A Method for Making Sharp, Distinct Mounded Raised Beds with Hand Tools Only
A problem that hand tool farmers have faced for years is how to actually deal with Mother Earth, since we have decided not to crush and beat and chop and cut her into submission with roaring machines such as rototillers, or worse ploughs, disks and harrows attached to monstrous tractors. It is an existential, philosophical crisis that one faces when confronted with the brutal equation of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) and the frightening fact that on average it takes 10 calories of oil to make one calorie of food.
Stricken with the reality of one’s existence depending on oil wells, you find yourself looking at stubborn clumps of grass clinging desperately to soil for very life, for it’s own place in the sun. And here you are, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, determined to separate the patches of grass and their root-clumps from the life giving soil, so you can colonize a piece of God’s Green Earth for the use of Man.
It takes determination and patience and persistence above all to be a principled hand tool farmer. The one allowable exception to the hand tool rule is that you can use a pickup truck to bring manure to your farm. But no machines should ever tread on your growing spaces, not even your feet if possible. Why? The first reason is that machines crush the soil structure and destroy the microbial soil web. Soils under mechanized cultivation become homogenized, and seem to dry out quicker and wear out more quickly, requiring more frequent amendments. The second reason is that machines require up-front investment and continuous fueling and maintenance, driving overproduction and “biting off more than you can chew.” Thus you have to sell X amount of your harvest just to break even, and the existence of the Industrial business farmer depends on, of all things, the price of fuel! The sorry history of business farming has millions of sad tales of debt, ruin and even suicide of mechanized business farmers who couldn’t pay their banker. The ethic of hand tool farming is to reverse these economics – to minimize expense, to completely self capitalize, to tap into the waste stream for soil and fertilizer (e.g. horse manure and spoiled hay of local horse farms), to feed oneself and one’s family before thinking of selling any of the harvest, and to enjoy what you are doing without the pressure of having to sell X amount of the harvest just to break even. Ultimately the goal of the hand tool farming movement is to set the example and popularize our model of food production creating a social and political movement based on family-scale backyard agriculture, and to exert influence over national agricultural policy to favor family farms practicing biological farming over corporate farms using Industrial and Petrochemical and GMO. The motto of the hand tool farming movement is “Save yourself; then save others.” We Americans are passively responsible for a lot of the problems in the world; hand tool farming is a necessary first step towards taking responsibility and control of ourselves, so we can eventually take responsibility for what’s being done in our names.
But first we must conquer our own fear of that hard, stubborn sod. How do we, flabby modern people, colonize a piece of God’s Green Earth for our use? There are two basic problems in turning lawns or meadow into garden: First is distinguishing the growing space from the walking space; second is taking the growing space from Nature for use by Man by removing grass, weeds, and clumps of roots and making nice fluffy soil for planting and cultivating. I have tried many ways; but only last weekend I found the best way.
Equipment needed: A pointed shovel, a wheelbarrow, and a dryer drum or other metal cylinder of similar size. A dryer drum should be easy enough to acquire; call local appliance stores and offer them 10 dollars if they can pull one out of a “dead dryer” for you, or go to the dump or look out back of appliance stores and get one yourself. You’ll need a screwdriver and maybe a 5/16 nut driver, and a knife to cut the belt that is around the dryer drum. A garbage can with the bottom cut out will work too.
Sifting the clumps of sod to separate weeds and rootballs from good dirt is the main activity. You shovel up a piece of sod where you are going to clear land, hold the blade of the shovel full of sod over the wheelbarrow and shake it up and down. Another thing you can do is put the clump of sod in the wheel barrow and gently shake it to shake out the soil so you are left with the root ball and grass clump, which you can throw away.
Clear the land big enough for the dryer drum or other bottomless barrel, and put the drum on the cleared land, and dump the dirt in your wheelbarrow into the dryer drum. Picture 1.
[IMG]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm96/rfreez/Hand_tool_gardening/1.jpg[/IMG]
Then clear land and sift more soil in the area around the dryer drum to give it some space on both sides, and to start advancing clearing land down the row. In my case I have multiple dryer drums so I filled a second one with sifted soil next to the first onePicture 2.
[IMG]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm96/rfreez/Hand_tool_gardening/2.jpg[/IMG]
Then you take the dryer drum and pull it off, leaving a mound of dirt. Do this repeatedly down a row, so you have a straight line of mounds of sifted dirt with cleared land around it, so you have a rectangle about 2.5 feet wide and as long as you please. Then take a rake and rake the mounds together, and flatten the whole thing out just a little bit. Now you have a beautiful mounded raised bed! Picture 3
[IMG]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm96/rfreez/Hand_tool_gardening/3.jpg[/IMG]
Put down grass clippings or hay and wooden boards or flat stones on the borders around the raised bed so have your distinct walking path and distinct borders. DO NOT WALK ON YOUR RAISED BED EVER. It will be slightly elevated, and it will have a sharp, professional look, as though a rototiller machine did it. If it ever needs to be “freshened up” or you want to add amendments like manure or grass clippings, you can either throw them right on, or dig out a space the size of the dryer drum, put the dryer drum back on, and fill the dryer drum back up with whatever soil mix you want to use. It will be much quicker than the first time because you won’t be sifting out vegetation and root clumps.
The trick is, of course, the dryer drum. The dryer drum acts as a “mold.” Soil is interesting stuff; it’s certainly a solid, but in some ways it can act like a liquid or at least a gel. If you just try to mound it with a shovel, it won’t pile up very high, or very neatly. But if you pile it up inside a dryer drum, when you pull the drum off it does keep a lot of its height and a lot of its shape – a lot more than without using a mold.
The dryer drum molded raised bed will be easy to work with. It’s borders will be clear, and you will be able to reach into it without having to step on the growing space. The soil will be loose so weeds will pull out easy, and root crops will be able to sink down. The only disadvantage to this design is that it is time consuming and requires persistence. But the bulk of the work is the first time in building it, and you’ll have years of great yields with minimal maintenance and minimal expense. If anyone reading this feels discouraged at the thought of colonizing a piece of God’s Green earth with mere hand tools, or if you need a dryer drum, post a comment.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Diabetes and Local Agriculture
Diabetes has become a fearsome epidemic in America. I bet someday they will trace it to partially hydrogenated corn syrup or some such thing. A doctor from India told me it is much more rare over there, but has been getting worse in recent years (probably thanks to globalized Industrial Farming).
I heard about Jerusalem artichokes helping people with diabetes, and have been growing them for a couple of years. Recently I gave Jerusalem artichokes to two sufferers of diabetes, and both reported being able to reduce their insulin shots. This is completely anecdotal and unscientific evidence, however, my two friends with diabetes are good enough evidence for me. There is a medical article in Russian referred to here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7667959&dopt=Abstract
[Use of Jerusalem artichokes in diet therapy of patients with type II diabetes mellitus][Article in Russian]
Meshcheriakova VA, Plotnikova OA, Sharafetdinov KhKh, Iatsyshina TA.
When I get this article and translate it, I will post it here. Here's a couple of cooking/diet related links talking about Jerusalem artichokes and diabetes:
http://www.rwood.com/Articles/Foods_that_Help_Prevent_Diabetes.htm
http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/FOOD_IS_ART_II/food_history_and_facts/jerus_art.html
I have high hopes for Food-Medicine to help save diabetics money on insulin shots, as well as provide a regular market for Connecticut farmers. And even to get diabetes sufferers doing gardening themselves! I'll be glad to work with anyone who wants to turn their property into a Food-Medicine-Garden. I will provide you with Jerusalem artichokes bulbs, as well as show you where to get horse manure for free (you'll need a truck).
Jerusalem artichokes, or Helianthus tuberosus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke:
GROWING AND PROCESSING
Jerusalem artichokes, aka sunchokes, are very easy to grow. You don't need to water or weed, but you do need to dig vigorously when you harvest them.
Jerusalem artichokes need full sun and fertile soil. They are "heavy feeders," that is, they quickly deplete nutrients in the soil. They are also "leachates," that is, they can prevent excessive chicken manure from getting in the watershed:
http://www.energybulletin.net/18527.html
They are, furthermore (and here is where we cleverly integrate the chicken story) an effective filter of leachates because they are ravenous utilizers of nutrients. The more nutrients they get, the bigger the tubers get. They work well with high carbon substrates in preventing leachates from getting into the watershed. A good design is a layer of bark filters with Jerusalem artichokes planted in them.
They are a fantastic chicken habitat for several reasons: It is cooler in a dense Jerusalem artichoke thicket; worms collect in this environment, as Jerusalem artichokes manage their own ecology; they like chicken manure; and chickens eat the foliage.
--snip
I suggest to read the whole Energy Bulletin article just above. It goes into detail about Sunchokes as a survival food in a Peak Oil situation.
But you don't need chickens to have Jerusalem artichokes. Rotate them around your property, and dump a few truckloads of horse manure or compost every year around them. I can help you with that. Just contact me through the comments of this blog.
Diabetes has become a fearsome epidemic in America. I bet someday they will trace it to partially hydrogenated corn syrup or some such thing. A doctor from India told me it is much more rare over there, but has been getting worse in recent years (probably thanks to globalized Industrial Farming).
I heard about Jerusalem artichokes helping people with diabetes, and have been growing them for a couple of years. Recently I gave Jerusalem artichokes to two sufferers of diabetes, and both reported being able to reduce their insulin shots. This is completely anecdotal and unscientific evidence, however, my two friends with diabetes are good enough evidence for me. There is a medical article in Russian referred to here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7667959&dopt=Abstract
[Use of Jerusalem artichokes in diet therapy of patients with type II diabetes mellitus][Article in Russian]
Meshcheriakova VA, Plotnikova OA, Sharafetdinov KhKh, Iatsyshina TA.
When I get this article and translate it, I will post it here. Here's a couple of cooking/diet related links talking about Jerusalem artichokes and diabetes:
http://www.rwood.com/Articles/Foods_that_Help_Prevent_Diabetes.htm
http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/FOOD_IS_ART_II/food_history_and_facts/jerus_art.html
I have high hopes for Food-Medicine to help save diabetics money on insulin shots, as well as provide a regular market for Connecticut farmers. And even to get diabetes sufferers doing gardening themselves! I'll be glad to work with anyone who wants to turn their property into a Food-Medicine-Garden. I will provide you with Jerusalem artichokes bulbs, as well as show you where to get horse manure for free (you'll need a truck).
Jerusalem artichokes, or Helianthus tuberosus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke:
GROWING AND PROCESSING
Jerusalem artichokes, aka sunchokes, are very easy to grow. You don't need to water or weed, but you do need to dig vigorously when you harvest them.
Jerusalem artichokes need full sun and fertile soil. They are "heavy feeders," that is, they quickly deplete nutrients in the soil. They are also "leachates," that is, they can prevent excessive chicken manure from getting in the watershed:
http://www.energybulletin.net/18527.html
They are, furthermore (and here is where we cleverly integrate the chicken story) an effective filter of leachates because they are ravenous utilizers of nutrients. The more nutrients they get, the bigger the tubers get. They work well with high carbon substrates in preventing leachates from getting into the watershed. A good design is a layer of bark filters with Jerusalem artichokes planted in them.
They are a fantastic chicken habitat for several reasons: It is cooler in a dense Jerusalem artichoke thicket; worms collect in this environment, as Jerusalem artichokes manage their own ecology; they like chicken manure; and chickens eat the foliage.
--snip
I suggest to read the whole Energy Bulletin article just above. It goes into detail about Sunchokes as a survival food in a Peak Oil situation.
But you don't need chickens to have Jerusalem artichokes. Rotate them around your property, and dump a few truckloads of horse manure or compost every year around them. I can help you with that. Just contact me through the comments of this blog.
Agribusiness Dealt a Blow by Local Agriculture in England
"If it bleeds, we can kill it." Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Predator."
McDonalds in Devon, England driven out of business by Local Agriculture.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/england/devon/6214686.stm
John Taylor, Tavistock Forward and EatWise chairman, said: "It just goes to show that the food is so good here we have seen them off.
"Because of the quality of our local food, McDonald's has not been able to compete. I think there is definitely a link.
"We have made every effort to make Tavistock a haven for local food and McDonald's wasn't local food, so they suffered."
-snip
"Since the restaurant opened in 1999, the trading patterns of Tavistock high street have changed and as a result we have taken the difficult decision to cease trading at this site."
-snip
Can the Agribusiness Beast be taken down? Or, even more important, can it be taken down without us going down with it?
The shutdown of a McDonalds in Devon England is big news for Local Agriculture activists who are just beginning to come in from the cold of citizen apathy. Movies like "Fast Food Nation," and other cinematic depictions of grotesqueries in fast food restaurants are beginning to jar the public consciousness. Outbreaks of food borne illnesses are helping as well, as reported recently at Salon magazine:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/07/pollan_bad_food/
What's wrong with our food?
E. coli at Taco Bell, Listeria in our Thanksgiving turkey, a report of unprecedented contamination in our chicken. Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," explains why.
-snip
More bad news, in fact, nightmarish news -- transgenic biofuel crops.
Whenever you hear "biofuel," or "biodiesel," I want you to think, "mass starvation." There are 7 billion people in the world, and they are only fed because of Industrial Farming. Industrial Farming requires 10 calories of oil for every calorie of food, not including transportation or energy to run the store, or energy to bring workers and consumers to supermarkets.
Biofuel will mean that croplands to feed humans or livestock animals will be competing with croplands for fuel for military machines and transport fuels. As George Monbiot puts it, this will be "feeding cars not people."
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/
Transgenic biofuel crops raise the stakes even higher. Frankencrops for fuel could spread over food cropland and "choke out" food plants, or deplete native soils, or pollute the gene pool of natural crops:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/12/08/transgenic_switchgrass/index.html
But the stakes are raised incomprehensibly high when we start talking about energy crops. There will be tremendous pressure both to perfect gene confinement technologies andto get to market with transgenic super-crops.
For ecologists, David Tilman's vision of a reinvigorated prairie, chockfull of multiple strains of naturally occurring grasses harvested sustainably for their biomass, is alluring. But far more likely is the industrial-strength monoculture engineered with one aim in mind -- feeding the world's energy maw. And unless we're very, very careful, the transgenes will go wild, until there is no wild left.
--snip
IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT PROFITS. IT'S ABOUT CONTROL OF THE FOOD SUPPLY
That's right, folks. If it was just about profits, then Agribusiness wouldn't receive an absurd amount of government subsidies every year. Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation has complained about farm subsidies:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg1763.cfm
Why so much subsidies? To drive small farmers out of business. First they did it here in the United States, then they started exporting corn for less than the cost of producing it to Mexico, apparently with the explicit goal of ruining millions of Mexican peasant corn farmers! That's why so many of them are coming here!
It's instructive that Americans did not band together back in the 1970's and 1980's to save family farms. It seems like both farmers and consumers didn't think to do this. Farmers were too proud to ask ordinary people to buy directly from them, and instead thought of themselves in an "industrial farming model" who succeeded or failed based on their individual virtues (in a rigged game I might add) rather than a "community farming model," where farmers were recognized as a local public good, and voluntarily supported and protected by local citizens.
Many people in Connecticut and New Jersey bemoan the development of what seems like every bit of wild land left for shopping malls and subdivisions. Our landscape has been plundered.
This would never have happened had we supported local farmers in the first place. Those farmlands would have never been sold off to greedy developers. We wouldn't be so dependent on the defense industry and casinos for so-called "jobs." We could have stopped cancerous economic growth in its tracks. But WE, collectively, chose not to do so.
Now it's time to try and save what we can. Many people in Connecticut have lawns. Those lawns need to be converted to food gardens. We must shake our little fists at the Agribusiness Beast, which is poised to devour and destroy us all.
"If it bleeds, we can kill it." Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Predator."
McDonalds in Devon, England driven out of business by Local Agriculture.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/england/devon/6214686.stm
John Taylor, Tavistock Forward and EatWise chairman, said: "It just goes to show that the food is so good here we have seen them off.
"Because of the quality of our local food, McDonald's has not been able to compete. I think there is definitely a link.
"We have made every effort to make Tavistock a haven for local food and McDonald's wasn't local food, so they suffered."
-snip
"Since the restaurant opened in 1999, the trading patterns of Tavistock high street have changed and as a result we have taken the difficult decision to cease trading at this site."
-snip
Can the Agribusiness Beast be taken down? Or, even more important, can it be taken down without us going down with it?
The shutdown of a McDonalds in Devon England is big news for Local Agriculture activists who are just beginning to come in from the cold of citizen apathy. Movies like "Fast Food Nation," and other cinematic depictions of grotesqueries in fast food restaurants are beginning to jar the public consciousness. Outbreaks of food borne illnesses are helping as well, as reported recently at Salon magazine:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/07/pollan_bad_food/
What's wrong with our food?
E. coli at Taco Bell, Listeria in our Thanksgiving turkey, a report of unprecedented contamination in our chicken. Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," explains why.
-snip
More bad news, in fact, nightmarish news -- transgenic biofuel crops.
Whenever you hear "biofuel," or "biodiesel," I want you to think, "mass starvation." There are 7 billion people in the world, and they are only fed because of Industrial Farming. Industrial Farming requires 10 calories of oil for every calorie of food, not including transportation or energy to run the store, or energy to bring workers and consumers to supermarkets.
Biofuel will mean that croplands to feed humans or livestock animals will be competing with croplands for fuel for military machines and transport fuels. As George Monbiot puts it, this will be "feeding cars not people."
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/
Transgenic biofuel crops raise the stakes even higher. Frankencrops for fuel could spread over food cropland and "choke out" food plants, or deplete native soils, or pollute the gene pool of natural crops:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/12/08/transgenic_switchgrass/index.html
But the stakes are raised incomprehensibly high when we start talking about energy crops. There will be tremendous pressure both to perfect gene confinement technologies andto get to market with transgenic super-crops.
For ecologists, David Tilman's vision of a reinvigorated prairie, chockfull of multiple strains of naturally occurring grasses harvested sustainably for their biomass, is alluring. But far more likely is the industrial-strength monoculture engineered with one aim in mind -- feeding the world's energy maw. And unless we're very, very careful, the transgenes will go wild, until there is no wild left.
--snip
IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT PROFITS. IT'S ABOUT CONTROL OF THE FOOD SUPPLY
That's right, folks. If it was just about profits, then Agribusiness wouldn't receive an absurd amount of government subsidies every year. Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation has complained about farm subsidies:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg1763.cfm
Why so much subsidies? To drive small farmers out of business. First they did it here in the United States, then they started exporting corn for less than the cost of producing it to Mexico, apparently with the explicit goal of ruining millions of Mexican peasant corn farmers! That's why so many of them are coming here!
It's instructive that Americans did not band together back in the 1970's and 1980's to save family farms. It seems like both farmers and consumers didn't think to do this. Farmers were too proud to ask ordinary people to buy directly from them, and instead thought of themselves in an "industrial farming model" who succeeded or failed based on their individual virtues (in a rigged game I might add) rather than a "community farming model," where farmers were recognized as a local public good, and voluntarily supported and protected by local citizens.
Many people in Connecticut and New Jersey bemoan the development of what seems like every bit of wild land left for shopping malls and subdivisions. Our landscape has been plundered.
This would never have happened had we supported local farmers in the first place. Those farmlands would have never been sold off to greedy developers. We wouldn't be so dependent on the defense industry and casinos for so-called "jobs." We could have stopped cancerous economic growth in its tracks. But WE, collectively, chose not to do so.
Now it's time to try and save what we can. Many people in Connecticut have lawns. Those lawns need to be converted to food gardens. We must shake our little fists at the Agribusiness Beast, which is poised to devour and destroy us all.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Here's a portable chicken cage that I built last weekend, with the help of three friends. It was like an Amish barn raising.
Those are guinea birds getting accustomed to their new home. The farmer who sold them to me told me to keep them confined for 2 weeks before letting them free range, lest they fly away and never return.
After I let the guineas out, I will be using this as a safe place for new chicks, until they are big enough to survive among full grown chickens.
This August those friends will return with canning jars and the pre-made kits for making ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and pickles, and we will put up the harvest for the winter for all of us. I should have a massive bumper crop of cucumbers and tomatoes.
Down with Agribusiness!
Monday, April 24, 2006
When something is unhealthy, it can be a strong phenomenon, like a quickly metastasizing cancer, but cancer is not a sustainable condition for the human body. The cancer cells die with the body. One could say cancer is a body destroying itself.
The fossil fuel, growth economy is a cancer on human civilization. It destroys the ecology, and it also destroys human morality. Greedy entrepreneurs hiring illegal aliens in a race to the bottom of wages is a perfect example of the amorality of our civilization.
Economic growth is the determinant of our morality. It overcomes custom, tradition, and established law.
I believe it is possible to destroy the growth economy with something I have dubbed "Local Economy Volunteerism."
It is basically taking up a volunteer hobby of trying to start a Local Economy. There is certainly a possibility of "making money," in it, at least enough so you can become a full time Local Economy Coordinator.
Another way to describe Local Economy Volunteerism is "Create Your Own Job." The paycheck jobs are going away. They are going to get scarcer and scarcer. People will fight to get them, and the pay will get lower and lower.
The first step to becoming a Local Economy Volunteer is to decide on an industry or 2 or 3 and work towards those. Transportation is one -- namely carpooling. Want to start a business right now? Get one of those little buses, and start knocking on doors and leaving pamphlets advertising this business. People can get rid of their car, and still go to work. Look how much they'll save -- it's a LOT. And you could turn a buck. You could expand this business model if it works in one place. You may get copycats. Maybe the large corporations will take over this business. But you see what you did -- you forced a change on society.
The industry I chose is food production. I found many resources of "hobby farmers" in my area, and people related to what's left of agriculture in this state. Then I started getting people I know to rip out their lawns and put in mini-farms.
When I help them set up their mini-farms, they expect to be charged for everything. I say no, if I bring you horse manure, you need only pay for the exact amount of the gasoline. When we really need to exchange money, we will, but the mini-farm is like a game, and the object of the game is to get as much as possible while spending as little as possible. Go after the waste of society -- the bags of leaves people leave at the side of the road, the horse manure that the horse people want to get rid of.
The second object of the Local Economy game is to rack up the money you didn't spend on the System. We don't want to make money off each other, we want to get money this way. By cutting expenses and developing Local Economy, you literally take money out of the pockets of the Corporate System. I motivate myself by imagining corporate board meetings where the board is freaking out over losing profits.
Local Economic Volunteerism is a matter of breaking the standing inertia. The Standing Inertia is pretty strong; but it is simply a lack of personal initiative and the belief that this would work.
When a critical mass of Local Economic Volunteers is reached in a certain small geographical area, then we will start really saving money. This is likely to catch on with friends and relatives once we have something concrete to trade. Even an extra seat in a ride from one place to another on a regular basis is something worth trading. It would be a form of mass transit within the private automobile system. Food is also easily tradeable and saleable, especially as the price goes up.
It will reach a point where it catches on fire, so to speak. I think it's going to happen anyway, quite frankly, but my goal is to accelerate the transition. Local Economic Volunteerism will make for a less hard landing when TSHTF, and it will also disempower our enemies.
One more form of Local Economic Volunteerism would be second hand trading via Craig's List. Anything to get people to do more second hand purchasing and less reliance on Wal-Mart.
The fossil fuel, growth economy is a cancer on human civilization. It destroys the ecology, and it also destroys human morality. Greedy entrepreneurs hiring illegal aliens in a race to the bottom of wages is a perfect example of the amorality of our civilization.
Economic growth is the determinant of our morality. It overcomes custom, tradition, and established law.
I believe it is possible to destroy the growth economy with something I have dubbed "Local Economy Volunteerism."
It is basically taking up a volunteer hobby of trying to start a Local Economy. There is certainly a possibility of "making money," in it, at least enough so you can become a full time Local Economy Coordinator.
Another way to describe Local Economy Volunteerism is "Create Your Own Job." The paycheck jobs are going away. They are going to get scarcer and scarcer. People will fight to get them, and the pay will get lower and lower.
The first step to becoming a Local Economy Volunteer is to decide on an industry or 2 or 3 and work towards those. Transportation is one -- namely carpooling. Want to start a business right now? Get one of those little buses, and start knocking on doors and leaving pamphlets advertising this business. People can get rid of their car, and still go to work. Look how much they'll save -- it's a LOT. And you could turn a buck. You could expand this business model if it works in one place. You may get copycats. Maybe the large corporations will take over this business. But you see what you did -- you forced a change on society.
The industry I chose is food production. I found many resources of "hobby farmers" in my area, and people related to what's left of agriculture in this state. Then I started getting people I know to rip out their lawns and put in mini-farms.
When I help them set up their mini-farms, they expect to be charged for everything. I say no, if I bring you horse manure, you need only pay for the exact amount of the gasoline. When we really need to exchange money, we will, but the mini-farm is like a game, and the object of the game is to get as much as possible while spending as little as possible. Go after the waste of society -- the bags of leaves people leave at the side of the road, the horse manure that the horse people want to get rid of.
The second object of the Local Economy game is to rack up the money you didn't spend on the System. We don't want to make money off each other, we want to get money this way. By cutting expenses and developing Local Economy, you literally take money out of the pockets of the Corporate System. I motivate myself by imagining corporate board meetings where the board is freaking out over losing profits.
Local Economic Volunteerism is a matter of breaking the standing inertia. The Standing Inertia is pretty strong; but it is simply a lack of personal initiative and the belief that this would work.
When a critical mass of Local Economic Volunteers is reached in a certain small geographical area, then we will start really saving money. This is likely to catch on with friends and relatives once we have something concrete to trade. Even an extra seat in a ride from one place to another on a regular basis is something worth trading. It would be a form of mass transit within the private automobile system. Food is also easily tradeable and saleable, especially as the price goes up.
It will reach a point where it catches on fire, so to speak. I think it's going to happen anyway, quite frankly, but my goal is to accelerate the transition. Local Economic Volunteerism will make for a less hard landing when TSHTF, and it will also disempower our enemies.
One more form of Local Economic Volunteerism would be second hand trading via Craig's List. Anything to get people to do more second hand purchasing and less reliance on Wal-Mart.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Americans need to reconnect with their land. Having a lawn is just wrong on so many levels.
The British upper class invented the lawn as a sign of conspicuous consumption. Using your land (especially the limited real estate of the British Isles) for lawns is a statement that you don't need to use it to grow food. Instead you play croquet or cricket or rugby while those stupid peasants toil out of sight. They enjoyed their lawns while the Irish starved to death in the famine of the 1840's.
Do I have a lawn? No. My front yard is a work in progress, but it's design is berry bushes, perennial and annual flowers, and the spaces in between will be White clover - the kind you get seed for cover cropping and pasturing and haying that grows high. I will cut the White clover down when it flowers and dry it and feed it to my rabbits.
So Americans, many of them Irish, are mindless aping the British aristocracy by having lawns. They have this symbol of conspicuous consumption even while losing their jobs and getting their house foreclosed. It's completely mindless.
Ornamental turf, aka lawns, are the biggest crop in the USA in square footage. Now just imagine if a "foodnotlawns" movement caught on in this country, as a retaliation against agribusiness. And every property owner that converted their property to food gardens called their Congress swine and said, "I grow my own food, stop the subsidies to agribusiness" and ending agribusiness subsidies became a mass movement. That would be a good strike back against agribusiness. They take 19 billion in direct subsidies, and much much more in indirect subsidies in the form of subsidized fossil fuels. Agribusiness corrupted the government, stole the taxpayers money, and used it to destroy small family farms. This is a RICO case if there ever was one.
And now they grow GMO corn and GMO canola. That GMO (genetically modified) pollinates a neighboring natural corn or canola field. The farmer growing the natural crop can no longer sell his crop to Europe or Japan, or even many African countries, which do not accept GMO Frankenfoods. Then Monsanto sues the natural farmer for "stealing" their GMO patent! The farmer didn't want his corn to be pollinated with Freak food in the first place! He just lost his livelihood, and the company that destroyed his livelihood turns around and sues him for "patent infringement!" It's too outrageous to be believed, it hurts the mind to think such things go on, but this is a 100% true story -- happened to a canola farmer in Canada.
Agribusiness is a modern Dracula, but Bram Stoker's Dracula was a saint by comparison.
Agribusiness wants to control the global food supply with terminator seeds and "genetically modified" junkie crops that will die if they aren't dosed with special chemicals. They want to make every producer of food their techno-slave. There isn't even any decent justification for what they are doing. They say things like, "we are scientists working hard to solve world hunger," but they can't, and won't debate the opposition. Sound familiar?
Agribusiness is maneuvering itself towards a position where it can say, "Go along with us, or you'll all starve to death." I'm not joking.
Agribusiness wants to pollute and take control of the gene pool of food plants, starting with staple crops.
This is a life or death issue.
The British upper class invented the lawn as a sign of conspicuous consumption. Using your land (especially the limited real estate of the British Isles) for lawns is a statement that you don't need to use it to grow food. Instead you play croquet or cricket or rugby while those stupid peasants toil out of sight. They enjoyed their lawns while the Irish starved to death in the famine of the 1840's.
Do I have a lawn? No. My front yard is a work in progress, but it's design is berry bushes, perennial and annual flowers, and the spaces in between will be White clover - the kind you get seed for cover cropping and pasturing and haying that grows high. I will cut the White clover down when it flowers and dry it and feed it to my rabbits.
So Americans, many of them Irish, are mindless aping the British aristocracy by having lawns. They have this symbol of conspicuous consumption even while losing their jobs and getting their house foreclosed. It's completely mindless.
Ornamental turf, aka lawns, are the biggest crop in the USA in square footage. Now just imagine if a "foodnotlawns" movement caught on in this country, as a retaliation against agribusiness. And every property owner that converted their property to food gardens called their Congress swine and said, "I grow my own food, stop the subsidies to agribusiness" and ending agribusiness subsidies became a mass movement. That would be a good strike back against agribusiness. They take 19 billion in direct subsidies, and much much more in indirect subsidies in the form of subsidized fossil fuels. Agribusiness corrupted the government, stole the taxpayers money, and used it to destroy small family farms. This is a RICO case if there ever was one.
And now they grow GMO corn and GMO canola. That GMO (genetically modified) pollinates a neighboring natural corn or canola field. The farmer growing the natural crop can no longer sell his crop to Europe or Japan, or even many African countries, which do not accept GMO Frankenfoods. Then Monsanto sues the natural farmer for "stealing" their GMO patent! The farmer didn't want his corn to be pollinated with Freak food in the first place! He just lost his livelihood, and the company that destroyed his livelihood turns around and sues him for "patent infringement!" It's too outrageous to be believed, it hurts the mind to think such things go on, but this is a 100% true story -- happened to a canola farmer in Canada.
Agribusiness is a modern Dracula, but Bram Stoker's Dracula was a saint by comparison.
Agribusiness wants to control the global food supply with terminator seeds and "genetically modified" junkie crops that will die if they aren't dosed with special chemicals. They want to make every producer of food their techno-slave. There isn't even any decent justification for what they are doing. They say things like, "we are scientists working hard to solve world hunger," but they can't, and won't debate the opposition. Sound familiar?
Agribusiness is maneuvering itself towards a position where it can say, "Go along with us, or you'll all starve to death." I'm not joking.
Agribusiness wants to pollute and take control of the gene pool of food plants, starting with staple crops.
This is a life or death issue.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Distinction between Consumer Economics versus Citizen Economics.
We all know what Consumer Economics is -- buying everything from teh store, and viewing each other as either producers, middlemen or consumers. There's no mental space to think of one another as something besides either producers, middlemen or consumers.
Is it possible for us to view each other in a wholly different Economic role?
The Consumer, as we know, is a very passive creature, and if it cares about politics, it clamors for "enlightened politicians" and "enlightened CEO's."
The Consumer does not question or subject to close scrutiny their daily economic existence, because everything is handed to him or her on a silver platter. Therefore, it "works," and therefore "it is good." It is considered that it's not necessary to bother with it, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Citizen Economics
Citizen Economics in days of yore was mixed between communal village economics, and capitalistic village economics.
In modern times, the communal village economics has been wiped out, and wholly replaced by urban capitalistic economics. It's not that capitalism or cities are "bad," but a balance has been lost. There is still a need for "village economics.
It will not be easy to restore "village economics," but it is both possible and there is a great potential to humble the corporations and the politicians.
If corporations and politicians see whole industries lose money because of it being replaced by village economics (e.g. agribusiness losing a significant chunk of market share to Community farms), there will be a scramble by the corporations to "co-opt" it and a scramble by politicians to garner votes and donations. This is a start.
Village Economics will change the "lifestyle," or the "culture" of it's participants in more ways than this. Less television will be viewed, fewer movies watched, fewer sports events will be attended, fewer name brand clothes will be coveted, fewer trips to Wal-Mart. Urban capitalists will scream in pain to co-opt and bring people back to the cineplex and the big box store and the sports stadium, or find some other way to "herd the citizen back into the consumerist corral."
People who participate in Village Economics will gain a voice, just as the Corporate Lobbyists already have a voice. There is a reason Corporate Lobbyists are THE constituency of the current government, or as George Bush said, "Some people call you the elite . . . I call you my base." The imbalance between communal village economics (now non-existent) and urban capitalistic economics (predominant, even monopolistic).
Village Economics can take care of food, child care, elder care, and transportation (car sharing), and that's just for starters. Unemployed and retirees can troll garage sales and Craig's List and www.freecycle.org for used consumer goods as scavengers. People can say to them, "I need a shovel" or "We need a crib for our baby" or "we need a refrigerator" and the scavengers either have them or start looking for them. Even if you end up paying "full price" for a second hand item, at least you didn't buy it new. Elderly women who do knitting and quilting can contact the "scavengers" and provide an inventory list.
Ever heard of the NAIRU? That stands for "Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment." The term was coined during the Nixon administration. That means that the elites running the American economy need to keep a certain percentage of people unemployed and desperate for work in order to keep the rest of the workforce “in line” and not bargaining for higher wages.
For the Federal Reserve elites, the Money Powers, “inflation” is a way of saying “higher wages are bad.” The goal is that you, the ordinary person, keeps spending and consuming, but you do not, under any circumstances, get higher wages. And that has been the game for decades. The national minimum wage is still 5.15 an hour! Flooding the country with immigrants and “outsourcing” is also in order to depress wages.
What we need to understand is that the relation between the Money Powers versus We the People is an extremely hostile relation. We the People have not caught on, and it’s the reason we haven’t even begun to fight back.
The only way we can fight back is to take up Village Economics. It requires personal initiative, and possibly even small investments of our dwindling disposable incomes. However, once it gets going, it’s a two fold victory; first, it saves us money, second it keeps money circulating among Us the People so we’ll be wealthier, and third it deprives the Money Powers of our money. Village Economics has the potential to cut off at least some of the oxygen to the Money Powers.
It will require breaking some of our ingrained habits and customs of individualism. Not cooperating with one another is considered “freedom” and even an American virtue. “Do your own thing,” remember that motto from the 60’s? Everyone doing his and her own thing has been a windfall for the Money Powers, and enslavement of all of the rest of us.
But it can be done. We have to relearn how to deal with one another, and remember our traditional values of honesty and fair dealing in dealing with one another and against the Money Powers. We don’t have to love one another, or even like each other. But we do need to overcome our laziness and standing inertia to work towards restoring Village Economics.
We all know what Consumer Economics is -- buying everything from teh store, and viewing each other as either producers, middlemen or consumers. There's no mental space to think of one another as something besides either producers, middlemen or consumers.
Is it possible for us to view each other in a wholly different Economic role?
The Consumer, as we know, is a very passive creature, and if it cares about politics, it clamors for "enlightened politicians" and "enlightened CEO's."
The Consumer does not question or subject to close scrutiny their daily economic existence, because everything is handed to him or her on a silver platter. Therefore, it "works," and therefore "it is good." It is considered that it's not necessary to bother with it, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Citizen Economics
Citizen Economics in days of yore was mixed between communal village economics, and capitalistic village economics.
In modern times, the communal village economics has been wiped out, and wholly replaced by urban capitalistic economics. It's not that capitalism or cities are "bad," but a balance has been lost. There is still a need for "village economics.
It will not be easy to restore "village economics," but it is both possible and there is a great potential to humble the corporations and the politicians.
If corporations and politicians see whole industries lose money because of it being replaced by village economics (e.g. agribusiness losing a significant chunk of market share to Community farms), there will be a scramble by the corporations to "co-opt" it and a scramble by politicians to garner votes and donations. This is a start.
Village Economics will change the "lifestyle," or the "culture" of it's participants in more ways than this. Less television will be viewed, fewer movies watched, fewer sports events will be attended, fewer name brand clothes will be coveted, fewer trips to Wal-Mart. Urban capitalists will scream in pain to co-opt and bring people back to the cineplex and the big box store and the sports stadium, or find some other way to "herd the citizen back into the consumerist corral."
People who participate in Village Economics will gain a voice, just as the Corporate Lobbyists already have a voice. There is a reason Corporate Lobbyists are THE constituency of the current government, or as George Bush said, "Some people call you the elite . . . I call you my base." The imbalance between communal village economics (now non-existent) and urban capitalistic economics (predominant, even monopolistic).
Village Economics can take care of food, child care, elder care, and transportation (car sharing), and that's just for starters. Unemployed and retirees can troll garage sales and Craig's List and www.freecycle.org for used consumer goods as scavengers. People can say to them, "I need a shovel" or "We need a crib for our baby" or "we need a refrigerator" and the scavengers either have them or start looking for them. Even if you end up paying "full price" for a second hand item, at least you didn't buy it new. Elderly women who do knitting and quilting can contact the "scavengers" and provide an inventory list.
Ever heard of the NAIRU? That stands for "Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment." The term was coined during the Nixon administration. That means that the elites running the American economy need to keep a certain percentage of people unemployed and desperate for work in order to keep the rest of the workforce “in line” and not bargaining for higher wages.
For the Federal Reserve elites, the Money Powers, “inflation” is a way of saying “higher wages are bad.” The goal is that you, the ordinary person, keeps spending and consuming, but you do not, under any circumstances, get higher wages. And that has been the game for decades. The national minimum wage is still 5.15 an hour! Flooding the country with immigrants and “outsourcing” is also in order to depress wages.
What we need to understand is that the relation between the Money Powers versus We the People is an extremely hostile relation. We the People have not caught on, and it’s the reason we haven’t even begun to fight back.
The only way we can fight back is to take up Village Economics. It requires personal initiative, and possibly even small investments of our dwindling disposable incomes. However, once it gets going, it’s a two fold victory; first, it saves us money, second it keeps money circulating among Us the People so we’ll be wealthier, and third it deprives the Money Powers of our money. Village Economics has the potential to cut off at least some of the oxygen to the Money Powers.
It will require breaking some of our ingrained habits and customs of individualism. Not cooperating with one another is considered “freedom” and even an American virtue. “Do your own thing,” remember that motto from the 60’s? Everyone doing his and her own thing has been a windfall for the Money Powers, and enslavement of all of the rest of us.
But it can be done. We have to relearn how to deal with one another, and remember our traditional values of honesty and fair dealing in dealing with one another and against the Money Powers. We don’t have to love one another, or even like each other. But we do need to overcome our laziness and standing inertia to work towards restoring Village Economics.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
