1. Clean the wood stove chimney. It had been two years, so we felt it was time. Instead of hiring a chimney sweep ($150 a visit) we bought a chimney brush with rods ($165). DH climbed up (our house has only one storey), I fed him the brush and the rods, and the job was done in 15 minutes.  We’ll add these tools to the Transition Wayland Tool Pool (chimney sweep not included).

2. All of last year, whenever the furnace would come on, the house would fill with an exhaust smell. Not enough to set off our carbon monoxide alarms, but unpleasant. We diagnosed the problem as a crack in the old chimney flue. We asked for an estimate and it came back at $1200 (materials and labor). But when the woodstove was installed and we had the other flue lined, it didn’t look like rocket science. So we bought the metal liner, the connectors and the chimney top online and the high temperature caulk and silicone ($400 total ), and with the help of two friends installed it in an hour or so.

It was pretty warm out today, 50F, so both chimney flues were unused until around 6 pm. I even opened the windows wide. I emptied the rain barrels for storage, reattached the gutters, put the hoses away. I am eager t0 clear the downed limbs from the garden beds so I can plant my garlic. I’ve got 4 pounds of seed garlic and plan to put some in every bed to “sanitize” the soil. I need to fix the hoop house (only one tear from the fallen branch). And I want to get some horse manure from my neighbor and start spreading it all over. Also, I need to get me 5 bales of straw from  the feed mill…

All that will depend on Amie. Her school is canceled a second day because the building still doesn’t have electricity, but she is ill, anyway, and will probably be home tomorrow as well.

Here is Amie’s first recital, a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

By the way, in case you were wondering, I think playing a musical instrument is one of those crucial skills we all need to learn again. Hand and homemade entertainment is vastly superior to the tinned junk piped in through the cables we’re hooked up to. Also, no ads!

Solar eye

Today we talked to the tree removal people, and the quote they gave us was reasonable. We’re talking a lot of trees, here: six largish-large oaks (some white, some red), one massive beech and one younger one, and three tall pines. Then there will be stump removal (necessary because we want to plant an orchard instead, matching each cut tree with at least one new dwarf one) and splitting and chopping fire wood. We’ll leave the first to the experts, but are planning to do the second and third jobs ourselves. I plan on becoming an expert in chopping and stashing away two more years of firewood while also gaining a kick-ass figure!

So far we’ve received three (ball park) quotes for a 5 kilowatt solar PV system and a solar hot water system. They too, given the incentives, could be within our means. We need to crunch more numbers, but one thing is for sure: it will be nice to open up our canopy for the gardens, but if we decide not to go with the solar array(s), we won’t take down the trees.

Above is the image one of the installers took when on our roof, which at that point still had 2 feet of snow above a good 10 inches of ice on it.  That was excitement enough for me!

Bubbles!

The Ginger Bug is bubbling so I’m moving on to the next stage of brewing a good beer: adding the culture to the base (water, more ginger and sugar/honey) and letting it ferment away some more. I’m making a little less than a gallon,  about 6 wine bottles, I should say.

DH made some wine a many years ago (it was really good), and so we have carboys in several sizes. You could use a milk container but 1) they’re plastic and 2) they’re not clear, which makes keeping an eye on the fermentation difficult. Also, 3) you need to find a way of closing the container, and that flimsy cap won’t do it, it’ll blow right off as the fermentation keeps going. DH’s carboy comes with a stopper with an airlock. Perfect!

A week to two weeks to my first ginger beer!

~

I want to grow ginger root, or rather, ginger rhizome (Zingiber officinale). It seems challenging in a cold climate – it needs about 8-10 months of growing time and is not cold-hardy, so it has to come inside for a large part of the year. And inside I am still struggling with the whiteflies and the aphids - the neem seems to have gotten the majority, but the survivors are recolonizing rapidly. Keeping humidity-loving, pest-prone exotics happy in the extra dry winter indoors is not easy.

Nevertheless I want to give it a try, and while I’m at it I’ll also try to grow ginger’s relative, turmeric (Curcuma longa), another great medicinal and culinary rhizome, if I can find a fresh root somewhere.

~

More snow is coming down. It’ll have added 7 to 8 inches by the time it’s done. I  don’t think that  I’ve ever seen so much accumulated snow in the twelve years that I’ve lived in the Boston area. School is canceled for an unprecedented second day int he history of our town. I will have to go out to dig out the hoop house and the beehive. I’ll have to wade through snow up to my knees. A plus is that it is making me take a closer look at where to put the chicken coop.

If we want to make a snowman we’ll have to do it today. After today we’re looking at a couple of days of excrutiating cold – minus 5 (F) Sunday night!

But the good thing is we got to stay with our dear New Yorker friends, A and D and their daughter E. They even fed us a wonderful vegetarian Thanksgiving Dinner. Yum! There was an acorn squash involved, with honey… I’m growing that squash next season! Amie got to play with E, who is seven now, very bright and kind. They’ve known each other since Amie’s birth and are like sisters, giggling, playing and reading together. It is with this family that we want to start an intentional community (I’ve not written about that, have I? Later).

And we got to take home two things that they had been storing for us (in their tiny 500 sq.f. apartment, which is already crammed full with art works):

• a grain mill
• a spinning wheel

~

The spinning wheel was a surprise. A, the dad, had picked it up off the street, along with a big, heavy suitcase that was locked. He brought these unwieldy things home (on the bus). There he opened the suitcase and found diplomas, certificates, prizes and photographs, many of them pretty old. A stashed these away until late that evening. When D was asleep, he quietly exchanged all their own photographs with these old ones. D woke up to a house full of strangers! But she became upset when she heard the story, because this was obviously someone’s life – so meticulously collected – thrown in the street as trash.  I’ve offered to help them track down family members to see if they want these things back.

The spinning wheel has some broken and possibly missing parts. We’ll figure out how to fix and work it once we get back from India.

~

The grain mill was A’s in college. Apparently, sometime during his adventurous college career, A and a friend baked tens of loaves of bread every day, from scratch. His parents had this mill sitting in their basement in Michigan for over a decade, and so it made its way to NYC, then to us. I don’t know how it works yet. I has a heavy duty engine but I want to find a wheel for it, to make it manual.

~

Do scroll down to see my new pots.

This one was in the oven at the right temperature. It rose just a fraction more than the previous one which was baked at 300 F, instead of the 350 F required, and still came out pretty yummy. Don’t know how this one tastes yet, it’s still cooling down. It weighs a little over a pound.

~

In any case, we’re back and I need to update you on yesterdays’  Daily Bread No.4. This one’s  the 5 minutes a day, kneadless 100% Whole Wheat sandwich bread.

(not its most photogenic side)

When making Bread No.2 my portable thermometer showed that our oven’s thermostat is off by quite a bit: set at 450 F, it heats up to 420 F, according to that thermometer, which is old and has been through a lot. Which one to believe? Yesterday while making Bread No.4, which needs to go in at 350 F, I tested using our digital thermometer (which can’t go up to 400). And the off thermostat was confirmed: set at 350 F it only heated up to 300 F.

Of course I only remembered to test this at the end of the baking. This might be why Daily Bread No.4  failed to rise to the occasion.

Yet it was lovely to eat, dense and moist, just about cooked through. And with a crust to die for. I also used only 1/3 of the salt that is mentioned in the recipe. I think I’ll start cutting down on salt. The read tastes sweeter. I still have two batches of dough left, so today I’ll compensate for the oven temperature and see if the loaf comes out better.

We’re still eating all this bread! They’re small loaves, I’ll weigh the next one.

Behind it is what’s left of Bread no. 1. I found the oven thermometer and determined that when set at 45o F my oven only heats up to 420 F. I’ll rectify that tomorrow. The bead is goooood though, and – one more advantage – it heats up my kitchen.

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.