the chicken, the egg, the vision, the direction your choices take you in

Make up your own story.  You might as well make it a good one.  This is ours.  This is what it is like when you choose a path, a good path, and stay on it.  If you want to have a family, you have to stay with it.  If you want to enrich the land, you have to stay with it.  That's just the way it is.  The only thing you have to give up is illusion.  And perhaps delusion if you've gone that far already.

This is what it looks like.  It isn't the only way it can look, but gosh darned if I've seen a lot of viable alternatives.

Whether you know it or not, you are making up your own story; make it a good one.  You are painting your own painting; don't make it one (or two) dimensional.  You are singing your own song: for goodness sakes, don't screech, just find your own voice.  You are dancing your own dance; so quit standing still.  Pay as you go.  Don't engage in exploitation.  Don't lie to yourself most of all.  You make your life one choice at a time.  Make good choices.  Don't guess at an answer that you already know is counterproductive.  Choose what at least could turn out well.

Start now.

satisfied juggling

This being a "real homesteader" stuff, none of it is hard, as in difficult.  What it is is a juggling act.  It isn't hard, as in difficult, to throw a ball up in the air.  Try to keep three of them going at once and see what happens.

This morning, for example.  As always, a plan is helpful and ours had gotten this far:  we'd have a fire because we had bread (wow, I've been baking this bread for more than FOUR years) to bake, and we'd have sausage and grits for breakfast.  When the milk came inside (from milking the cow and then goats), it quickly came to my attention that we were busting at the seams with milk.  Again.  This happens.  This happens rather continuously when you are milking.  This only doesn't happen when milk production goes down to match consumption levels at which point the milker inevitably wonders if it is really worth milking.

We'd been in one of those lean times of milk for some time now.  Or maybe we just weren't paying enough attention to the milk.  Whatever it was, now, without re-freshening the cow (still), but with adding three goats to milk, the milk would drown us if we didn't do something.  And I had just made cheese and buttermilk and yogurt and sour cream two days ago.  So, another batch of cheese. 

So, here's the juggle part:  First, there's another batch of cheese.  And the first batch of butter in quite a while.  And buttermilk buttermilk out of the butter whey.  And don't forget that the bread was already on.  And even as I'm still immersed in the juggling and sitting here writing this, I haven't checked the status of the goat milk but we have, umm, lots.

So, here's the juggle part:  The oven has to be hot hot to bake the bread, and the iron pot it is baked in has to have soaked the heat for an hour before the bread is put in there, and the dough has to have been kneaded (in a manner of speaking) two hours before it is baked;  Two gallons of milk has to be creamed then its temp raised to 88*, and inoculated with cultures to make the cheese taste good, and then held at that temperature;  The cream has to be pretty exactly at 55* to begin churning.  And husband, using the heat of the wood cook stove to make fudge so that has to come precisely to soft ball stage, then cool pretty precisely to 130* to beat.

(Did I mention that only one of our thermometers at the moment measures in Fahrenheit?  And that Celsius is way less accurate?  Still, industrial surplus thermometers are what we have and it just makes like that much more interesting.  It also means all my instructions have notes as to the equivalent C temps.)

(And did I mention that I was also doing laundry and that the washing machine has to be filled up by buckets of water because if it tries to fill itself up, it leaks (out the drain hose) (if you know what that's about, especially how to fix it, I'll love you forever).)

I don't know, now that I write it all out, maybe it doesn't seem like that much, but trying to keep it all straight, to time everything, to not drop any of those balls, it isn't hard but it takes a great deal of attention.  And frankly, going to work (making money) so that you can buy the stuff is a whole lot easier, and provides ego strokes that homesteading/providing for yourself will never provide.  And every single thing that you do to provide for yourself I swear produces more dishes to wash and more laundry to do too.  We're saved on the laundry mostly because we just don't change clothes as often as normal people, but nothing will save you on the dishes.

I'm thrilled to have as much feta and mozzarella as I care to eat, and motz that is that nice golden color that comes from the grass that the cow is eating.  I'm thrilled and my stomach is soothed to have that buttermilk and yogurt.  That butter is just too sublime for words.  And bread is the staff of life, quite literally.  Life is just plain better with real food.

But that becomes the next thing:  what's for supper.  Turns out tonight it is a stew.  And the rest of the family is heading to the garden while I finish the cheese and the cleaning, making sure to leave time to work my horse this afternoon.

And tomorrow is a juggle of work and riding and teaching and appointments and errands and farm sitting and manure.  We've gotten really good over the years at knowing our limits, at saying "no" to the one-more-thing that would make the whole day unpleasant, that would turn satisfying into stressful.

(this post has a soundtrack so start humming the song Satisfied Mind and read it again!)

today

I just wanted to let you know that yesterday I qualified as a "real homesteader" -- I made two batches of cheese (feta and mozzarella), bread, and birthday cake.  We had a wonderful birthday.  I love our traditions.

Today I rode two horses, taught a lesson, mucked and fed and all that jazz, and brought home both a big round bale (probably the last of the season) and a load of manure.  I'm not sure what that "qualifies" as, and I don't really care.

kids rock

As far as homesteading goes, it goes.  We've had some fun making remarks about "back when we were real homesteaders" but we still are.  It is a mistake to think that life is static, even on the farm.  I work off the farm a good bit, but I'm getting to do something that I've always wanted to do, something that makes me no end of happy most of the time.  The kids are older and so pull more of the load.  The husband is home, not only doing his own business but involving those same kids, and helping them with some of their own businesses.

So we haven't been making every speck of our own bread lately.  So even tho we have three cows we've been buying butter.  Making that outdoor bread oven is still on the short list and the first batch of feta from this freshening of the goats (all new nanny goats after we got wiped out in the last few years) is coagulating now.  It isn't all or nothing and it never is.  What it also always is is something, all the time, take steps, take steps in a direction.

And have fun.

Speaking of fun, you may remember the story of the neighbor we had when we had our first child.  When he came calling after the child was born, his remark was, "Well, all your fun is over now."  Yeah, right.  We really like our children, and enjoy being around them.  I'm constantly amazed at them, at their kindness, or skill, or beauty, or brilliance, or competence, or compassion, or or or, you get the idea.  Everything.

We've always had the tradition of getting everyone presents for everyone's birthdays, and on a recent birthday the present the youngest child got from his aunt was an analog watch.  Even tho he's twelve, he'd never had reason to learn to tell time on a dial like that before but he was very excited with this present.  He strapped it on and asked a sister to explain it to him.  She started.  He was frustrated.  She tried again.  He stopped her, said, "Wait a minute," and went away.  He came back with a drawing of the watch face and told her to fill it in.  She did and explained a little bit.  He asked a question or two then said, "Ok."  He studied the diagram for about ten minutes, and then he went to each person in the house to proudly tell them what time it was!  And he told us every few minutes throughout the rest of the day.

He did the same sort of thing, except different, with tying his shoes.  That little skill had been somewhat of a contention in that we are totally and entirely comfortable with a person gathering skills as needed and we didn't care if most six year olds could tie their shoes and that he still asked us to do it for him at ten.  It didn't bother us.  It bothered his grandparents and at least one aunt.  But again, as a family we've weathered these pressures, these contentions, before.  Anyway, one day he was just fluent at tying his shoes, boom.

But one of the things that really really tickled me happened just the other day.  The husband and I were gone getting scion wood for grafting apple trees.  We'd just hung up after calling to check in with the kids when our phone rang.  It was the youngest calling back to tell me that he was teaching his sister (his sister who "taught" him to tell time and tie his shoes) how to make fudge.  He's been his father's assistant fudge maker for some time but, you know, who knows how much attention someone is paying when they do that?  Besides that, what I thought his most important duty in being assistant fudgemaker was to help to watch the temperature as it first came up to heat and then cooled down for beating.  The fudge they made was perfect!

And I thought, it is impossible to know what all knowledge that kid has in his head.  They have all grown up helping to make the bread, churning the butter (I will never forget when I learned how impossible that little task was for some kids), milking the goats, growing the garden, handling large animals, butchering, fishing, walking, cutting wood, reading tracks, running just for the heck of it under the big blue sky and the big starry sky, making musical instruments and costumes, splinting the broken legs of chickens, taking care of animals, cooking, cleaning, everything.

I'll tell you right now, we don't subscribe to the paradigm of  "18 and out".  I don't know what our household will grow like, or look like, but we've always had the philosophy, "All for One and One for All."  We envisioned a different way to live,  internally and externally; we created an alternative reality; we have done all we can to bend the wheel of fortune toward sanity the coming paradigm.

And I do believe that as we've lived this life, probably as I've written this blog, the world paradigm has changed.  Past tense.  People keep wondering about a recovery and I want to ask, "To what?"  It isn't ever going to be like that again and that is a good thing.  The paradigm shift as a whole, really, is just smaller, simpler.  All of us live on less, drive less, and do more real productive work, a lot more.  Families spread to the wind won't fare well, nor will people who can't figure out how to get along with others without dependency, co-dependency and inferiority issues.  What we value must change because what is important to us wins out every single time.  You know the tree by the fruit.

what it looks like after Garuda eats your ego

I met the person who would be my husband and I knew there was something different about him.   I’d met a few people like him before, but very few.  And I think no women like him.  I still don’t think I’ve met any women like him.  Although I think there are a few of us moving in that direction, maybe even almost there for all I know.

Not to say he’s perfect; far FAR from it.  Nope, just this one aspect is pretty unique.

I remember my brother just thought he (the hubby to be) was an asshole and thinking back on that day at Piccadilly makes me smile.  The only reason brother thought that was that hubby to be wouldn’t defer to him.  Brother was used to being deferred to.  I think he and I both grew up with a little bit of wunderkind in us.  Which is certainly not a bad thing – it helps later to remember that at one time you did fly so that perhaps you can fly still, or again, or whatever.  And yet they weren’t “glory days” for either of us, not the pinnacle.

Hubby, you see, experiences no self-doubt.  That’s how I’d describe it.  It can be totally infuriating but at the same time, it’s kinda cool.  He does what he does and he can look at it and while he might obfuscate as to why he sucks at refrigerator organization, well, it isn’t personal.  He doesn’t believe he is a bad person because he can lose food better than anyone else in the fridge, nor does he really imply that you are a bad person for excelling at it.  He’s perfectly willing to let you excel at fridge organization and totally unwilling to give you any credit for doing it.

Because the man does not live on credit.  The fridge is organized or the fridge is not organized and that’s it: no credit, no debit, no strokes, just is, state of being.

He builds things, he grows things, he makes things, and there is only looking at what is, this worked, that didn’t, this is good enough (which, learning about good enough instead of some nefarious perfection is a whole ‘nother but important topic).  He might fix supper, and it might be good, and you might say so and thank you and all that but it never defines him.

The closest I came to this on my own was horses, which by the time he even met me were only a memory.  I knew I was good, I knew I could read them, I knew I could outride anyone without it ever being a competition, just a what is.  But when he met me I hadn’t seriously ridden in about six years, and it would still be another 19 before I would again.  He said that horses were the only thing in my whole life I wasn’t apologetic about.  But that was just in the talking.

It is possible that I had that about more things when I was the wunderkind.  I could dance, I could make straight A’s, I could discuss current events and business decisions, I could ride horses, I could tell a joke, and I didn’t give a sh*t about all the people who hated me for it.

Because there isn’t a person anywhere that someone doesn’t hate.  Because people are small, petty, self-absorbed and only able to see a small percentage of the picture.  So you can get somebody like Hitler and some people love him, and you can get somebody like Jesus and some people hate him.  So it doesn’t matter (in the context of what someone else thinks of you I’m talking about – whether you tend toward the Jesus or Hitler parts of the spectrum does indeed matter).  The only thing that really matters is what you think of yourself and whether or not you can live with yourself.

Which is oddly the opposite of self-absorption.

You see, I finally met someone else who helped me see this, my own miniature Marlboro man.  He’s quite the horseman, frankly better than any.other.person.I.know.period.  He was also quite the successful businessman (in a corporation and outside of it).  He’s lived in the same place and been married to the same woman for a long long time.  And it didn’t take me long being around him to see that he has no self-doubt.  Although when I ran this whole idea by him he said it was less that he had no self-doubt than that he accepted even before he made any decision, before he did anything, that on some level or another it was going to be wrong.  Anyway.

Suddenly having both him and my husband as examples I saw that rather than being self-assured because they were egotistical (which is what most outside observers would say from inside their own bitter self-doubt), they rather have no ego at all.  They are ego-less.  People who need assurance, who are always in need of support, their egos are out of control and controlling them.  But people who can stand whether it be in the calm or in the storm, well, the only way it is possible to do that is to be ego-less.

When I stood up to a couple stupid cowboys the other week, it felt awful.  But it worked.  Because my ego was not involved, only something much simpler, what was right and just and compassionate.  Can you believe that?  Me?  The Contrary Goddess doing compassionate?  To quote my midwife, it hasn’t exactly been my life’s path.  But compassion isn’t thoughtlessly stroking someone’s ego with “you are so right” but involves finding how to say difficult things in ways that can be heard.  Compassion involves not allowing someone else’s misery to infect you.  It may well be that compassion mostly involves leaving other people be to harvest their own sowing and quit trying to save them from it.  But compassion has no ego involved.  It has no need to be “right” because it already knows it is.

What do you know to be right that doesn’t require anyone’s approval?   Non-attachment is ego-less-ness; it is the hand opening and not grasping, not controlling, not blaming.  There is nothing that makes you happy or unhappy outside of you.

By the way, Garuda eating your ego is what happens when you live with nature, with animals, with your family, without domination or subservience, or exploitation.

maybe to love is not so strange

2012

Ok.  So.  The past year and the year to come. 

2011 had a lot of transitions.  The word “transitions” makes me smile because we do so many transitions riding horses, and we work for those transitions to be clean, precise, forward.  Not muddy.  Not sloppy.  Walk-trot.  Trot-halt.  Can-ter.  Not rushed.  With good rhythm.  Without bracing.    So much.

2011 had a lot of transitions.  Our foundation bred goat, our dog, our big horse all died, all very significant to our lives and the life of the farm.  But three new goats came and while they haven’t yet proven their usefulness to the farm, they seem on their way.  And two new dogs came to stay, as well as some temporary puppies.  And the little horse came.  My life at barn one became unbearable, but in that I learned something about my power (like, if I put on a bearskin – and the truth of that matter is that the bearskin is coming back out too, but only for one person who dared to hug me instead of shake my hand in a business deal).  And I found a life that has at least different potential at another barn.  The hours are harder, the riding more, the work easier, the owners of my own cultural milieu.   I found some people and some horses that I really really like at the new barn, no surprise.  I think it is a place of much loyalty, a place to grow.  Two cars died, four were junked.  Someone bought the neighboring land for next to nothing (although the property assessors probably won’t decrease “land values” because of it for tax purposes).  My goodness, even the stupid neighbors have taken down their light up swans over the holidays.

Some of those transitions made it seem to me to be a hard year.

Plus we had no girls’ weekend mostly because of my new job and me being unwilling to take time away from it a month after I got it.

But in the garden it was a year with a lot of cooperation, really the first year where we all worked at it, although as always I would be considered the slacker there.   One daughter got much needed braces, without tooth extractions or jaw work.  The house, while still somewhat of a mess (I can’t imagine living in a museum) got some areas of organization that work for what we’re doing now.  The cottage industries continued to come ever more into their own.  The family began some studies as a group.  And as in the job, there is a lot of potential floating around.

This past year gas and food prices went up; technology and land prices went down.  There is a lot of unrest (OWS) and unease (Tea Party), and not only at home (US) but the world over.  The internet has made censorship all but impossible, with the only exception seeming to be the totally closed N. Korea.  Although people with an ax to grind won’t ever even look at the other sides’ information, if talk radio is not balanced by NPR (and vice versa), well, there are consequences.  You choose the method, you choose the results.  It ain’t pretty, that one-sidedness (like only working your horse to the left).   The entire world is in denial about there being an actual limit on the amount of energy available to be consumed, a limit to growth, a limit to jobs, an actual meaning that affects your every day choices to morality. 

I do think there will be huge changes coming for the world in 2012.  I still so vividly remember when the first inklings of 2012 came into my head.  I don’t know what those changes will be and I don’t have any predictions.  I suppose the thing I think possible that would be the biggest cataclysm would be lack of food.  Americans think their grocery stores are always full.  Dear fat people:  you won’t always have access to 8000 calories a day.  Or to unlimited medical care.  I think gas will be $5/gal by the summer, although it will go down again when even people like me find they can’t afford to go to work anymore.  I believe that what is considered wealth might well change, for the masses and for the elite.  I believe that if you write down what is right now, next year the world will indeed have come to an end by having changed more than you can even think about right now.  I believe as much as the world changed between 2006 and now, it will change that much in 2012 alone.

What I wish/hope for 2012 is:  more love; more room; less defense; more cooperation (without punctuation)





Those transitions bear more work: you know up-down-up-down develops balance, strength, collection, self-carriage.  I'm also pretty sure I need some Dan Fogelberg music back in my life -- do you know how many Dan Fogelberg song lyrics I looked up to find the title of this post?  I think I'm in a really good place to be full of myself, to not shrink.  I think I am with the greatest set of people ever.  Yeehaw.

tears will fall sometimes

I realize nobody really pays as much attention to this blog as I do, and lately I obviously haven’t paid all that much attention to it either.  But one thing I’ve done for awhile now is to change the banner photo with the seasons – the same scenes but in the current season.  I’m having trouble changing the one up there right now though.

First, I just like that one, with the mare’s ears sticking up in the foreground.  She was so funny that day.  I went down to where I always take the photo and I took one photo before she literally ran up to see what I was doing and the result of that was this photo.  After I took this one, she ran out to the big horse and, I swear, posed.  I took two more photos with her standing beside of him, the last one with her mimicking his position grazing.

He died.  He was old.  It wasn’t a surprise.  We didn’t put him down and he didn’t linger.  It was mystically foggy the night.  We sat with him for long periods of time while he was on that final journey but left him be for the final part of it.  When I went out in the morning, he was gone.

And leaving the farm and coming back home it is like something is missing.  He’s been so much part of building this place, and so much part of me.  And I will never again take a seasons photo for the banner of this blog that he’s in – and I daresay he’s been in most of them.  We’ll never plow the garden or pull a log again.  He taught me so much, he gave me so much of me back.  He was gentle and slow and different enough that it wasn’t even scary.

I don’t know what the next chapter will hold.  There are advantages and disadvantages to giant horses and if I got another gentle giant, that would be fine, but there is nothing we do around here that warrants one.  The first thing that attracted my attention was smallish mules.  I think I could borrow a horse for this spring even.  I should probably try to take care of the cows first, and they need breeding and selling.  Perhaps I should try to train one of them to plow.  There is just nothing in stone about any of this except, of course, that I like equines.

I will miss him.  I do miss him.  And they’ll come a day I’ll change that banner photo, but that day is not today.

Also I will just note that the year was bracketed with the deaths of Jim and my big boy.  And Jim particularly loved this photo.  So maybe now's the time for Duke to show Jim a thing or two.

my witness

I used to think that I had chosen to live on a rather difficult cusp.  Not to complain, just to notice.  We chose to live differently but we also lived in the dominant paradigm too.  It was in so many areas of our lives too -- from how we worked, how we ate, how we raised our kids, everything.  And sometimes confounding and compounding this cuspiness, we chose not to live all the way over the other side of the cusp -- like we don't allow our children to do whatever the heck they please with no thought of the consequences; we eat gluten and meat; we have grid power.  There were pressures, from a lot of directions, at once, sometimes.

It was most difficult where those worlds met.  The most difficult for me was in dealing with my mother because I loved her so and she so did not understand much less approve.  Also, with children, it was like we were a pioneer family living alone on the prairie -- there was no one to trust.  Then there was work but more than work there is money, where money is required and where money can be got and what money must be spent for and how people value money and things and how not valuing those same things can lead to, well, if not friction exactly certainly unpleasant vibes.

But now I'm thinking that has switched and the most unpleasant place to be is in the position of buying into the dominant paradigm that is obviously and unutterly failing and realizing that there is nothing at all you can do about it and what the h*ll are you going to do about surviving it now anyway.  Nothing you've ever known is even out there anymore.

It isn't that I think it is too late.  I just think that I'm the one who gets to be comfortable (well, now, that's a loaded term) now.  Our life is different.  And it has been for a long time.  And those differences are now becoming visible to people.  I wonder, sometimes, how mad they will get, how much it will be my fault, that they refused to look.

Food and Love

I heard a guy on talk radio say, "Don't go to the feeding centers; don't go to the Super Dome."  Made me flashback at least five or six years ago to telling a girl who was pretending at that time to be my friend, "Don't go to the feeding centers."  I knew she didn't have much resilience and I knew I wasn't going to let her family come here so the best I could offer her was at least don't go there.

I remember telling a girl I worked with who moonlighted in real estate that it (real estate) couldn't continue like it was.  It was 2006 which, it turned out, was the height of it, and I said, "By 2012 the world will not be recognizable."  And it isn't.  It is certainly not in real estate and not in a whole lot of other ways too.  Although no one has been sent to feeding centers.  Yet.

And then a horrible warning decided to visit us.  We were generous to allow him to "hunt" our land and he could not even show up to scout and somehow thought that "hunting" involved 15 minutes and a clean shot given to him.  Not surprisingly, he saw no game although I guarantee you that game saw him.  He remarked that he'd "done his time" with wood heat and a lot of other things that I really don't need to catalog although I certainly took mental note.

As I tend to do with bad examples, I examined myself, ourselves, our life together here and now, for signs of what he could be mirroring for us.

The closest of "same-same" that I saw was when we butted heads over peak oil vs. abiogenic oil.  It was our house so he shut up but neither side was giving an inch.  He would spout oil field names and husband would spout how many barrels of oil were not there.  That sort of thing.  Probably the sort of thing that most "normal" people have never thought about.  I mean, really, say "abiogenic oil" or "Hubert's Peak" to anyone you choose and see if you don't draw a blank look back.

I suppose what disturbed me was the unthinkingness he displayed, which is pretty much what disturbs me about most people:  They decide they know how it is and they don't look again.  This guy spouted straight up talk radio talking points with no deviation, no deviation at all.  His money, his guns and his french fry oil will solve it all.

And then I read a piece about OWS and their "demands" working group.  And not unlike "don't go to the feeding centers" it seems so obvious to me: there is no list of demands.  It isn't a problem of demands. 

Essentially, money is a "demand" in that when you present it, you can "demand" something.  Supply and demand.  That sort of thing.  That's where demands are and they are equally at home in a capitalistic system, a socialist system, a communist system or a fascist system (and I would argue that our system, in fact the world's current system, is in fact all of those at once -- I might or might not be able to argue that cogently but it seems obvious to me nonetheless).

I have heard and even come to believe that one of the most important decisions that you make in your life is whether you see the universe as a place that is friendly toward you or hostile toward you:  does your life move toward fulfillment or is it a constant fight?  If your worldview is friendly, you will view and react and plan and live to events accordingly, and if your worldview is hostile, although the exact same things would happen, your view, reactions and plans for life would be totally different.  What we have, what we have had for a long time now, is a crisis of values, of how we view the world. 

I think we have to see the world as a place of abundance rather than a place of scarcity. 

Money is not real but a way to make what is scarce seem valuable.  I repeat, money is not real.  The economy is not real.  Jobs are not real.  Protests are not real.  They are all constructs, not unlike a planetary view of an atom -- perhaps useful in some contexts but not real, not what an atom really looks like.

What is real is food.  And love.

Eventually we get to the question of what does the world look like to us if we value what is abundant rather than what is rare?  I can tell you this;  changing values is a process not unlike dealing with an addiction, or changing a habit.  When I quit smoking I couldn't just decide to quit and that was it:  I had to decide anew to quit every.single.time I wanted a cigarette until finally I didn't want smoke anymore.  Changing values deliberately can be a lot like that -- getting rid of the bad habit of, say, covetousness or envy or desire (in the Buddhist sense) or thinking something is pretty or necessary that isn't or anything at all -- it is a matter of choice and decision, not feeling.  I decided not to shave anymore for many reasons all of them values (morality) based but it took me awhile to feel beautiful unshaven. 

Shaving and smoking are lightweights in the values department though.  It is everything about how we live every day and even think.  It is mindfulness.  It is the opposite of unthinkingness.  It is the opposite of reactive.  It is the opposite of popular and fashionable and being in the clique.  To view the world differently, abundantly, ironically requires some discomfort because you very wrongly think comfort is something that it isn't

If we value what is common instead of what is rare we see what is natural instead of what is contrived as beautiful.  I think people see "less" and think scarcity but really, look around, it is the sermon on the mount all over again, that's all.  This doesn't mean vilifying anyone, just refusing to value, to give weight or desire or admiration or envy to, say, rich people, or travel, or eating out, or having a new car, or even buying those new insulated coveralls when your old Salvation Army frayed ones are perfectly adequate.

I've had this piece of writing up on my computer for several days and it just does not look like it is ever going to come into any form of coherence.  So I'm going to point you to another bit of incoherence to think about.  It is long and it is so incoherent I'm going to point out the good parts:



A Million Gardens (for the 99% of the 99%)

1)  The problem with the system is not the driver.  It is the car.

2)  This crisis is not short-term, and it will force people to adopt new tactics for everyday life.  It represents both a trauma and an opportunity; but that opportunity, in my opinion, is not available through policy.

3)  People have been captured by their dependency upon a vast, technocratic apparatus that has de-skilled them and rendered them 100% (not 99%) dependent on money.  (that isn't real -- you see the problem?)

4)  What I am about to say is that institutions – all of them, even your favorites – are inherently and unavoidably corruptible.  (I'd say, are corrupt right now)

5)  My own trick for categorizing these relations is to think of them as covenantal as opposed to casual or contractual.  Your relation to your boss is contractual.   Your relation to a grocery clerk you see once a week is casual.  Your relation to your friend, lover, child, mother, etc, is covenantal.  These covenantal relations are built on care, on trust and empathy.  They imply certain non-monetized, highly personal duties and obligations to one another that are accepted out of love.  These relations do not require formal rules; and in fact, formal rules would have a deleterious effect on these relations.  (quite nicely, my relationship with my boss is more covenantal than contractual so don't take definitions too seriously but catch the drift)

6)  As the power of administrators grows, an ethic of care becomes more and more antithetical to the rules-regime of administration.  Impersonality metastasizes, and we wake up to find ourselves not living in the world but moving plugs around on a switchboard to get what we need from the technocratic grid.

7)  While the masters of the financial universe at Wall Street protect their guarded walls and ensure the system keeps paying the imperial tribute, we are making do.  We do things that they can’t control or fully account for.  We barter, clip coupons, work under the table, trade labor, share tasks and expenses with friends… all those little cheats to bypass the more disadvantageous routes along the Grid.  Making do.  Bricolage.  Bricolage is so detailed, so numerous in instance, so adaptable, that much of it escapes the notice of the Big Strategists; more importantly, it is beyond their power to control.

8)  And bricolage ends up being growing food.  Any makes a difference but more is better.  Go down to your local mill and buy some wheat.  Salad is fine but make room for some storage staples.  Keep some hens.  Some bees.  Have an adventure.  Do something meaningful.

Food and love.  Because the rest of that sh*t, it's just sh*t.

Two Articles and a Dare

It took me a second look to make sure of what this Gene Logsdon blog post was saying:  that the Achilles heel of pasture farming is not an Achilles heel to pasture farming itself but the Achilles heel of industrial pasture farming.  Long to short, he’s run into an unwanted grass that needs to be eliminated by hand and very early in its invasive process which, put together, means by a farmer with a hand tool walking his pastures very regularly.  An individual farmer can’t walk but, what, maybe 20 acres, maybe forty?  And even that might be stretching it.  Not so much for a farmer farming, but for the farmer with a town job to boot, a stretch for sure.  A hired hand can’t usually be counted on to do such work, not well, and besides would cost a lot to do it.

Then there was a local article about a local invasive that I happen to know we have on ancestral land of my husband’s family.  And the only thing in this article is how much these town job farmers are spending to eradicate this tree . . . and that it isn’t working.  Now, true enough it is an invasive that was brought in to ameliorate surface mining (strip job) damage, which was when people were concerned about erosion and acid slag heaps instead of invasive plants.  Anything that would grow there seemed to be a good thing.  But the farmers now seem to think that, well, they shouldn’t have to deal with it.

So my first comment is, get over it, sh*t happens and life ain’t fair.

But my deeper meditation is on how these two article fit together and compliment each other.  I’d pretty much guarantee that this shrub, taken on regularly in hand to hand combat, probably aided by goats, would fall to a controlled status.  Or find a useful niche.

I will out of habit pull out my pocket knife and cut off two inches under the ground any blessed thistle that I see anywhere.  Because I know how invasive these can be, and how nothing can eat it (although I've seen the donkey give it a go).  But we had some, and I know I didn’t control them all, and seasons come and go, and we don’t have many anymore.  For some years our bottom back field was nearly overtaken by iron weed, although this latest herd of goats, combined with cows that browse, has largely gotten it under control.  Both iron weed and thistle are gorgeous flowers, and I know at least the thistle makes wonderful honey, so particularly in rehabbing waste places and on fringes, there is a place for every plant.  I don’t believe in monoculture anywhere and especially not in a pasture (or hayfield).  Animals and the ground need variety.


Like so many other things, it is almost a dare -- dare to live smaller, have less and live more, dare to be a nobody, dare to pass without leaving a mark except in the wild tales your children's children will still tell about you.

cooking from the garden

You know how the froufrou chefs do it -- they go, "hmmm, what weird thing could I put with this other weird thing to make a taste sensation?".  Or something.

Homestead cooks have a slightly different technique -- "what's here and what can I make out of it?"  So that I knew I was going to have a side of summer squash with supper, and I pretty well knew I was going to saute it, but with what?  We love onions but didn't have many and they and the garlic were going into the main course.  We have an abundance of hot peppers though, so I picked a red cayenne.  Ok, there's that base note, and I'll seed it so it won't be so hot but still flavorful.

We were watering everything and weeding a little since we've had no rain lately and everything is pretty much just sitting there staring at us.  And as I watered, I gathered: some purslane, some purple basil, some sage.

And this is how the squash went:  pepper, summer squash, purslane, basil, sage, olive oil.

What I'm jonesing for now is really just a baked potato -- fully loaded.  If I could get the husband to dig some!

pieces and squashes

Some days ago Jimmy, I mean, Warren Buffett wrote a piece about how the rich in the US should not be "coddled", meaning they should be taxed more. While I know both sides of that argument, that's not what interests me about it.

The real strength of that article, the real strength of what he was saying was that he was talking about himself: Today's problems and what he himself could do to help.

Almost no one does this. Go listen to people asking for stuff from the government (legislative hearings). The only people there are people who are going to be directly affected -- the people working for the programs and the people benefiting from the programs. There is no generally recognized "need", not really. Milk and midwifery are not outlawed because they are dangerous but because someone (some group of someones) wants to keep those profits for themselves. The NEA isn't against school choice because it really thinks choice is bad but because choice takes money away from the schools that employ the NEA teachers who want pay raises. People who are for drug testing welfare & food stamp recipients mostly just think they themselves would never be be a welfare or food stamp recipient themselves -- and they don't even bother to think through the cost of doing that testing.

And I'm not saying that whatever it is that I'm doing is what needs to be done. Or even that I'm doing everything that I could do. But I hope that my thinking is on the level of what I can do. Of course, a lot of what we're doing is living at a level diametrically opposed to Warren Buffett. I do not find that sort of wealth enviable nor in fact do I think it is moral. But hey, at least Warren Buffett is talking about what he can do. I don't know many other people who are doing anything other than waiting for "the economy to come back", or to vote some some lying politician who promises to bring "good jobs", or for some state to drug test welfare and food stamp recipients.

Ok, so Buffett's point was weakened by the fact that he could go ahead and do it and not wait until the government forced said payment. It may well be for him, as many choices are for me, that there isn't a "win" choice to be made -- I can see a new paradigm coming and that needs to come, and I try to help it, but we ain't there yet and I still have to find a way to live in this current paradigm. Still, would that Warren Buffett and Jimmy Buffett and all of us would engage in a bit of bread labor every day.

Well, anyway. Here are some photos of some things to do with your summer squash.

This is an experiment this year. On the high recommendations of other bloggers, I got the library to get The Resilient Gardner by Carole Depp. I must admit, I'm a tough sell on gardening books anymore: it's hard for a normal gardening book to be interesting and informative to folks who have been gardening forever. Carole at least had an interesting concept -- what would you concentrate on to be resilient, which is her version of self-sufficient. And she picks, in my opinion, the right stuff mostly. But I still didn't find anything really that I liked about the book. And as hard as I looked, the only new idea I got was about summer squash.

When she mentioned squash as one of the resilient foods, I knew she was talking about winter squash. A good winter squash year is a thing of beauty and deliciousness. But summer squash? They're really just a summer treat, aren't they? She promotes the idea of drying them and says that, not unlike green beans which when dried become a thing that is an entirely new vegetable -- shucky beans, dried summer squash becomes an entirely new and different winter veggie. So we're experimenting. She had a lot of blather about varieties and tastes but not a lot on how to use them except in winter soups, and honestly I'm just drying whatever we've got and we'll see if they become a staple or not.

This is another way to enjoy them, even a little larger than usual -- skewer them and roast them after the chicken on a spit!