Figuring it all out

This last week was a lesson in humility.  For the first time we put up our entire hay field loose, using the hay loader and hay trolley/grapple forks in the barn.  This has been a goal of mine for quite a while, as it's the only practical way to make hay without using a tractor.

Yes, it's much more work; of that there's little doubt.  But it's much less work than trying to revive a planet we've put into cardiac arrest -- a requirement if we continue using tractors. 

Suffice to say that there was a steep learning curve.   I learned that it's not possible to back up a hay wagon into the barn.  The only way to back it up is to disconnect and walk it while manually steering via the tongue.  A fully loaded wagon doesn't always move too easily.  It was hot -- in the high 80's.  Good for drying hay, not so good for working.  That's how haying always goes. 

The hay trolley in the barn worked very well, but it takes a bit of technique though.  You have to pull it hard back towards yourself at the center of the barn, fast enough that it trips the release at the center of the track.  But you don't want to pull too hard, or 60lbs of sharp pointy steel will come crashing down on top of you from 30' above.  I finally figured that I could loop the trip line around a beam, which lands the grapple forks well away from me.

It's hard to say exactly how much hay we put up when there are no bales to count.  But, based upon last year's 2nd cutting which produced 160 odd bales, I think we put up the equivalent of 200 bales this time around.  We can fit 4 600 foot long windrows on the wagon before we have to return back to the barn.  With about 28 windrows, that's 7 trips to the barn and back (actually more like 8 or 9, since it took a few trips before we figured out that we could fit four of them on the wagon at a time).

Before we started, I figured that we'd pitch everything off of the wagon and into the hay loft by hand until it became too high, at which point it would become worthwhile to use the grapples.  I was naive.  The grapples can unload a full wagon in 4-5 bites, which is much easier than using pitchforks. 

The horses pull the hay rope, which lifts a huge pile of hay up to the peak of the roof.  As soon as it reaches the trolley, the trolley trip is released, and the whole assembly flies to the end of the barn where it hangs until I pull the release on the grapple forks, when a few hundred pounds of hay drops to the floor with a big woomf!

Another recent lesson in humility was my attempt to cultivate our small patch of field corn using the horses. I was able to focus on the horse's hooves or the cultivator's position relative to the corn plants, but never both at the same time. I think I managed to "save" about 10% of the plants in the last row before I gave up. With the cultivator set to its widest possible setting, there's about an 8" slot through which the corn must pass.

We bought a reproduction of the old "Planet Junior" wheel cultivators, which I've been using instead. It's not nearly as fast, but most of the corn plants get to live for now, at least until I polish my horse cultivating.

BTW -- if you're looking for a non-gas powered option for garden cultivation, I highly recommend the Planet Junior style cultivator. The original models trickle through on Ebay, but they go for about the same price as the reproduction which we purchased.

Buttercup the cow is just about to calve, based on the way her udder is growing ever larger and pinker.  Both she and Josie are due on June 5th, although Josie doesn't seem to be showing it as much.   Like my great grandparents, we're going to try leaving the calves with their mothers, which is almost unheard of in the modern dairy world, where feeding cheap powdered "milk replacer" is the new norm.  Most dairies "beef" their cows after 3 lactations now.  My great grandparents had cows that they kept in production well into their teens.

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Eulogy For A Breaking Heart
Gerald Herbert - May 2010

“A young heron among oil-covered mangroves in Barataria Bay, Louisiana"

This photo recently appeared in one of the economics blogs I read. It's not as if I've never seen a photo of a pathetic oil soaked bird before, but this time around I realize that I'm responsible for what it shows. BP is nothing more than our hired hit-man. Sure -- they deserve some credit, but the real guilt rests on the folks who paid them to risk this.  Look in the mirror to find your culprit.

Unless you and I change our lives dramatically we're going to do this again, to billions of other creatures, including ourselves. I'm not talking about changing the flavor of our lifestyles ("I know -- I'll sell my SUV and buy an electric car!") because that won't solve our predicament. Major painful changes are necessary (as in making car ownership a distant memory). Yes -- we will be seriously inconvenienced, to say the least. Personally, I'd take the inconvenience over watching my son realize that his future is no brighter than that of the heron in this photo.

You say you can't get to work without your car?  Then move to where you work, or find a different job.    You would *die* if you could no longer drive to the mountains each weekend (as I once did)?  Find another way to have fun, or figure out a way to live in the mountains.  Can't live in your house without using fossil fuel heat or air conditioning?  Then you're living in the wrong spot.  Find a way to eliminate the need for fossil energy.  You're smart -- you can do it.  Yes, it is that important.

From a contemporary perspective, you and I seem pretty normal. We do pretty much the same thing as everyone else. Our houses are about the same. We all drive cars, and occasionally fly in airplanes.

From a historical perspective, however, you and I stick out like Roseanne Barr at an Anorexics Anonymous meeting. Compared to everyone who came before us, we're fabulously wealthy. My family of three has 600 slaves working for us, and is probably just like yours. Just because we pump our slaves out of the ground in places like the Gulf of Mexico, dig them up from underneath the boreal forests of northern Alberta (now the leading source of oil imports in the US), or blow up entire mountains in Appalacia to get them -- doesn't mean we get to live with a clear conscience. Instead of stealing the lives of folks we've kidnapped from other continents, you and I have resorted to stealing the future of our own kids. But everyone else does it, which makes it alright I guess...

Farmer Training Techniques

The horses have developed an annoying habit over the last few weeks. They now like to run away from me when I approach them with halters in hand. Bruce likes to tease me. He lets me get close, sniffs the halter, and then spins around and bounds playfully away, farting with every bounce. He still follows when I give up and walk back to the barn though, because he knows my backup plan always involves the grain bucket.

When he's finally harnessed and ready for his bridle, he's decided that he can no longer accept the bit in his mouth unless I smear it with molasses first. I tried not to let him make a habit of this, but he tried harder than I did. I'm becoming very well trained.

Doc has become ever more friendly lately. He walks up to me whenever I'm out on the pasture (so long as I don't have a halter in my hands), as he's developed a taste for back scratching. He's even started reciprocating, and now scratches my butt while I'm scratching his back. Sometimes he gets a little carried away though, and just bites me.

Just before the rain started, I managed to put our plot of field corn in; maybe a half acre or so. The horses did everything -- plowing, disking, harrowing, and planting.

While sitting on the newly converted corn planter, I started to get a little nervous. The drive chain was grinding away menacingly next to my pant leg. The depth control lever was pointed right at my chest, and the row marker was held by a rope which would surely hook my foot if I needed to bail off the back for any reason. It dawned on me that the corn planter might not be OSHA approved.

We put together a "chicken tractor" last weekend.  It's basically a portable chicken coop for broilers out on pasture, ala Joel Salatin. Broilers don't live long enough to become smart enough to roam freely, so they stay in this until they're butchered. It allows them to eat some grass and bugs in addition to their grain. We just drag it forward once a day to give them fresh greens.

Word has it that the chicks know enough to stay away from the advancing rear wall as you move it forward, but we had 3 that apparently failed to read their Proper Chicken Behavior manual. When we moved the tractor for the first time this morning, two of them got their legs stuck.  One went to birdy heaven. Hopefully we can avoid that in the future, or we won't be eating much chicken this year.

Horses are an easy choice for a farm; they lasted on farms up through the 50's, well beyond the point at which cars became commonplace. Horses for transportation are another matter though, particularly on roads which are still dominated by cars.

I've spent much of the last several months contemplating how our life will change if I replace my car with a buggy. Where can I safely tie up while I'm in a store? What routes will I take in to town? I'd like to take the shortest route, but that's along a busy highway which would be suicide. There are safer routes, but they are considerably longer. That's a big deal when you're relying on a horse's muscles rather than a gas tank.

I say "my car" because Rachel isn't yet on board with "our cars". So long as we retain "her car", most of my contemplation is probably moot, because I'll just use it instead of the buggy whenever the buggy seems to be too inconvenient. I suspect that will be the case about 98% of the time.

How long will it be before energy constraints reduce traffic and make the roads safer? The Pentagon now says we're likely looking at a 10% shortfall in oil supplies by 2015, with shortfalls increasing every year.  Will that be enough to change the traffic levels? I couldn't find exact figures, but I suspect that's a much greater shortfall than we experienced during the oil shortages in the 70's. I remember the gas lines from the one in '79, enough to know that it wasn't fun for most people.

Conventional crude production peaked 5 years ago.  If we count unconventional crude and condensates, world oil production peaked in July of '08.  We're still near the top of Hubbert's roller-coaster shaped curve, but the downhill leg has begun.  Net oil production (even including new fields as they come online) is expected to decline at a rate of over 6% annually according to the IEA.

Our world will be a whole lot smaller than it is now if we go buggy (it's like going "batty" - only different). I won't be taking any day trips up to Grand Rapids to check out a find on Craigslist. Buying farm supplies will be difficult. Most of what we purchase is from Shipshewana, about 50 miles round trip by car, and further if we take back roads. That will be out of buggy range. I could take my bicycle, but cargo capacity will be much reduced. Taking the bike in the middle of winter or the humid heat of summer wouldn't be easy either. Maybe we'll rely more on UPS?

There are plenty of Amish in the area -- but the nearest are probably about 15 miles away. Within our own buggy range, there won't be much in the way of buggy accomodations, like the hitching posts that many businesses maintain in their parking lots. The highway department also avoids using rumble-strips on the side of the highways in Amish areas, but our local highways are loaded with them (they can scare horses). We won't really be able to blend in here in Three Rivers.

Most all of my ancestors did just fine without cars. Our house was built well before cars existed. Only the last 3 or 4 generations had the benefit of cars in my family. Granted, earlier generations lived in a world which was organized to function without cars, but much of that infrastructure still exists. Are we as capable as our great grandparents?

Most people that I share these ideas with are pretty dismissive. How can you live (particularly in a rural area) without a car? Everyone is convinced that we'll all be able to transition to electric cars soon, but I think we'll sooner find ourselves buzzing around in flying saucers like George Jetson. The energy which made the technology of the 20th century possible was great stuff, but the technology won't keep flying along without the energy that feeds it.

I guess the obvious consequences of our petroleum addiction are more acceptable when the addiction and associated denial are shared. Just like our sheep, humans are herd animals. So long as we're doing what the rest of the herd is doing, we should be fine, eh?  

In the last 15 years we've already started to pay for our addiction by giving up most of the world's coral reefs, among other things. It angers me that everyone seems to be so accepting of this, and so unwilling to stop doing the things which caused it. I wonder if most people even comprehend how important the reefs are to their own existence, beyond the fact that it won't be fun to snorkel on them any more. The oceans as a whole aren't far behind at the rate we're currently pumping CO2 into them. If the ocean ecosystem goes belly-up, a worldwide shortage of fillet-o-fish will be the least of our worries (assuming we're still around to worry, that is).

The Deepwater Horizon Rig wasn't just another oil rig like the many others which fill the gulf. It was an ultra-deepwater rig, designed to get oil at depths well beyond what we've drilled in the past. Much of the oil that remains will be deep-water. Mishaps will be more common due to increased pressures at these depths, and they will also be nearly impossible to recover from, as evidenced by the current spill.

We're going to destroy more and more unless each of us personally kick the oil habit. Have you ever thought of how much you're willing to destroy before you make your own changes? How will you explain to your kids that driving your car everywhere or flying to Hawaii for vacation was more important than preserving the only planet they could have survived on? I don't think they'll view it the way we see it now.  This is the one inheritance they can't live without, and we're gleefully spending it before their eyes.

Nobody can expect everyone to immediately stop using cars. We typically live miles from our employer, states away from our families, and have no decent public transportation.  We still think it's fine to go for a Sunday drive and waste a few gallons of gas. Maybe it's time to start positioning ourselves for a transition?

There's really no questioning the fact that we will -- sooner or later -- run out of fossil fuels that are economicaly viable. It's just a question of when. I expect that most of us will be forced to make significant changes within the next 10 years as a result of peak oil.

And on a lighter note, this is what a frustrated lamb does when mom won't get up for nursing time.

Red Light District

Much has been arriving in the mail lately.  Fruit trees, grape vines, and now baby chicks.  They provide endless hours of entertainment for Coon the barn cat, who dreams of joining them inside their brooding pen. 

While some friends of ours were visiting, Rachel notices one of the new chicks sprawled face down on the straw.  Uh oh.  Kate sees it too, and is thinking the same thing.  Should I go and bury it now with everyone here, or just wait 'till later?   Oh -- there it opened an eye for a second.  So it's still in the process of dying.  Great.  Just then the chick springs to life and runs to the feeder.  Just a deep sleeper, apparently.

Our second ewe finally gave birth a week ago, to a single female lamb.  She had a little trouble finding the teets at first but did finally figure out how to nurse alright.  We've moved them in with the other ewe who has been roaming our orchard along with her two lambs.  Our poor ram now has no flock to attend to, and has befriended Josie the cow.  He follows her around like her calf.  Josie doesn't seem to mind, and  licks him on the head every so often.

Earlier this week, the two male lambs were hiding in a hole where I dug up a tree.  As mom walks by, they jump out and ambush her, each one immediately dropping to his knees on either side of her (they're getting big now) and latching on to a teet.  Their tails start up like the ringer on a fire alarm bell as soon as they make contact.  Mom isn't putting up with it though, and wanders off to leave them staring at each other.

One of the great things about moving to this farm is that we can do a lot of the things we've always wanted to.  That's also one of the bad things about moving here.  There's an awful lot of temptation to plant anything that interests us.  Today that was paw-paw trees, currant bushes, pecans, spruce trees (for future Christmas trees) and a buckeye tree for Henry.  Last week it was wine and table grapes, raspberries, blueberries, and more apple trees (the 20 or so we planted last spring weren't enough). This all fits in around our regular chores (milking, feeding, watering, weeding, cutting firewood, etc), which take increasing amounts of each day.

Much of the day yesterday I spent working on our horse-drawn hay mower.  One of the oil seals blew out last fall and needs replacement before I can cut anything this year.  I spent a couple hours trying to remove the threaded flywheel shaft, using ever more leverage and language to try and break it free, until I realized that I was turning it the wrong direction.  Once I was turning the right direction, it came unscrewed with barely any effort at all.  With the shaft removed I needed to replace the bushing that sits behind the oil seal (and which is probably the reason for the failed seal).  Spent another hour mangling that as I tried, unsuccessfully, to remove it.  Projects like this make me feel smart. 

The day after I returned from a business trip to Bellingham earlier this month, we drove down to Yoder's auction (about half of the Amish seem to have this name), which was a sight to behold.  There must've been over 500 buggies parked there in addition to nearly as many cars and trucks. 

This appears to be the grand-daddy of all Amish auctions, with everything from restored wringer washers by the dozen (the amish use these powered with a gasoline motor) to horses, furniture, farm tools, and ponies.  A bunch of Amish kids were flying around the field in pony carts and catching Henry's attention. 

We were there shopping for our next "car", but didn't see a whole lot of interest despite a fair number of buggies entered in the auction.  There were a couple that I thought might be worthwhile if the price was low enough, but the buggy auctioneer was so slow that I couldn't take it any more, so we finally gave up and headed home. 

Maybe it's for the better that we haven't found a buggy yet.  Since the world is ending soon, I've also thought that it might be nice to have a water source that works when the electrical grid fails.  Earlier I was thinking that a nice Aermotor windmill would be the way to go, but our location doesn't lend itself to wind power very well, and they're not particularly cheap.  

We're investigating a solar well pump, which is quite a bit cheaper than a windmil, as well as being more suitable for our location.  I like the fact that they don't need batteries, which seem to be an achilles heel in most solar power systems.  These are a bit cheaper than windmills, and could use our existing well.  The main downside is that they don't work all that well at supplying a pressure water system, so the best bet would be to install a big storage tank (more $) and pump from that.  That means no showers or sprinklers or "normal" faucets. 

We would still be reliant upon a relatively complex (and thus failure prone imho) system for our water though, so I would like a hand pump as a backup.  So maybe we should just go with that. It would require a separate well, but we could keep our decadent standard electric well pump in the mean time, and still take showers or water the garden with sprinklers until the grid goes down and the hand pump becomes our only option.

Speaking of failing electrical grids...   One of the things I really like about our house are the big maples that shade us in the summer from the east and west -- but not the SOUTH, where shade would be most beneficial..  The powerlines run accross our narrow front yard, making tall trees there a no-no.  I'm thinking that I should plant a nice sugar maple under the powerlines anyway. By the time the tree reaches the power lines (10 years?), I think they'll be out of commission.  It's like placing a bet on the demise of the grid.

Just think -- in 10 short years we could be living in a world without coal fired power plants spewing mercury and CO2 into the atmosphere.  Monsatan and the type of agriculture it spawns would crumble.  No grid means no gasoline, so we'd all be walking or using bikes and buggies.  There would be no more traffic noise from M-60 near our house.  A veritable utopia would erupt, until we realize that we can't buy toilet paper, or nails, or chicken feed, barn roofing, lumber, buggy parts or...  

I could make some really neat copper bracelets out of the old powerline wire though.

Mmmmmmm.... manure....

The large mountain of manure we've accumulated behind the barn is being eaten away, as we load up some manure for the garden. It's much easier to load into the spreader than it was to scoop it all up over the last few months, especially now that the manure heap is still much taller than the spreader.  Bilbo the dog was very excited, as he views the manure spreader the way most children view their neighborhood ice-cream truck

One of our ewes gave birth to two nice lambs a little over a week ago.  We had been expecting them for the last month, until Rachel noticed two black shapes in a corner of the barnyard one morning.  Both are black ram lambs, so I'm trying not to get too attached (males get to become lamb chops here in a few months). They're awfully cute for now though.

Mom was in a very licky mood after they were born. Normally she runs from us as if we're crazed axe murderers, but not after the lambs were born. She would lick them, then lick us, then lick them some more (that's how she dries off the lambs). When she wasn't licking anyone, her tongue was still running full bore licking the air. Nearly every photo I took had her tongue sticking out.

Thinking that we had better live up to our name, Henry and I put a few bluebird houses up on the pasture fences this last weekend. I was a little worried that they would sit unused, because the wind over the tensioned electric fence really makes them resonate.  Each one sounds like a mad bee hive when the wind picks up. Today, I noticed a pair of bluebirds loading one of the houses up with nesting material (our outhouse also doubles as a birdwatching blind), so maybe it's still alright. I'll have to check back after the next windy day and see if they're still there.

I'm apparently not the only person in the world who thinks Hummers and horse drawn vehicles might be the wave of the future. My friend Hazen found this excellent project and emailed me about it. It may be a tad more stylish than an Amish buggy, but I think the buggy would win in a drag race.

On Farming and Nutrition

It wasn't all that long ago that my primary concern about food was cost. I was a big fan of the 99 cent Whopper. I giggled to myself as I went through the Burger King drive through, knowing that I was outsmarting them by purchasing nothing but their money-losing hamburger promotion when they were hoping I'd buy some high-profit fries or pop to go with my meal. I was pretty sure that my frequent climbing and skiing trips would render the artery clogging cholesterol harmless, and getting fat was a non issue as well.

At the time, I thought that I only had to worry about what was *in* my food. I had never thought to worry about what *wasn't* in my food.

I developed an interest in farming a few years ago, when my friend Ed introduced me to the idea of small farms, some of which actually made money. I was always interested in farming, but had previously written it off as a possible career choice, because I thought the only farms making money were thousand-plus acre industrial farms which were neither affordable to buy nor fun to work.  I wanted to farm like my great-grandfather did in southern Illinois.  They milked a half dozen cows by hand, raised hogs and chickens, and grew veggies for the Chicago market.  Maybe I just want to emulate them because I know so little about their farm.  I once visited it when I was 6 years old, although the farm had new owners at that point.

As I started reading more and more books about farming, a common theme emerged. Farmers (organic farmers in particular) usually found that their animals or crops didn't get sick when they had proper nutrition. Elliot Coleman, a famous vegetable grower, claims that he has almost no pest problems when his plants get everything they need. When a bug infestation occurs, he figures out what the plants are missing, and adds it to the soil to solve the problem. Joel Salatin, a famous livestock farmer in Virginia, discovered that his cattle never developed pink-eye (which is very common in cattle, and can cause blindness) so long as they received enough iodine. He now feeds them kelp -- which is high in iodine -- and never has a case of pink eye. Most cattlemen just treat the pinkeye with antibiotics.

It doesn't take long before the farmer realizes that he's the same as his crops and animals. Many human diseases are a result of poor nutrition. Western medicine is just now figuring this out to some degree, with vitamin D deficiency. A doctor at the University of Washington I was listening to a while back said that, "We have learned that we shouldn't be thinking in terms of the rate of diabetes in women of a certain age class, but rather in terms of diabetes rates of vitamin D deficient women of a certain age class". In other words, most of these diseases, like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, are allowed to progress due to our body's inability to fight them off.  Our bodies are typically full of cancer cells and surrounded by pathogens.  Our immune system keeps them at bay so long as we keep it supplied with plenty of ammunition. 

Living in the US, it's hard to think of how our diets could be deficient. Our supermarkets are stocked with what is probably the widest variety of food ever made available in the history of humankind. But if you look closely, most of our food has been modified to have a maximum shelf life, with nutritional value losing out as a result. Our milk is skimmed, pasteurized and homogenized. Our canned goods are heated to very high temperatures to sterilize them.  Fruit juice is heated, condensed, and reconstituted.  We've been told that animal fats are bad, so we substitute vegetable fats which have essentially no nutritional value.  We can only eat so much, so everything we eat that is of low nutritional value deprives us of something which is important for keeping our bodies functioning.

An excellent example is flour. Most baked goods are made of white flour (either partially or entirely), which has had the germ removed from the wheat. The germ is actually the most nutritious part of the wheat grain. When I scattered some wheat behind our old house in Bellingham to see if it would grow there, slugs came and ate many of the seeds, but only part of each seed. Guess which part they ate? The part they left is the only part that we consume in white flour. Seems to me that the slugs are smarter than most humans when it comes to nutrition.

One of the main reasons we now use white flour is because it lasts much longer than whole wheat flour. The wheat germ contains oils which will quickly go rancid and spoil the flour, so we remove it. That's one of the reasons each town had to have a flour mill before the advent of white flour. It had to be milled nearby, or it would go bad in the time it took to transport it.

After we figured out that people got sick when we removed the wheat germ, we engineered a solution by creating "enriched flour". So we solved the problem we had just created. But, I suspect, we didn't really solve it completely, because we don't know what all was removed.  Humans always like to assume that we know much more than we really do.

Weston A Price, a prominent Ohio dentist from the earlier part of the last century had always assumed that everyone had bad teeth like most of his patients did. Then one of his family members started travelling the world as the age of air travel began, working for National Geographic. He visited exotic locales all over the globe. Wherever he went, he came back with stories about people who all seemed to have perfect teeth.

Dr. Price grew curious, and decided to figure out why. He and his wife spent nearly the decade of the 1930's travelling everywhere from remote Swiss villages, to the islands of Scottland, to the natives of northern Canada, the South Pacific, Australia, and a number of other places I can't remember.

Wherever he went, he found one theme, over and over. People who had transitioned to the modern "western" diet of refined, processed foods had far more cavities, poorly developed skulls (resulting in crowded teeth and sinus problems), and much worse health overall. People who still ate their traditional diets invariably had much better overall health. After analyzing many of the food samples he collected, Dr. Price concluded that the traditional foods were many times higher in vitamins A and D (as well as another unknown nutrient which he dubbed factor-x or something to that effect) than their western diet substitutes. If you google "Vitamin D" now, you'll find that western medicine is just now discovering what Dr. Price concluded 70 years ago.  

My take on this is that we don't need to study nutrition textbooks to eat well.  We just need to eat whole, unprocessed foods.  If people weren't eating something a few hundred years ago, we probably shouldn't be eating it now.  Michael Pollan has a great rule as well:   Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised.

My interest in farming is driven by a number of factors, but nutrition is a big one.  Growing much of our own food is quite time consuming, but I think it's worth it.

Regressionist Transport

Here's the view from our new outhouse, looking out over the barnyard and pasture. The open seat beckons...

I never before suspected that using it would be such a pleasant experience. We now get to defecate to the sounds of singing birds, clucking chickens, and snorting horses, in addition to our own soothing sounds. It's just like playing the tuba in an orchestra.

We looked at a new car last weekend. Both of our current cars are just a little too convenient and reliable, which makes it easy to take frequent trips (usually inspired by cheap craigslist farm equipment). We really need to do something about that. I never feel good after driving for more than an hour.

When purchased, our new car will have a maximum range of about 20 miles, and a top sustained speed of around 10mph. It will have no airbags, crumple zones, climate control, seatbelts, or radio. Like the Toyotas in recent headlines, it will also be prone to speeding out of control. There's definitely some potential for steering problems as well. The car we looked at was afraid of stumps and house for-sale signs, so we decided not to make a purchase.

This is what our new car will look like.

I'm not quite manly enough to sell the other cars yet (and I suspect Rachel might veto that decision), but I am easing into the new transportation paradigm. An IEA official recently said that it will soon be unusual for people to travel 30km in a day, so I figure we're just getting a head start. Note that the IEA is notorious for their rose colored glasses when it comes to predictions of future oil supply.

I tend to suffer from a lack of self control, as I suspect many other people do as well. If there's a pack of cookies in the house, I eat them as quickly as I can (see -- I'm willing to sacrifice my own health for the benefit of my family!). The trick is simply not to buy cookies, because I'll rarely go through the effort of driving to the store just to purchase something I shouldn't be eating anyway. The same thing is true with cars. They're so convenient that they make it easy to go anywhere on a whim. Maybe they need to be a bit less convenient.

Some of you may have heard of Jevon's Paradox, which essentially says that when something becomes more efficient (he was observing coal powered steam engines at the time), it results in more energy use, because it's suddenly cheaper to do what you want to do with the energy. Owning a Prius, according to this paradox, actually encourages you to drive more because there's a reduced fuel cost. Maybe we should all buy Hummers (they'll be a collector's item soon -- even better!) to steer away from climate change?

My last post drew some concerns that I may be suffering from severe depression, mental illness, or suicidal thoughts (and this post will surely bring the men in white coats), but I would like to assure you that I am neither depressed nor suicidal (mental illness is still debatable). I actually find it very exciting to be dealing with our current TEOTWAWKI situations, particularly the converging crisis of energy and climate issues. My own actions alone will not make a lick of difference by themselves, but maybe I'll have some company someday.

I see industrial society's current course as suicidal, and would prefer to avoid suicide, even if it means giving up my god-given right as an American to worship the automobile. How about yourself? Most people I know seem to have a preference for the suicide (and homicide, as it turns out) option.

I took a day off of work this week to plow up a strip of our field for planting a new osage-orange hedgerow. As with most other things, I like to do the exact opposite of what other farmers are doing, like the farmer down the road who is currently ripping out his hedgerows with an excavator to make room for a big center-pivot irrigation system.

The weather lately has been wonderful, as evidenced by Henry's attire. (just click on the play button below -- for some reason this video clip doesn't show the first frame)

Procrastination

I've always felt that someday there would be an event, probably a catastrophe of some sort, which would make it clear that I -- and everyone else -- would have to change the way we live if we wanted to continue to live.  Aside from some minor feel-good changes, I could continue to live a comfortable and conventional life like everyone else until this event happens.  When this event occurs, everyone would understand the gravity of the situation and *seriously* change the way we live.  Making changes at that point would be easier, because everyone else would be making them as well.

It's clear to me now that this event has already occurred, but we all missed it.  It wasn't really a single event, but rather a series of events.  That makes it harder to spot.  With few notable exceptions, nobody that I know has responded.

Most Americans weren't really looking for the big event, because they don't like the implications.  Those who knew about it probably just chose to look away.  We've never had such an event that the wonders of technology couldn't deal with, so another group is comfortably convinced that we'll be able to deal with this one as well.  Hey, we sent people to the moon, didn't we?  Give us enough fossil fuel, and there's nothing we can't do! (oh wait -- that's how we got into this mess!)

Exhibit A, (and B, C, D, and E...)
If you're one of the rare few who bothered to read about the recent events in Copenhagen at the climate conference, you may have come accross mention of the fact that the IPCC scientists have recommended that we keep our temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius (that's 3.6 degrees Farenheit).  Seems like an arbitrary number.  I might want to take my sweater off if the temperature in my living room suddenly rose by 2 degrees, but it doesn't seem like a whole lot. 

Two degrees is important because that's the point at which most climatologists believe that a number of feedback loops will be triggered, making much greater temperature changes impossible to avoid.  At the Copenhagen summit, no significant agreements were reached.  We essentially agreed that we're going to keep marching right past 2 degrees.  The last time temperatures increased as much as they are now projected to increase within this century, nearly every large animal went extinct.  Though this train is headed for a cliff, nobody wants to ruffle the passengers by applying the brakes.  Seems logical, doesn't it?

The IPCC has proven itself to be far too conservative, as we've already exceeded most of their 2001 projections for the current year.  When the IPCC is confronted by a lack of data or some controversy, they exclude that subject from their projections in order to keep everyone in agreement.  Such is the case with arctic methane releases as a result of melting permafrost.  There simply isn't enough data yet, so this super important feedback mechanism has been excluded from their models.

The evidence coming in now is that we've already triggered the feedback loop of methane releases.  Check out this video of people on a frozen bog in Siberia.  Much of the methane currently being released is beneath the Arctic ocean on a shelf near Siberia in the form of "clathrates", also known as methane ice.  Submarines in the arctic have recently noted massive columns of bubbles rising to the surface.  It appears likely now that we'll see the north polar icecap disappear within this decade, for the first time since humans have walked the earth. 

Aside from the methane releases, it's become apparent in recent years that the ocean is now becoming saturated with CO2, which lowers the ocean's pH near the poles (where most of the plankton exists).  We've already found areas in the north Pacific which can dissolve calcium carbonate shells.  Strangely enough, I've also read about recent drops (about 30% if I remember correctly) in plankton levels at both poles. 

We've known about bleached coral reefs for quite some time now, with major bleaching events occuring in back into the 1990s.  In a previous life, Rachel and I had plans to cruise our boat around the Pacific for a few years.  I followed a number of blogs written by people who were doing this sort of thing.  One couple who left Florida and headed west accross the Pacific and Indian oceans noted that the first healthy coral they saw was in the Red Sea.  In fact, they were surprised to learn that coral wasn't normally a bleached white color like they'd seen everywhere else. 

Another friend of ours was on a scuba dive in this same Red Sea along with a group of Israelis who had been diving in the area before.  When they exited the water, the Israeli group started crying because the reefs had died in the time elapsed from their previous visit.  Keep in mind that coral and plankton remove much of the CO2 from seawater and turn it into limestone.  We're destroying the coral that is part of our life support system.  The ocean provides about 50% of the oxygen you're now breathing.  Do you really want to find out what happens when we kill it?

Though it seems strange in the middle of winter here in the northern hemisphere, we recently experienced the single warmest day ever recorded.  It concerns me that we experienced this in spite of the fact that the current sunspot cycle is at its minimum .  What do you think will happen when it starts to climb again?

Ocean currents are one of the biggest factors influencing our climate.  There's been some concern that the increasing melt rates of Greenland's glaciers would flood the north Atlantic with fresh water, which floats on the surface of the heavier saltwater.  This could potentially shut down the thermohaline circulation system that drives the gulf stream.  If you watched the news this last winter, you probably heard that the UK was being hammered with one of the worst winters ever recorded.  Chances are that you didn't hear anything about the suspected cause (particularly if you like to watch Faux News).  It just so happens that we saw the gulf stream divert itself towards the west coast of Greenland.  While the UK looked like the north pole, the west coast of Greenland was quite balmy -- in the 50's -- in the middle of winter. 

If the sum of this evidence doesn't constitute the big event I refer to above, I'm not sure what will.  It's time to make some changes. 

Ideally we'd all wake up tomorrow and find ourselves living in bark huts and chipping flint arrowheads.  Well...  that's an ideal from a climate stability perspective anyway.  Aside from thoughts of seeing my wife in a buckskin bikini, I don't find that lifestyle particularly appealing either.  Besides, there are too many of us to live that way now.  It's also hard to pay your property taxes with squirrel hides these days.  Suffice to say that the current system imposes some constraints on the changes we can make. 

But at the same time, I don't think changing your lightbulbs to CFL's and buying an electric car is going to cut it.  We need to reach a 90% reduction in carbon emissions to have any hope of a future, and these feel-good measures don't measure up.

We need to "regress" to the low carbon lifestyles of our ancestors as fast as we can, step by step.  You don't have to go back too many generations to reach a 90% reduction in your carbon footprint.  I don't think that the lives of our ancestors were as awful as many of us have come to believe.

Transportation, home heating/electricity, and material consumption are probably the biggest toes on our carbon footprint.  We've got the heating part covered, having gone to 100% wood heat at a small cost in material consumption -- a woodstove.   None of these changes are ever black & white. 

Material consumption is a tough one, probably the hardest to tackle.  Just buy less, and reduce your need to buy as much.  Living in a smaller house means you buy less paint, fewer roofing shingles, have less need for heating fuel or electricity for lighting, and have less space for that big screen TV.  I think houses like this are the wave of the future, whether for financial or environmental reasons.

Moving to our current rural location enabled us to eliminate fossil fuel based heat, but it set us back on the transportation front, where we were previously using bicycles for 90% of our needs.  Bikes don't work as well with younger family members that are too big to fit into a bike trailer though.  The extremes of Michigan weather make bikes a bit less appealing as well. 

But there are alternatives to the car and bicycle.  They're dangerous, inconvenient, expensive, and not very capable.  But when faced with the certain outcome of continued car use, I'm beginning to think they may be worth some consideration.  Stay tuned for further thoughts...

The Season of Rest

Farmers work hard in the summer, but they get the winter off.  Or so I once thought.  Maybe that's true for farmers who don't deal with livestock.  After a very busy spring, summer, and fall last year, I was looking forward to a bit of R&R, sitting in front of the woodstove, reading about all the farming stuff I should know already, and maybe fixing up the house a bit if I felt like it.  For some reason, this leisurely winter has yet to arrive. 

I've been a bit lax lately in updating the blog, but have been spending plenty of time on the computer, working on the new business website for our farm.  A domain squatter wants $1500 for "bluebirdfarm.com", so we added the "andorchard" part to the domain name a bit prematurely (our fruit trees are all about as thick as my thumb).  We're now officially open for business, and are listed on localharvest.org as well.

"Hayman Road Farm" just didn't have a ring to it, being a leftover name we used to differentiate this property from others before we bought it.  Bluebird farm sounds a little generic, but it does have a special meaning for us, as the bluebirds really like fenced pastures.  They returned to our farm when we returned the former cropland to pastures and put up our fences.  They're always out sitting on the fences in the middle of the pasture, waiting for a bug to fly by.  I'm not sure how many bugs fly by at this time of year, but they still hang out in the same spot.  Our bird book says bluebirds shouldn't be wintering this far north.  Guess we need the new climate-change updated edition.

We've got a third addition to the bovine barnyard brigade - Maggie.  She's a full blooded brown swiss, which makes her much larger than our other cows.  She's well aware of her size, and immediately assumed her role as Queen of the Barnyard.  The Queen is always first into the barn for milking, and she also gets to push everyone else out of the way at the hay feeder.  She arrived at the farm already pregnant, as evidenced by a large "P" painted on her elegant behind. 

Our sheep were sheared a couple weeks ago, and went from being overheated to shivering.  Yeah -- I thought it seemed a little strange to shear at this time of year, but the woman we bought them from swears by it, saying it's easier for the lambs to snuggle against the ewes.  Having the ewes give birth in February gives the lambs a head start before they're out on pasture where they'll invariably pick up worms, which are especially hard on them when they're younger. 

The morning the shearer was to arrive, I noticed that Bruce (our lead draft horse) had an owie on his foot.  We brought the vet out, who found an abscess that just needs to work its way out of his hoof.  I liked that diagnosis, because I had awful visions of sending him to the glue factory. The vet needed Bruce set up in the shoeing stocks, which happen to be upstairs in the barn. Next to the shearer and her victim, the vet and Bruce, and the two remaining sheep, one of our hens decided to come in and lay an egg on the hay bales, which she announced to the crowd. The barn is a very happening place.

Not knowing a thing about shearing before ours were sheared (sheep are a neglected reading subject for me), I turned to my trusty Youtube for guidance, where there are several videos of shearing competitions. I learned there that sheep have an off switch. Flip them on their back, and they give up and go limp. Armed with my new-found knowledge, I headed out to the barn to try it for myself. Sure enough, ours do it too. The tough part is catching them first, as sheep are always certain that us humans are out to kill them (maybe they're just really smart).

After they were sheared, I noticed Thunder (our ram) sniffing the ewes' behinds as if he hadn't previously noticed that they were female. Later I caught him displaying his manly appendage as he shuffled accross the stall all hunched up. I worried that he was just now discovering his sexuality when he was supposed to have done that about 5 months ago, but it appears now as if my concern was unfounded. One of the ewes is starting to "bag up" (her udder is getting ready for action), so she'll be lambing soon. Hopefully the other ewe will follow suit shortly.

Rachel and her mother are quite excited for our own wool, and are waiting at the ready with their new spinning wheel.  These definitely take some skill to use;  I tried it, and the results weren't pretty.  We'll still send it out for processing, but it is neat to think that we could grow and manufacture our own clothing.  Stay tuned for some exciting fashion statements.

Though there's still plenty of snow on the ground, we've had a few nice days lately, with temps climbing into the upper 30's.  We have an old woodstove/kettle combination that I bought at an auction, hoping to use it for condensing maple syrup.  I cleaned it up this morning, and then went to see if the maple sap is flowing yet, which it is.  So all three of us visited each of the maple trees near our house and have about 15 buckets up now.  We collected a few gallons, which are condensing on the woodstove in our house for the time being.