Dammit! We Wasted a Day of Sunlight!
Posted by Nate Hagens on August 27, 2008 - 11:07am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: solar oven, solar power [list all tags]
This is a repost from last summer, when for the first time, I attempted to grow a meaningful amount of my own food, at least enough to store during the winter and supplement (hopefully) fewer trips to the grocery store. I planted 38(!) heirloom tomato plants, which proved to be a few too many. I literally had days with bushel baskets of tomatoes. Some went to friends, many were dried, many were partially cooked in a solar oven, then frozen. This brief story is not really about tomatoes or solar ovens, but about a comment my father made, ultimately relating to paradigm shifts and tipping points. (Note: I am just now finishing the last of 2007's tomatoes, just when this years are being snuck off the vine by my dog)
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First some background:
I go out in the morning and pick whatever tomatoes are ripe. On sunny days, I wash and core the tomatoes, then quarter them. In July, I wrote a post here about the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, where I bought a Solar SOS oven. I really like it, and use it most days either to cook a snack or blanche/prepare some produce for storage. It can get to about 225 degrees and about 275 if you use the solar reflectors (not shown here)
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I then put the tomatoes in the pot, put a little olive oil on them and some oregano and italian seasoning, close the lid of the solar oven, point it towards the sun and rotate clockwise 30 degrees, and leave to do whatever else is on my agenda for the day.
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Several hours later (or as little as 2 hours), I return to juicy delicious tomato concoction, which I can eat with bread or such right then.
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But lately, I've been dumping the contents in freezer bags and throwing them in my (energy star) freezer, to remind me of summer during the long Wisconsin winter. But heres the moral of this story.
My father is one of my favorite people, though politically and economically he hits it pretty straight down the fairway. He's a peak oil agnostic - though he does believe that oil is finite, he doesn't think there will be meaningful supply problems in his lifetime (on this we disagree). He is a nature lover, and very knowledgeable about the natural world, though I suspect this is related to the deer and ducks he shoots. He has always been a very hard worker - even if nothing really needs 'doing' he will find a 'project' of some sort to occupy his time, usually outdoors.
Though Ive thought Ive gotten under his skin the past year or so - warning of peak oil, explaining how dependent our system is on liquid fuels, articulating how fragile the food transport economy is, etc., perhaps there have been positive externalities from these talks. He helped me build a decent sized garden this year, and we have been storing (and eating) from the garden for the past few months.
(Punchline)Yesterday I was too busy to go use the solar oven. At about 3 in the afternoon my father returned from some various outdoor chores and inquired 'Whats in the solar oven today, Nat?" I told him I had forgotten to put anything in it - that I was too busy. His reply, (the title of this post), was a vehement "Dammit?!! You've wasted a day of sunlight!!" And you could tell from his expression that he actually felt this as a 'loss'. (It's possible he was thinking that we'd now need to use the kitchen oven, which would cost money in KwH, as opposed to free sunlight)
After the initial shock and some chuckling, I thought a bit about this. My father is old school. For him to think in terms of 'energy' as a currency to pay attention to, is important. He is not in the peak oil crowd, but just a normal guy pursuing his lot. It gave me renewed confidence in our collective ability to change, when I heard those terms meaningfully spoken, from someone who has worked hard his entire life but never viewed 'sunlight' as something of value.
Today's societal metric of success is pecuniary bigger and better stuff. This metric was not one created overnight. Our world has been morphed by a collection of baby steps, too small to notice day by day, but quite significant when they accumulate over decades. So too, will the world of our children be created by such small steps. The change to a biophysical economy will also be a long process. To me, being chastised by my Dad that I wasted a day of sunlight, was a baby step in the right direction.
I'm not suggesting that everyone be farmers. But to change small aspects of our lives to be more in sync with natural systems is an improvement in our demand infrastructure that will accrete over time. These ‘food chores’ may appear wasteful to an economist. My time, knowledge and experience in other areas should be able to provide more societal utility translatable to monetary value for me and more resources to society as a whole via my comparative advantage. Indeed, the amount of money I could make in the time it took me to procure one batch of tomatoes would probably be enough to have dried heirloom tomatoes delivered to my door by Federal Express. But I a)enjoy spending my time this way, b)eat healthier unprocessed food, c)have more opportunity to create social capital with neighbors and d)have less opportunity to spend my time consuming other stuff...
Had my Dad not been traveling today, perhaps he would have told me I wasted a day of rain...;)
I wonder how many acres to support the average family annually? I guess it would depend on how much meat and how intense the farming/gardening techniques are, location etc.
Meat is a key determinant. John Jeavons lists 1/6 of an acre for a vegetarian using intense intercropping IIRC. Much more if one needs to grow food for animals. Im sure Jason Bradford or Sharon Astyk or others will have more specific references...
I've never been able to come close to John Jeavon's yields using the methods in Grow More Vegetables.... I should probably take a Grow Biointensive class. :)
Has anyone else here been able to come close to the yields listed?
An excellent book for information on the resources required for raising meet animals and the nutritional values of various food groups is "Crisis Preparedness Handbook" by Jack Spigarelli. The feed requirements for animal from rabbits to cows are daunting. For example, enough rabbits (12) to provide an average of 1.5 to 2 lbs of meet per day requires 3.5 tons of commercial feed per year! Or you can make your own feed from corn, grain sorghum, hay, oats, soybeans, and wheat. The acreage to grow that amount of feed is substantial. A dozen laying hens to get close to four dozen eggs a week require 1,200 lbs of mash per year (page 171.)
The space needed to raise meet animals is not very large, it's the land required for the feed which is in scarce supply.
If there are any Bio-Engineers out there perhaps you should get cracking on a new animal that 'eats sunlight'. As a starting point may I suggest a cross beteen a chicken and a billiard table...
Trust me, these 'Pool-Head Chickens' are going to be the norm come the revolution and their legs will be tasty too given all the xtra weight...
Nick.
I raise chickens. Our dozen hens get no grain from green up (April) to 'no more bugs' (October), and about half the listed amount of grain the rest of the time. They do get kitchen scraps, but that's just preprocessing the compost.
Also four eggs/week is poor laying. Rather than almost four, you should get over 5. And a dozen chicken dinners per year: six retired layers, and six cockerels that you raised along with the six replacement pullets.
Thanks for the good news. I was a bit bummed with the numbers in the book. I did some more research and found an article with two key pieces of information.
http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/90/90-3/Jim_Hogue.html
The article is about Carl Hammer in Montpelier, VT who raises 1,400 chickens on primarily restaurant garbage! Even better, was the method for protecting his free range flock from predators. He relies on a single German Shepard.
One fact I have not found yet is the ratio of birds to acres during the spring, summer, and fall that allows for enough forage food that supplemental commercial food is not needed. I'm sure that ratio has a wide variation depending on the makeup of the land. Lawn, hay meadow, meadow no longer hayed and left to grow, shrub growth area, and forest area.
On another note, back in the seventies when we raised a couple of pigs we feed them primarily with day old donuts from Dunkin Donuts in Essex, Jct, VT. We typically picked up two to three bags a day. If I remember correctly, the bags were about 3' tall. I also remember eating quite a few before they got to the pigs:)
Our flock ranges over about two acres. That's pretty much a circle around the coop and includes about everything: lawn, garden, forest (the neighbors) pasture and barnyard. We collect expired food from the local food bank for our pigs (and other animals -- sheep like broccoli the way pigs like chocolate donuts). We've been known to eat a bit ourselves too.
Our winter feed bill for the chickens would likely be higher if they couldn't scavenge seeds from the hay and risk their lives robbing the pigs.
"Has anyone else here been able to come close to the yields listed?"
I have not, but this couple from Hertfordshire in the UK seem to have cracked it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt2qDOwxiUU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2YZhVvFPUc
We've not gotten close to those yields.
My first crop of potatoes was good - but then came beetles.
Tomato yields were great last year - but this year things warmed up earlier - we've not really gotten summer heat - and EVERYTHING (peas, beans, tomatoes, raspberries) is 2 to 3 weeks late (seemingly all across Canada) while it's the first time ever that we've had a crop of lettuce (it usually bolts - but this year we had lettuce well into late July if you don't mind it a bit bitter).
Each year we generally find a wonderful new pest. This year it's flea beetles (destroyed my brassica crops). I've never so much as seen any of my lambs lettuce come up (been trying spring and fall crops 2 years running now). We still don't know what's destroying our beans at the community garden plots, or what's demolishing our kale at the home gardens. My late planting of Brasilian peans worked out well (I'm still getting some every week) and will plant them again. Likely coons are going after my corn - I planted Indian corn for grinding into flour and it's sweet if you eat it (raw) before it changes color and I'm hoping that they'll stay away from it as it's now dark and more starchy. All squash crops are pretty well shot again - vine borers are hell unless you spray spray spray (that now includes our neighbours and community garden).
We do have a "Square Foot Garden" with Mel's mix - and some things are growing well in there - but not the tomatoes (last year they did wonderfully but required watering AT LEAST daily or lots of blossom end rot - this year they seem anemic). Our of our 6 gardens tomatoes are really only growing well in one. By growing well I mean that I have to use more than those toy wire cages and use wooden stakes about 4' high in order to provide enough support to stop the fruit from tearing the plant to pieces (heritage beefstake, "boars heart" and heavy Italian plum types).
It's funny how Jeavons never mentioned humanure outright in his books - although I believe that they did use it (reading between the lines).
We had blossom end rot five years running. Then we read about putting a single "tums" tablet with each plant when planted. This year we've had no blossom end rot. Seems to work.
Blossom-end rot is caused by calcium ion deficiency and very rapid ripening. Work dolomite into your soil before planting next year. This will give you both calcium and magnesium ions, needed for growth of many plants.
For the squash vine borers, I've found in my garden that planting a different species of squash, Cucurbita moschata, results in my having more squash. The borers are less successful in destroying the vines. One particular variety that I've heard called both trombocino and zucchetta is a bit like a long, curly zucchini. It's pretty productive for me down here in NW Georgia, without needing much more time to first-squash than regular zucchini or yellow squash.
Been gardening vegetables all my life. Diversity is one key to dealing with pests. Plant small patches of many different varieties, and interleave appropriate vegetables. There's a good book called (IIRC) "tomatoes love carrots," which is a store of useful information on that subject.
I've also just encountered the flea beetle for the first time in my life. (New country, new pests). I had fair success with a "mechanical" pesticide: Diatomaceous Earth. Google it and take a look for yourself, my guess is that it is okay for organic use because it's not a poison. Conquered the flea beetles... :)
Jevons is in California, Nate is in Vermont. If Nate got half the annual yield that Jevons does he'd be the better gardener.
No, I haven't - but then again, I live in a climate with only half the growing season. My own experimentation suggests that a reasonable estimate for most people would be somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 acre per person, allowing for crop failures, errors,climate, etc... That's not to say that the other can't be done, but I prefer not to eat quite so many parsnips myself ;-).
Sharon
I would suggest considering alternative techniques. Bio-intensive requires more inputs than traditional horticulture techniques, such as those used by settlers and indigenous populations across the west. As soon as individual plants come into contact with one another, it is safe to assume that the plants are competing for light, water, and nutrients. Yields per plant will be limited due to crowding. Crowded plants are also stressed plants, and more susceptible to disease and predation. Jevon's "living mulch" is in fact a haven for disease and pests by a)limiting air-flow b)trapping moisture and c)providing cover.
But pull-out every other plant,freeing up space previously occupied, and growth resumes with fewer inputs, larger yields per plant, and in many cases, higher quality produce. Disease and predation are limited as a)progressive thinning selects for the fittest individuals, b)increased airflow checks virus populations, and c)limited cover shifts the balance towards predator populations.
Steve Solomon is an informed source for this approach. His latest book is "Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times." I also highly recommend his virtual library: www.soilandhealth.org. In an age of scarcity, his book "Gardening Without Irrigation" may also prove useful: http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030201/03020100frame.html
Solomans books are the tops in the field.I use them like a bible.
Plant a whole bunch of different types of fruit trees...some will do well one year,some will do well the next.The most steady suppliers I have found is a chojoro Asian pear,and a Sparatan apple.At the elevation I am at,and the location.[Your milage may vary]
I think that's incorrect generally, perhaps correct specifically. If you live in an area where the sunlight is so strong that it kills plants (as I do) then overcrowding actually helps.
Why is it "safe to assume" that as soon as they come into contact they are competing, if soil contains higher concentration of nutrients across a broad spectrum than plants require then the overcrowding will reduce ion concentrations in soil in a helpfull way.
There are also several good reasons to overcrowd from a pest control point of view. Take cabbage moth for example, it flies around quasi-randomly lobbing on anything that looks cabbage like, if after several tries in a particular patch it fails to find a cabbage it will wander off into another patch. So, hide your cabbages in amongst non brassica plants.
(I thouight this was new age bullshit when I read about it but I actually observed cabbage moths performing exactlty this behaviour only 3 days ago. )
Progressive thinning to select for the strongest individual is the only point of yours that I would agrree on.
To each his own however and may your harvest be bountiful whatever your method.
I have been following the low input Solomon approach in subtropical Australia with a few adaptations and I have found he is right on the money. We have just gone over two months with no rainfall and I am only just now considering watering my vegetables from a rainwater storage tank. The key is to store your rain when it comes within the soil by cultivating deeply but gently, and by providing ample nutrients to your crops so they dont have to use up all the soil moisture to access them. And spacing your plants generously, while weeding religiously, means you can balance the water demands of your crop with the available rain water. As an example of how superfluous watering by hand is I have had pumpkins germinate and a crop of fair quality lettuce grow in my garden from directly sowed seeds through two months of zero rain, and no hand watering. Just put them into properly prepared and maintained soil and up they come like magic. The time otherwise spent waving a hose around is better spent gently mowing down the weeds as they germinate with a good quality sharp hoe.
The only modification I have made of his method is to divide my garden into two halves, one for a summer crop of heat loving veggies, and another for the winter crop of frost tolerant ones. The summer crop gets the end that is heavily shaded in winter, the winter crop gets the side that is more dry and exposed in summer but gets good winter light. When the crops arent growing I put in dense rows of green manure crops (just packets of food grade broad beans, and whole animal feed oats) that get cut by hand multiple times through the season (and some tossed to the chooks). This does amazing things to soil texture- and it is far more time effective than turning a concentrated compost heap and digging it in everywhere. It also means you can water them with urine to enrich the soil without worrying about contaminating your crops.
Best of all it means I get to sow my crops at the perfect time and can let a long running crop like eggplants finish off properly since they don't need to be shifted to make room for the next rotation.
I would also agree with the estimation of about four to five people per acre of staple crops as a safe estimate for reasonably fertile soil with about 1000 mm of rain a year. Under ideal conditions you could manage double this, but halving it leaves a margin for error for crop failures. It also gives you enough surplus to feed stock in the good years and improve the quality of your diet. Drought years then mean just having less chicken dinners, rather than actually starving.
To my mind novice gardeners are often setting themselves up for unneccesary trouble growing vegetables. They dont realise that some are very robust and easy (kale and collards) while related versions can be extremely finicky (cauliflower, brussel sprouts). Reliance on store bought seedlings is another major problem- the sooner you learn to handle the power of seeds the better, but be aware that most store bought seeds are terrible quality. They sometimes take on too much species diversity at once, rather than picking out a smaller subset of new species to get a handle on each year. You can tackle these two problems together by making sure you buy multiple strains of a type of vegetable (eg beans) from lots of different sources to grow side by side the first year. This will show you how much seed quality can vary, and also show you how different varieties will perform very differently in your garden. Next year you can just grow the best two or three that serve different purposes, preferably from your own seed. And finally they put too much emphasis on watery vegetables and neglect to master growing life sustaining staples like starchy root crops and drying legumes. In the short term home grown vegetables offer the best economic and quality advantages over store bought ones, but you need to have experience in growing staple crops in case you ever need to really feed your family in times of need.
Currently there are about 5 arable acres of land per person, only 50 years ago there was roughly 12 arable acres per person. I am guessing without lots of fertilizers and the like you would probably want roughly 8 acres per person.
An important consideration is, does this land have to catch all the water? or is their town water? can you get water out of a stream? i am sure you could produce all your food on 1 acre per person easily enough if you used more water than what fell inside of that 1 acre (in my geographical location at least).
Kipper
The world average yield for 2007 is [source],
wheat, 2.75t/ha
maize, 3.41t/ha
rice, 3.37t/ha
All grains give about 3,500 calories per kg. A sedentary adult will require about 1,500cal daily, one doing heavy physical labour - like growing grain without fossil fuels - will require about 4,000cal daily. Given that about half the world are city-dwellers and don't do heavy physical labour, and a good number are children or sedentary elderly, we can get an average of about 2,000cal per person daily.
Thus, 2,000/3,500 = 570g grain are required daily, if nothing else is eaten. This would also give about 60g of protein, which is plenty.
So 209kg grain per person annually are required - again if nothing else is eaten. This would take 0.076ha for wheat, 0.061ha for maize, and 0.062ha for rice. Allowing a small surplus to save up for any bad years, we could call it 0.1ha. That's a quarter-acre, more or less.
Legumes give roughly the same yields as grains, and are grown in the off-season. If you don't have artificial nitrogen, then growing grain in the summer and legumes in the winter is more than good enough. Fruit and vegetables tend to have higher yields per hectare than grains, since grains are essentially grasses and what we eat are their seeds, a smaller proportion of their total growth than for fruit and vegetable-yielding plants.
So in a person's 0.1ha they might have just 0.05ha for grain, and the other 0.05ha for fruit and vegetables, they'd thus have a nicely-mixed diet, and a good amount of diversity to protect against bad weather or disease; if you grow only one thing, one kind of weather or one bug can wipe it all out, if you grow twenty, you'll always something left to eat.
And if you have that diversity of things growing, then you can on your 0.1ha have a few animals, too, some chickens, a pig or goat or two, and feed them just with the scraps of your own eating, getting them to clean up the fields for you - so they don't take extra land, but complement the land use you're already doing.
Some may argue that absent fossil fuels, these yields will drop. But crop yields have three main limits. The first is available nutrients in the soil, we prefer artificial sources to crop rotation in the West, and that involves fossil fuels. This is mainly because artificial sources of nutrients require less labour than crop rotation and the like. Since in the West labour is expensive and resources are cheap, we prefer using resources. Having a tractor means you can just spray stuff on the ground, it means less farm workers to employ, but then if the tractor stops working and I can't get the workers, land lies unused, crops wilt in the fields.
The last is water. When you look down the list of crop yields in the various countries in the piece I linked to earlier, the lowest-yielding countries (setting aside those with civil conflicts, like DR Congo and Zimbabwe) mostly have lower inputs of fossil fuels - but varying much more is their water. Places like Lesotho are just bloody dry, places like Haiti have good rainfall but they cut down their trees so the water washes away and doesn't stay to feed the crops.
If you have a good source of water, and can keep that water in the soil, then you can feed people on very small amounts of land.
Of course if the people want new t-shirts every week then you have to grow lots of cotton, and if they want burgers every day you have to keep cattle and then feed them, too, and the land required jumps up hugely. To feed humanity is not a problem. To have even a fifth of humanity living extremely wasteful lifestyles, that's a problem.
Cannabis makes better fabric, for a lot less input of most things, than cotton. That way if you don't like the T shirt then you smoke it and forget all your worries for a while.(witt off)
Yes, it could all end like one giant episode of 'scrap heap challenge' but at least within the lifetime of those reading this blog we will have access to many technologies that can help.
For example a solar panel connected to a water pump will allow for recirculating aquaponics system that can provide fish and crops. Seaweed can be used as fertiliser and don't forget good old clover 'fixes' nitrogen.
So I don't think we need to exert a ploughmans amount of calories / day if done like this. The panel(s) can easily provide a couple hundred watts / 1/4 HP...
Nick.
What happened to the greenies? This post gets my +1
Its one acre per person if you are not using green revolution's seed, that is, if you are doing farming the way it used to be in india, china, australia, south america, europe, africa etc in 1950 and before, you not use artificial fertilizers, you not use pesticides, you not use tube wells, you have a much much larger bio diversity in crops and you are having only one crop in a year.
If you are using green revolution's seeds then its 0.2 acres but you need fossil fuels to make artifical fertilizers, pesticides and to run tube well to pump ground water. If you want to avoid input of artifical fertilizers by recycling crop residues and human and animal manure, avoid usage of petrol to run tubewell by using sugar cane ethanol instead, then you need 0.25 acres per person.
The question about how much land a family need is uncomplete because you hadn't defined family size. The world average through out history is 5, you should be clear if that is what you meant.
If you want to have a farm land to grow your own food you must have atleast twice as much land as you need to survive during crop failures.
The calculations about why you need exactly one acre per person on average and not any other number can be given on request.
Per person ....
400 corn plants .. 20x100 plot of beans(legumes) .. 15 winter squash plants ... various nut and fruits that can be dry stored (almonds , figs, apples) .. various vegetables (fresh if at all possible)
Not much, when you know how.
Take a look at this evergreen piece, from a professional who's been doing it for a living since his dad started to teach him the craft in his childhood.
The answer to your question is in paragraph 9, after "Dear Folks". My own stumbling steps -- a LONG way behind David -- and those of many others learning the craft on the job, confirm what he says:
http://www.whale.to/a/blume.html
Great story, Nate. I did this myself too, grew three hybrid tomato plants (Bush Early Girl) on the deck for the first time this year. I didn't have quite as good luck. They grew well at first, but they're looking pretty sick now from aphids and disease. I did get some tomatoes off them, just barely enough for a few salads and sandwiches. Hope I have better luck next year.
Did you lop off all the sucker branches? Or maybe to
much attention due to not having as many plants to care for? Like over watering?
You mention a deck and I get the idea of a deck as being attached to the dwelling...is the deck on the
east of or north side of the home,therefore shading the plants? Maters love full sun all day.
Was the soil in the containers,potting soil or real
earth you took time to cultivate and add organic matter too?
Really its not hard to grow food if you apply yourself
The labor and physical effort I dont add to the equation because todays liesure pursuits are yesterdays mundane chores. Tomorrows chores will be
todays liesure pursuits.
Tending a mono-culture lawn of grass,will, in the not
so distant future,be considered a sign of mental
instability.
Todays culture is so starved for recognition that a
mere "atta boy" from a superior is like Pavlov ringing
bells to salivating dogs.
Grow a successful garden and be prepared to find pure
joy and self pride buried deep within your very DNA
and spirit.
Two slices of bread and a salt shaker and a home grown
tomater and even angels would trade places with you.
It was a roof deck so it had plenty of sun. I probably overwatered. It was growing great until the leaves turned dark, then curled up, then turned yellow and died. I didn't know about pruning, but I'll remember that for next time. It wasn't a total loss. They tasted pretty good, and I had enough smallish tomatoes for salads and sandwiches.
Dwcal: Cut off every branch that doesnt have blossoms.Every
tomato plant is essentially a vine and shouldnt resemble
a bush.The branches to be discarded will fork off just before the blossom main branch and be closer the trunk of the plant. After just a few minutes of pruning and you will
no longer even be looking for the blossoms as it will become
instinct and habit.You may find you dont need scissors or
a knife either if you take care and pinch off the sucker
branch near its base.
Dont blame me if you begin thinking of your plants as children and smother them with love and attention.
Its natural.Dont become alarmed if you wake and first thing
you do is go and look at your veggies and last thing before
the waning light is go look at your veggies.
Aphids usually appear on a water stressed plant. Keep the soil evenly moist.
In much of the world there is a virulent tomato disease caused by nearly the same organism that caused the infamous Irish potato blight. The spores are usually present everywhere. The problem starts when foliage is wet 48 consecutive hours whether from constant rain, fog, dew or especially watering with spray in daylight hours. (Always water early in the morning when the leaves are still wet with dew). When these conditions are met the spores germinate, penetrate the leaf and spreads systemically. Usually it appears about the time the first tomatoes are pink - almost red. You may see a few black spots on leaves as it gets established. Often the plants are dead or dying in 3 or 4 days after first seeing the spots. You can avoid this by spraying (well before infection) with boullie Bordelaise which is a water suspension of copper carbonate. (Developed in France many years ago). The copper spray will not cure sick plants. The other alternative is to grow the tomatoes in a tunnel or green house with drip irrigation so the leaves stay dry..
Thanks for the advice. I get fog every night from the marine layer. I'll have to prune better next time and give the leaves room to dry out. It was a surprise how the tomato plants are such a magnet for pests. As if the aphids and blight weren't bad enough, I found a Tomato Horn Worm on it last week too. The other (non-food) potted plants are doing fine.
Like your father Nate, my wife finds the concept of peak oil too far out in the future to worry about. That was until our water pump in the cellar bit the dust last Saturday morning. In the 48 hours we were without water, she started to come around to the stark reality of doing without. Lugging buckets of water from the river to flush the toilets became a better alternative for her than braving the mosquitos while trying to use the great outdoors for a bathroom:)
We are fortunate that our spring is less than 20' deep. My wife was extremely excited when I told her an old fashioned pitcher pump would provide clean water just yards from our back door. Next year I'll bring up gardening:)
Only a few miles from your meager home, the land of sun and tomatoes, I too captured the sun in my photovoltaic system and fondled my garden. Others here are doing the same. They are shifting, becoming aware. Today I talked to my renter about making preparations for the winter and the new increasing costs of dealing with that. She knows it is changing. This year they will heat fewer rooms, as we do. Her pickup is gone. The windows will have heavy curtains and she admitted she tried not to use the air conditioners after she received a $125 electric bill last month. It is a hard shift but money and necessity seem to have a way. The key is information and that is what The Drum does. It is my hope that slowly the information will trickle down and the settling into the new paradigm will be gentle. I have my doubts, however. The thoughts of steady state economics, exponential growth, resource depletion, scale paralysis, cognitive dissonance and the never ending hype of Madison Avenue certainly disrupt my wishful thinking. Do keep up the good work and believe me there are untold number of lurkers like me in one way or another keeping track of your work.
It's our ability to borrow from the future (aka DEBT) that is worrying. Debt is predicated on the possibility that tomorrow is better than today and can thus be repayed. I say possibility because so far it has always 'worked out that way' in aggregate.
If today is shitty and you borrow to help you get over it and the tomorrow is even shittier where does that put us?
Governments will do the same. At some point I think we are looking at the greatest default in the history of humanity.
Nick.