Thursday Open Thread 3-30-2017
This week I have been paying attention to my daily habits and thought processes that contribute to the practice of resilience. Its been only three years since I decided to try and turn the acreage into my age in place home. Part of the process is changing to low input farming techniques and deliberately managing as a unique ecological unit. A number of permaculture techniques are being tried.
A short growing season, with the potential of frost 12 months of the year limits the number of successful crops. Grass is easy to grow. The sheep, cattle and chickens are very efficient at converting it to products I can use.
My newest addition arrived yesterday morning. Mom and calf are doing good. I will add a photo next week, the upload is stalling. I can start using Mom's milk this weekend to make yogurt and cheeses. The taste of the fresh cheese is definitely worth the extra work.
My hens are providing enough eggs I am to freezing the extra for next winters dog food. Been making my own dog and cat food for 5 years, after a rash of dog food recalls.
Tuesdays Open thread by Mark from Queens had a good discussion on restarting the Resilience Group. Mhagle had a good comment on a format style we might continue discussing
Comments
A family mystery/history solved this morning, before 8 AM!
My sister is beginning the slog through our Mother's 96 year accumulation of stuff. She found a set of baby shoes, leather, not-white with heels and a cryptic note: Margaret King. Who was Margaret King, and how long ago? It's Aunt Mag, died before I was born, part of a duo with Uncle Dan, my mother's Second Parent set. Her biological ones were fairly disconnected from life, even from their only child's. And this was the set I was exposed to the most, a deaf and blind grandfather and an agoraphobic grandmother who wheeled herself around in a chair because arthritis or heart disease or combination. I grew up with the strangest set of normals. I was totally accepting, as many of us have learned. My father's father I saw at most 4 times in his life, including his funeral. Step-grandmother there. BRCA-1 and -2 came from Mertie, my biological grandmother. She died of breast cancer, introducing a new DNA cocktail to the family. One cousin had breast cancer in her 20's. Implant breasts; other cousin was so freaked out she had a voluntary bilateral mastectomy when she had insurance as a grad student. Yes, we are normal.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
The traditional-family-only crowd
. . . is so out of touch with history. Historically, all families were blended, non-traditional, including many generations.
I was raised on family stories that my dad would tell, leaning on a cow in the dairy barn. Fun stuff.
I enjoyed hearing about yours!
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Nuclear vs extended families
I spent my childhood in a "large" extended family household. It had gramps, two uncles, one aunt, my parents, and me. I enjoyed huge holiday celebrations that gathered nine brothers and sisters and their families. It was wonderful. When I wore my welcome out with one, there was always another happy to see me. I gardened and watched cowboy movies with my grandfather. I cooked with and was mothered by aunt, and played cards and games with my uncle. My mom was always at work or making me trying on frilly and scratchy dresses I hated. Despite the wails and tears, she taught me a "sense" of fashion and dress. Lots of good memories. Unfortunately, families go their own way, people die, and my grandchildren missed all of it. Ah, life.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
It was just called family growing up.
No labels other than sibling, cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparent and add great in front of the label here or there. The women contributed to the economics of the family raising and preserving food, working at a job or running their own business.
I did not know I was poor until the second year of college after sending in my taxes. The state sent me a letter explaining I was too poor to pay taxes.
I had plenty of good food, an apartment (with a roommate), second hand or handmade furniture, had things to do I could enjoy and felt I had a safety net because there was always someone I could call for help. It was part of my evolution of understanding it is not simply how many $$ you have to spend that creates poverty.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
I enjoy reading about the resilience movement.
I would never do it, but I admire the industriousness and ingenuity of the people that do. Your cheese sounds delicious. If your growing season is worse than Michigan's you must be pretty far north. What do you do for "fresh" vegetables and fruit? When our summer finally comes, I eat as much fresh produce as I can.
Right now, it is snowing. If March goes out like a lion, spring comes in like a lamb.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Resiliance is to increase the capacity to Enjoy Life,
not simply endure life. I am finding is easier recreating a homestead environment than it was to start and grow a business so I could afford to live in Central Oregon. It is a little beyond my imagination to contemplate on the stress of having to raise a family and the same time meet the demands of corporate job.
In winter, I buy fresh fruits and vegetables in the grocery store shipped from all over the world. In summer the local farmers market. The food I grow, raise and preserve has to taste better and be more nutritional than other available options.
I live on the east side of the Cascade mountain range, in the high desert (more accurately a sagebrush steppe) The night and day temperature fluctuations are similar to a desert. I grew up 20 miles south of my current home, all the plants had to be hardy to zone 3 and garden crops were primarily those that matured in less than 60 days. I am nearly a 1000 ft lower in elevation, zone is now a 4, certain micro-climates a zone 5 and can plan on a harvest of vegetables with a 100 day maturity.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
wow threat of frost all year....
Sure sounds strange to this southerner. That would be a challenge. If you have access to a backhoe you might consider a small geothermal greenhouse. That could really expand your season and crops. I recently saw a few youtube examples -
Here's a quick 2 min explanation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2NtBCS2_WQ
This gives the formula for piping...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU4fhHH83RA (22 min showing the beginning of construction)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DPMg-z4pqg (14 min of a project in Dec)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA3YGYELZ98 (12 min review of the house above in June)
Our problem is we get too hot in summer to grow the cooler seasoned crops. The trick is to eat with the season.
Best of luck with your cow and calf! Fresh milk and cheese sounds good.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
They grow citrus in Nebraska
[video:https://youtu.be/IZghkt5m1uY]
Underground greenhouse in Nebraska.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Geothermal techniques can probably be used to cool or heat
a space to grow plants. The videos you selected gave me some great ideas. I have a sun room off one side of the house I can grow lime and lemon trees. I had my first harvest this winter of one lime. The plants are getting strong enough I should be able to leave on 4 to 6 fruit per plant. Planted some siberian spinach in a pot last spring, never transplanted outside and have been harvesting a few leaves all winter.
I have been heating with electricity in the winter and adding an additional heat source is one of my future projects.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
It's expensive
but I recomend ground source HVAC that come with $7500 Federal tax credit. It also gives over 40% reduction in heating bill.
Also, have installed an efficient fireplace insert and run ductwork thru attic to farthest room in house to circulate the enormous heat it puts out.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
For some reason not understood, I was not given ground-source
heat as the final option, but a 500 gal Propane bomb next to the house. Still an interesting heat/DHW system (until the ignighter fails) tankless to everything, just copper pipes. An improvement over 600 gal Water storage, plus an 80 gal hot water heater whose solar capacity had died in a meltdown. In a basement with no floor drain because RADON. My water is alpha-wave Hot. My house still exceeds NY radon levels. Marcellus shale. My foundation is settled into 8' of shale, it only sways in small earthquakes. Many fossils and many rock fragments. The whole summer of construction we dragged off stone. I became a stone mason, dry-laid. A mason who worked on a rebuild in one area gave me a rock hammer. Still not a pro at that. But ideas...
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Let's keep talking about getting resilience going again
StudentofEarth,
If I remember right, you are in Oregon at a higher elevation? You have the risk of frost all year round? Wow.
I am interested to learn how you make dog food. Do you freeze eggs raw or cooked?
And you have a dairy cow. Just one? I guess that is all you need. On my childhood dairy farm, some cows would milk 100 lbs. per day. I am loosely contemplating a couple of dairy goats. Fresh cheese is indeed so wonderful and easy.
With your permaculture efforts, are you planting more fruit, nut, or berrie bushes?
On to the format idea. I am working on a mock-up this morning while I have time. It is at http://resilience.hagle.com Sounds like you could do courses on permaculture, small dairy, cheese making, and making your own pet food.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
If anyone would like to mess around on the website . . .
Send me what you want to use for a username and an email address. I will give you password you have to change. Let me know if you just want to log on as a student, or if you want to login as a teacher too. Then give me the class name, I will create it and list you as teacher so you can mess with the features and create content if you like.
marilyn@hagle.com
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Next week will discuss the homemade pet food
My Dad also milked a small herd of cows when I was very small. He would sell the milk and cream we did not use to the local farmers co-op. I started milking because nearly all the cottage cheese, ice cream and yogurt has one or two thickeners added to the product. Ricotta without a thickener is getting harder to find. Last spring, I had been to the 5 major chain stores in town to try, could not find what I wanted. Did not want to drive to the next town or take the time for an on-line product to be delivered. I have small mixed breed cattle herd, the polled (no horn)shorthorn cow had calved two weeks earlier so I ran her into the squeeze shoot and taught her to stand for milking.
I would take 1-2 gallons (aprox 8 lbs/gal) a day and leave the rest for the calf. I have thought about a Guernsey but, a regular dairy cow produces more milk a day than I need, one can't miss one of the twice daily milking session.
I have had goats in the past. Milk is nice, but they are so good at finding every hole in the fence and if one is not there make one. If the electric fence gets shorted they are out of the pen.
Eggs I freeze, 12 scrambles eggs with 1 tablespoon sugar. Salt can be used, but if the yolk is not full emulsified it hardens slightly into little lumps. Sailors have been known to cover the egg shell with petroleum jelly or shortening and store them in egg cartoons up to a year. Some farms would submerse the egg in a jar with cold water to extend the fresh egg season for baking.
I have some fruit (apple, plum, asian pear) trees that will produce a good crop every 3 to 4 years. The bramble berries are a good choice. I have raspberries, want to add black berries and marrion berries. I need to add some an ever bearing strawberry variety. My blue berries I fuss with and have never had them produce very well.
I need to take the time to create a login and then will check out your course, looks interesting.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Thanks, soe. In this age of Economic Terrorism, Resilience is
perhaps the most important conversation this community could be having going forward.
With the outlook being pretty bleak toward hope of a responsive government holding the greedy culprits accountable with nothing short of Wall St CEO and upper management prosecutions and jail time, we'll have to begin thinking differently about how we individually and collectively interact with the economy, society and government. I think that could take shape in sharing practical tips on how to best navigate a world that continues to press down hard on the middle and working class.
But first I'd like to let folks know that I've been pretty consumed with the daily care of a growing infant and other appointments, so I haven't had much time to be online, and looks to be so intermittently. Apologies for having been remiss on getting back to some of your messages. I'll drop a few thoughts here.
What could a revived Resilience series look like? There are many different directions this could go. I enjoy reading and admire greatly how folks here are able to manage their own farms and become self-sufficient with food. It find it inspiring and wish I had such a proclivity (and the space to even consider it). But I think tantamount to the situation in which we find ourselves, will also be sharing, brainstorming and cultivating tips and tactics of how to best respond to strangulating monopoly corporate control of every aspect of society in our daily lives. That, as it pertains to such things as our choices of what and how to eat, where to shop for goods, banking, reusing/recycling and re-appropriating household items, finding or establishing bartering communities, and caring for this less fortunate.
To me, it could include:
- how best to respond to and not participate in the monopolization of our food systems.
- pushing back against/not participating in the explosion of franchise drug store chains on our main streets and the avalanche of cheap disposable goods made by slave labor in SE Asia they dangle in front of us as part of the deeply embedded consumer propaganda, of acquiring goods we don't really need, being sold to us as part of the American Dream propaganda. Non-interaction, to the best of our abilities, with the vast consumer culture trap.
- sharing ideas on how to stretch budgets to survive on increasingly sparse income, how to stay out of debt, living a principled life of frugality.
- knowing our rights when it comes to renters protections/homeowners aware of predatory bank mortgages
- practical household tips, with regard to saving on and reducing energy cost/consumption, how to be better aware of and in line with cooking healthy, developing an eye for using everything in the refrigerator (cutting down on waste), finding or making for yourself alternative soaps/laundry detergent/toothpaste that aren't Big Pharma chemical concoctions.
As far as how this would look here on the pages of C99, maybe we can get a private message thread going with the folks who have most expressed interest in seeing this through, and take it from there.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Reviving the resilience group
sounds better than starting anew, as I was about to do. Have some pressing concerns at the moment.
Picked my 47 year old son up off a frozen doorstep 5 weeks ago, sleeping in his shoes. He fits that demographic of middle age white male without a degree. He had told his mom (my ex) by phone that he was thinking about ending it all. She lives hours away and was crushed badly. I found out through my other son. I got there just in time.
I brought him home. Put him up until he found a job through Worksource and has since gotten on steady with one employer who offered a permanent position and promoted him to supervisor.
Today, we buy a 27 foot travel trailer and are ready to move it to a nearby RV park only 4 miles from his work.
He could have been another statistic.
Meanwhile, through no real fault of his own, he's brought bronchitis and scabies from the homeless shelter he stayed a couple of nites, til he ran out of 5 dollar bills for each nite.
After five weeks I'm still not well. Will return to clinic tomorrow morning and change medicine.
I called his mom told her not to worry, that I got this. I could feel the relief come over her over the phone.
All he needed was for someone to reach down with a hand.
Soon, I can return my attention to our greenhouse and garden, as spring is here. I keep a 55 gallon drum of water inside the greehouse to moderate the temperature swings and harden my seedlings around it. Hope to pass on more tips soon.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I am so glad you saved him
There are so many falling between the cracks and so many 20 - 50 year olds without decent jobs. Actually, my job opportunities ran out at age 53, but we still had my husband's retirement and some other resources. Land in the country and some ability to grow and make things. Sort of wonder if we might have other folks living with us as time goes by.
Sort of shocked by a conversation my husband had with a friend of ours. She was telling us about how much a state college in Texas costs. $20,000/year! Who can afford that? We were sort of clueless because our child attends an excellent community college and it cost us $1700 this year. She lives at home though.
Sorry you got sick though it all. So wonderful you got your son back on his feet.
I think working together on resilience issues is important because we have to reinvent our lifestyles - largely for the sake of our kids. The ways of the past 50 years won't work anymore.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Thanks for the kind words, Marilyn.
. I to have joined the search for arable land that would be self sustaining. I look for a water source that belongs to me and my heirs for perpetuity as that is the hedge for future water wars. But even that isn't locked in stone. Colorado claims the rain that falls the property of the state.
Recent technology that suck moisture from the air is promising.
Who was it that said: "Nothing is sacred when Congress is in session"?
Eventually, we may have to stop Congress from coming into session. Since they have maintained an approval rating in the single digits much of the time, could we get the American people to fire them all for gross incompetence? Conspiracy to defraud? RICO Act violations?
What we need is a president who is adept at firing people. One not afraid to delare a national emergency and suspend the Congress. Hmmm, where could we find one of those?
Anyway, I currently live in a modest 1700 square foot house but with a sizable lot (around 10,000 Sq. Ft) that has plenty of room for a 15 by 25 garden. I also use my chain link fence all around the back yard for string beans and peas. I'm able to grow enough produce to feed ourselves and most of our extended family and many neighbors from about June (broccoli, butter lettuce, and other early spring vegetables) on. Including some "Early Girl" tomatoes, though it has to be an unusually warm spring.
That's not likely to happen going forward (snark).
Really can't wait to trade ideas and techniques with fellow c99%ers.
I am a little behind starting my seedlings though.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
So many sad but hopeful stories here, Spring nears
and with it everyone's mood. Except maybe for goat people. Ever wondered about those slanty pupils? Anyone remember Bama Bike Boy from TOP? His goat adventures were funny!
A retired farm near me rents sheep, mini's of various colors, only low movable fences needed to keep them in. They do a nice job of mowing and fertilizing the fields. And are transportable in the bed of a pickup truck. A new occupation and a new need for same. And look nice under trees in the sun. Must introduce my pup to sheep this spring... Also chickens. But she has yet to kill, I suspect chickens if not chippies, which should be appearing outside now any day.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.