the front yard, that'd leave not very much at all to mow.
I wish we'd kept closer track of expenses with the chickens, but honestly, I could probably go back and record everything we've bought. A great deal of stuff has been scavenged, from the brooder box to almost all of the chicken coop materials (indeed, the only exceptions I can think of are some hardware cloth to cover the droppings pit and a single sheet of plywood). Between that, free ranging, and at least attempting to grow some food for them, I think we can at least keep the chickens at the break-even point, assuming the cost of free-range eggs and meat (which is fair, since that's all we buy).
This may seem funny, but I daydream Jacob's shop, too, even though I personally spend hardly any time there and don't plan to. I do love a nice clean, organized shop, and that's just the sort of shop Jacob would run if he had half a chance. He's very tidy-minded. I love the potentiality of it all, and the smells of oil and lingering coal smoke, and the wonderful Jacob-ness of it. I love to think that by the end of summer he'll finally have a shop he can be proud of, after all the careful thought and hard work he's put into it. And it's not just idle hobbying, either...that shop is a potentially very important source of future income and productivity for us.
I'm dreaming of jars full of beautiful dry heirloom beans, rare-breed chickens in the yard, dinners flavored with new and wonderful herbs, and that wonderful glow of security and accomplishment...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Ludicrous speed
This spring, as Jacob and I hoe away in the garden, we've discussed an idea that his mother gave me. We were whinging on about all of the rocks we've had to chisel out of the ground in order to make a viable garden, and she commented that she was proud of us; that we were breaking ground just like our pioneer ancestors. First of all, obviously that's very flattering, but it got me thinking, too.
Let us compare two different basic types of people who "live off the land". There are peasants, and there are pioneers. This isn't meant as a comprehensive list, just the categories that are relevant to the moment.
Peasants are sort of the ultimate in sustainability--that's what they do. They sustain. They keep going. What level of existence they sustain at, what quality of life, etc., varies by time and place, but either way, it's a generally stable state. Peasants live a basically cyclical life, with the same fashions, the same holidays, the same foods and the same tasks, for potentially hundreds of years at a go, disturbed only by outside forces. Ambition is not a common trait, nor is it necessarily considered a virtue. All you have to do is maintain. Work the fields your grandfather worked. Wear the clothes suited to your station. It may not be an easy life, but by definition it should never exceed that which is physically sustainable over the long term.
Pioneers are pretty much the complete opposite. They're making history, and they know it. They are cut off, sometimes almost completely, from the known and the familiar. They are creating something new in the world, and often they have to seriously bust their butts just to survive. When you couldn't start the trip 'til May because of mud, traveled for two months, and now must secure food, water, and shelter before winter, you push yourself as hard as you physically can, and worry about paying the piper later.
Part of the reason that the work Jacob and I (and others like us) are doing is so punishing is that we are, in essence, pioneers. Obviously we're not exactly living in a soddy and burning cow pats for heat, but we are breaking new ground, figuratively and literally. We are creating our personal culture and values anew, creating fertile soil where, believe me, there was none, and pushing ourselves as hard as we can ahead of the threat of scarcity and adversity.
Of course, we are not cut off from the known and familiar, and its lure is a constant mental drag on our efforts. We are children of our time; we like steak and Bruce Willis and vegging out playing video games. We have to constantly remind ourselves that these feelings and the culture we grew up in are likely not to serve us well in the future we forsee, and it makes all that frenetic pioneer-speed hoeing bite just a little harder when we're tired and the baby is crying to go back inside.
So now we joke about pioneer-speed and peasant-speed. Some days, especially when the sun is brutal, peasant speed is all we can manage, and the hoe rises and falls and the feet tread to a steady, deliberate beat that I can imagine singing to, if only I were in better shape. Other days, though, we move as if a demon snapped at our heels, and collapse at the end of the day nursing aching backs and icing strained joints.
This weekend, we went to plaid. I really don't know how we kept going. We harvested and froze the last of the bolting bok choy. We planted cucumbers, potatoes, zucchini, watermelons, winter squash, and spaghetti squash. We dug up a large chunk of the front yard, worked it smooth, and planted four types of basil, sage, parsley, rosemary, and french tarragon (there's still space for more, I just don't know what yet). We turned and began to hoe a huge chunk of the far-back yard, preparatory to planting buckwheat and millet (for the chickens). We weeded and prepared a roughly, I dunno, 15x20 chunk between the parking lot and chicken coop and planted it with millet, rapeseed, and mustard to provide a nice nutritive patch of greens in the chicken yard. We picked maybe 5 quarts of strawberries. We potted leftover pepper and tomato seedlings. We weed-whacked a large portion of the overgrown back yard. We completely stripped the grass off of a strip 2 feet wide and maybe 60 feet long along the fence preparatory to planting beans there. We hilled up a row of potatoes. We changed out the chicks' litter. We went to the farmer's market, the grocery store, and the feed-n-seed. And we had the kid with us the whole time. And mind, this was a two-day weekend, no Friday off.
This weekend, I can honestly say that we did everything we could. I am very proud of us.
Let us compare two different basic types of people who "live off the land". There are peasants, and there are pioneers. This isn't meant as a comprehensive list, just the categories that are relevant to the moment.
Peasants are sort of the ultimate in sustainability--that's what they do. They sustain. They keep going. What level of existence they sustain at, what quality of life, etc., varies by time and place, but either way, it's a generally stable state. Peasants live a basically cyclical life, with the same fashions, the same holidays, the same foods and the same tasks, for potentially hundreds of years at a go, disturbed only by outside forces. Ambition is not a common trait, nor is it necessarily considered a virtue. All you have to do is maintain. Work the fields your grandfather worked. Wear the clothes suited to your station. It may not be an easy life, but by definition it should never exceed that which is physically sustainable over the long term.
Pioneers are pretty much the complete opposite. They're making history, and they know it. They are cut off, sometimes almost completely, from the known and the familiar. They are creating something new in the world, and often they have to seriously bust their butts just to survive. When you couldn't start the trip 'til May because of mud, traveled for two months, and now must secure food, water, and shelter before winter, you push yourself as hard as you physically can, and worry about paying the piper later.
Part of the reason that the work Jacob and I (and others like us) are doing is so punishing is that we are, in essence, pioneers. Obviously we're not exactly living in a soddy and burning cow pats for heat, but we are breaking new ground, figuratively and literally. We are creating our personal culture and values anew, creating fertile soil where, believe me, there was none, and pushing ourselves as hard as we can ahead of the threat of scarcity and adversity.
Of course, we are not cut off from the known and familiar, and its lure is a constant mental drag on our efforts. We are children of our time; we like steak and Bruce Willis and vegging out playing video games. We have to constantly remind ourselves that these feelings and the culture we grew up in are likely not to serve us well in the future we forsee, and it makes all that frenetic pioneer-speed hoeing bite just a little harder when we're tired and the baby is crying to go back inside.
So now we joke about pioneer-speed and peasant-speed. Some days, especially when the sun is brutal, peasant speed is all we can manage, and the hoe rises and falls and the feet tread to a steady, deliberate beat that I can imagine singing to, if only I were in better shape. Other days, though, we move as if a demon snapped at our heels, and collapse at the end of the day nursing aching backs and icing strained joints.
This weekend, we went to plaid. I really don't know how we kept going. We harvested and froze the last of the bolting bok choy. We planted cucumbers, potatoes, zucchini, watermelons, winter squash, and spaghetti squash. We dug up a large chunk of the front yard, worked it smooth, and planted four types of basil, sage, parsley, rosemary, and french tarragon (there's still space for more, I just don't know what yet). We turned and began to hoe a huge chunk of the far-back yard, preparatory to planting buckwheat and millet (for the chickens). We weeded and prepared a roughly, I dunno, 15x20 chunk between the parking lot and chicken coop and planted it with millet, rapeseed, and mustard to provide a nice nutritive patch of greens in the chicken yard. We picked maybe 5 quarts of strawberries. We potted leftover pepper and tomato seedlings. We weed-whacked a large portion of the overgrown back yard. We completely stripped the grass off of a strip 2 feet wide and maybe 60 feet long along the fence preparatory to planting beans there. We hilled up a row of potatoes. We changed out the chicks' litter. We went to the farmer's market, the grocery store, and the feed-n-seed. And we had the kid with us the whole time. And mind, this was a two-day weekend, no Friday off.
This weekend, I can honestly say that we did everything we could. I am very proud of us.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Update at last
Hello...been a loooong time. I really, really wish I got to write more. It does me so much good.
Sigh...well, we have the chickens, in the living room dusting the place up. They're 3 1/2 weeks old now, no longer cute fluff balls, now half-feathered-out and distinctly untidy looking. The coop is making progress, not done. Soon, though, all the "spring" stuff will be planted in the garden (should already be, but at least we're close), and the focus will shift more to the coop. I feel comfortable with where we are, anyway. The things I'm not comfortable with are how little I can get done when I'm alone with Evelyn and what a pit the house is. "Spring cleaning"--are you kidding? It sounds great, but I'm too busy breaking my back in the garden.
Right now I'm in a good mood--nothing like a project yielding results to start a decent morning. On Saturday, I and a couple of others set up a booth at the Maryland Heartland Sustainable Living Fair for our little sustainable living group. Last night I took the signup sheet we put out and sent out invitations to join our Yahoo group...and this morning there are already three new members! Now I'm planning strawberry picking for this weekend, trying to get people to come out and share a picnic, and hoping to goodness they don't run out of berries before we get there. And that's entirely possible, since several of us are involved in the farmer's market, so we can't very well go first thing Saturday. Argh. Well, there's always next weekend.
So, as Evelyn's miraculously still sleeping, I've been catching up on the news. Always a depressing activity, and at the moment, it always makes me once again want to yank Jacob's 401K, take the penalties, and put the money to work. I have no faith in savings in the current climate, and that is saying something, because Jacob and I are both very play-it-straight, pinch-penny, savings kinda people. But with the global economy disassociating themselves from the dollar as fast as they can, and the gov't printing money as fast as it can, forclosures still going crazy and predicted to hit another "wave" this summer, etc., etc., etc., I am thinking I can come up with better uses for our money than watching it burn. We still need to replace the gutters and a piece of siding that blew off now over a year ago, we'd love to blow in some more insulation, a home energy audit seems like a great idea, and I for one would like to see a small solar array, if only to keep the chest freezer and maybe one or two other things running. That freezer is a really valuable part of our food storage system.
Basic status right now is that in some ways I'm really proud of us--picture perfect garden, decent food stores, good collection of tools, coop's coming along nicely, and in general we've done a truly monumental amount of work all while raising a very high-spirited baby into a remarkably thoughtful, intelligent, and loving toddler. In other ways, I am completely overwhelmed by the work still to do and dismayed by how much trouble I have with, say, housekeeping, or keeping in touch with people. And, of course, by how much of my time Evelyn still demands (and demands is exactly the right term; you should hear her) and how little able I seem to be able to do anything about that, like, say, do a few dishes without her screaming and trying to push me away from the sink.
Meanwhile, it's fairly clear that the world I grew up in is crumbling around my ears. People naturally expect "the end of the world as we know it" to be some big, dramatic event, but the fact is, history usually takes place over the course of months and years, and when you sum them up history-book style, the crises of the past and coming months and years would probably look pretty dramatic. So of course I feel pressured to be the best I can, to do as much as I can and then some, and when I inevitably fall short, it's hard on the self-confidence. And, of course, frightening. It's all so very frightening.
Sigh...well, we have the chickens, in the living room dusting the place up. They're 3 1/2 weeks old now, no longer cute fluff balls, now half-feathered-out and distinctly untidy looking. The coop is making progress, not done. Soon, though, all the "spring" stuff will be planted in the garden (should already be, but at least we're close), and the focus will shift more to the coop. I feel comfortable with where we are, anyway. The things I'm not comfortable with are how little I can get done when I'm alone with Evelyn and what a pit the house is. "Spring cleaning"--are you kidding? It sounds great, but I'm too busy breaking my back in the garden.
Right now I'm in a good mood--nothing like a project yielding results to start a decent morning. On Saturday, I and a couple of others set up a booth at the Maryland Heartland Sustainable Living Fair for our little sustainable living group. Last night I took the signup sheet we put out and sent out invitations to join our Yahoo group...and this morning there are already three new members! Now I'm planning strawberry picking for this weekend, trying to get people to come out and share a picnic, and hoping to goodness they don't run out of berries before we get there. And that's entirely possible, since several of us are involved in the farmer's market, so we can't very well go first thing Saturday. Argh. Well, there's always next weekend.
So, as Evelyn's miraculously still sleeping, I've been catching up on the news. Always a depressing activity, and at the moment, it always makes me once again want to yank Jacob's 401K, take the penalties, and put the money to work. I have no faith in savings in the current climate, and that is saying something, because Jacob and I are both very play-it-straight, pinch-penny, savings kinda people. But with the global economy disassociating themselves from the dollar as fast as they can, and the gov't printing money as fast as it can, forclosures still going crazy and predicted to hit another "wave" this summer, etc., etc., etc., I am thinking I can come up with better uses for our money than watching it burn. We still need to replace the gutters and a piece of siding that blew off now over a year ago, we'd love to blow in some more insulation, a home energy audit seems like a great idea, and I for one would like to see a small solar array, if only to keep the chest freezer and maybe one or two other things running. That freezer is a really valuable part of our food storage system.
Basic status right now is that in some ways I'm really proud of us--picture perfect garden, decent food stores, good collection of tools, coop's coming along nicely, and in general we've done a truly monumental amount of work all while raising a very high-spirited baby into a remarkably thoughtful, intelligent, and loving toddler. In other ways, I am completely overwhelmed by the work still to do and dismayed by how much trouble I have with, say, housekeeping, or keeping in touch with people. And, of course, by how much of my time Evelyn still demands (and demands is exactly the right term; you should hear her) and how little able I seem to be able to do anything about that, like, say, do a few dishes without her screaming and trying to push me away from the sink.
Meanwhile, it's fairly clear that the world I grew up in is crumbling around my ears. People naturally expect "the end of the world as we know it" to be some big, dramatic event, but the fact is, history usually takes place over the course of months and years, and when you sum them up history-book style, the crises of the past and coming months and years would probably look pretty dramatic. So of course I feel pressured to be the best I can, to do as much as I can and then some, and when I inevitably fall short, it's hard on the self-confidence. And, of course, frightening. It's all so very frightening.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Cognitive dissonance
Am I happy or miserable or terrified? I really do not know. Consider:
We ordered chickens last night, after talking about it for two and a half years. The coop is still in need of some serious work, and the fence is only partly done, but, eh, we have two months before they're needed. Momentary euphoria.
Jacob worked his butt off at his blacksmithing class and came home with a very creditable dragon head to show for it.
It rained all day and I couldn't get squat done in the garden, which is about two weeks behind schedule right now.
My neighbor started seed for the one pepper I wanted most and didn't start seed for (lemon drop), and will share. Whoohooo, yellow hot sauce here we come!
My daughter is pretty much over the vomiting/diarrhea tummy bug she got from the neighbors.
My husband is just getting it with an agonising vengeance, and has been in and out of the bathroom for going on two hours now, and since he can't even face the thought of peppermint tea, I really have dick to offer. Wish I could nurse him like I did the baby. I don't even know what he could possibly be throwing up at this point, but let me just say, it sounds positively epic.
Jacob did the taxes (yeah, we procrastinated all hell outta that) and we'll get a decent return, so, something in the bank again after dwindling our savings down to zip over the Christmas season.
The Obamas are planting a garden on the White House front lawn, and gardening, knitting, and chickens are all gaining wildly in popularity. And Freecycling and Craigslist and consignment sales. How awesome is all that?
Soul-crushingly horrifying prospects for the immediate and not-so-immediate future economically, socially, environmentally...yeah. Four horsemen, here we come! The complete collapse of society is rapidly moving from seeming totally impossible even to those of us who know better to seeming all but inescapable. Go us.
But, on the other hand, chickens...
We ordered chickens last night, after talking about it for two and a half years. The coop is still in need of some serious work, and the fence is only partly done, but, eh, we have two months before they're needed. Momentary euphoria.
Jacob worked his butt off at his blacksmithing class and came home with a very creditable dragon head to show for it.
It rained all day and I couldn't get squat done in the garden, which is about two weeks behind schedule right now.
My neighbor started seed for the one pepper I wanted most and didn't start seed for (lemon drop), and will share. Whoohooo, yellow hot sauce here we come!
My daughter is pretty much over the vomiting/diarrhea tummy bug she got from the neighbors.
My husband is just getting it with an agonising vengeance, and has been in and out of the bathroom for going on two hours now, and since he can't even face the thought of peppermint tea, I really have dick to offer. Wish I could nurse him like I did the baby. I don't even know what he could possibly be throwing up at this point, but let me just say, it sounds positively epic.
Jacob did the taxes (yeah, we procrastinated all hell outta that) and we'll get a decent return, so, something in the bank again after dwindling our savings down to zip over the Christmas season.
The Obamas are planting a garden on the White House front lawn, and gardening, knitting, and chickens are all gaining wildly in popularity. And Freecycling and Craigslist and consignment sales. How awesome is all that?
Soul-crushingly horrifying prospects for the immediate and not-so-immediate future economically, socially, environmentally...yeah. Four horsemen, here we come! The complete collapse of society is rapidly moving from seeming totally impossible even to those of us who know better to seeming all but inescapable. Go us.
But, on the other hand, chickens...
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Hopeful January
Well, the pump is installed, and it works great. Glee! Joy! As if that weren't enough joy, Jacob and Mamma also fixed the library and living room doors so that they actually close and installed my coat rack after two years of it sitting in a corner of the bathroom. I am so inspired by my house's new awesomeness that I actually picked up the office floor. Incredible, no?
So, Obama's in the White House now. I am very hopeful. I'll tell you what would be awesome, would be if he actually listened to the people who are petitioning him to put an organic food garden on the White House front lawn. He read Michael Pollan...now's his chance to show he really got it. And hell, what'd it cost him? He's got gardeners. If he did that, I would be very, very hopeful. Of course, if gardening gained ground as the new national fad as it would from such a thing, then there really would be a seed shortage. Well, so much better that than a food shortage. Just have to be sure to start saving seed this year!
Actually, I don't seem to have much to say.
So, Obama's in the White House now. I am very hopeful. I'll tell you what would be awesome, would be if he actually listened to the people who are petitioning him to put an organic food garden on the White House front lawn. He read Michael Pollan...now's his chance to show he really got it. And hell, what'd it cost him? He's got gardeners. If he did that, I would be very, very hopeful. Of course, if gardening gained ground as the new national fad as it would from such a thing, then there really would be a seed shortage. Well, so much better that than a food shortage. Just have to be sure to start saving seed this year!
Actually, I don't seem to have much to say.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Shiny!!
Yup, my husband rocks. For Christmas this year, he made the calls, he did the thinking, he made the measurements and calculations, and he got me the best goddamn hand deep well pump on the market, so far as he or I can tell. $1800 for a solid stainless pump from Bison. By far the most either of us has ever spent on a gift, and he's still reeling, but I consider it's well worth it. How utterly absurd to be cut off from one's own water in a power outage or blackout! And if you're going to spend the money, do it right. There were, of course, other, cheaper pumps, but Jacob didn't feel that they were cheaper enough to really compensate for the loss in quality, so he bit the bullet. That's a philosophy the two of us share, obviously, but even so, $1800 takes a bit of getting used to. He's allowed to be a bit shocky.
Me, I'm amused, because I was utterly delighted and astonished and, well, so relieved to have him take all the worry and figuring off my hands and just DO it, and the pump head, it really is beautiful...every weld is smooth as butter, and the whole thing has a lovely burnished gloss...but of course most people would not find a well pump to be a romantic or exciting gift. So gushing about my wonderful present is a little funny, as most people greet the whole thing with something akin to incomprehension. For example, a dear friends' parents, who have just finished spending who knows how much on another big screen HD TV, think that spending $1800 on a well pump when, uhhhh, it already comes out of the tap?, to be thoroughly odd. And who can blame them? I am preparing for something that we all hope will never happen. I'm just not in the least willing to gamble that blackouts and the like will never happen, and not having non-electric access to one's water strikes me as a pretty big gamble.
Anyway, there it is. I can't wait to get it installed, gleaming subtly in the center of my herb garden.
Me, I'm amused, because I was utterly delighted and astonished and, well, so relieved to have him take all the worry and figuring off my hands and just DO it, and the pump head, it really is beautiful...every weld is smooth as butter, and the whole thing has a lovely burnished gloss...but of course most people would not find a well pump to be a romantic or exciting gift. So gushing about my wonderful present is a little funny, as most people greet the whole thing with something akin to incomprehension. For example, a dear friends' parents, who have just finished spending who knows how much on another big screen HD TV, think that spending $1800 on a well pump when, uhhhh, it already comes out of the tap?, to be thoroughly odd. And who can blame them? I am preparing for something that we all hope will never happen. I'm just not in the least willing to gamble that blackouts and the like will never happen, and not having non-electric access to one's water strikes me as a pretty big gamble.
Anyway, there it is. I can't wait to get it installed, gleaming subtly in the center of my herb garden.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Two steps forward...
Most of next year's seeds are on their way! I dithered over whether to buy seeds early, because it seemed sort of...alarmist, but then I realized that there was no reason on earth not to, and it made a lot of sense. First off, it's the same dang seed whether I order it now or in the spring; it's not like I'll get fresher seed in the spring. And second, well, next year's garden seeds are a critical part of my food storage plan, so why on earth would I leave them to chance? As an added bonus, I'll know exactly what I have to work with all winter, which, one would like to think, should assist in the planning process. One would think. Besides, it's absolutely true that a lot of seed companies saw hugely increased demand last year, and I'd expect this year to see even more, so even if things proceed more or less as normal, it's entirely feasible that the slowpokes won't get everything they want next spring.
On a similar note, my delightfully cracked neighbor went on an heirloom bean kick and just bought multiple packs of maybe 20 varieties of heirloom beans. She wants to grow them to use in dry soup mixes to sell at the farmer's market, which is a fine idea, but she bought enough seed to go into business as an heirloom bean farmer, and we're reasonably sure that she has basically no idea what she's getting into. Where we're going to plant them all is a great mystery, but once those beans mature, boy, we'll be safe from starvation, anyhow. I love love love beans, and really can't justify the expense of heirloom beans at anything more than the rare treat level, so I'm as happy as a clam...which is good, because I'll have to be pretty involved to make sure this whole process actually happens in an effective manner. The world is full of wonderfully unique and special people, my neighbor not least among them.
I can hear Jacob out back shredding our brush pile and the (other) neighbors', which we'll use as mulch. I feel rather badly about destroying these brush-pile habitats right at the beginning of cold weather, but our yards just aren't so big that we can afford to leave parts of them wild. Meanwhile, we can certainly use the mulch. When Evelyn's done napping, I'll go out to join him, and we'll work on planting garlic and finishing the kill-mulching of the garden expansion. Jacob could, of course, be working on those things now, but through a logic all his own, he is usually able to look at my to-do list, agree that it's an excellent list, and then spend the entire weekend working on other things. Worthy things, no doubt, but I guess we're prioritizing somewhat differently. It's like my mother-in-law, who once complained that if she asked my father-in-law to help clean the house in preparation for company, he was liable to decide that the most important thing he could do would be to clean the light switches. But if I go out, then we (or at least whichever one of us isn't chasing the baby) will reliably work on the garlic and garden beds...which, apparently, are "my" projects now or something. Which is unkind and discouraging, because we both know perfectly well that "my" projects never get done, if they even get started, largely due to things like naptime and teething.
We're also in discussions over whether to get a solar oven, or, really, which one to get. Of course, November is kinda a stupid time to be buying a solar oven, since in order to cook dinner in one, I'd have to start at noon and eat before Jacob got home for the night (well after dark). On the other hand, of course, a solar oven is a nigh-miraculous device which might be a great boon in the future, and the fear, as always, is that come spring we won't be able to buy one. Besides, one could always pre-cook and bake bread. You know, if one did bake bread, theoretically. The two major choices seem to be the Tulsi sun oven (advantages--power backup and a broad enough chamber to make pizza) and the Global sun oven (advantages--seems to be the better actual solar oven, easier to get hot, slightly deeper chamber for pots).
Progress is being made, however, on the health front. Because, having grown up below the poverty line, let me tell you: Being poor and healthy really isn't that bad. Being poor and unhealthy is misery. With that in mind, I've prioritized getting our health needs taken care of. Jacob and I have both had dentist's appointments, and he has another to get some work done (I, in defiance of all standards of dental hygiene, needed no work, just to stop clenching my jaw all the time). I have an optometrist's appointment later this month to get new glasses for the first time since middle school. And, most excitingly, next Tuesday I have an appointment with the naturopath who has worked such wonders on my mother. Damn, I want the vitality she has these days. I would like to be actually healthy for the first time in my life. I'm hoping that next Tuesday will be the beginning of my journey to health, and I am REALLLLLY excited. I consider taking care of all outstanding health problems to be a really critical part of disaster/poverty preparedness. Being unhealthy in any way reduces your ability to cope with circumstances and poisons everything you have to do.
I just hope that we can get Mamma's cancer cleared completely before TSHTF, if it does. She continues to progress incredibly, and my happiness over that is rendered very bittersweet by thinking of all the suffering of people who could have benefitted from these same therapies if only our medical system weren't so fucking in love with itself. She's got a rare form of cancer, considered highly intractable and untreatable via chemotherapy--surgery and radiation were the only route offered by the conventional doctors. And here it's in full retreat, shrunk to less than a third of its initial size, using only lifestyle changes, homeopathics, herbs, and a couple high-quality supplements. And not only is the cancer going away, but Mamma is radiantly healthy, more so than I ever remember her. How many cancer patients can say that? If she'd listened to the allopathic doctors, she'd be very ill now, permanently so, and her chances of beating the cancer would still be very slim statistically. If she hadn't been willing to try an alternative, I might be losing my mother right now. Please, if anyone you know has cancer, encourage them to look up a naturopathic oncologist. I'm not saying they're all as amazing as the one we got, but it could only be to the good.
Anyway...so, yeah. The pantry made progress today, and I should actually be able to put things away in my new cabinets now, which is SUPER exciting. We ordered a LOT of buckets and gamma seals for food storage purposes, and I mean a lot--24 buckets and 32 seals (we ordered bulk for the best prices). We'll keep about a dozen for ourselves and sell the rest at cost to whoever wants them. I have a lead on getting bulk wheat, finally. The kill-mulching of the garden expansion is maybe half done all told, but about 1/2 of what's left can be done over time. Progress.
On the other hand, I stuck my neck out and tried to tell my mother-in-law about Peak Oil to get her to prepare a little, and she smiled amusedly the whole time and told me that I didn't need to worry, she didn't think Mad Max or Waterworld or whatever was going to happen too soon. Gag, gag, gag... Oh well. I expressed myself cogently and calmly. I don't feel that I failed in my duty in any way. I sent her a link to Chris Martenson's Crash Course, and hopefully she'll watch it, if just to be polite. And if she chooses to ignore my warning, then hopefully we'll be able to help them later on. I am running out of patience with people who can actually hear a warning and ignore it at this point, though, since we're no longer warning about future events so much as trying to point out just how bad current events could get. Its happening NOW, people, and the evidence is thick on the ground.
Okay, enough babble for now. I have work to do.
On a similar note, my delightfully cracked neighbor went on an heirloom bean kick and just bought multiple packs of maybe 20 varieties of heirloom beans. She wants to grow them to use in dry soup mixes to sell at the farmer's market, which is a fine idea, but she bought enough seed to go into business as an heirloom bean farmer, and we're reasonably sure that she has basically no idea what she's getting into. Where we're going to plant them all is a great mystery, but once those beans mature, boy, we'll be safe from starvation, anyhow. I love love love beans, and really can't justify the expense of heirloom beans at anything more than the rare treat level, so I'm as happy as a clam...which is good, because I'll have to be pretty involved to make sure this whole process actually happens in an effective manner. The world is full of wonderfully unique and special people, my neighbor not least among them.
I can hear Jacob out back shredding our brush pile and the (other) neighbors', which we'll use as mulch. I feel rather badly about destroying these brush-pile habitats right at the beginning of cold weather, but our yards just aren't so big that we can afford to leave parts of them wild. Meanwhile, we can certainly use the mulch. When Evelyn's done napping, I'll go out to join him, and we'll work on planting garlic and finishing the kill-mulching of the garden expansion. Jacob could, of course, be working on those things now, but through a logic all his own, he is usually able to look at my to-do list, agree that it's an excellent list, and then spend the entire weekend working on other things. Worthy things, no doubt, but I guess we're prioritizing somewhat differently. It's like my mother-in-law, who once complained that if she asked my father-in-law to help clean the house in preparation for company, he was liable to decide that the most important thing he could do would be to clean the light switches. But if I go out, then we (or at least whichever one of us isn't chasing the baby) will reliably work on the garlic and garden beds...which, apparently, are "my" projects now or something. Which is unkind and discouraging, because we both know perfectly well that "my" projects never get done, if they even get started, largely due to things like naptime and teething.
We're also in discussions over whether to get a solar oven, or, really, which one to get. Of course, November is kinda a stupid time to be buying a solar oven, since in order to cook dinner in one, I'd have to start at noon and eat before Jacob got home for the night (well after dark). On the other hand, of course, a solar oven is a nigh-miraculous device which might be a great boon in the future, and the fear, as always, is that come spring we won't be able to buy one. Besides, one could always pre-cook and bake bread. You know, if one did bake bread, theoretically. The two major choices seem to be the Tulsi sun oven (advantages--power backup and a broad enough chamber to make pizza) and the Global sun oven (advantages--seems to be the better actual solar oven, easier to get hot, slightly deeper chamber for pots).
Progress is being made, however, on the health front. Because, having grown up below the poverty line, let me tell you: Being poor and healthy really isn't that bad. Being poor and unhealthy is misery. With that in mind, I've prioritized getting our health needs taken care of. Jacob and I have both had dentist's appointments, and he has another to get some work done (I, in defiance of all standards of dental hygiene, needed no work, just to stop clenching my jaw all the time). I have an optometrist's appointment later this month to get new glasses for the first time since middle school. And, most excitingly, next Tuesday I have an appointment with the naturopath who has worked such wonders on my mother. Damn, I want the vitality she has these days. I would like to be actually healthy for the first time in my life. I'm hoping that next Tuesday will be the beginning of my journey to health, and I am REALLLLLY excited. I consider taking care of all outstanding health problems to be a really critical part of disaster/poverty preparedness. Being unhealthy in any way reduces your ability to cope with circumstances and poisons everything you have to do.
I just hope that we can get Mamma's cancer cleared completely before TSHTF, if it does. She continues to progress incredibly, and my happiness over that is rendered very bittersweet by thinking of all the suffering of people who could have benefitted from these same therapies if only our medical system weren't so fucking in love with itself. She's got a rare form of cancer, considered highly intractable and untreatable via chemotherapy--surgery and radiation were the only route offered by the conventional doctors. And here it's in full retreat, shrunk to less than a third of its initial size, using only lifestyle changes, homeopathics, herbs, and a couple high-quality supplements. And not only is the cancer going away, but Mamma is radiantly healthy, more so than I ever remember her. How many cancer patients can say that? If she'd listened to the allopathic doctors, she'd be very ill now, permanently so, and her chances of beating the cancer would still be very slim statistically. If she hadn't been willing to try an alternative, I might be losing my mother right now. Please, if anyone you know has cancer, encourage them to look up a naturopathic oncologist. I'm not saying they're all as amazing as the one we got, but it could only be to the good.
Anyway...so, yeah. The pantry made progress today, and I should actually be able to put things away in my new cabinets now, which is SUPER exciting. We ordered a LOT of buckets and gamma seals for food storage purposes, and I mean a lot--24 buckets and 32 seals (we ordered bulk for the best prices). We'll keep about a dozen for ourselves and sell the rest at cost to whoever wants them. I have a lead on getting bulk wheat, finally. The kill-mulching of the garden expansion is maybe half done all told, but about 1/2 of what's left can be done over time. Progress.
On the other hand, I stuck my neck out and tried to tell my mother-in-law about Peak Oil to get her to prepare a little, and she smiled amusedly the whole time and told me that I didn't need to worry, she didn't think Mad Max or Waterworld or whatever was going to happen too soon. Gag, gag, gag... Oh well. I expressed myself cogently and calmly. I don't feel that I failed in my duty in any way. I sent her a link to Chris Martenson's Crash Course, and hopefully she'll watch it, if just to be polite. And if she chooses to ignore my warning, then hopefully we'll be able to help them later on. I am running out of patience with people who can actually hear a warning and ignore it at this point, though, since we're no longer warning about future events so much as trying to point out just how bad current events could get. Its happening NOW, people, and the evidence is thick on the ground.
Okay, enough babble for now. I have work to do.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
If you're not outraged...
...you're not paying attention. This classic bumper-sticker nugget has long been a bone of contention between my mother and me...I think it's quite accurate, and she--well, I suppose she thinks it's accurate too, at base, since her argument is essentially that, since she can't function in a constant state of outrage, she's rather just not pay attention.
I can see her point. Right now I'm definitely pushing my threshold when it comes to functionality...it's gone well past outrage into sickened horror, really. Probably, since I already don't eat fast food or industrial meat, I could safely have forgone the additional emotional burden of reading Fast Food Nation right now. Too bad Jacob gleaned it out of a box at the Thursday night auction and now I'm stuck reading it, sucked in and tangled up as it unveils new highs of awful.
Of course, I would have had plenty on my mind without worrying about schoolchildren eating the shit of diseased cattle processed by exploited illiterate illegal aliens and whatnot. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and a certain amount of (hopefully benign) parental neglect, I am finally beginning to feel like I actually understand the basics of the US economy and the banking system. Unfortunately, it's even more criminal, short-sighted, moronic, and, well, fucked than I suspected it was, only now I have the joy of understanding the mechanisms by which I and my loved ones in perpetuity have been fucked up the ass. My understanding has not yet, however, reached a level where I actually feel like I know what, if anything, I can do to protect myself and said loved ones from the clusterfuck, and so I feel obligated to persevere.
Because, you know, it wasn't enough that my mom has cancer, I haven't slept for more than four hours in a row (and usually much less) in well over a year, half my house is completely disarranged due to remodeling, I haven't been able to breathe through my nose at night in over a week, there's nearly a bushel worth of apples rapidly decomposing on the kitchen counter, and the check engine light just came on in the Subaru AGAIN (we just spent over a grand getting the other car back up to snuff, mind).
The hilarious part of all this is that I'm so used to being, as I put it to Mamma, "Six feet under and sinking" that at the moment my mood is predominantly hopeful--the remodeling didn't make enough progress for things to get cleaner, but it did make progress, the cancer is retreating rapidly without any of the standard, harmful allopathic "therapies", Evelyn's sleep habits are once again shifting from ludicrously awful to merely bad, and, most importantly for a dork like me, I'M LEARNING. Oh boy, upgrade me to "six feet under and rising"!
I really like learning, and I particularly like learning that promises to actually improve my life. I get really, really pissy when my access to said learning is blocked, which has been one of my biggest problems as a parent--reduced time means a reduction in time I can spend reading and dicking around on the internet learning new things. Last night was a really pissy time. Then Evelyn went to sleep and miraculously let me get up, and I proceeded to spend the next two hours watching this video series, which I highly recommend you also watch. I'm still working through it, mostly because of my utterly assy cable internet.
So, to sum up, watch the videos, including the video I linked to a few posts back, and read the news with a critical eye, and if you start to get completely dysfunctional thinking about a world full of malnourished children, old people freezing to death in their own homes because they couldn't afford to heat, families rendered homeless by foreclosure, etc., etc., then do what I do: remind yourself that, failing all else, it sure isn't boring.
I can see her point. Right now I'm definitely pushing my threshold when it comes to functionality...it's gone well past outrage into sickened horror, really. Probably, since I already don't eat fast food or industrial meat, I could safely have forgone the additional emotional burden of reading Fast Food Nation right now. Too bad Jacob gleaned it out of a box at the Thursday night auction and now I'm stuck reading it, sucked in and tangled up as it unveils new highs of awful.
Of course, I would have had plenty on my mind without worrying about schoolchildren eating the shit of diseased cattle processed by exploited illiterate illegal aliens and whatnot. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and a certain amount of (hopefully benign) parental neglect, I am finally beginning to feel like I actually understand the basics of the US economy and the banking system. Unfortunately, it's even more criminal, short-sighted, moronic, and, well, fucked than I suspected it was, only now I have the joy of understanding the mechanisms by which I and my loved ones in perpetuity have been fucked up the ass. My understanding has not yet, however, reached a level where I actually feel like I know what, if anything, I can do to protect myself and said loved ones from the clusterfuck, and so I feel obligated to persevere.
Because, you know, it wasn't enough that my mom has cancer, I haven't slept for more than four hours in a row (and usually much less) in well over a year, half my house is completely disarranged due to remodeling, I haven't been able to breathe through my nose at night in over a week, there's nearly a bushel worth of apples rapidly decomposing on the kitchen counter, and the check engine light just came on in the Subaru AGAIN (we just spent over a grand getting the other car back up to snuff, mind).
The hilarious part of all this is that I'm so used to being, as I put it to Mamma, "Six feet under and sinking" that at the moment my mood is predominantly hopeful--the remodeling didn't make enough progress for things to get cleaner, but it did make progress, the cancer is retreating rapidly without any of the standard, harmful allopathic "therapies", Evelyn's sleep habits are once again shifting from ludicrously awful to merely bad, and, most importantly for a dork like me, I'M LEARNING. Oh boy, upgrade me to "six feet under and rising"!
I really like learning, and I particularly like learning that promises to actually improve my life. I get really, really pissy when my access to said learning is blocked, which has been one of my biggest problems as a parent--reduced time means a reduction in time I can spend reading and dicking around on the internet learning new things. Last night was a really pissy time. Then Evelyn went to sleep and miraculously let me get up, and I proceeded to spend the next two hours watching this video series, which I highly recommend you also watch. I'm still working through it, mostly because of my utterly assy cable internet.
So, to sum up, watch the videos, including the video I linked to a few posts back, and read the news with a critical eye, and if you start to get completely dysfunctional thinking about a world full of malnourished children, old people freezing to death in their own homes because they couldn't afford to heat, families rendered homeless by foreclosure, etc., etc., then do what I do: remind yourself that, failing all else, it sure isn't boring.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Yay fall
God, I love fall weather. And fall food. And that giddy pre-holiday, busting out the cool-weather wardrobe, starting to think about cocoa feeling.
Yesterday we started a 3-cabbage batch of plain red cabbage sauerkraut. We still have more cabbage though (by the time we're done, god only knows how much sauerkraut we'll have made, but we love it, and other people turn out to love it too when it's real and crisp and not canned or chemicalized), and I want to try some of the stuff from my deeelightful new book Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz. So the next batch will have dill weed and celery seed. Not caraway, though. After 25 years of disliking rye bread, last year I finally figured out that I like rye just fine, thanks, but I really don't like caraway. Which makes it one of the very, very few flavors I don't like...usually I dislike a food based on texture, and very little even at that.
So anyway, yay sauerkraut. And also I wanna make kimchee, so on Thursday at the swap I'll try and get a couple heads of bok choy off of a friend who's an organic farmer. Need ginger, though. I want to try freezing ginger...I hear it works well, and I love ginger, but generally don't use it often enough to keep fresh on hand, which has been very frustrating. And also also I wanna make some other fermented veggie, though I vascillate between a turnip and carrot mix vs. a beet and carrot mix. The beets sound lovely, but--and I know this is a bit silly--they'd dye the carrots red too and then the mix wouldn't be as pretty. Also, the author said that a batch of fermented turnips he made was one of his more popular experiments.
Obviously, this book has me...haha...all in a ferment. It's a really wonderful book...exciting, practical, readable, personable, and with a huge heart. What other book would start a section on winemaking with a recipe for "hooch", guest-written by a guy who spent 18 years in prison making booze on the sly? (Hint: it involves fruit cocktail and trash bags). Sandor wanted to make it clear that you don't need fancy equipment.
Also fall-ey is the fact that we've got fun stuff to go to every weekend of October...harvest fests big and small, mostly. I've actually lost track. Dang, do we ever need a calendar. I really, really meant us to have one this year, but we never actually bought one, so my list never got transfered and never made it past June...though I tell ya what, even what I did was enormously helpful and got referred to often. I just can't find a calendar that's everything I want. Which, considering the huge number of calendars out there, is pretty deeply lame.
Jacob magically made a drawer in the kitchen out of what used to be a fake drawer and some hardware he collected off the side of the road. Genius! So now we have a drawer for our maglite, LED headlamp, and batteries (and matches and candles once I get them in there). Happiness. Also, now that they're put together enough, I have confirmed that all of our gallon and half-gallon jars fit upright in the bottom drawers of the new cabinets. That revelation got an enthusiastic round of the Halleluia Chorus from me, much to Evelyn's amusement.
Eeee, I feel positively chirpy today. I swear I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in summer. I love fall so much. On the downside, chirpy doesn't make for coherent reading. So I'm'a gonna stop now.
Yesterday we started a 3-cabbage batch of plain red cabbage sauerkraut. We still have more cabbage though (by the time we're done, god only knows how much sauerkraut we'll have made, but we love it, and other people turn out to love it too when it's real and crisp and not canned or chemicalized), and I want to try some of the stuff from my deeelightful new book Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz. So the next batch will have dill weed and celery seed. Not caraway, though. After 25 years of disliking rye bread, last year I finally figured out that I like rye just fine, thanks, but I really don't like caraway. Which makes it one of the very, very few flavors I don't like...usually I dislike a food based on texture, and very little even at that.
So anyway, yay sauerkraut. And also I wanna make kimchee, so on Thursday at the swap I'll try and get a couple heads of bok choy off of a friend who's an organic farmer. Need ginger, though. I want to try freezing ginger...I hear it works well, and I love ginger, but generally don't use it often enough to keep fresh on hand, which has been very frustrating. And also also I wanna make some other fermented veggie, though I vascillate between a turnip and carrot mix vs. a beet and carrot mix. The beets sound lovely, but--and I know this is a bit silly--they'd dye the carrots red too and then the mix wouldn't be as pretty. Also, the author said that a batch of fermented turnips he made was one of his more popular experiments.
Obviously, this book has me...haha...all in a ferment. It's a really wonderful book...exciting, practical, readable, personable, and with a huge heart. What other book would start a section on winemaking with a recipe for "hooch", guest-written by a guy who spent 18 years in prison making booze on the sly? (Hint: it involves fruit cocktail and trash bags). Sandor wanted to make it clear that you don't need fancy equipment.
Also fall-ey is the fact that we've got fun stuff to go to every weekend of October...harvest fests big and small, mostly. I've actually lost track. Dang, do we ever need a calendar. I really, really meant us to have one this year, but we never actually bought one, so my list never got transfered and never made it past June...though I tell ya what, even what I did was enormously helpful and got referred to often. I just can't find a calendar that's everything I want. Which, considering the huge number of calendars out there, is pretty deeply lame.
Jacob magically made a drawer in the kitchen out of what used to be a fake drawer and some hardware he collected off the side of the road. Genius! So now we have a drawer for our maglite, LED headlamp, and batteries (and matches and candles once I get them in there). Happiness. Also, now that they're put together enough, I have confirmed that all of our gallon and half-gallon jars fit upright in the bottom drawers of the new cabinets. That revelation got an enthusiastic round of the Halleluia Chorus from me, much to Evelyn's amusement.
Eeee, I feel positively chirpy today. I swear I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in summer. I love fall so much. On the downside, chirpy doesn't make for coherent reading. So I'm'a gonna stop now.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Putting food by--how much?
Several days ago I had a useful thought about food storage and preservation, and I'm finally getting around to putting it down here. I'm sure it's not revolutionary or anything, but I hadn't heard it expressly articulated anywhere else, and it's really helping me think about things, so here it is.
Fruits and vegetables constitute the bulk of what we must put away in summer for winter, at least in most households. Most of us tend just to buy our dry goods, and dairy and eggs are more of a year-round proposition, at least with modern, relatively affluent farming practices that allow for, say, winter grain feeding and lighted chicken coops. So this thought is mostly about fruits and veggies, though the same thinking could of course be applied to other stuff if it were relevant to you. (If, for example, you were dependent on your own dairy or eggs--you lucky dog you--then of course there are ways of preserving milk and eggs).
The USDA (leaving aside any doubts we might have about the general validity of their dietary guidelines, let's assume this one's reasonable enough) recommends 3-5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. I think it's reasonable to say that a seasonal diet would look more like five (or more) servings of fruits and vegetables during the growing season, and three servings the rest of the time. Simply put, then, for every day of summer, you need to average roughly 3 servings of fruits or vegetables per person in the household going into winter storage.
Another useful way of thinking about it would be to multiply 3 by the number of household members by seven to get your weekly average. Or whatever seems appropriate. For example, our household: if I calculate Evelyn in for one adult serving per day for now, and three each for Jacob and me, then in a given summer week we need to put up 49 servings of fruits and/or vegetables.
At first, that struck me as pretty intimidating, but later, as I sliced dozens and dozens of tomatoes for drying, it didn't seem so bad. After all, a lot of preserving projects work best on the large scale anyway, and a serving is not as big as we tend to imagine it. That round of tomatoes probably accounted for nearly our week's total. A quart of apple sauce is, say, five or six servings, and last year we put up twelve quarts: 72 servings. Sauerkraut is another project where you end up with a lot pretty quickly, and for relatively little effort, and of course this sort of thing is where root cellaring really shines--think of the food value:time ratio of properly storing a pumpkin or a few pounds of carrots.
Obviously there's a lot to be said for estimating on the high side--there are going to be losses both small and large (a few nutrients destroyed by heat or time here, a squash rotted before you caught it there), and you never know when you're going to end up feeding more than the usual number of people. One of the joys of a well-stocked pantry has always been being able to feed guests without worrying. And you could just as well estimate for 4 servings per day or whatever, depending on how you prefer to eat. It's just a simple, obvious way of thinking about the question of how much is enough.
Fruits and vegetables constitute the bulk of what we must put away in summer for winter, at least in most households. Most of us tend just to buy our dry goods, and dairy and eggs are more of a year-round proposition, at least with modern, relatively affluent farming practices that allow for, say, winter grain feeding and lighted chicken coops. So this thought is mostly about fruits and veggies, though the same thinking could of course be applied to other stuff if it were relevant to you. (If, for example, you were dependent on your own dairy or eggs--you lucky dog you--then of course there are ways of preserving milk and eggs).
The USDA (leaving aside any doubts we might have about the general validity of their dietary guidelines, let's assume this one's reasonable enough) recommends 3-5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. I think it's reasonable to say that a seasonal diet would look more like five (or more) servings of fruits and vegetables during the growing season, and three servings the rest of the time. Simply put, then, for every day of summer, you need to average roughly 3 servings of fruits or vegetables per person in the household going into winter storage.
Another useful way of thinking about it would be to multiply 3 by the number of household members by seven to get your weekly average. Or whatever seems appropriate. For example, our household: if I calculate Evelyn in for one adult serving per day for now, and three each for Jacob and me, then in a given summer week we need to put up 49 servings of fruits and/or vegetables.
At first, that struck me as pretty intimidating, but later, as I sliced dozens and dozens of tomatoes for drying, it didn't seem so bad. After all, a lot of preserving projects work best on the large scale anyway, and a serving is not as big as we tend to imagine it. That round of tomatoes probably accounted for nearly our week's total. A quart of apple sauce is, say, five or six servings, and last year we put up twelve quarts: 72 servings. Sauerkraut is another project where you end up with a lot pretty quickly, and for relatively little effort, and of course this sort of thing is where root cellaring really shines--think of the food value:time ratio of properly storing a pumpkin or a few pounds of carrots.
Obviously there's a lot to be said for estimating on the high side--there are going to be losses both small and large (a few nutrients destroyed by heat or time here, a squash rotted before you caught it there), and you never know when you're going to end up feeding more than the usual number of people. One of the joys of a well-stocked pantry has always been being able to feed guests without worrying. And you could just as well estimate for 4 servings per day or whatever, depending on how you prefer to eat. It's just a simple, obvious way of thinking about the question of how much is enough.
Monday, September 22, 2008
The good news and the weird news
Well, I had my first dentist's appointment in six years or so this morning. I've been experiencing some pretty serious, quality-of-life-reducing jaw pain for quite a while now, and since at first some of it seemed to originate in a spot where I was once told I had a "soft spot" developing, I had assumed that I was looking at some pretty advanced tooth decay.
So the good news is no tooth decay. The weird news is that instead I have a disorder. Namely, bruxism, more commonly known as tooth grinding.
The first two people who heard the news said, "Well, that's good right? No root canals!" Fortunately for me, Jacob and I share a brain (I have been known to refer to "our head"), so he understands. Sure, it's nice to be able to say that I still haven't got a single cavity in my head despite, by conventional standards, abominable dental hygiene. But, well, when we thought it was cavities, I could just be knocked out for a while and someone would FIX IT. Now, though, the problem is just as serious as ever, but, not to be punny or anything, it's in my head. And it's going to be a journey to fix it, and not just a doctor's appointment.
The diagnosis completely blindsided me--I would not have suspected it at all. Now that I've read and thought a little more, I do have a few thoughts, though. First off, I'm pretty sure that I don't actually grind my teeth at all, not even in sleep...I'm pretty sure I'm clenching them, as I've caught myself doing it several times since the appointment and it felt pretty--well, normal. Which leads to my second observation, which is that I'm not at all convinced that the problem is entirely or even primarily nocturnal--in which case the dentist's recommended treatment (the standard treatment) of a night-guard won't really solve it. I also feel like I need to know more, to see to what extent the temporal-mandibular joint might be involved/affected, since I have had ear problems wrapped up with this too.
So far, what this really makes me want to do is hurry up and get an appointment with my mom's naturopath, which I wanted to anyway. I really trust her, and I feel like she could give me a better picture of the full range of options and treatments, plus helping me with other problems that I would really like to resolve.
Basically, I've been trying to clear up my health and get things straight because, well, for one there are obvious quality of life issues. Also, though, my next pregnancy can't afford to be like my first one, not with a toddler running around. There were entire months of my first pregnancy when I found sitting up exhausting and barely had the energy to read--and mind you, I had no actual medical problems. And last, but not least, there is nothing more worth investing in than one's health when it comes to preparing for an uncertain future. I cannot afford to be less than my best if things come to a crisis, and currently I'm a whole lot short of "my best", whatever that may be--I'm confident that I've never approached it even in childhood, actually, since I've always had pretty poor health.
Well, now is the time to end that. Evelyn needs a capable, awake mother and Jacob needs a functional mate. I need to be able to do things without the additional burdens of pain and malaise.
It's just frustrating, because I don't know how much I can realistically do to reduce stress...our life is about as simple as it could reasonably be, we don't take on a lot of commitments, and there's just not really ANYTHING that I feel could beneficially be cut from our schedule. The very few things we do go to outside the home are really important for our mental/emotional wellbeing, just by virtue of their being so rare. Evelyn is what she is and I can't change that any faster than it's changing, and that's the primary source of stress in my life now. And, well, the world is a scary place right now and I really don't think that not thinking about that is a safe or productive answer.
Sigh.
So the good news is no tooth decay. The weird news is that instead I have a disorder. Namely, bruxism, more commonly known as tooth grinding.
The first two people who heard the news said, "Well, that's good right? No root canals!" Fortunately for me, Jacob and I share a brain (I have been known to refer to "our head"), so he understands. Sure, it's nice to be able to say that I still haven't got a single cavity in my head despite, by conventional standards, abominable dental hygiene. But, well, when we thought it was cavities, I could just be knocked out for a while and someone would FIX IT. Now, though, the problem is just as serious as ever, but, not to be punny or anything, it's in my head. And it's going to be a journey to fix it, and not just a doctor's appointment.
The diagnosis completely blindsided me--I would not have suspected it at all. Now that I've read and thought a little more, I do have a few thoughts, though. First off, I'm pretty sure that I don't actually grind my teeth at all, not even in sleep...I'm pretty sure I'm clenching them, as I've caught myself doing it several times since the appointment and it felt pretty--well, normal. Which leads to my second observation, which is that I'm not at all convinced that the problem is entirely or even primarily nocturnal--in which case the dentist's recommended treatment (the standard treatment) of a night-guard won't really solve it. I also feel like I need to know more, to see to what extent the temporal-mandibular joint might be involved/affected, since I have had ear problems wrapped up with this too.
So far, what this really makes me want to do is hurry up and get an appointment with my mom's naturopath, which I wanted to anyway. I really trust her, and I feel like she could give me a better picture of the full range of options and treatments, plus helping me with other problems that I would really like to resolve.
Basically, I've been trying to clear up my health and get things straight because, well, for one there are obvious quality of life issues. Also, though, my next pregnancy can't afford to be like my first one, not with a toddler running around. There were entire months of my first pregnancy when I found sitting up exhausting and barely had the energy to read--and mind you, I had no actual medical problems. And last, but not least, there is nothing more worth investing in than one's health when it comes to preparing for an uncertain future. I cannot afford to be less than my best if things come to a crisis, and currently I'm a whole lot short of "my best", whatever that may be--I'm confident that I've never approached it even in childhood, actually, since I've always had pretty poor health.
Well, now is the time to end that. Evelyn needs a capable, awake mother and Jacob needs a functional mate. I need to be able to do things without the additional burdens of pain and malaise.
It's just frustrating, because I don't know how much I can realistically do to reduce stress...our life is about as simple as it could reasonably be, we don't take on a lot of commitments, and there's just not really ANYTHING that I feel could beneficially be cut from our schedule. The very few things we do go to outside the home are really important for our mental/emotional wellbeing, just by virtue of their being so rare. Evelyn is what she is and I can't change that any faster than it's changing, and that's the primary source of stress in my life now. And, well, the world is a scary place right now and I really don't think that not thinking about that is a safe or productive answer.
Sigh.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Criticism of Montessori
My stomach hurts and I can't sleep, so I might as well sit here and work out my Montessori gripes. Sitting in the dark in the middle of the night seems, somehow, like an appropriate time and place to do this, since as far as I can tell, critiquing Montessori is somehow taboo--internet searches on the subject yield pretty much two things--complaints about specific schools and articles about this one professor in the early days of Montessori who for some reason took major exception to the philosophy. Which is funny, because I feel like there's a lot more to say than that.
First of all, I want to make it clear that overall, I like Montessori. In my experience and judgment, there is no better system generally available to the American public for the intellectual development of children. It certainly beats the ever-livin' pants off public school, and public schools would be/have been improved in direct proportion to the number of Montessori concepts they employ. I went to part-day Montessori preschool for one session (my mother worked there as a janitor in order to afford it), and didn't learn anything new 'til second grade. One of my dear friends is a Montessori teacher.
All that said, I do have some significant complaints.
First of all, all I've read about Montessori attitudes and expectations in infancy is seriously flawed. Some examples:
The next complaint I see as unfortunate, because I really think that modern Montessori is a privilege of the affluent, and after all it started out with inner city kids. Hand-crafted hardwood shelving units made in the US are wonderful, no doubt, but even we cannot afford to spend $300 on a single set of shelves, much less most of the world. Entire play areas, even rooms, set aside specifically for the child I disagree with in principle as well, because I feel like they create segregation, but they are also an impossibility for many apartment dwellers or people in small (read, reasonable-sized) houses. The focus on beautiful, carefully made toys and materials is laudable in some ways, but even for those of us who can afford an $80 shape sorter, we have to ask if this is actually a wise allocation of money in a world where millions of people don't even have safe drinking water. So no, I don't think that Montessori principles are accesible only to the affluent, but I do think that in practice, the world of Montessori has become populated almost entirely by people with significant disposable income. Certainly the tuition for Montessori schools, however much they might be a reasonable reflection of the schools' costs, is far beyond the reach of many if not most.
And lastly, damn, is it just me or is Montessori anal!? We must be calm, neat, tidy, organized, polite! Teach your child not to splash! Don't let the toys get spread all over the floor! Children love order! Well, yes, some children do have a fierce need for ritual and predictability...and some don't...but I think we should own our own needs and realize that, very often, kids don't give a damn if the house is a mess, and it's really our problem. Anyway, yeah, wow is Montessori ever anal. Like a lot.
Okay, it's no longer the middle of the night and I probably have better things to do than bitch. I would love to hear other people's thoughts, though, if anyone reading has experience with Montessori.
First of all, I want to make it clear that overall, I like Montessori. In my experience and judgment, there is no better system generally available to the American public for the intellectual development of children. It certainly beats the ever-livin' pants off public school, and public schools would be/have been improved in direct proportion to the number of Montessori concepts they employ. I went to part-day Montessori preschool for one session (my mother worked there as a janitor in order to afford it), and didn't learn anything new 'til second grade. One of my dear friends is a Montessori teacher.
All that said, I do have some significant complaints.
First of all, all I've read about Montessori attitudes and expectations in infancy is seriously flawed. Some examples:
- Infants sleep best on their own, and are capable from birth of regulating themselves through the stages of sleep. No and no. This does not reflect either the most current research (infants need practice regulating their physical state during sleep transitions and can benefit significantly, even life-savingly from the presence of an attuned adult) or my personal experience ("Are you serious? AHAHAHAHAHAHA!")
- Babies should be weaned from the breast at around one year of age, or they'll get an oral fixation. Uhmmm, NO. The scientific research shows that breastfeeding is beneficial for as long as it continues, and the anthropological research suggests that natural weaning age for humans is somewhere between three and five years old. As for whatever Freudian bullshit an oral fixation is supposed to be, it can't be too crippling, seeing as how the vast majority of humans ever have apparently had one. Personally, I can say that Evelyn now nurses at least as much as she ever did, it's a lifesaver when she's sick or teething, and it really takes a load off my mind to know that whatever solid food she eats, she's still getting good nutrition so long as I'm eating decently.
- You should put a young baby on a rug or fleece on the floor so that s/he can watch what the rest of the family is doing and be interested. Yeah, this isn't going to happen with a lot of babies. Certainly not mine. She would not be put down, not even when asleep. My clear understanding is that this is quite common. I suppose this idea is intended as an alternative to sequestering the baby in a crib, though, in which case it's certainly an improvement. What would be far better, even for the easy-going baby who would lie calmly on the floor, would be to wear the baby so that s/he could actually be at the level of the action and in physical contact with a caregiver. The many benefits of babywearing are demonstrable both anthropologically and scientifically (as well as, believe me, experientially), but Montessori philosophy also disapproves of "too much" babywearing on the grounds that it limits physical exploration and hinders gross motor skills. The evidence suggests that this is totally unfounded, and that, indeed, babies who are worn extensively actually gain gross motor skills more easily and sometimes earlier than babies who are not.
- Children are naturally ready for and interested in potty training between a year and 15 months or so. This one's funny, because it's one of the more frequently complained about tenets of Montessori, and usually people are complaining that it's just unrealistically early. I'm going to complain that it's just like the conventional opinion, only earlier. The Montessori attitude is that neurological and physical development doesn't allow for the voluntary control of the sphincters and other muscles involved until a year, whereas standard doctrine puts it at around 18 months. I have firsthand experience that this is utter bullshit, since my daughter has been voluntarily peeing and pooping at appropriate times and in set situations since she was, oh, two or three months old? She now often goes to the potty completely of her own volition if we leave her diaper off, and this morning she yelled at the bathroom door to be let into the potty when she had to pee. To any mama practicing Elimination Communication (by whatever name) this attitude is just as wrongheaded as the conventional take...maybe even a little more, since it is generally agreed in the ECing community that after your child becomes mobile it is more difficult to get him/her to sit on the potty.
The next complaint I see as unfortunate, because I really think that modern Montessori is a privilege of the affluent, and after all it started out with inner city kids. Hand-crafted hardwood shelving units made in the US are wonderful, no doubt, but even we cannot afford to spend $300 on a single set of shelves, much less most of the world. Entire play areas, even rooms, set aside specifically for the child I disagree with in principle as well, because I feel like they create segregation, but they are also an impossibility for many apartment dwellers or people in small (read, reasonable-sized) houses. The focus on beautiful, carefully made toys and materials is laudable in some ways, but even for those of us who can afford an $80 shape sorter, we have to ask if this is actually a wise allocation of money in a world where millions of people don't even have safe drinking water. So no, I don't think that Montessori principles are accesible only to the affluent, but I do think that in practice, the world of Montessori has become populated almost entirely by people with significant disposable income. Certainly the tuition for Montessori schools, however much they might be a reasonable reflection of the schools' costs, is far beyond the reach of many if not most.
And lastly, damn, is it just me or is Montessori anal!? We must be calm, neat, tidy, organized, polite! Teach your child not to splash! Don't let the toys get spread all over the floor! Children love order! Well, yes, some children do have a fierce need for ritual and predictability...and some don't...but I think we should own our own needs and realize that, very often, kids don't give a damn if the house is a mess, and it's really our problem. Anyway, yeah, wow is Montessori ever anal. Like a lot.
Okay, it's no longer the middle of the night and I probably have better things to do than bitch. I would love to hear other people's thoughts, though, if anyone reading has experience with Montessori.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
One cubicle wall from disaster
That's about how I'm feeling right now. Right now, Jacob's company is still booming, and so long as he has his job, we have quite a comfortable cash-flow. We even have savings, which, as noted, is part of the problem, since our bank is among those on shaky footing. I actually have no idea (how sad is that?) what would happen to our money if Wachovia went under in any of the various possible (likely?) ways. But just as there are any number of possible events that could push the US/the world from "badly infected cut" to "systemic illness" status, there just isn't that much between us and a very scary situation.
Say Obama wins the election--an event we would welcome--and starts pulling back troops and decreasing defense spending. Or just say that the economy keeps worsening, which I think we can take for granted. Jacob is a versatile guy, but largely unappreciated, and far from the most senior engineer at work. We calculate that we need over $30K a year just to pay the bills in this, our very modest old house in farm country, with no cable, no cell phones, and old cars. Where is Jacob going to pick up another job with money like that? How far would he have to drive? We live fifteen minutes from the nearest grocery store and 25 from his job as it is. How on earth would I contribute? I might be able to leave the wee one with the neighbor--though it'd kill me to have to--but all I have on offer is an incomplete Associate's degree and a resumé of food and customer service jobs I despised. Not promising.
And yet we keep living like we always have, which is to say frugally but more or less normally (although plenty of people consider it pretty stinkin' abnormal for us to not have cellphones, I guess). Heck, we just spent all that on a kitchen remodel. And I don't regret it, but I do feel tense.
Jacob...I don't quite know how to explain Jacob, or to get through to him. I grew up very poor, so I started from the viewpoint that hard work and perseverance sometimes just get you walked all over (certainly the case for my mother), but Jacob grew up very middle class and I think part of him still believes that poor people are poor through lack of effort, etc., and that basically things will be as they always have been for him. Intellectually, he agrees that the system is fucked, but I don't think that he accepts that it's really, really FUCKED, and that he could be too. He agrees, at least superficially, with the things I read to him from various peak oil blogs and articles, and has started paying attention to the news more closely and so on, and he's a complete partner when it comes to homesteading, etc., but still there's a strong tendency to make a joke of everything and to resist any action that really commits us to the future I forsee as opposed to "normalcy".
For example, he was quite in agreement with me when we reduced his 401K contributions to a very low level, because we had more critical use for the money and considered it an extremely dubious investment anyway. But when I now say that I think it incredibly unlikely that any of that money would be there for us to retire on anyway, or that "retirement" will even have the same meaning by the time we're sixty, and that we might consider just taking the penalties and yanking our money while it's still there, he dismisses the idea. He's there with me most of the way, but he still holds back from full belief.
It's hard to complain...I know a lot of people have much larger disconnects with their spouses than this when it comes to their take on the future. But still...I'm feeling so tense and really wanting to commit to action, and he's hanging back and joking. Maybe I'm just being a whiny punk because wahhh wahhh he's minimizing my worries...but dammit, he IS.
Of course, part of the problem is that I can hardly believe in it at all, and it takes active effort to "live the reality" of what's happening to our world. Mostly I fail. Witness the kitchen: $2K to make the kitchen work better? Sure, totally worthwhile. A few hundred to make sure we have access to the well in case of a power outage? I dunnoh....
Well, anyway, small crabby infant calls.
Say Obama wins the election--an event we would welcome--and starts pulling back troops and decreasing defense spending. Or just say that the economy keeps worsening, which I think we can take for granted. Jacob is a versatile guy, but largely unappreciated, and far from the most senior engineer at work. We calculate that we need over $30K a year just to pay the bills in this, our very modest old house in farm country, with no cable, no cell phones, and old cars. Where is Jacob going to pick up another job with money like that? How far would he have to drive? We live fifteen minutes from the nearest grocery store and 25 from his job as it is. How on earth would I contribute? I might be able to leave the wee one with the neighbor--though it'd kill me to have to--but all I have on offer is an incomplete Associate's degree and a resumé of food and customer service jobs I despised. Not promising.
And yet we keep living like we always have, which is to say frugally but more or less normally (although plenty of people consider it pretty stinkin' abnormal for us to not have cellphones, I guess). Heck, we just spent all that on a kitchen remodel. And I don't regret it, but I do feel tense.
Jacob...I don't quite know how to explain Jacob, or to get through to him. I grew up very poor, so I started from the viewpoint that hard work and perseverance sometimes just get you walked all over (certainly the case for my mother), but Jacob grew up very middle class and I think part of him still believes that poor people are poor through lack of effort, etc., and that basically things will be as they always have been for him. Intellectually, he agrees that the system is fucked, but I don't think that he accepts that it's really, really FUCKED, and that he could be too. He agrees, at least superficially, with the things I read to him from various peak oil blogs and articles, and has started paying attention to the news more closely and so on, and he's a complete partner when it comes to homesteading, etc., but still there's a strong tendency to make a joke of everything and to resist any action that really commits us to the future I forsee as opposed to "normalcy".
For example, he was quite in agreement with me when we reduced his 401K contributions to a very low level, because we had more critical use for the money and considered it an extremely dubious investment anyway. But when I now say that I think it incredibly unlikely that any of that money would be there for us to retire on anyway, or that "retirement" will even have the same meaning by the time we're sixty, and that we might consider just taking the penalties and yanking our money while it's still there, he dismisses the idea. He's there with me most of the way, but he still holds back from full belief.
It's hard to complain...I know a lot of people have much larger disconnects with their spouses than this when it comes to their take on the future. But still...I'm feeling so tense and really wanting to commit to action, and he's hanging back and joking. Maybe I'm just being a whiny punk because wahhh wahhh he's minimizing my worries...but dammit, he IS.
Of course, part of the problem is that I can hardly believe in it at all, and it takes active effort to "live the reality" of what's happening to our world. Mostly I fail. Witness the kitchen: $2K to make the kitchen work better? Sure, totally worthwhile. A few hundred to make sure we have access to the well in case of a power outage? I dunnoh....
Well, anyway, small crabby infant calls.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Money makes me feel stupid
I have been striving off and on to reach a better understanding of how money works. And it's amazing how hard this is given that I'm a fairly highly intelligent person. I'm not bothered by my initial state of ignorance, or rather, not on a personal level, because we're basically all profoundly ignorant on the subject, and there really are vested interests that wish to keep us that way. THAT is, needless to say, extremely bothersome, but at least it's not because I'm a dumbass or because I snoozed through civics (I did). It does make me feel stupid, though, when I'm actively seeking to understand things--like, say, my mortgage--and am completely boondoggled.
Actually, I think this is because basically I can't bring myself to believe the bullshit that makes the system run. I come from a few thousand years worth of farmers, same as pretty much anyone else, and have the basic agrarian distrust for merchants and money. In feudal Japan merchants were considered the lowest class of people--parasites who created nothing useful. Other cultures, certainly my own, have held similar attitudes. Now, mind, I'm not saying that these attitudes are appropriate--actually, I think they're about as ignorant and counterproductive as the current habit of believing that the people handling our money are basically trustworthy and benevolent and we don't need to worry so long as we play by the rules. What I'm saying is that probably my problem is that I keep expecting this stuff to make sense, and by my sights, it just doesn't. That is, it really is smoke and mirrors without substance.
I keep persevering, though, and I'm making some progress. I feel like I need to, because we still need to make the money system as it exists work for us so long as it does exist. Very little of what we're trying to do around here will matter at all if we can't keep our home, and that, for the forseeable future, means paying our mortgage, which means money and banks.
Right now, I'm finding this video to be enormously helpful. Watch it.
Actually, I think this is because basically I can't bring myself to believe the bullshit that makes the system run. I come from a few thousand years worth of farmers, same as pretty much anyone else, and have the basic agrarian distrust for merchants and money. In feudal Japan merchants were considered the lowest class of people--parasites who created nothing useful. Other cultures, certainly my own, have held similar attitudes. Now, mind, I'm not saying that these attitudes are appropriate--actually, I think they're about as ignorant and counterproductive as the current habit of believing that the people handling our money are basically trustworthy and benevolent and we don't need to worry so long as we play by the rules. What I'm saying is that probably my problem is that I keep expecting this stuff to make sense, and by my sights, it just doesn't. That is, it really is smoke and mirrors without substance.
I keep persevering, though, and I'm making some progress. I feel like I need to, because we still need to make the money system as it exists work for us so long as it does exist. Very little of what we're trying to do around here will matter at all if we can't keep our home, and that, for the forseeable future, means paying our mortgage, which means money and banks.
Right now, I'm finding this video to be enormously helpful. Watch it.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Ugh
Pretty low on posts here, coming into the toddler years I'm spending more time standing behind my daughter as she goes up and down (and up and down and upanddownupdownup) the stairs than I am read and writing (and thinking). I just really needed to purge a little angst though, because DEAR GOD things are getting scary. Climate is turning nasty in a big way and financial markets are--well, teetering would be a nice way to put it, no?--and I begin to feel like Jacob and I are in a three-legged race against professional sprinters who aren't actually tied. We move at a snail's pace (upanddownandupanddown the stairs), and feel good if we manage to do one preserving project a week and zero other preparedness, and the world we still depend pretty heavily on to function is racing manically towards some invisible but certain tiger pit. Where? When? How long do we have?
We're still critically dependent on electricity for the basic functions of our house--heating, water, food storage, light. We're still fonged without Jacob's high-tech defense industry job. We're still shitty gardeners, as the garden attests too depressingly. Still no rainwater collection. Still no chicken coop. No sun oven, no rocket stove, shit, we haven't even got a solar wax melter slapped together, which is probably the easiest solar project short of a soda bottle on the dash board, and we have dozens of frames of used wax literally molding in the basement. Well, actually, a LOT of things are molding in the basement, including any vegetables we try to store there.
We did make progress this weekend, and good progress too, though as preparedness goes, it's sort of a move sideways, and a gamble on a few more years of relative normalcy and affluence. We bought (most) of the materials for a partial kitchen remodel, so that a) more stuff can be put away, out of the way of good cooking, inquisitive fingers, and weekday evening preserving, b) I can spend the time I would normally have to spend doing the dishes by hand instead making bread or hanging laundry (or standing on the stairs, but ya know). So we're ripping out some really space-wasting installments and an old leaky washing machine we couldn't use and replacing them with better-designed cabinets and a new washer. When we're done, the kitchen will still pretty much look like 1984, but it will be more organized and less cluttered (and, okay, I'm very happy about the oak coutertops), which will be a Good Thing.
For a long time I resisted getting a new dishwasher, because it seemed like a step in the wrong direction to buy a new electric appliance. I was finally persuaded (Jacob thought it was a good idea all along, and only hesitated on the point of repair or replacement) for a variety of reasons. First of all, we have no time and our lives feel out of control and something's got to give, and nothing gets done in the kitchen when first you have to clear every flat surface of dirty dishes. Second, I have a major mental block about washing dishes in still water--I grew up with washing dishes that way, but as soon as it was up to me I switched to running water and I can't seem to make myself do it any other way. I have to steel myself just to reach in and pull the plug on used water after someone else washes dishes...yuckyuckyuck! So anyway, that's the long way of saying that a dishwasher would almost certainly use less water than me. And last but not least, it's not as if turning the dishes over to a machine for now has any long-term repercussions...I'm not gonna forget how to do dishes. It presumably will use a bit more power than the current method, but we've only considered energy star washers, and, well, basically, the cost-benefit analysis came out in favor of the washer. The new washer instead of the repair is because, well, even if we could get it repaired reasonably, the one we have would still be builder-grade crap from 1984. It's been trash for years, and that isn't our fault...it just hasn't been thrown away.
There...is that enough justifications and rationalizations for not getting our butts in gear? Truly, we're trying, but sometimes the news makes me feel panicky that we're not trying hard enough or moving fast enough. And always it makes me hurt hurt hurt for all the people who no longer have our options and opportunities (or never did).
We're still critically dependent on electricity for the basic functions of our house--heating, water, food storage, light. We're still fonged without Jacob's high-tech defense industry job. We're still shitty gardeners, as the garden attests too depressingly. Still no rainwater collection. Still no chicken coop. No sun oven, no rocket stove, shit, we haven't even got a solar wax melter slapped together, which is probably the easiest solar project short of a soda bottle on the dash board, and we have dozens of frames of used wax literally molding in the basement. Well, actually, a LOT of things are molding in the basement, including any vegetables we try to store there.
We did make progress this weekend, and good progress too, though as preparedness goes, it's sort of a move sideways, and a gamble on a few more years of relative normalcy and affluence. We bought (most) of the materials for a partial kitchen remodel, so that a) more stuff can be put away, out of the way of good cooking, inquisitive fingers, and weekday evening preserving, b) I can spend the time I would normally have to spend doing the dishes by hand instead making bread or hanging laundry (or standing on the stairs, but ya know). So we're ripping out some really space-wasting installments and an old leaky washing machine we couldn't use and replacing them with better-designed cabinets and a new washer. When we're done, the kitchen will still pretty much look like 1984, but it will be more organized and less cluttered (and, okay, I'm very happy about the oak coutertops), which will be a Good Thing.
For a long time I resisted getting a new dishwasher, because it seemed like a step in the wrong direction to buy a new electric appliance. I was finally persuaded (Jacob thought it was a good idea all along, and only hesitated on the point of repair or replacement) for a variety of reasons. First of all, we have no time and our lives feel out of control and something's got to give, and nothing gets done in the kitchen when first you have to clear every flat surface of dirty dishes. Second, I have a major mental block about washing dishes in still water--I grew up with washing dishes that way, but as soon as it was up to me I switched to running water and I can't seem to make myself do it any other way. I have to steel myself just to reach in and pull the plug on used water after someone else washes dishes...yuckyuckyuck! So anyway, that's the long way of saying that a dishwasher would almost certainly use less water than me. And last but not least, it's not as if turning the dishes over to a machine for now has any long-term repercussions...I'm not gonna forget how to do dishes. It presumably will use a bit more power than the current method, but we've only considered energy star washers, and, well, basically, the cost-benefit analysis came out in favor of the washer. The new washer instead of the repair is because, well, even if we could get it repaired reasonably, the one we have would still be builder-grade crap from 1984. It's been trash for years, and that isn't our fault...it just hasn't been thrown away.
There...is that enough justifications and rationalizations for not getting our butts in gear? Truly, we're trying, but sometimes the news makes me feel panicky that we're not trying hard enough or moving fast enough. And always it makes me hurt hurt hurt for all the people who no longer have our options and opportunities (or never did).
Monday, August 18, 2008
Yard Sale Bonanza
Boy, we didn't really set out to, but we did a helluva lot of yardsaling this weekend. It was a Friday off day, and I was feeling half-crazed by recent events, the state of the house, etc., so I basically demanded that we drive up to Gettysburg to do some outlet shopping--summer clearance for the baby, some shirts without stains all over them, that sort of thing. Well, we never got as far as the outlets, because Littlestown, which we have to drive through to get there, was revving up for a giant yard sale weekend. We shopped 'til we were exhausted and the baby was howling, and spent over $70--at yard sales, for pete's sake--and filled the car pretty solid. At the very first yard sale, we spent $35, and not a single item more than $1. I loaded up on new-condition textbooks for Evelyn--4 sequential math texts for grades 3-6, sequential readers for grades 1-5 and several other readers, a sixth grade science text, and a children's text-book style book about Europe and Russia, as well as some cookbooks and a volume about Echinacea. Also, a good-condition game of Memory and assorted playdough toys, and some rusty metal bits for Jacob. Over the course of the day we picked up assorted baby clothing, 7 all-wool sweaters, over 100 books, mostly but not entirely children's books, and various other things.
Then Saturday morning we headed out for the farmer's market, and ended up stopping at half a dozen yard sales on the way there, too. Didn't pick up too much, but we did get some more baby clothing, most notably a super soft and super sweet fuzzy brown jacket with, as we term them, "Ewok ears" on the hood. Also a book with attached color-coded laces to help Wyatt learn to tie his shoes, an AC/DC shirt for me so that I can wear it when Evelyn wears her AB/CD shirt, and a couple of Schleich knights and horses (which we are jokingly referring to as Evelyn's My Little Ponies). Also a complete-in-box beginner's wine brewing kit, much like the beer brewing kit we already had, and valued by us as much for the big food-safe bucket as anything else. Also, already operating out in the shop, a dehumidifier. And last, but not least, a blue plastic rocking boat for Evelyn--you know, the Step 2 molded plastic yard toy stuff.
Anyway, that got my shopping yen out safely, and we had loads of fun, and even got more than a few things that we would have bought sooner or later anyway. At this point, Evelyn is set for winter clothes and not too bad for summer clothes for years to come, mostly from yard sales. It's the way to go!
Then Saturday morning we headed out for the farmer's market, and ended up stopping at half a dozen yard sales on the way there, too. Didn't pick up too much, but we did get some more baby clothing, most notably a super soft and super sweet fuzzy brown jacket with, as we term them, "Ewok ears" on the hood. Also a book with attached color-coded laces to help Wyatt learn to tie his shoes, an AC/DC shirt for me so that I can wear it when Evelyn wears her AB/CD shirt, and a couple of Schleich knights and horses (which we are jokingly referring to as Evelyn's My Little Ponies). Also a complete-in-box beginner's wine brewing kit, much like the beer brewing kit we already had, and valued by us as much for the big food-safe bucket as anything else. Also, already operating out in the shop, a dehumidifier. And last, but not least, a blue plastic rocking boat for Evelyn--you know, the Step 2 molded plastic yard toy stuff.
Anyway, that got my shopping yen out safely, and we had loads of fun, and even got more than a few things that we would have bought sooner or later anyway. At this point, Evelyn is set for winter clothes and not too bad for summer clothes for years to come, mostly from yard sales. It's the way to go!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Swapperific
The latest outgrowth of the excellent local natural/AP parenting group I'm part of is a semi-separate group created for the express purpose of getting together and trading around goods and services; mostly, at this point, produce. In other words, for getting rid of zucchini. ;-) We've met twice so far, and I've nigh-miraculously made both meets (the first time, my mother was in the hospital--up here--and the second time I had to beg a ride AND was getting a cold, so really shouldn't have gone). The first time, I swapped/sold honey, dried peaches, and cucumbers to the tune of about $40 in goods and cash, and today I made something over twenty (again, goods and cash combined) on dried peaches and cucumbers again, a strawberry jam, fresh ground wholemeal flour, and some dried cayenne. I took home tomatoes, fig-raspberry preserves, an orange playsilk for Evelyn, peaches, and some beets. In fact, that's two weeks or so now that I've kept us supplied with tomatoes without actually purchasing any, and our tomatoes aren't in yet. Not half bad!
Next week the swap meet is here, actually, so that's rather exciting and excellent incentive to clean up the yard a bit, at least to cut down on the rusty nail and poison ivy factors (we've been doing this outside, and of course there are small children present). I hope to have more flour, maybe some pickles...ooh, I should do some fruit leather!... a bit more honey, and we'll see what else I come up with. Also, I've invited Nicole to haul some of her stuff over, and she's agreed, so hopefully I can pull her into the fun, too.
I'm very excited about the whole thing, because it represents 1. a way to make money offa surplus stuff, obviously, 2. an excellent development and practice in the informal economy for everyone involved, which I think will be invaluable in the depression to come, and 3. a return to productivity for yards and people largely excluded from the formal economy (at the moment, most of us are stay at home moms). Personally, my garden isn't actually producing much surplus at the moment...the cucumbers are about it and quite possibly will continue that way...so I see my "product line" as being mostly value-added goods like dried fruit, pickles, etc. So far, I've also thought of possibly making some fresh pasta, knitting dish towels and matching cloths around the holidays, making felt balls for the kids, and naturally, loads and loads of sauerkraut. Well, I assume that the audience for sauerkraut will be a little limited, but we'd make tons anyway after last year's excellent experience. Also possibly bean spreads, hummus, cheese spreads, and other prepared dishes. And I hope to create a bit of a regular audience for fresh-milled flour and dried goods. I figure that's a great way to make back some of the money spent on those toys.
So that's my big enthusiasm right now, aside from Evelyn, who is awesome at the moment. I guess about three weeks ago now she took her first independent steps, and by now she's all but dumped crawling and is getting faster and more confident all the time. She's babbling more and showing more receptive language skills, too, which is very nice because I was beginning to think that she was falling rather behind the curve in that department and, of all the places to be a little slow, language is not the one I would have picked. It's been a crazy three weeks with Mamma sick and here nearly three times as long as she meant to be and yadda yadda I won't get into it except to say that it's created a pretty intensive environment for Evelyn, with many more loving adults than usual talking to her and playing with her. Usually, I mostly leave her alone when she's happy, which I feel has value too, but I should probably set aside time on a more regular basis to work/play with her. She likes her new shape sorter and investigates it most satisfyingly. I think she spent a good 15 minutes straight yesterday doing exactly what she was supposed to do, trying pieces in various holes, etc. My acquisitive nature is very eager to see what people will get her for her birthday. We got her a cute wooden tongue drum, which I think she'll like, but whether she does or not, I guarantee the neighbor boys will. Technically the sorter was for her birthday too, but I sorta just opened it when it came and gave it to her...oops. It's not like it makes any difference to her, but I did think that I'd save some things for an actual celebration so that people would know that, in fact, we got her more than one fairly cheap thing. Whatever.
I've also been doing quite well at yard sales the last few weeks. I've picked up more clothing for Evelyn, piles more books for her (I've been reading the "young adult" selections for myself, and so far they're excellent), a manual breast pump to play with, some cute puddle-jumper boots for when she's older and some warm and comfy Robeez boots for this winter (pink, but for 1/7th the original cost I think I can stomach it), and other miscellany. A particularly excellent find is a child's lap harp complete with a stack of tune-sheets that slip under the strings and graph for you what notes to play for only $1.75, presumably because it was out of tune and they lost the tuning key (a wrench worked dandy, but I have hopes of finding a tuning key someday, too). We turned this over to Wyatt on Tuesday, and with a little help he was able to play through about half the songs and put on a concert for Nicole when she came back. He loved it. As far as I know, that was his first experience with making music, so I feel really good about that.
Well, anyway, it's actually the middle of the night. I just woke up to get a snack and pee, and I felt better than I did all day, so stayed up far longer than I should have. I should get my sick butt back in bed.
Next week the swap meet is here, actually, so that's rather exciting and excellent incentive to clean up the yard a bit, at least to cut down on the rusty nail and poison ivy factors (we've been doing this outside, and of course there are small children present). I hope to have more flour, maybe some pickles...ooh, I should do some fruit leather!... a bit more honey, and we'll see what else I come up with. Also, I've invited Nicole to haul some of her stuff over, and she's agreed, so hopefully I can pull her into the fun, too.
I'm very excited about the whole thing, because it represents 1. a way to make money offa surplus stuff, obviously, 2. an excellent development and practice in the informal economy for everyone involved, which I think will be invaluable in the depression to come, and 3. a return to productivity for yards and people largely excluded from the formal economy (at the moment, most of us are stay at home moms). Personally, my garden isn't actually producing much surplus at the moment...the cucumbers are about it and quite possibly will continue that way...so I see my "product line" as being mostly value-added goods like dried fruit, pickles, etc. So far, I've also thought of possibly making some fresh pasta, knitting dish towels and matching cloths around the holidays, making felt balls for the kids, and naturally, loads and loads of sauerkraut. Well, I assume that the audience for sauerkraut will be a little limited, but we'd make tons anyway after last year's excellent experience. Also possibly bean spreads, hummus, cheese spreads, and other prepared dishes. And I hope to create a bit of a regular audience for fresh-milled flour and dried goods. I figure that's a great way to make back some of the money spent on those toys.
So that's my big enthusiasm right now, aside from Evelyn, who is awesome at the moment. I guess about three weeks ago now she took her first independent steps, and by now she's all but dumped crawling and is getting faster and more confident all the time. She's babbling more and showing more receptive language skills, too, which is very nice because I was beginning to think that she was falling rather behind the curve in that department and, of all the places to be a little slow, language is not the one I would have picked. It's been a crazy three weeks with Mamma sick and here nearly three times as long as she meant to be and yadda yadda I won't get into it except to say that it's created a pretty intensive environment for Evelyn, with many more loving adults than usual talking to her and playing with her. Usually, I mostly leave her alone when she's happy, which I feel has value too, but I should probably set aside time on a more regular basis to work/play with her. She likes her new shape sorter and investigates it most satisfyingly. I think she spent a good 15 minutes straight yesterday doing exactly what she was supposed to do, trying pieces in various holes, etc. My acquisitive nature is very eager to see what people will get her for her birthday. We got her a cute wooden tongue drum, which I think she'll like, but whether she does or not, I guarantee the neighbor boys will. Technically the sorter was for her birthday too, but I sorta just opened it when it came and gave it to her...oops. It's not like it makes any difference to her, but I did think that I'd save some things for an actual celebration so that people would know that, in fact, we got her more than one fairly cheap thing. Whatever.
I've also been doing quite well at yard sales the last few weeks. I've picked up more clothing for Evelyn, piles more books for her (I've been reading the "young adult" selections for myself, and so far they're excellent), a manual breast pump to play with, some cute puddle-jumper boots for when she's older and some warm and comfy Robeez boots for this winter (pink, but for 1/7th the original cost I think I can stomach it), and other miscellany. A particularly excellent find is a child's lap harp complete with a stack of tune-sheets that slip under the strings and graph for you what notes to play for only $1.75, presumably because it was out of tune and they lost the tuning key (a wrench worked dandy, but I have hopes of finding a tuning key someday, too). We turned this over to Wyatt on Tuesday, and with a little help he was able to play through about half the songs and put on a concert for Nicole when she came back. He loved it. As far as I know, that was his first experience with making music, so I feel really good about that.
Well, anyway, it's actually the middle of the night. I just woke up to get a snack and pee, and I felt better than I did all day, so stayed up far longer than I should have. I should get my sick butt back in bed.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Cucumbers! And other things
Last year, our most depressing crop failure (there were several, but such is the price of learning) in the garden was cucumbers. They were insufficiently thinned and parched, despite a fair bit of watering, by the drought. The plants yielded a few bitter, pithy efforts and then died. About the only good thing about that is that they were done early enough that we could pull them out and replace them with a fair crop of turnips.
This year, we were careful to thin rigorously, give the cukes more space, and water obsessively (unfortunately, still from the well, as the rain barrels are still sitting in the driveway mocking us). The other day, we spotted the first fruits of our efforts hiding plumply under the leaves, and picked them and brought them in, with greatest trepidation. Later in the day, my neighbor sent me home from a chat with a cupful of dip made from a spice-mix she was trying out, and my reticence was broken. I cut a good portion of the end off in case on the ends were bitter. I cut off a slice. I admired the fine texture...promising...and finally, I put it in my mouth.
Squeeeeeeeeee! Bestest cucumber EVAR!! No, seriously. It was sweet and flavorful and crisp and cool and delicious, and I do not remember ever in my life eating one that compared, including the one last week from my neighbor's garden. We have had several since, and they've all been up to the mark the first one set. And mind, this is supposed to be a pickling variety! The "eating" variety is less vigorous and hasn't got anything up to size yet.
Currently holding the record for this year's most dismal crop failure are the beets...which is depressing, because the greens looked absolutely lovely, I was very good about thinning them, and it was all very exciting until they completely failed to ever plump out and were thoroughly woody. We have no idea why, which is the main reason it's upsetting. The obvious answer is that we need to get a proper soil test one of these days, instead of just arbitrarily throwing amendments in.
The garden, after several weeks of lull in harvest (and, shamefully, consequent neglect), is recapturing my attention. The tomatoes needed to have been staked a couple of weeks ago at least, and now several are already all gnarly and laid over. The weeds were rank, but I am beating them back most satisfyingly with my newest garden toy--a stirrup hoe. I've wanted one for a while, so we got a cheap-o one to try while we were out on Saturday, and I am delighted. It feels like "scrubbing" the garden like a kitchen floor (not that that's an experience I have nearly as often as I should). You scuffle the hoe (with great effort, if your garden, like ours, is rapidly becoming a meadow) back and forth, then sort of sweep the weeds towards you for collection, and, ta da!, a clean spot! It's terribly satisfying, and much more efficient than any other means we would previously have used. I've gotten about half the garden cleared again, but I badly want to finish clearing the tomatoes before we leave town Thursday night.
Other recent harvests have included some of the onions and all of the garlic. The garlic is lovely, with good-sized heads and all of the spicy, aromatic delight of its farmer's market progenitor. We planted onions in two batches...one as seedlings grown by an organic farmer friend of ours, and the other bought as sets from a big box store by Jacob's sister (the onion seeds we actually bought ourselves never got big enough to bother with). The sets are drooping right and left, and don't seem to be getting very big, but they're crisp and mild, and it's still pretty cool. The seedlings are a bit behind, of course (not least because they were, naturally, planted late), so we haven't pulled any of them. We shall see.
Anyway, yay, the garden proceeds apace. The latest is that I've got the tomatoes half weeded, stakes driven though not yet tied up, and the ground cherries are weeded. Looks like I'll have a good fistful of cukes to take down to my mom's this evening!
This year, we were careful to thin rigorously, give the cukes more space, and water obsessively (unfortunately, still from the well, as the rain barrels are still sitting in the driveway mocking us). The other day, we spotted the first fruits of our efforts hiding plumply under the leaves, and picked them and brought them in, with greatest trepidation. Later in the day, my neighbor sent me home from a chat with a cupful of dip made from a spice-mix she was trying out, and my reticence was broken. I cut a good portion of the end off in case on the ends were bitter. I cut off a slice. I admired the fine texture...promising...and finally, I put it in my mouth.
Squeeeeeeeeee! Bestest cucumber EVAR!! No, seriously. It was sweet and flavorful and crisp and cool and delicious, and I do not remember ever in my life eating one that compared, including the one last week from my neighbor's garden. We have had several since, and they've all been up to the mark the first one set. And mind, this is supposed to be a pickling variety! The "eating" variety is less vigorous and hasn't got anything up to size yet.
Currently holding the record for this year's most dismal crop failure are the beets...which is depressing, because the greens looked absolutely lovely, I was very good about thinning them, and it was all very exciting until they completely failed to ever plump out and were thoroughly woody. We have no idea why, which is the main reason it's upsetting. The obvious answer is that we need to get a proper soil test one of these days, instead of just arbitrarily throwing amendments in.
The garden, after several weeks of lull in harvest (and, shamefully, consequent neglect), is recapturing my attention. The tomatoes needed to have been staked a couple of weeks ago at least, and now several are already all gnarly and laid over. The weeds were rank, but I am beating them back most satisfyingly with my newest garden toy--a stirrup hoe. I've wanted one for a while, so we got a cheap-o one to try while we were out on Saturday, and I am delighted. It feels like "scrubbing" the garden like a kitchen floor (not that that's an experience I have nearly as often as I should). You scuffle the hoe (with great effort, if your garden, like ours, is rapidly becoming a meadow) back and forth, then sort of sweep the weeds towards you for collection, and, ta da!, a clean spot! It's terribly satisfying, and much more efficient than any other means we would previously have used. I've gotten about half the garden cleared again, but I badly want to finish clearing the tomatoes before we leave town Thursday night.
Other recent harvests have included some of the onions and all of the garlic. The garlic is lovely, with good-sized heads and all of the spicy, aromatic delight of its farmer's market progenitor. We planted onions in two batches...one as seedlings grown by an organic farmer friend of ours, and the other bought as sets from a big box store by Jacob's sister (the onion seeds we actually bought ourselves never got big enough to bother with). The sets are drooping right and left, and don't seem to be getting very big, but they're crisp and mild, and it's still pretty cool. The seedlings are a bit behind, of course (not least because they were, naturally, planted late), so we haven't pulled any of them. We shall see.
Anyway, yay, the garden proceeds apace. The latest is that I've got the tomatoes half weeded, stakes driven though not yet tied up, and the ground cherries are weeded. Looks like I'll have a good fistful of cukes to take down to my mom's this evening!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
a couple addenda
My clever husband made a couple of good points re: the list which I thought I should mention.
First, as regards canisters of propane fuel: he pointed out that with an adapter and a bit of hose, anything that runs off little Coleman canisters can be run off the big boys, which are 1. cheaper, 2. more convenient because you don't have to switch them out midway through dinner, and 3. exchangeable and therefore more environmentally friendly. Suiting actions to words, we bought said adapter, which should be easy to find, since ours came from Walmart on the Coleman shelves.
Second, he added WD-40 to the handy-man section of the list. That's a pretty solid addition.
I'm feeling pretty good, because after a little shopping yesterday we now have a good stock in hand of most of the list. Since the vast majority of that is stuff we use anyway, the main effect is that we've saved money by buying the value-sized packaging and saved hassle by not having to go to the store for any of this stuff any time soon. If that's all this round of "stocking up" ever comes to, then I am well satisfied.
First, as regards canisters of propane fuel: he pointed out that with an adapter and a bit of hose, anything that runs off little Coleman canisters can be run off the big boys, which are 1. cheaper, 2. more convenient because you don't have to switch them out midway through dinner, and 3. exchangeable and therefore more environmentally friendly. Suiting actions to words, we bought said adapter, which should be easy to find, since ours came from Walmart on the Coleman shelves.
Second, he added WD-40 to the handy-man section of the list. That's a pretty solid addition.
I'm feeling pretty good, because after a little shopping yesterday we now have a good stock in hand of most of the list. Since the vast majority of that is stuff we use anyway, the main effect is that we've saved money by buying the value-sized packaging and saved hassle by not having to go to the store for any of this stuff any time soon. If that's all this round of "stocking up" ever comes to, then I am well satisfied.
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