MamaStories

last of the frozen blueberries (rinse out baggie, reuse)

Today was fabulous. Almost 60F, sunny, a mild breeze. Amie and I went outside and worked - well, she sat and drew, I worked. I made a new 4′x16′ bed near the fence, for peas and lettuce (it will be shaded by the summer hoop house). Still have to fill half of it in, with the soil from my potato bins, only the top twenty inches of which weren’t frozen. Ooph, my back! Feels good. I also bought enough timber for 4 more beds and 5 trellises, which means…

… that I am going through with the tree, bush and vine order. This is the order I am contemplating:

• 1 BARCELONA HAZELNUT (Corylus avellana), layered
• 6 BUSH HAZELNUT (Corylus americana), 1-2 foot seedlings
• GAMMA HAZELNUT (Corylus avellana), layered
• 1 MEADER PERSIMMON (Diospyrus virginiana)
• 2 PAW PAW (Asimina triloba)
• 1 ATREANO FIG (Ficus carica)
• 3 PATRIOT BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
• 2 ANANASNAYA FEMALE HARDY KIWI (Actinidia arguta)
• 1 MALE HARDY KIWI /POLLINATOR (Actinidia arguta)
• 3 CHINESE MAGNOLIA VINE (Schizandra chinensis)
• 1 ROSA RUGOSA / ALBA (Rosa rugosa alba)
• 1 RUBY AUTUMN OLIVE (Eleagnus umbellata)
• 1 SWEET SCARLET GOUMI (Eleagnus multiflora)
• 2 SOCHI TEA (Camellia sinensis)
• 2 RED HUCKLEBERRY (Vaccinium parvifolium)
• 2 RED OSIER DOGWOOD (Cornus sericea)
• 3 ARONIA SEEDLINGS (Aronia melanocarpa)
• 2 YORK ELDERBERRY (Sambucus canadensis)
• 2 JOHN ELDERBERRY (Sambucus canadensis)
• 3 SNOWBERRY (Symphoriarpos alba)
• 2 SERVICEBERRY (Amelanchier alnifolia)
• 2 HiGHBUSH CRANBERRY (Viburnum trilobum)

I’m still trying to find these:

• WITCHHAZEL (Hamamelis)
• WINTERBERRY (Ilex verticillata)
• SHADBLOW SERVICEBERRY (Amelanchier canadensis)
• APPLE SERVICEBERRY (Amelanchier grandiflora)]
• STRAWBERRIES

Mot of these don’t mind shade, and not a few of them don’t mind it wet, either. All are edibles - except the Red Osier Dogwood, which we want for coppicing, for basketry.

I just need to do some more fine-tuning, placement in the garden plan, sourcing and price matching. So far Burnt Ridge seems my best bet (they have all the ones in the first list). A pity it has to come from so far away: we’re talking seedlings, 3 foot trees, and some pots!  I wonder how all that can survive in the mail. But my local garden center is too expensive, and they don’t sell half of what I want - same with the few Massachusetts nurseries I found. If anyone knows of one: I’m near Boston…

Turns out we won’t be replacing our old, rotting, dirt-floor small shed with a new and larger, insulated workshop/pottery studio. The previous owner had an unwieldy septic system put in, and some digging today confirmed that part of that system lies within 10 feet of the corner of the old shed - and closer than 10 feet we may not go. We’ll try to appeal to our Town’s Board of Health, but I’m pessimistic.

My idea now is to keep the old structure, to reorganize its shelving, and to build a platform for a floor so DH can still have a small workshop in it. We might put up a small potting shed nearer to the vegetable garden.

Well, at least we saved $13.000 today! Should this make me feel better about that pending $400 order from Burn Ridge (for paw paws, hardy kiwis, rosa rugosa, elderberries, among others)? The $350 for the hive and accessories? Shall I throw in some extra mushroom spawn too?

~

Then we have the root cellar. The asbestos tiles were removed so we’re a go. But since our future in this place is (dare I say it) not as certain as it once was (aargh), we may not go ahead until we know that future better (more news at the end of April). Let’s just say that taking a large chunk out of a basement room that could be finished as a tv room (gack), so as to install a root cellar (a what?), would not be a good “investment decision” (in case we sell).

That of course also makes the bushes and trees order and the spawn order problematic.

The hive and the bees are movable.

In the hoop house:

Outside: garlic

And this is where the bee hive will stand:

I stopped reckoning our food consumption for the Riot a long time ago: the Riot way of calculating our food consumption and production was never clear to me. And so, though the growing and storing and preparing of food are almost constantly on my mind, I haven’t kept track, which made me feel at a loss. The challenge over at Not Dabblng in Normal is a great occasion to take stock.

For me the issues are

1. processing (preservatives, food coloring, pesticides, and simply the amount of steps from field to fork)
2. packaging (especially plastics and styrofoam)
3. food miles

(+) I’ll first discuss those points we’re already making progress on and are improving as we go. (+/-) Then there are the points that we still need to get started on, that need work but that can be done. (-) Then the ones we can’t do much about in either the near future, or ever.

Lastly, why are we doing this? Three words: health, resilience, thrift.

1. + EGGS: We’re eating a lot of eggs (4-5 eggs, each, a week), which we buy locally at our Winter’s Farmers Market or through my raw milk buying club. The cartons are being reused by the farmers, and I’m keeping some for when we have chickens ourselves. I still hope to have those chickens soon.
2. + SWEETENER: Hopefully we’ll also be getting our bees soon (end of April). The idea is to start using more honey for sweetener than sugar. (We decided, BTW, to go ahead with the bees even if we can’t have honey: for the skill, the pollination, the wax - the potentially poisoned honey will be returned to the hive for winter feeding.)
3. + VEGETABLES/BEANS: Compared to last year, our vegetable garden will be expanded, in time (we’ll have a Spring season this time), size (double, at least), and yield (thanks to my higher position on the steep learning curve).
4. + HOME-PROCESSED FOOD: We’re still eating well from our canning pantry: jams, jellies, chutneys, pie filling, apple sauce, peaches in syrup, etc. I can’t wait to start adding more and more variety to that in a few months.
5. +/- FOOD STORAGE: Tomorrow marks the removal of the asbestos tiles in our basement, which prevented us from installing a root cellar or “cold room”. Then we’ll start drawing up plans and we hope to have a cold room by the end of Summer, when the big harvest comes in.
6. +/- FRUIT: We will be planting berry bushes, kiwi vines and paw paws this Spring, but it will be a while before we will be able to harvest a good amount.  No room for apples or pears, our staple fruits, but we buy them locally and organic when in season and eat them processed at other times.
7. +/- FISH: We don’t eat a lot of fish” two or three times a month. To be honest, looking at the selection at the grocery store (Whole Foods), I don’t know what to buy anymore: farmed, wild caught? We’re planning to have a small pond in which we might grow tilapia or some such (haven’t researched it much yet) which we will harvest and freeze for special treats.
8. +/- MEAT: We also eat very little meat: once a week, if at all. When we do, we buy it at Whole Foods: no antibiotics, etc, and usually quite locally sourced, but still, to be minimized. The allowances from the meat CSAs are too big for us: we’d have to stuff ourselves with meat, by our standards. They’re also pricey. The thing to do here is to keep our meat consumption down and to enjoy only as a special treat the occasional chicken from the backyard.
9. +/- DRINKS: We don’t drink soda at all and rely mostly on water from the tap, which we filter. We do love a good cup of coffee and tea, or two - especially in winter, when it’s 58F in the house. I am going to experiment with tea plants and maybe, with a good homegrown tea, I could kick the coffee habit. As for juices, what little comes into the house is for Amie, and I hope to make our own come berry time.
10. +/- BAKING: This is a weakness of mine. I know I can bake a bread and that it doesn’t take a lot of time or hassle. I know that with just a little more effort and dedication I can make perfectly good bread (and cookies, cakes, crackers). But baking just isn’t in my blood. I hope we get to make that Earth Oven: it’ll be a kick in the butt. Imagine how much processed, bagged foods I could ignore at the store if I did this! (As for food miles, see GRAINS).
11. +/- DAIRY PRODUCTS: There is also, really, no reason why I shouldn’t be making my own yogurt, butter and cheese! As for the raw materials for those:
12. - MILK: The raw milk is as unprocessed as it gets, and it comes in glass ball jars, so the packaging isn’t a problem. But its has a lot of food miles on it: it comes from 100 miles away. And at its price, $4.50 for half a gallon, we can afford only 1 gallon a week, but we consume about 3 gallons. The rest I buy from Organic Valley at Whole Foods. Nothing much I can do about this, as yet. There are cow shares around that I know of and that would be affordable. But the plastic bottles I will reuse either as hotcaps for early transplants,  or for emergency water storage if I ever get round to that.
13. - GRAINS/RICE: I have no room in my garden to grow my own grains, let alone rice. Most grains on the market come from over a 100 - probably a 1000 -  miles away. The only thing way I can do, for now, is to buy them dry and in bulk.  I’d love to get a grain mill and buy whole grains, then grind them, but that would be for later and would not solve the issue at hand. I’ll look into ways to eventually replace conventional grains with other sources of carbs and starches.

Last year’s averages (calculated here) are mentioned as a baseline. I use this calculator.

Gasoline. I can’t wait for the temperatures to go up and the rains to stop so I can bike Amie to school.

9.96 gallons per person (pp) in cars + 10 miles pp on public transport

=  24 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 24.8%)

Electricity. This went up a lot because of the growing lights and heat mat. I’ll measure how much is consumed by the full setup of eight lights, heat mat and fan.

539 KWH (all wind) = 15 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s early average: 18.2% - we only switched to wind in the middle of the year)

Heating Oil and Warm Water. I’m relieved to say this number is finally going down. It’s warming up and we had some good thaw days. We still heat to 58F at night and most of the day. The wood stove goes on around 6 pm and goes till when we go to bed, heating the house to around 64F. I’ll count the second cord of wood we started once it’s finished. Also our warm water is heated with this oil.

50.15 gallons = 81 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 77%)

Trash. We did even better here. I reuse most unrecyclable containers for the seedlings. 90% of our trash is plastic food wrapping, so I watch the packaging of the food we buy, and try to buy mostly in bulk anyway.

3 lbs pp = 2 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 7.3%)

Water. This again crept up. We had four guests over for the holiday week and I also did a lot of washing and rinsing of last year’s plant and seedlings pots. Those seeds and seedlings also need a lot of water…  The lower one’s water consumption, the more these little bits count and jump into the eye. I’ll be happy to see the rain barrels back in use.

494 gallons of water pp = 16 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 16.5%)

Consumer Goods. Most of our purchases were towards the garden this month, so I won’t count them. For the rest we did well again, only splurged a bit at the MFA ($20 for a book and some small toys) and bought two magazine subscriptions.

$60 = 7 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 27.2%)

Do you think about the future? Do you wonder what it will be like? Or do you live like it’s always going to be the way it has been?

~

I found at least 5 entries like this one, all in drafts, abandoned. As I prepare for the growing season with more resolve and urgency than ever before now that my apprenticeship is over (ha!), I need to line up my motivations like a general does her troops. This is just a declaration, not a proof or demonstration: others are supplying the data much more clearly and comprehensively than I ever could.

~

1. We’ve got problems

I believe that sometime in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of my daughter, life will be changed, drastically. This is because three changes are already happening.

• Peak Oil

(I believe that) there will be a chronic shortage in oil production and thus cheap oil. This year, in 20 years, I don’t know, but in my lifetime. This will not just affect the heating of our houses and our trips to the grocery store, but also the delivery trucks’ trips to the grocery store, and the farm equipment that “grows” our produce, and the factory equipment that put together all those plastic containers for our shampoos, and the pharmaceuticals producing our medicine, etc. (cf. The Oil Drum)

• Economic Depression

(I believe that) increasing debt, decreasing value of money, hyperinflation, the precariousness of globalization and the lie of never-ending growth will soon mean the end of any value to our national currency, the end of imports, the closing of  businesses and banks, rampant unemployment, the end of the middle class as we know it, and the cessation of public services. (cf. The Crash Course)

• Climate Change and Overpopulation

(I believe that) the Earth is changing and that it’s too late to do anything about it (if we ever could), that several tipping points have been already been (b)reached. The effect is the disturbance of the climate pattern upon which our agriculture and settlements developed and rely, and thus a growing difficulty for growing food and maintaining our towns and cities. This means a growing number of climate refugees and massive immigrations of our immense world population.

All three are interrelated. I suspect Economic Depression will be the first step, soon exacerbated by Peak Oil, then, more gradually but much more insistently, Climate Change. (Read also, John Michael Greer’s “Endgame” and Richard Heinberg’s Museletter).

~

2.  Collapse

I believe that even just one and certainly all of these events together will lead to collapse. I don’t believe it will be as bad as zombies or The Road, but I foresee some hard times and, at the very least, the end of the way we live our lives today.

I can’t say that it is my hope that this won’t happen. Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if it didn’t. If, for instance, we found some renewable, clean and omnipresent source of energy, freely and democratically available,  capable of powering our fleet of vehicles and our agricultural and factory equipment. Oh, and if it could also reverse the climate change tipping points… Sounds like heaven on earth to me, but I’ll just go ahead and prepare for if that doesn’t happen.

And it’s not like we have a lot of time. Collapse is already happening. Maybe not to me, or you, but to many in this country, in the world, and to whole countries even, to some degree or another. But for reasons that will become clear, here I just want to talk about myself, my family, and my neighborhood.

~

3. Hope

Still, I have hope. I hope that (for myself and my community, at least), collapse will be gradual enough. I hope it’s not a precipice, but a staircase, and that at each step enough people will (have to) take sufficient action to “catch up” on the decline. I hope that we can descend gracefully: without famine, violence, the destruction of culture and civilization…

A funny thing, though, this hope. I hope it’s reasonable (unlike “aw, come on, nothing’s going to happen!”). It will require hard work and sacrifices,  but we could pull it off. And to those who say “forget it, it’s too late, TS is really going to HTF,” I say “I hear you,  but you know what? I have no choice but to hope. My child leaves me no choice.” I must do my best to make my hope, her hope come true.

~

4. Starting descent

How do I do this? We, myself and my immediate family, have already started to power down. For instance, this month, February 2010, is our 16th month of the Riot for Austerity. In the Riot we try to decrease our consumption of oil, water, electricity, and consumer goods, and our production of waste, all to10% of the US national average. It’s tough! We’re almost there with certain things, but not anywhere near 10% with others.

We changed our eating habits: less meat, less food, more bulk, dry goods, and very little eating out. We are establishing a large food garden, with a hoop house for a winter harvest, and hopefully a beehive soon, and chickens. We work on our food storage and emergency supplies. The immediate goal is to grow and store enough and a healthy variety of food to feed two families, and to plant an extra row for the hungry. You can find more details of our lifestyle changes on the “What We Do” page.

Why are we doing this, making these sacrifices in the time and the land that is still plenty? Do I  think it’s going to make a difference to climate change? I’m not that naive.

• But I do it out of principle: to take more than what one needs is to be greedy and bad for the soul.
• I do it because, when I make something myself, with my own time and genius and effort, I take responsibility for it and I take care of it as a thing that I love. When I buy it, I just get the responsibility, like an extra price tag, easily snipped off. I “take care” of it only because it cost me so much - or, more frequently, I don’t take care of it at all, because it cost me so very little. I want to take control, responsibility, and care.
• I want to be prepared - practically and psychologically - for a future with less cheap oil, less income, less security, more manual labor, the need for different kinds of skills, etc.
• I do it to set up a model for others, for when circumstances will force them, too, to adopt such a lifestyle. That’s my next point.

~

5. A model

We take these and many other actions as an average (middle class) family, with an average income and debt. We can’t bring in the big machines to flatten the land and mow down all the trees that shade our vegetable garden. We can’t tear down our 1950’s ranch and put a zero energy house in its place. We can’t buy the $1000 compost toilet, the photovoltaics, the hybrid car. And that’s good, because that makes our place an attainable model for anyone in our quite average situation around here.

As people start realizing they can no longer afford the $300 electricity bill, the $4000 oil bill, or the cable subscription, we can show them that it’s possible both practically and psychologically, for them to descend without hurting and actually even gaining something. For we don’t need television and video games to entertain ourselves, and digging in the garden is better exercise than the gym, and eating from that garden is healthier than take-out. I hope to demonstrate by example that living with a little less at a time does not need to hurt.

~

6. Will that be all?

Do I think that what we are doing and working on - this 90% reduction in consumption of this and that, this 50% (?) self-reliance in food, this reskilling, etc. - will be all that is required of us?

Not by a long shot! But as a first step it’s the perfect preparation for the second step.

Which is? I don’t know. Ask me on a good day, then ask me again on a bad day. All I know is that what my family and I are doing right now is not what will be required, at some point, of all of us, and that after that, there will be even more.

Think of it. When oil hits $5, or $10, or $50 a gallon? When the shelves in the grocery store stay empty? When we are freezing in our houses? When half the people on the street are unemployed, and one third is homeless to boot? When a shift in climate wipes out a major crop? When the majority of us can no longer ignore or evade the situation, because our money can’t buy anything? Now we’re talking collapse.

There are times when I think the worst and that head-for-the-hills feeling flares up. When, in essence, I lose hope. But I squash it. Many reasons make it impossible for my family to pack up and dig in. It wouldn’t work for me to want to live as if collapse has already happened. It would wreck my family and isolate me. That’s not what I’m aiming for.

So if in the eyes of some I take it too fast, and in the eyes of others I take it too slow, so be it. I hope I’m hitting that golden mean, but I also know that mean is sliding down as we speak, until at some point “too much” and “too little” collapse into one.

In the meantime I hope the forerunners can be helpful, by their example, to the masses descending behind them. But if there’s suddenly going to be a whole lot of people barreling down that ever steeper and narrower staircase, it would be good for those who are ahead to install a railing as they go. Or else we’re all going to end up in a big, crushed heap at the bottom.

~

That railing is relocalization, but about that, next time. It takes a lot out of me to write this, and it takes a long time to write, because I know that most of you don’t agree, and I feel I have to be argumentative, on the defensive, and watch my words. While I just want to say it like it is for me, so we know where I stand.

Last year’s averages (calculated here) are mentioned as a baseline. I use this calculator.

Gasoline. This is the usual: still too high. When the temperatures go up I’m really going to work on biking Amie to school and back.

9.52 gallons per person (pp) in cars + 10 miles pp on public transport

=  23 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 24.8%)

Electricity. This went up a little because of the confluence of four things: we’re using the space heater in the bathroom more often, our new fish tank requires heating and filtering, we’re using the humidifier in our bedroom at night, and we’re internet-backing up our humongous desktop computer, which we use only for data storage (it’ll take 2 weeks this first time around!).

445 KWH (all wind) = 12 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s early average: 18.2% - we only switched to wind in the middle of the year)

Heating Oil and Warm Water. It’s been cold. Again. We heat to 58F at night and most of the day. The wood stove goes on around 4 in the afternoon and goes till when we go to bed - seems like, as soon as the sun goes down, our tolerance for 58F comes to an end.  With the stove I try to keep it around 64F. Our first cord is finished now, so I’m adding that (it was used over the last three months or so). Our warm water too is heated with oil.

71.4 gallons = 116 % of the US National Average

add 1 cord of wood: 140 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 77%)

Trash. We’re holding steady on this one.

5 lbs pp = 4 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 7.3%)

Water. This went up by a bit from the usual (14 %). Don’t know why.

443.8 gallons of water pp = 15 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 16.5%)

Consumer Goods. We purchased next to nothing this month. All I can think of are four little fish ($1.25 each) and fish food. (I’m, as always, excluding seeds and growing supplies.)

$15 = 8 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 27.2%)

~

It’s interesting to compare these last three months to the same months last year, to see what a difference our wood stove and the lowering of the thermostat are making in our consumption of heating oil (so I’m not reckoning in that finished cord):

Nov 2008- Jan 2009 (63F): 131.6 % vs. Nov 2009 - Jan 2010 (58F): 82.6 %

We had, of course, that crazy warm November in 2009… Still:

Dec 2008 - Jan 2009 (63F): 155 % vs. Dec 2009 - Jan 2010 (58F): 112.5%

It’ll make a noticable difference in the yearly average.  If only we could  eliminate the part of the oil that goes to heating our water, if only on warm days.

It’s scary out there. First it snowed: big, heavy, sticky snow. I went out every two hours to clear the hoop house with the big broom. The bare trees are loaded with snow, the branches that have leaves or needles on them droop precipitously. Then it stopped snowing, the clouds blew away, and all that white fluff flash froze to a crunch. Then, wind. Loud too, like jets suddenly flying over low, and the rumble of large objects hitting and rolling around on the roof.

I went out one last time - it was already dark - and the tiny flying ice scratched up my face. I had to put large boulders on the two ends of the hoop house where the plastic had been jerked loose. I couldn’t go into the house to pull them into place because the two clips holding the door flap closed were frozen stuck.

Tomorrow and the day after it will be sunny and bitter cold: wind chill as low as -10, and gusts of wind as high as 41 mph.

If after those days the hoop house still stands, and no tree has fallen on our house or our electricity lines, I’ll be very grateful!

Our back garden, house and veg garden are on a little hill. The slope (in red) is quite steep, and we terraced the part where the soil had been disturbed and was eroding. We put beds on either side (only the two lowest ones shown in brown) and a path of grass in the middle. This path leads down to the “front garden,” the large stretch of land at the bottom of the hill.

This piece of land has issues.

1. It is home to the large septic leach field, so we shouldn’t put deep-rooted plants there, or any heavy stuff, like an asphalt parking lot for our truck (kidding).
2. It is the lowest part of this part of our street, so it catches all the rainwater runoff from all sides. Luckily  most of it is from our own roof and hilltop, which we plan to divert (blue line) to a small pond and wetland at the lowest spot.
3. It was badly disturbed by the installation of the septic (by the previous owner). In direct violation of one of the first rules of permaculture (never leave disturbed soil undisturbed!), we paid no attention to it for almost 2 years now and it is overgrown with weeds and brambles. And the soil is, of course, still bed: light brown, full of rocks, waterlogged.
4. That soil is also very fungal, so it’s a challenge to grow and maintain grass on it. To put it simply, greens like bacterial soil, woodies like fungal soil.
5. It borders on the street, with in between a strip of land that belongs to the town (where a lot of snow gets dumped, so we won’t be investing in any expensive bushes over there. I don’t even know what we could do there, it not being ours.
6. We never go down there. In the past it was understandable: it was not inviting, and until last Fall (when we put the grass in), there wasn’t even a path that led to it.  But I know that, if we don’t make it absolutely gorgeous, it will be still be a neglected area: it is so out of the way of all our traffic.

Of all these issues, no.5 seemed to me the most challenging. What good is a fancy garden down there if we would never visit it? So I kept hesitating, pushing it out of my mind. Then Amie catalyzed an insight.

She kept insisting on lots of flowers. “I want to grow lots of flowers, Mama!” Yes, why not. And we do have a beehive in mind, so we’ll need them. And flowers are beautiful, and down there they will be the first thing people will see. And if we put a bench there, visible and accessible from the street: community!

So. Strip the weeds, lay out beds in curves and organic shapes with the large stones that are native to our property. Fill those with good soil and put in perennial shade-loving flowers. Plant deep-rooted flowers and bushes (elderberry!) to the east, clear of the leach field. Make these plantings transition into the wet area. There plant reeds, put in the pond with fish, a little boardwalk. In the middle have a small patch of lawn. There put a bench. Lay a gravel path to it from the street. Sit down. Enjoy the colors and scents, the sounds of water and of the breeze in the reeds around the pond. And invite the neighbors!

With daytime temperatures in the single digits (F), I was motivated to cover the smallest, yet still considerably large, living room window with a thick quilt I had lying around. I just slung it over the curtain rod and then snapped on three of the handy pvc clips that hold the plastic to our hoop house. Then I tucked it in on all sides. It’s not what you could call sealed, but an improvement nevertheless. Amie likes it so much she wants to keep it on during the day, and I don’t mind because it still lets a lot of light through.

I’m hoping to find a couple of quilts that will cover the large bay window in the living room (to be removed during the day), and one small one for the bathroom window, where I will have to use a tension rod. All the little bits help.