Disillusioned

Shearing Day

I've got a thousand different thoughts rolling around my mind these days.  Few are worthy of a full blog post on their own. They all fall under a single category of thought:  disillusion. Yes, this is one of "those" posts.  No, I'm not pointing fingers (well... for the most part).  Just expressing disgust, dismay, and frustration at the way the world around me works... or doesn't. This is the rant of a raving lunatic, full of tangential thoughts and complete rambling nonsense.  Hopefully there's some agreement out there, somewhere.

In a world where our life support systems are clearly failing (the great barrier reef nearly dead, ocean fisheries depleted by 90% in the past 60 years, a clearly destabilized climate, burning forests, fundamental changes to the ocean's chemistry, CO2 going off the charts at an ever faster pace, the arctic likely to be ice free in a matter of months...), people still announce to me their plans for far-off air travel, expecting my joyful approval. The NY Times still promotes wonderful places to fly off to. Nobody bats an eye. The emperor's new clothes remain beautiful.

I was once naive enough to think that people would eventually recognize the danger of our continued business as usual, and eventually pull their heads out of their asses with regards to climate change, flying (the fastest way to burn our future), cars, and the whole shebang.  Now, I've had people effectively tell me they plan to change nothing of their own free will, no matter how bad the consequences. We'll keep on flying, keep on driving, and drive our families right over the cliff, because that's the most comfortable way to go, apparently.  I'm far from perfect myself, but would at least like it if there was someone goading me to do better than I am.  If they exist, I have yet to meet them.

If we actually wanted to look at our kids and not feel pangs of terror when we envision the future we're busily creating for them (my mother tells me I shouldn't share my thoughts with my son), we're going to have to suck it up in a big way.  It's going to be uncomfortable, in the same way that it was for members of the "Greatest Generation" to roll out of their landing craft on Omaha beach. The task before our generation, however, is both more difficult and far less likely to succeed at this late stage.

Americans, by enlarge, still trust corporate media sources who have demonstrably lied and done their best to enslave us through their promotion of various rackets (housing / mortgages, healthcare, higher education, etc). Modern day enslavement uses no chains -- only debt.  Even those who manage to avoid debt must compete (and thus pay prices inflated by cheap credit) with those who willingly partake of it.  It's the same tool predatory Americans used on other countries for decades, and it's increasingly being used on everyday Americans.

I learned recently that Mark Twain, bright guy that he was, fought tirelessly against America's decision to become predatory imperial assholes (this was around the time of the Spanish-American war).  He and his ideals lost, of course, and have continued to do so for well over a century now. USMC General Smedley Butler came to similar thoughts after spending time on the pointy end of the imperialist asshole stick.  Geez, why do all those middle-easterners want to blow us up?  Must all be crazy...

Likely as a result of our continued trust in corporate media, most Americans still seem to be afraid of socialism, to the point that they don't even recognize it when they do see it.  There are in fact things which are *best* done in a socialized manner.  Public roads.  Firefighting.  Police. Military defense. But, while someone is eating our lunch (healthcare insurers and pharmaceuticals?), we're not allowed to recognize the fact that healthcare is among those things best accomplished in a collective, socialized way. With the election of Trump and his appointment of DeVoss, our education system will soon be privatized, and will come to resemble our healthcare system.

If Three Mile Island and Chernobyl weren't enough, Fukushima has fully demonstrated that we cannot handle nuclear energy. The complete melt-downs experienced there have yet to be contained, and still spew radiation into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean which will be wreaking havoc for many thousands of years to come. Even our best robotic technology can't get close enough to the reactors to even observe it, much less do something to contain it. Yet, nuclear energy is still promoted throughout the world. China is still building dozens of reactors, including ocean-based mobile reactors. Some people deserve a swift kick in the nuts for this stupidity. Or several kicks. With pointy-toed cowboy boots.

Energy. Yes, perhaps as little as a decade ago, I would get excited about things like fusion reactors, biofuels, new battery technology, wind generators, solar energy, and other ways around our seeming predicament with regards to fossil fuels destroying our future. It's clear to me now that cheap energy is the problem, whether it comes from fossil fuels or not. Limitations on humanity and our ability to do whatever we like are critical for keeping our world intact and our species alive, despite short term effects which may appear otherwise (such as an individual not being able to fly to a hospital after an accident, for instance).  The continued search for the holy grail of carbon-free energy is little more than a search for a nicer rope to hang ourselves with.

Corruption. Well, this is nothing new of course. It's the reason congress can't figure out our little healthcare problem, with us currently paying more than any other country on the planet while getting some of the worst results. It's the reason that we invariably have to attack and kill people (expensively, of course) any time someone can think of a reason to do so. Eisenhower got it right with regards to the military industrial complex.  If only someone with enough guts to do something about it had listened to him.  Oh wait, someone did...

When Bradley Birkenfeld blew the whistle on 15,000 Americans illegally hiding cash in Swiss banks to avoid taxes, only one person went to jail. He did. Hillary Clinton personally travelled to Switzerland to make sure that these people weren't unmasked (all but 5,000 of them, anyway).  Great -- so the people who should and could be financing our country are going to continue buying mega-yachts instead.  She nearly became president you say?  Brilliant!

Still, nobody knows about this.  How did the Clintons fare in the deal?

“Afterward the Clinton Foundation’s cash registers rang up $600,000 in UBS gifts,” he writes. “The bank also decided to partner with the Foundation on some inner-city development programs, issuing a $32 million loan at very reasonable rates. Oh, and suddenly UBS also thought that Bill Clinton would make a very fine paid speaker about global affairs, so they paid him $1.52 million for a series of fireside chats with the bank’s Wealth Management Chief Executive, Bob McCann. It was Bill Clinton’s biggest payday since leaving the office of the Presidency.”

When Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA (the Snowden movie is well worth watching), he became an exile. When Assange exposes criminal wrongdoing in the US and around the world, his life is threatened. When Manning exposed war crimes, he was put in jail. Corruption rules, and nobody cares, because those in position to fix it are being paid to stay quiet once they're back in the private sector. That's how a society dies, though perhaps we won't have to worry about it much longer if our whole planetary ecosystem gets there first.

Do something uncomfortable, socially unacceptable, or otherwise difficult. For your family if nobody else. Even if you're doomed to fail.

More Making

Master shoe maker Cliff Pequet at his shop in Shipshewana, Indiana.

A song sparrow has laid claim to the brush near our barnyard, and regales me with his morning melody while I busy myself with the manure fork, harvesting the night's crop of cowpies. It's a song I remember from Washington as well. It always reminds me of sitting with my father and sister in our little aluminum fishing boat on Lake Cassidy, feeding worms to the fish that typically evaded capture.

It's always a surprise when the birds start singing again in the spring, as it makes me realize that I hadn't even noticed their absence through the winter. We don't notice the things that slowly fade nearly so much as those which change quickly. The host of a podcast I regularly listen to noted something similar, the fact that his family's annual pilgrimage to their favorite vacation spot no longer involves cleaning the splattered bug-goo from their car's windshield at each gas stop. He said they had exactly 3 bugs smear the windshield last summer.  I've noticed the same thing, now that he mentions it. Seems as if we're getting rid of all the bird food these days, courtesy of Monsanto and Syngenta. When it threatens "nice bugs" like the monarch butterfly, or the honey bee, we create "butterfly highways" or "bee habitat" instead of solving the problem, which happens to be the same problem that's killing bees and a million other critical insects that we know little about. Gotta keep that cheap chemically-enhanced food (or is it Monsanto shareholder returns?)  flowing at all costs, even if it kills us apparently.

The cheap food isn't actually cheap, of course.  Instead of paying full price at McDonalds or the grocery store, we pay it later in ways we have trouble connecting (which is just the way the chemical companies like it). We pay for it with fewer insects, fewer birds, more cancer, diabetes, heart disease, birth defects, and everything else that has slowly become "normal" over the last few decades. Considering that industrial food production is one of the chief contributors to climate change which now appears likely to cost us our future, the externalized cost of our "cheap" industrial food is in fact far higher than that of any food ever produced.

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Changes to my work schedule (the work that makes money... not the farm, that is) have opened up a new world for me that I like quite a bit.  Instead of leading a perpetually harried existence, worrying about which neglected project most needs to be prioritized, I'm able to cover most of our farm tasks now as they arise.  I even find time for many the activities I've wanted to do but always lacked the time for.

With this in mind, Rachel's Christmas gift for me was a certificate to learn shoe-making from Cliff Pequet, maker of shoes and leather goods, and proprietor of a truly amazing antique store.  It's indeed rare for a customer to leave Cliff's shop without making some interesting new discovery, as his historical knowledge is unrivaled by anyone else I know.

Cliff makes shoes the way they've been made for centuries -- measuring the customer's feet, making a last to match each foot, and then cutting and stitching everything by hand. They're not cheap by modern standards now that most shoes are glued together in China, but are quite a bargain by historical standards, where a pair of shoes typically cost the same as an ounce of gold (currently $1250).  Now you know why going barefoot was once so popular.

The shoes I chose to make are a pair of "jeffersonian bootees", a style made famous by Thomas Jefferson in 1801.  As I understand it, wealthy people of that time typically owned and rode horses, for which boots were the preferred footwear.  Commoners did not own horses, walked everywhere, and thus preferred shoes.

The leanings of a politician -- towards either the common man or the moneyed class -- could thus be determined by the height of his footwear.  When Jefferson showed up in footwear that was neither shoe nor boot, he was accused in various political cartoons of being two faced.

The shoe project of course revived my interest in working with leather, which got me back to finishing the tanned hide of Gertie, our first "retired" cow.  Her hide has become a sheath for the knife I made Henry for Christmas, and I've learned a fair amount in finishing the hide.

The Jeffersonian Bootees

There are precious few resources on hide tanning, either online or in books.  Particularly lacking is information on bark-tanning large hides such as cowhides, so I've been learning as I go.  While the dehairing and tanning process seem to be fairly simple, the hide softening process on such large hides is difficult.  Initially, I thought that bark-tan would not need softening, but I was wrong.  That's a project worthy of its own blog post someday soon though...

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In addition to the new shoes and leatherwork, I had a chance to complete a nightstand I started many moons ago. What started as a bird-poop-speckled pile of rough-sawn black walnut lumber from a farm auction was slowly transformed into my first piece of "real" furniture, based on a design from Aldren Watson's Furniture Making:  Plain and Simple.

Made without a single power tool whatsoever, it features all pinned mortise and tenon joints, chamfered and tapered legs, and a nice little dovetailed drawer (my first ever attempt at dovetails!). I'm quite pleased with the end result.  The top is made from a single plank -- a width that would be impossible to find with conventional lumber.

It's still worth fighting a losing battle, or "Learning to Die in the Anthropocene"

Turn Point Light Station on Stuart Island in the San Juans.
What does it have to do with this blog?  I'm not sure exactly.  I've been missing it lately, and am thinking of the fact that much of what makes it among my favorite places in the world is not likely to last long if we continue to avoid the reality of our current situation.  My wife and I sailed past here on our honeymoon, escorted by dolphins who regularly swim out to play with passing boats.

It's becoming increasingly clear that Trump's plan to "Make America Great Again" involve a return to America's "glory days", back when there was no such thing as the EPA, when rivers used to catch fire, the toxic clouds of Gary, Indiana contaminated anything and anyone unfortunate enough to be downwind, and DDT was the insecticide of choice.

His selection to lead the EPA has long campaigned for its destruction, and is also a climate change denier from  -- Oklahoma (I'm shocked, shocked!).

Better yet is Betsy Devos, his choice for education secretary.  She's a multi billionaire (her family wealth comes from being co-founders of the multi-level marketing scam known as Amway) who has been a lifelong advocate of abolishing public education in favor of private schools, preferably with a good dose of fundamentalist christian indoctrination. Want to see America complete its current trajectory of becoming a third world country of haves and have nots?  She's your lady!

Of course, nobody is all good or all bad, though most of us have trouble categorizing someone as both. My Grandparent's friends (who grew up in 1930's germany) once explained to me how Hitler had threatened a polluting cement plant with closure if they didn't clean up their act. Despite complaining that such measures were impossible, the plant did in fact clean up and remained in business (though I suspect that WWII might not have been all that good for them or their employees).

Trump isn't entirely bad either. Withdrawing from the TTP and calling for a renegotiation of NAFTA are both good moves which were supported by my candidate of choice in the elections. Unbeknownst to Trump, however, is the fact that a healthy economy is fully reliant upon a healthy environment with intact life support systems. By trying to improve our economy at the expense of our life support system, Trump will be dooming far more people to short and miserable lives with his actions.

I've recently had a conversation with two close family members, who are both convinced that things would be far better if people like me had voted for Clinton.  (I voted instead for Stein)  Both avid watchers of television, they couldn't fathom why I wouldn't favor her over Trump the Terrible. Suffice it to say that I'm convinced that she's a corrupt corporatist neo-conservative of the George W Bush type, with a bit of artificial leftist rhetoric thrown in to gain the acceptance of those who look no deeper into her record. Despite an occasional penchant for environmental rhetoric, her actual record on such issues closely mirrored that of Dubya, as did her extensive record on foreign policy.

Clinton's role along with that of her DNC and corporate media accomplices as not just immoral but criminal, in their back-stabbing of the best presidential candidate we've had in my lifetime (Sanders). If you haven't read Greg Palast's well researched account of how they rigged the California primary elections, you should.  If you think such actions were limited to California, I'd suggest taking off those rose-colored glasses.

I see Trump's primary value as the fact that his presidency appears to have ruffled the feathers of our corporate overlords (well, some of them at least). This is perhaps overshadowed by the fact that his actions will awaken this country's left, which has long laid dormant as corporate whores in both parties sold us out. Those on the democratic side keep us sedated through a steady stream of empty rhetoric to cover up the wounds left by their regular backstabbing (healthcare, education, environment, etc).  Fortunately, I see signs of people waking up to this fact now.  Better yet, trust in the corporate "mainstream" media is probing all-time lows.

I've long applied a litmus test of environmental ethics to any candidate I might support, because I view the environment as both of primary importance to all human activity, and because I'm convinced that it has been damaged much further than most people realize. The dramatic decrease in exposure to nature we've all undergone in our increasingly urbanized and industrialized world has done us no favors, and has made it easy to overlook the single greatest threat to our lives. Trump -- who rarely goes outdoors except to play on one of his golf courses -- is the poster child of this disconnect.

An understanding of exponential change is critical to understanding environmental degradation. The best illustration of exponential change I've seen is the example of duckweed. Placed into the right conditions, it can nearly double itself each day.  Imagine, if you will, a small pond with a clear surface, seeded with a single duckweed plant. The plant doubles itself each day, such that after 30 days the pond is completely covered. Stop for a moment and think.  At which point will the pond appear to be in danger of being completely covered? Day 29 (50% coverage), or perhaps day 28 (25% coverage) for the astute observer. The point is that things look just fine until the end is nigh. Such changes simply do not follow the slow, plodding linear path that most of us seem to assume.

Human population growth, and the damage we've wrought upon ourselves through industrialization is undoubtedly undergoing exponential change right now.  While our "pond" may not be completely covered just yet, signs of environmental failure are showing up everywhere.

One of my close family members has recently suggested flying out for a visit.  I'm all for the visit, but not so sure on the flying. While I try to communicate that our situation really is dire enough that she should rule out flying, I know that she (like most people) doesn't have the supporting knowledge to understand what I'm saying, and in fact avoids it whenever presented with such knowledge. It's depressing, after all, so I understand her position.

Guy McPherson, a university of Arizona biology professor and well known "doomer", has concluded that our planet will cease to support human life within a decade, with major changes occurring within the next two years. I'm sure that most would write off such claims as chicken-little fear mongering from a complete quack, given the background knowledge they've gleaned from the corporate media. I've read much of his work and listened to him speak, and I can assure you that he's no ignorant quack. As much as I would like to find a hole in his argument, I can't find anything of significance. While his timing may be off, his conclusions, based upon hundreds if not thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers, are not likely to be far off the mark.

I'd recommend visiting his website and reading his (extensive) climate change essay.  I'll happily buy a beer for anyone who finds any demonstrable flaws in the logic.

I believe much of his premise and short timeframe revolves around the coming "blue sea event" -- that being the point at which the arctic ocean first becomes ice-free. We've been flirting with that for nearly a decade now, but this last summer set new record lows, and this winter has seen an unprecedented drop in the winter re-freeze of sea ice. This event has the ability to set multiple feedback loops into high gear (McPherson counted some 67 feedbacks the last time I listened to him), such as the "clathrate gun" that NASA scientist James Hansen fears would end human civilization.

So how do I personally deal with such knowledge that I believe to be sound? I'm not entirely sure. I grapple with it daily. If you cannot improve the quantity of your life, perhaps you should work to improve the quality. I also find Roy Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene essay to be a very helpful way of viewing things.

Spending days and money

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives 

-- author Annie Dillard

I can't remember where now, but one of the blogs I frequent used this quote recently.  It made me think, something which I've been able to do a lot of lately.  It's easy to get caught up in our daily lives and end up going nowhere, so any goals we have need to be met through our daily actions.  They're not something to be saved for later, when things will be easier (which, quite often, is never).

Without the sort of job I've held for most of my adult life (40+ hours at a desk somewhere), I've found myself doing many of the things I want to do, spending my days as I would want to spend my life.

There are of course the daily tasks which never cease on the farm -- feeding, milking, watering, and scooping up after cows and horses, cutting/splitting/stacking firewood, etc, but now there's more. Those daily chores are in fact things I enjoy, even if scooping wheelbarrows full of poop doesn't sound like fun. You know that addictive endorphin response you get when you see a new email in your inbox or get a new "like" notification on Facebook?  I get the same thing when I find a big steaming cowpie nestled in the straw.

These tasks help me to achieve my life goals of better health for myself and those around me as well as reducing our environmental impact. I'm putting myself closer to life's essentials and am much less reliant on a destructive industrial system that is more primed for failure with each passing day. I'm fulfilling the dream of working with big monsters -- the dream that developed while my mom was reading books like Where the Wild Things Are or Dr. Doolittle to me as a toddler. Now the wild things are out in our barn, and some even have horns like the monsters in the first book (which they like me to scratch).  Others (Penelope the cow) like to express their affection by licking my beard with their goobery, cud-dripping tongues. Monsters can be a little annoying sometimes.

I like being out in the weather, even when it's 10 below, blowing, and snowing. Unlike sitting at a comfortable desk in a climate-controlled cubicle and looking longingly out the window, I'm alive. The good life isn't about achieving some leisurely, passive and risk-free existence of the sort promoted by Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or the travel section of the New York Times. It's about making and doing things, and interacting with the world and its inhabitants. I don't like being a spectator.

When I initially quit my job in August, my idea was that I needed to jump into something lucrative like Donald Trump does (wood carving?) with a full-time dedication, or I was bound to fail and end up back in cubicle prison. Then again, the tech recruiters who keep calling haven't been following up much after seeing my latest resume. Might have something to do with quitting my last job cold turkey? I burned that bridge to keep my future self from getting scared and running back across it, and it seems to be working (thank you, former self! ... I think). Maybe I don't need to worry so much about returning to a cubicle so much as I need to figure out which bridge to live under.

Leatherwork: a dagger sheath

The problem is that I'm not sure there's any one thing that I really want to do 40 hours a week, non-stop. There are certainly lots of things I enjoy doing -- but anything gets boring if it's all you do. What I'd really like is to do a bit of everything. Farming, construction, remodeling, wood carving, blacksmithing, making things with leather (shoes?), tending to our bees, our orchard, logging, working with our horses, cutting firewood, and yes... scooping poop!

Blacksmithing: Henry's christmas present

Some friends have congratulated me for cutting the cord to the regular job, which I appreciate. At the same time though, I'm not yet convinced that congratulations are in order. While I've managed to escape the prison walls, the cops of fiscal responsibility and their bloodhounds are still hot on my trail.

So for now, I'm living my days the way I'd like to live my life.  I'm not sure how long it can last, but I'm enjoying it while I can.  Who knows, maybe I'll pull it off?

Purpose

A grain scoop for the horses, and the tools used to make it.

As I grew up and set a direction in life, having a purpose was not one of my criteria, and I suspect that's true for most of us. Many people seem to be happy to go about their daily lives with little thought to purpose or any sort of big picture, but I'm not blessed with such an attitude.

A purpose need not be grandiose, such as achieving world peace.  I've found that simply meeting the needs of my family in a direct and tangible manner works just fine.  It's a bonus if I can do that while making the world a better place for others at the same time.

I've been thinking a lot about purpose lately, in large part because I think it's the lack thereof that has been at the core of my dissatisfaction with my career of the last 18 years (programmer, data analyst, etc). Yeah, I worked and my employers paid me for it, but at the end of the day I rarely felt as if I had accomplished anything of significance or importance to anyone. My sense of purpose would've been no less if I had been paid to dig random holes and fill them back up again.  

In Sebastian Junger's excellent book Tribe, he describes the way soldiers discover a new sense of purpose when they become part of a unit, of watching out for each other, and perhaps (but not always) attacking a common enemy. These same soldiers, returning to our society after their service, frequently commit suicide as their sense of purpose is lost. In fact, a very large percentage being diagnosed with PTSD haven't even seen combat; the stress they're experiencing is really a loss of purpose.  

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Starting our farm here in Michigan, developing a sense of purpose was not one of my goals, but it has in fact been one of the outcomes.  I know that the food we produce helps others, and I know that the way we produce it helps everyone on the planet.  

We had one mother who was unable to nurse her baby, and was rightfully concerned that her one month old was quickly losing weight no matter what formula or concoction she fed her. Only when the child started receiving raw milk from our dairy did she start to gain weight again. Other parents have related stories of children whose severe allergies disappeared when they were on our milk. Many have discovered that "lactose intolerant" family members could in fact consume our milk without ill effect (pasteurization is in fact what makes many people unable to tolerate milk).

I see the effects of our milk and home-grown food in our son, whose teeth are (unlike either of his parents) almost perfectly straight, uncrowded, and cavity free. Many of our customers have raised children on our milk, to similar good effect. I've found that I no longer battle chronic sinus infections, as the far superior nutrition offered by whole, raw milk is known to boost the immune system. I'm sure we have customers experiencing the same effect, but a lack of sickness never seems to be noteworthy.

Our farm no longer releases massive quantities of Nitrous Oxide (a super potent greenhouse gas released by chemical fertilizer), CO2, or contaminates our neighbor's groundwater with cancer causing pesticides, as it was undoubtedly doing before our tenure. That's a good thing, and it also feeds the sense of purpose.  

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So all would seem great -- I've got a new found sense of purpose. But, as it turns out, I haven't yet figured out how to retain it while earning enough money to sustain ourselves, no matter how frugal we become.  

We've reached a point where it appears as if greater frugality becomes counterproductive. Replacing our refrigerator with an icebox (as I would like to have done when it died last week) would require the construction of an ice-house as well as additional time to cut, haul, store, and retrieve ice. Time available for earning cash would have become even more scarce, probably resulting in a greater net cost than the new refrigerator and associated electricity use. Should I be factoring in the costs of fracked natural gas or nuclear power -- which generates the electricity that runs the fridge -- and ruins lives both present and in the future? Absolutely. But the system is such that I feel forced to disregard it, as does most everyone else.

If you ever sense in my writing that I'm cheering the decline of industrialization, you're not imagining things.  This is but one of many reasons to do so.

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So for now I have a new career, after quitting my data analyst position in August. Much like the farm, it comes with a good sense of purpose. I'm making useful (and beautiful, I think) goods for friends, family, and customers in an environmentally friendly manner. There's no fossil fueled commute where I have to dodge cell-phone addled drivers, and no sense that I'm a cog in an evil machine (a former pharmaceutical industry job comes to mind...).  I've got full autonomy to make everything as I see fit, with a forest of raw materials that grows much faster than I'll ever be able to wield a bowl adze or chisel.

For now my hand craft is limited to woodenware -- bowls, plates, spoons, scoops, etc, but I would like to expand to blacksmithed and leather goods if I can find demand for them.  Here's a link to my current Etsy store for any who are interested.

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In other news, we've had the most amazing extended fall, with a faint suggestion of winter just now approaching in the first week of December.  The colors were of the sort that made me think "Wow!" every time I looked.  I've taken photos of it all before, but here a few I just couldn't resist.

Winged sumac at the edge of our pasture

Jake (far side) and Jasper, our new team of Belgians

View from the house past the greenhouse, new barn, garden toolshed, and firewood stack.

Timber-framed garden shed.  Not 100% finished, but getting close!

Sometimes the answer is staring us in the face

There's an interesting article in the NY Times that's worth a read.  The article cites a recent study on the incidence of asthma, which is considerably lower within the Amish community than it is for the rest of us.  For those not familiar with it, asthma can be a big deal.  Rachel (my wife) has it, as have numerous friends.  One of my favorite teachers in junior high died from an asthma attack.  It's also expensive -- with the typical preventative inhaler now costing $225 for a month's dose.

The study essentially found that exposure to barnyard dust, bacteria, and allergens is providing the fodder that our immune systems need to function properly.  The Amish community cited is in Indiana, likely the one we often interact with. Though many if not most are now employed off-farm (in the RV industry for the most part), they still tend to have farms and all keep horses for transportation.  We regularly see young kids (as young as 5, I think) driving pony carts, and I've seen boys younger than 10 driving large teams of draft horses.

The authors of the study assume that their discovery could lead to therapies which could prevent asthma, but I'd like to suggest something much more reasonable, and something which could be implemented immediately for those with interest.  Go and live like the Amish.

Why take such drastic measures?  Well, first of all, they're not really drastic.  Perhaps most importantly, you'll solve a thousand other problems.  The Amish are by no means perfect, but they have a lot to teach us.

For example, if you were to "go live like the Amish", you solve the following problems (in addition to preventing asthma):

1)  Reduce car traffic along with associated fatalities (like the one which killed my good friend a few years back), CO2 emissions, and the whole toxic industrial mess that produces automobiles, whether coal mining, steel smelting, petro-chemical contamination, oil spills in the gulf, or contamination from fracked tight oil.

2)  "Going Amish" allows you to feed yourself without poisoning everyone else around you.  I've raved about industrial food problems before.  Google Atrazine, for a starter.  (Yes, when you're "Lovin' it!" at McDonalds or even the local grocery store, you're also killing people and contaminating the world.  Congratulations!)

3)  Not only do you get to eat healthier, more nutritious food, but you can cancel the gym membership.  Forget about being fat, because growing your own food is a *lot* of work. The diseases associated with our sedentary lifestyles will be much less likely to plague you (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc).  The best solution to our healthcare racket in this country is simply to not need it in the first place.

4)  We're a little late on this, but extracting yourself from the industrial food system allows you to do a better job of farming than the industrial system currently does, and reverse some of the CO2 that threatens to make asthma the least of our problems.  You can raise your animals on pasture instead of heavily sprayed GMO corn and soy (this is what surrounds us here in the midwest).  Pasture sequesters carbon.  Intensive cultivation of corn and soy releases carbon from the soil, ruining it for future generations and increasing reliance on inputs which won't be available much longer.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  Instead of trying to solve the endless array of problems that we've brought upon ourselves through industrialization, why not de-industrialize?  Anyone who has studied our energy situation knows full well that it's inevitable.  The only question is whether we do it willingly and in time to give ourselves a chance of survival as a species.

The Dark Side

Most of what you'll read about farming these days is perhaps a little one-sided.  People like to share their victories, their bucolic photos, or their accomplishments, because those are all fun to share. That's what I like to share too, but perhaps it's good to take off the rose colored glasses once in a while and tell it like it is, or at least how it's been lately.

Before we started our grand rural adventure, a friend who was already down the homesteading road a ways related, "You'd think it'd get easier after a few years, when you've learned from your mistakes and gained more experience.  But it doesn't."  He was right.  Some things do get easier, but there's always a new pitfall to experience.  We've found a few of those this year.

Wherever there's life, there's death.  The nice scene of cows or sheep out on pasture hides the fact that most of these animals will eventually be butchered.  A loved pet invariably dies, and perhaps suffers. So it is with all animals. The more life there is, the more death and suffering. They're two sides of the same coin.

Much of this is to be expected by any aspiring farmer who knows full well that animals raised for meat must eventually be killed, but there's always the unexpected as well. You could easily work yourself into a tizzy trying to prepare for all the possible ailments depicted in the Merck Veterinary Manual, but chances are you'd never experience more than a minute fraction of what's listed there in a whole lifetime of farming.  Experience provides some perspective as to which ailments need to be guarded against, but there's always new and exciting ways to fall into the same traps.  The worst is to fall into traps you already know about. Here's a sampling of the pitfalls we've fallen into lately...

Fritz was one of our steer calves, slated for butcher this fall.  Playful, friendly, and (like all cows) expensive to feed through the winter.  One morning this spring, he failed to come back to the barn with the other cows for morning milking.  Figuring he had probably just fallen asleep and not noticed the herd leaving him (it wouldn't be the first time), I went to go check just to be sure.  I found him dead underneath a tree on the edge of the pasture, before I had to head (late) into work, wondering. It wasn't a good morning.  I really have no idea how or why he died, though my suspicion is something known as hardware disease.

Cows aren't too particular about what they swallow.  Nails, bits of wire, glass... just about anything to be found in the grass can be swallowed.  The usual method of avoiding this is to make the cow swallow a magnet, which remains in the cow's first stomach and captures any steel floating by, before it can do damage in the more vulnerable parts of the digestive tract.  I knew plenty about this, but had never given one to Fritz, thinking that he was unlikely to need it before heading off to freezer land.  I was wrong, apparently. Or perhaps I wasn't.

Later on this spring, our cow Penelope (Penny) had her first calf on our farm, a little bull calf we named Pancho. We've had one cow experience milk fever before, so I knew to avoid it by giving calcium supplements to the mother immediately after calving.  I wasn't able to find the tube of supplement I had stashed away the evening that she calved though, and figured I could look again in the morning and give it to her then.  It was late, I was tired, and the chance of her developing milk fever was slim.

In the morning I found Penny groaning on her side, half passed out from milk fever.  She had fallen over on Pancho and killed him.  I ran up to the house to get our emergency treatment -- an IV of calcium gluconate (which, of course, had expired).  Rachel called the vet while I tried to remember everything about setting up an emergency IV -- which is inserted into the cow's jugular vein.  The vet arrived just about the time that the IV had finished.  Penny wasn't fully perked up at that point, but an additional shot of dextrose (which the vet administered) did the trick.  One cow saved, one calf dead.  At least we'd have lots of milk.

A week after the milk fever episode, Penny didn't want to come back to the barn in the morning. When I finally goaded her into getting up, she remained hunch-backed, as if her stomach hurt. Thus my introduction to ketosis -- an apparently common malady among high producing cows who are also prone to milk fever.  It can also kill, but we managed to avoid that outcome.

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Not all the animals that die on our farm are our own, or die by accident. With our broiler chickens being raised in a chicken tractor (that's a movable pen) out in the orchard, the raccoons had discovered that they could reach through the wire and grab the less-than-wary chicks.  I set up the live trap, and sure enough, caught the culprit.

In their efforts to escape they invariably tear up a surprising amount of grass and pull it into the cage with them. They also do a lot of pooping.  If you shoot them inside the cage, the headshot tends to make for a lot of bleeding, leaving a bloody, poopy mess that nobody wants to pick out of the wire. The cage is as long as my arm, so getting everything out means reaching in all the way, and getting up close and intimate with the mess.

With this in mind, I released the first raccoon to shoot *outside* the cage.  Thinking this would be simple, I was wrong.  He got away.  More chickens died the next night, as the trap sprung prematurely without an occupant.

I wasn't going to mess around anymore.  I shot the next one in the cage, bloody shitty mess be damned.  And the next.  And the next.  Raccoons, if you've never seen one up close, are really cute, and really smart. They growl at you. They look at you like they know exactly what's happening when you point a rifle between their eyes, point blank. Contrary to what Hollywood would suggest, a creature shot in the head doesn't just go limp right away.  They writhe, flail, squirm, and make you wonder if your shot was true.  I don't like shooting raccoons, and finally decided that the chickens were old and smart enough to stay away from the wire when they were around.  Fortunately, I was right.  I'm sure there are still plenty of raccoons around.

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Sometimes my stupidity doesn't result in death, which is a nice break from the norm. Our first attempt at this year's 2nd hay cutting came to an abrupt halt through just such an event.  While cutting our main field with the horses, I stopped and got off to move some cut grass that had fallen the wrong way, into the path of the next pass where it would jam the mower. Though it always makes me nervous, there are times when you have to drop the lines on the horses and trust them to stay in place, like when you're opening a gate or hooking up a log to haul out of the woods.  The more you work with them, the more you have an idea of what is and isn't safe.  Experience tells you what's not safe, and on this day I gained more of that.

The horses, enjoying neither the heat nor the flies, decided they had a better place to go (the shade of the trees at the edge of the field).  I was too far away to sprint and grab the lines (and was already doubting the situation), and they weren't interested in obeying my repeated "Whoa!" as I ran after them anyway. They ran the mower into the fence, breaking one of the main castings and tearing off the cutter bar.

Fortunately, we're about 45 minutes away from one of the only shops in the country that specializes in these antique mowers.  Unfortunately,  you can't call ahead because it's Amish owned. That particular day was also the start of "Horse Progress Days", an annual event showcasing the latest in horse drawn equipment and techniques.  When I arrived at the shop, still well within business hours, I found a note saying they were closed for the duration of the event.  

Thinking fast, I remembered another shop that might have a few mower parts.  After milling about the open (but unstaffed shop) for way too long with some other customers, I learned that they had sold their mower parts to another shop nearby.  Still hoping that I could salvage the day, I drove to the other shop, only to find a note on the door saying they were also at Horse Progress Days.  

So... no more haying that week. We took it easy and went to Horse Progress Days.  I'd planned on going anyway, while the hay was drying.

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The next week, we finished putting up our 2nd cutting, and all went well.  Everything was safely in the barn, and nothing was broken.  We stopped at a nearby auction that evening, leaving early but staying long enough that I was late to start the evening milking.  

After milking, I headed over to the horse barn to bring them in for the night, but found that they had managed to open the gate to the hog pen. They had lifted the lid off of the feeder, but the two drafts were in the back of the pen nibbling at brush. Bobby (our Standardbred) pulled his head out of the feeder to show me his feed-dusted lips, as if offering to share some of the tasty stuff with me.

I checked the feeder, decided that the horses hadn't eaten much, and would probably be fine.  It was too late to call the vet anyway, unless I wanted to get him out for an emergency call. I went to bed and forgot all about it until the next day, when Rachel mentioned that the horses hadn't eaten well. Bruce, she thought, might be favoring one of his front hooves.

The wheels in my head started turning (about 15 hours too late), and I thought that it might be prudent to call the vet, just in case the horses had in fact eaten enough feed to cause problems. Too much grain becomes toxic to them, causing their gut to release endotoxins that trigger a massive inflammation response in their hooves, which can in turn cause the bones inside the hoof to shift and render them permanently lame and unable to work.

I called the vet, who set aside some medication that should help if they had problems.  Rachel picked it up, and I had it with me when I went to check on them after coming home from work.  

The horses seemed quieter than usual when I arrived, but I figured that might just be the heat.  I thought they were fine until I tried to take them outside for water when Bruce simply refused to walk. Doc wasn't much better.  Bobby walked, but slowly.

That's when it occurred to me that we were in deep doo-doo, that I might very well have to put down three of the most wonderful creatures on our farm. The horses who whinny a greeting at me when they see me each day. The ones who run across the pasture for me to slap the big horsefly on their flanks.  The horses who reach around to give me love nibbles with their big soft lips when I scratch their withers for them. The same horses who run, jump, and fart with joy when I let them out on pasture. The horses for whom I feel immense and loving gratitude every time I lift off their harnesses. Because I'd been negligent, I might have to look them in the eye and put a bullet in their head.  This realization is not pleasant, and remains the most likely outcome.

In the time elapsed (about 12 days), there's been no gun fired, but we're not out of the woods yet. Bobby seems to have emerged with little more than the initial tummy ache.  Bruce can get around alright, but is a little slower than usual.  

Doc got hit hard.  He fell over in the barn one day, but was able to get back up with the help of an Amish crew who happened to be replacing our roof that day.  It took me a half hour to get him out of his stall and walk 20 feet.  He's improved to the point where he can walk better, but walks like a 90 year old arthritic, afraid to put his hooves back down at the end of each step.  I still hope for some recovery, but know it's a very remote possibility.

I could go on... about cows who refuse to breed back, adult cows who insist on nursing, calves who don't restrict their nursing to their own mothers, sheep who develop hoof infections, pastures gone bare in the drought, the heat, ammonia, and flies of the barn in mid-summer, electric fences covered in weeds that need trimming, or hooves that also need trimming (and whose owners don't let me near with trimmers), and other annoyances...

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I'm sure there are those who will look at all this and say, "Duh!  You'd have to be an idiot to want to be a farmer!" (and I count my former self among them).  All this trouble, and with monetary compensation that would make minimum-wage sound like a god-send. There are still times when I see it that way and wonder why it is that we're doing all this stuff. However, I still think that it's better than the alternatives, for ourselves and for all the animals involved.