Much has happened since my last blog update in February!   Spring started early, forcing us to get a running start.   We loaded roughly 40 loads of manure by hand and spread it out on our fields to be plowed and some on the pastures this year.

Our half acre of corn (being plowed above) and a half acre of oats went in without a hitch.   Oats need to go in early to gain an advantage over weeds that germinate at higher temperatures.   I thought I'd lost this race when the temps hit 95 shortly after getting the oats planted (in early March), but the crop still did well.

Aside from harvesting our oats and straw, and one load (out of 9) of hay, we've completed all of our fieldwork with the horses this year.  All the manure spreading, plowing/discing/harrowing, planting, hay mowing, raking, tedding, and hay loading were done without any direct use of fossil fuel.  We're not 100% yet, but I'm proud of that.

The first cutting of hay was a bit late due to a business trip of mine to Pennsylvania in May, but we got it all in the barn without rain.   Lots of volume there, but the humidity was so low (in the 20's) that we lost a lot of the leaves as they crumbled off in the field.   Leaves contain most of the nutritional value in alfalfa hay.

As soon as the hay was in the barn, we were feeding it out, as the rain had stopped and our pastures stopped growing as a result.   Feeding this winter's hay in June wasn't something I'd planned on.   With the lack of rain, our hayfields screeched to a halt as well, and the price of hay started to take off.  I can usually get good dairy quality hay at around $4/bale, but I've seen prices as high as $17 this year.   We started buying as much as we could, and sold another cow and some sheep.   We butchered our steer a few months earlier than planned, as any gain he made on hay would've been dearly expensive.  Even with the cuts in our herd and our own hay production, our hay requirements were quickly becoming a several thousand dollar liability.  Milk production dropped nearly 50% with the heat and return to a hay diet.

With temps hovering in the '90's and topping 100 a few times, I decided that it was time to move my computer (where I make money to support my farming habit) to our 72 degree stone basement.   I made friends with a salamander who lives under some boards in the dug-out "michigan basement" section under part of the house.  Hopefully he liked the cricket I put down his hole.

The past non-winter and summer starting in March began to worry me.   It was entirely possible that our farm would be untenable if this continued much longer.   Drought had been plaguing many southern states on a regular basis.   Had that situation moved north already?   Climate models (most of which have proven themselves to be far too conservative over the last decade) suggest that Michigan is destined to lose its forests and become a grassland area.  Would we also be losing our woods?   The massive sugar maples that shade our house?  Certainly changes of this magnitude aren't possible so soon... or are they?  With the north polar icecap on schedule to disappear by 2015, anything is possible.   There's little doubt that this will send our climate patterns into a new state.

About three weeks ago, the rains began again, with a 2" in an hour deluge.   We've had some rain every few days ever since.   The hay is growing again, and the animals just returned to pasture this week.  Hopefully we'll continue this way for the rest of the summer.   The nightmare is over, for the time being.   I'm still not sure we have enough hay to get through this winter (but that won't be a problem if winter doesn't come!), and am hesitant to buy what I'm seeing offered at the moment.   Hopefully our own remaining cuttings will give us what we need.

We've found that our wood cookstove is fine in the mornings, but a bit much in the evenings on days above 90, so Rachel requested a rocket stove for outdoor cooking on our patio.  Rocket stoves, for the uninitiated, are a very simple third-world type of design;  essentially an L-shaped chimney.   Put the wood in the bottom of the L, and set your pot on the top.  They burn quite efficiently.  We happened to have some bricks from an old chimney we took down last summer, which seem to work well for the stove.  So far, so good.   Our materials have cracked from the heat already -- but hopefully will stick together.

Running the Wrong Way

Bonneyville Mill near Bristol, IN.   Built in the 1830's and still operating

Engineers and inventors the world over are hunting for the holy grail of clean carbon-free energy that will "save the world".  Hardly a week goes by when I don't read about some amazing new technological development which will revolutionize the way we generate energy and allow us to continue our happy motoring habits without guilt.

Everyone assumes that all will be well if we can find a source of carbon free energy.  Never mind that we had carbon free (or neutral) energy for thousands of years, and did just fine with it.   For reasons I can't fathom, it seems as if we're wanting a *new* source of energy that doesn't exist yet (and probably never will).

Or, perhaps we should focus on increasing our efficiency?   What about that 100mpg car?   Installing CFL lightbulbs?   A high efficiency furnace, or a newer, more energy efficient refrigerator?  Never mind that a more efficient device becomes a cheaper device to operate -- thus *increasing* our energy demand.  How many times have you decided that it was okay to leave a light on, justifying the action because it's an efficient cfl instead of an energy sucking incandescent?

I've advocated for many of these solutions myself at one point or another.  I've been wrong on many if not most of them.   The fact of the matter is that we don't need more energy, nor should we strive to meet our current energy wants.   If our goal is to ensure the survival of the human race, we need *less* energy, not more!

Carbon emissions -- and their unfortunate side effects, aren't the only problem excessive energy has brought us.   Like pouring a bag of sugar into a vat of yeast, too much energy is exactly what has enabled the continuing explosion of the human population.   It's enabled our vacuuming of the ocean, leveling of the rainforests, blowing up mountains for coal, plowing of the prairies, and thousands of other activities which threaten the life support systems we rely upon.  What happens to an overextended yeast population once all the sugar is used up?

Instead of exploring new ways to render large portions of the globe uninhabitable with nuclear energy, perhaps we should focus on resetting our expectations.   Maybe the scope of our travels should return to historical norms.   Instead of worrying about the efficiency of our lights or air conditioners, we should worry about the fact that we "need" them at all.  

A deal which sounds too good to be true...

You've seen it before, if you follow the news.   Under the guise of "helping" them, president Clinton negotiated trade policies with Haiti which flooded their country with cheap subsidized rice from the US, for which he later apologized as if he had been innocent to the end result of such a deal.   While I'm sure there was some initial relief at the influx of food, the Hatian farmers were unable to compete, and are now out of business.   They're slowly losing the expertise to provide for themselves while they have developed a dependence upon our highly efficient (and thus vulnerable) and industrialized agriculture.

We've done the same thing with Mexico, using NAFTA to flood their markets with cheap subsidized corn, thus destroying their farmers.  Many of them had little choice but to starve or emigrate to the US as illegal aliens. The longer their farmers remain out of business, the more expertise they lose.

This same pattern has repeated itself throughout the world.   At the behest of the large corporations which own it, our government pushes our products into foreign markets, destroying their agriculture and engendering a dependence upon us while destroying their local expertise.  When the foreign country rejects our products as France did, we look for ways to punish them.

The problem isn't limited to people in foreign lands though.   You and I are just like the Haitians.  Every time we opt for the cheap industrial alternative (whether food, clothing, energy, or transportation), we lose the local expertise we once had in providing these goods and services for ourselves.  The gains in efficiency always come at a cost in resilience, lost knowledge, and greater dependency.

A great example of this is the field corn we grow on our farm.   Last year we produced perhaps 25 bushels on our half-acre field.  It took several days to spread manure, plow, disc, harrow, plant, cultivate, and harvest this crop.   At $12 per bushel (organic prices), the end value of our efforts is worth about $300.   If I figure an optimistically low 40 hours of labor involved, and subtract costs, we earned perhaps $5/hr.

A rational person would quickly realize this poor return on investment, and instead shell out the cash for organic, open pollinated corn (if they could find it). That person would be the little piggy who saved on the house of straw just as the wolf is starting to huff and puff..  Why?   Because they're still completely reliant upon a food system that is fully dependent upon fossil fuels -- which are, as I write this, becoming decreasingly viable to extract (not to mention their climate-altering side effects).   If the time comes when the complex industrial food system collapses, they will not have the expertise required to feed themselves or their families.   What do you think that knowledge is worth?

China has done something similar to us as a country.   Our manufacturing sector has been giddy with the prospect of utilizing their cheap labor in lieu of our own.  All they ask for in return is our expertise.   As we become increasingly reliant upon their manufacturing, our knowledge begins to disappear, and we become completely dependent upon them.  Should we rejoice at the cheap consumer goods that enable us to save money (or just buy more stuff), or should we be concerned about our new dependency?

Finding Time

We didn't get around to shearing our ewes before lambing season this year, but the lambs don't seem to mind too much.

Our non-winter has been an odd one -- hopefully not a harbinger of winters to come.  We've been waiting for the right moment to tap our maple trees, when the daytime highs first climb above freezing -- usually in late February.   This year, however, we haven't had a solid week where they remained below freezing, much less a few months of this weather.   We finally put our taps in this morning, and they are all flowing well.   Looks like we could've tapped them about a week ago had we been prepared for it.

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I've always had an interest in woodworking, and did a lot of carving while I was growing up, first making toys for friends and myself (swords are very popular with eight year old boys) and then carving figures as Christmas presents for my grandparents.  I've never owned the larger and more expensive power tools for more serious woodworking though, and don't see a whole lot of reason to purchase them now anyway.

Traditional woodworking, however (sans power tools) appeals to me immensely.   A friend of mine is quite knowledgeable about it, and my father suggested that I watch "The Woodright's Shop" on PBS.  I didn't imagine it was the same show I remember seeing a few times while I was growing up, but it is.   It's been running for 30 years now -- a very impressive run!   After dinner we've been picking out a few episodes here and there which I've really enjoyed.

We picked up a pile of black walnut for a song at an auction last spring, which has been tantalizing me ever since.   Made thus far is a milking stool.  Next?   Maybe a medicine cabinet, or....?   Now if only I could find the time to actually complete one of these projects...

As an aspiring blacksmith, I've come to the realization that I can make many of the simple woodworking tools which I don't already have.   I've made a "hook knife" used in spoon carving, as well as a large froe for riving (splitting) planks, allowing me to make smaller lumber without a sawmill.   I'll probably attempt a bowl-adze here sometime soon, but am not sure my skills are up to snuff just yet.

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Doing things "the hard way" has a number of benefits, whether learning new skills, avoiding the use of fossil fuels, or gaining a bit of pride and self sufficiency.  Sometimes I think I'm piling a little too much on myself, and other times (such as after watching this video) I'm disgusted that I'm not doing it enough.  So in that vein of thought, I came up with the idea to cut some lumber (white oaks purchased from a landowner across the street from us) which I'm planning to load and haul with our horses to a friend's mill, a little over a mile away.

I know the theory behind loading logs on to a wagon using horses.  This weekend I'll get to see how well I can make it work.   I'm still using a chainsaw (thank you Alberta Tar Sands!), and the mill uses gas as well, but there will be no fossil fuel use beyond that.  No skidders, logging trucks, or kilns.  I'd *really* like to take the logs to a water powered mill, but the two former sites near our farm have been long since abandoned.   Maybe someday I'll get to help rebuild them.

Divesting yourself of the suicidal tendencies inherent in our industrial society isn't easy.   I'm not even sure it's possible with all the bridges we've burned and the knowledge we've lost, but I am certain that it's important to try.   I, for one, would like to see my son have a chance of living on an intact planet.   If we all continue with business as usual, that's not going to happen.

Time is one of the most important -- and scarce -- factors in doing things the right way.   Riding your bike vs. taking the car.   Growing and preparing a meal using your own fuel rather than going to a restaurant or grocery store.   Teaching your kids vs. dumping them at a daycare or school.   Time is of primary importance.

For most families, both parents hold jobs outside the home, often both full-time.   As a result of time constraints we don't even have the option of doing things the right way.   I'm beginning to think that this is a package deal;  doing things the right way may very well require removing yourself from the security of full time jobs, and in many cases taking an effective vow of poverty.   Is it better to remain part of the machine that will kill you and everyone you love, but provide for your immediate comfort and convenience?

Local Energy

Whenever we wanted to cook something before, the local coal fired powerplant threw a few extra nuggets on the fire for us.   Out their stack came a few more wisps of mercury to end up in the next fish we eat.  A few more pounds of CO2 wafted in to the atmosphere to keep the polar icecaps melting and the subtropical deserts moving northward into the US.  Or perhaps the Palisades nuclear power plant threw another fuel rod into the reactor for us, and vented a little extra radioactive tritium like they did a few weeks back. (that's how they do their part to encourage mutations and foster evolution)   Our son's chance for a viable future dimmed, just a little. 

We haven't reached cooking perfection, but we're a little closer now.   The 1918 Kalamazoo ("A Kalamazoo, direct to you!") woodstove we rebuilt last winter is now installed and in regular use, with our electric stove soon to go on the craigslist free ads, or perhaps to the local metal recycling bin. 

Our kitchen is now a little warmer in the winter (let's not think about summer temps just yet).  We're also trying to catch up on some hastily prepared cookstove wood, which must be shorter and of lesser diameter than the wood for our regular heating stove.  The stuff we're burning now is a little green yet, as we still haven't quite worked up enough of a reserve.  We're also using corn husks from our field to light most of the fires.

Impressions so far?    Woodstove cooking tends towards the "medium" heat range.   You really have to work to get something hot.  But, on the plus side, things do tend to taste better when cooked at lower temperatures for longer times.  It takes a little more lead time, particularly if I've been negligent in cutting some dry kindling out of scrap wood from the barn.  Starting the fire with green kindling is possible, but takes a few applications of paper or corn husks.  We've been using it for about 6 weeks, so it's starting to feel normal now.   I usually get a fire going first thing in the morning.

Eventually I plan to plumb a water heater into the stove, which has a water jacket on one side of the firebox (essentially a hollow cast iron box for water to circulate through).   That'll give us another way to wean ourselves ever so slightly from the grid.  It also happens that our electric dryer was haphazardly wired through the old electric stove outlet, so getting rid of the electric stove gave us an excuse to stop using the dryer.   It wouldn't take me more than an hour to rewire it, but the default path for now is to leave it be.   We used it very rarely anyway, and find that the clothesline and wood drying rack both work great.

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Fall is about over now.   The leaves are off the trees, which now shriek when the wind blows like it's doing this evening.   I miss the colors, but they'll be back again next year.  Just had our first snow this week, which lasted less than a day.  Snow is beautiful too, especially outside at night under a full moon. 



The Tell-Tale Calf



 There was just no good way to do it, so I'd been putting it off.  Maintaining one herd on pasture is difficult enough, and I never really designed our farm to maintain separate herds.  We have four calves, aged 3 to 13 months, and they were all actively nursing as a result.  9 weeks is the standard weaning age.  On the plus side, everyone is fat and happy, but on the downside... we were averaging just over a gallon of milk per cow each day.   Some of that is the fact that we're feeding only grass (that's about a 40% drop compared to the usual grain diet), part of it is the fact that we milk once a day (about a 20% drop) as well.   But the four biggest problems with our production were merrily bouncing and jiggling around the pasture betweeen frothy mouthfuls of milk.

Even though we sequestered the calves at night, we weren't getting half of our cows' production.   Some of the cows were better than others, but a few of them would hold back their milk.   Their teats would go dry while the udder was still bulgingly full.    Hmmmmmm...

With our ever-growing herdshare requirements, something had to give, so one morning I shooed the cows back out of the barn after milking and moved the calves to a newly fenced off part of our yard.  The mooing ensued.  Momma cows were angry.   Kids were angry.   I just felt like a jerk.

The bellowing followed me back into the house when I sat down for my other job (the one that actually makes money).   Despite the heat, I had to close the windows.   The bellowing came through the walls -- a constant reminder of my cruel and abusive actions.  It really didn't stop until about the third day.  I'm sure the neighbors loved it even more than I did.

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The new combine worked beautifully on our oats, which we forked from the hay wagon into the combine, essentially just using it as a threshing unit.   We discovered, however, that the hull-less oats have small hairs around the seed which the fan on the combine sprays all over.   Think itchy fiberglass-dust.   Even after putting everything through the wash, we could all tell when we put on the same clothes we were wearing on threshing day.

Though this is still a small-scale operation, it's much bigger than most anything we've done before.    "Real" farmers use massive propane or natural gas grain dryers to get their grain down to a suitable moisture content for storage.   In our case, I had to cycle it through the oven in small batches, which took nearly a week.   Not sure how they did it before the advent of grain dryers.   Corn is easy -- just put it in the corn crib while it's still on the ear, but with oats.....?   Maybe leaving it in the shocks a while longer was the trick.

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Earlier in my life, I joked about writing a "cookbook" which would contain only meals that could be prepared and consumed in under 5 minutes.   I didn't see a whole lot of point in spending time on anything related to food.   Food was fuel, and who would want their life to revolve around gas stations? 

Now every day of my life is devoted to food in one way or another.  This is exactly what our ancestors have done for centuries, though most of us born in the 20th century have been lead to believe that it's below our dignity to grow or process our own food in the age of machinery and cheap labor from illegal immigrants.  I think that this is what people should be doing instead of looking in vain for some sort of fulfillment from watching TV, or having a "hobby".  I think we're all programmed to focus on food, whether we realize it or not.  I think it's why fishing and hunting are so popular.  While I was growing up, my stepmother would use up her vacation time by picking berries.   At the time I thought she was wasting her precious vacation.   Now I think she's on to something.

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Our khaki-campbell duck, quack-quack, went broody this summer and stayed with a clutch of eggs for several weeks until she finally hatched two of them.   Rachel summoned us all to the barnyard when she took both of them down to the puddle for their first swim, which was really neat to see.   Peeper (the ducks' father) was swimming in the puddle as well, and immediately ran over to the chicks and tried to kill both of them as we watched in horror.  He suceeded with one before we could intervene, but we managed to save the second.   Animals don't always see the world as we do, I suppose.

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I've felt a bit frustrated as of late with my own inability to ditch my pickup truck for good.  I know full well that we're teetering on the edge of human extinction if we haven't already committed ourselves to it.   I also know that most of the gasoline I'm burning here in Michigan is probably coming from tar-sands, making it *extremely* carbon intensive and damaging -- much more so than the gasoline from conventional oil that was running my car just a few short years ago.   Reading articles like this makes me all the more determined to do something, but then I start to think about trying to haul lumber home, or feed, or fencing, or....

The truth is that 99.9% of my ancestors had none of these "needs" that I claim to have.   I really shouldn't have them either, but I doubt that I could live like my ancestors in the society that we've built for ourselves.   There's no doubt about it -- our lives in most countries are fully dependent on fossil fuels in hundreds of different ways.  Choosing the low carbon option at this point -- as we should -- will mean the death of *billions* of people on this planet.   The other option -- and the one which we look to be following -- will mean the death of all 7 billion of us along with most other life on the planet.  We don't have good choices at this late stage in the game. 

Next time you're wondering why no politician is capable of doing anything substantial to combat global warming, just ask yourself how long you think they would live if they actually did do something substantial, such as phasing out all fossil fuel use over the next year or two.  They'd be hanging from a light pole in a matter of minutes, I suspect.  This sort of change has to come from the grass roots, or it will never come at all. 

The Learning Curve

Our first and second cuttings of hay are all safely in the barn now. Both cuttings were made with a clear 5 day forecast which changed to include rain a day after the hay was down. In both cases we just managed to squeak through and avoid the thunderstorms that make up most of our rain at this time of year.  Perhaps it's a good lesson in humility for me, as there's really nothing you can do if your hay gets rained on.  On the other hand, it has lead to a serious case of OCD as I fight the urge to check the latest radar animations every few minutes.

The first cutting was 100% horse powered. The second cutting was about 50% in the barn when the hay loader suffered a mechanical problem that I wasn't sure I would be able to fix, so we opted to finish with the assistance of our great neighbors, Stan and Sharon, and their baler. When the equipment you use hasn't been manufactured for 70 years, you can't just run down to the local tractor supply and find replacement parts. 

The new 1951 Allis Chalmers "All-Crop" 60 combine -- yet another Craigslist find



I'm still learning a lot about growing small grains. The oats we planted earlier this year did well, but the weeds grew worse and worse as harvest time approached. I ended up purchasing an All-Crop combine, and learned that weeds will make combine harvesting difficult, due to their high water content making a mush in the threshing cylinder.

In Gene Logsdon's excellent Small Scale Grain Raising book, he suggests cutting the oats and windrowing them (as with hay) before harvesting, which allows the oats to ripen while drying out the weeds. I cut and windrowed the oats along with our second cutting of hay last week, so they're ready to be picked up by the hay loader now for manually feeding through the combine. Guess I'll see how that goes.

Yeah -- I know. Combines aren't exactly in line with my low carbon goals. The problem is that there don't seem to be any good low-carbon methods of threshing any significant volume of grain. The Amish in this area typically use a grain binder, and then take the shocks of grain to an old fashioned stationary threshing machine powered by a tractor. Not a bad solution, but I figure if I'm going to use gasoline for one part of the process, I might as well use it for the whole process.  Stationary threshing machines are huge (and all very old), and I'd need another barn just to store it along with the grain binder I would need. I can justify this one on the fact that we purchase grain for our chickens and hogs anyway, and this should be somewhat less carbon intensive due to the fact that I'm doing most of the fieldwork with horses. When the gasoline dries up, I'll be in almost as bad of shape as anyone else, but at least I still have my grain cradle and a bathtub to thresh in!

Our corn was a bit of a challenge this year. Equipment problems delayed the planting, and the local crow and turkey population quickly discovered that each young sprout had a tasty kernel attached to it -- a problem I haven't had with my last two plantings. I ended up re-planting the corn very late (June 5th), and put up a scarecrow. I'm not sure if the scarecrow did any good or not, but the end of the field where I placed it does seem a little less sparse than the other end now. The corn is up about 7', but still has a way go go, with no tassels yet.



Our garden buckwheat patch (with white flowers)

 The small patches of buckwheat we planted at either end of the garden are producing lots of seed now, but the plants are so green and lush that I can't imagine how we'll be able to dry them for threshing. Many of them lodged as well, so might be difficult to harvest.

I think this is the first truly miserable stretch of weather I've experienced since moving to Michigan 3 years ago. Temps have been in the 90's with heat indexes in the low 100's. I'm sweating even before I make it to the barn in the mornings, and am very much looking forward to fall now!  Putting up hay in this kind of weather isn't particularly fun either.  Bam-Bam (our merino ram) wants to get into the cool and bug-free barn so much that he started ramming the doors.  This behavior was bolstered by some initial success before I finally got around to reinforcing them.

Our batch of Freedom Ranger chickens (a meat variety) went exceptionally well this year, with *zero* mortality (except for butchering day -- where we had 100% mortality). We took them to 11 weeks again this year, which makes for quite large birds. We've started another batch of cornish cross birds, which will be our first experience with this breed. Thus far we've lost a half dozen, though that may be a result of the awful heat we're now experiencing. On the plus side, they haven't needed a heat lamp. They'll be going out into the pasture pen here in about a week, so hopefully the mortality is all behind us now.

I’ve been looking ever since we arrived in Michigan. I figured that somewhere on our plowed fields I was sure to find an arrowhead eventually, but no such luck. I finally found one, while hoeing in our garden. It’s a 1” triangle point, a little lopsided but clearly handmade. I see it as a memento, from the last people to live here without trashing the place.  They lasted 10,000 years before we gave them smallpox and shot them.  We're looking as if we'll have the place trashed in 200 short years.  But hey, look what we can do!

Speaking of arrowheads, I've noticed an ever growing contingent of people who have arrived at the same conclusion that I have, that we need to return to a non industrial society.  Our problems arent simply that we produce too much carbon, or that we overfish the oceans, or that we like to raze the rainforest to grow chemically intensive soybeans for our factory farms.   Our problem is that we are an industrial society which is relentlessly spending our environmental capital in a million different ways.  We're driving the oceans to complete extinction with acidification.  We're the primary culprit in the massive extinction event which is now underway before our eyes, and which will likely include ourselves within the next century, unless we manage to alter course.

This is the same idea now embodied in the movie "END:CIV", and in the writings of Derrick Jensen among others.  It sounds ludicrous to many of the boomer generation, who seem to be almost universally convinced  that the cornucopia of technology will solve all problems, but many of the folks in my generation or younger are seeing this as self evident.  It's an idea worth exploring, if for no other reason than the fact that our society's current course is clearly suicidal.