"The numbers", or "facts is facts"

The numbers don't lie (mostly), and some people who have been speaking out about the real affects of Climate change for YEARS, have previously described the very events that are currently taking place politically, economically, and geophysically.

 "BJOERN H. AMLAND   06/ 6/11 09:40 AM ET      OSLO, Norway — About 42 million people were forced to flee their homes because of natural disasters around the world in 2010, more than double the number during the previous year........" (From the Huff Post online )

Now the thing that I find vey telling is that majority of the scientific community has been speaking about this for a long time and their attitude has been very much one of providing access to the info that they gather, statistics and models, projections based on previous events.  

I think of it like somebody saying that if your car has a range of 200 miles (defined by tank size and average mileage) and you plan a trip of 300 miles you will either need to get more fuel along the way or you will not make your destination.  Simple, right? But nothing is really ever simple, or isolated, as it is on paper or in the lab.  

If they were to say you will run out of gas in 200 miles then they would have to ASSUME you started with a full tank.   They would have to assume, likewise that the terrain is all flat and would not alter your fuel consumption.  They might not have taken into account your use of AC or electronics that put added strain on your alternator and engine, the state of your tires, if you start and stop along the way and add more weight.....You can see that it is not so straight forward.

The scientist that create models to predict the possible affects of climate change have often been wrong in their forecasts.  Things have been happening faster, or stronger than most predictions have been stating.  These are not Hollywood movie size predictions or rates.  They are real life events and real life scale, but they do border on the fantastic now, and the timeline is not what we are used to.

Change is difficult.  It consumes a great deal more energy than stasis.  That's physical, mental, emotional, economic, and spiritual energy.  The World is a world in change.  Read Bill Mckibben's "Eaarth".  Even more importantly read the news of what is happening on earth, our home.  Read multiple sides to any one story.  Read about what is happening in parts of the world you have never been to, as well as in your own community.

Even if climate change, changes, and becomes less of a threat to our species, our species could be less of a threat to the climate (environment), to other species (plant and animal) and especially to ourselves.

It seems quite ironic to me (maybe moronic)  that most of the trouble that threatens us can be sourced back to our very own activities, our lack of being reasonable about what we ask of each other, our surroundings, our lives.

Barrel Hoop #5

Barrel Hoop MicroFarm

For the past week the Chipmunks have been sharing their crops of strawberries with us.

Chipmunk food, also known as our strawberry patch!

Actually they are our strawberries and each morning we get a hand full or so.  We eat them fresh or have them with some local yogurt and almonds or walnut, with a dash of maple syrup!  YUM!
The thing about getting from our garden is that they are completely free of any nasty chemicals, but they do have some Chipmunk spit on them.  On the more challenging side, most of them are just a day before really being perfect for eating, so they are a little bit tart.  Kind of like some candy's, sweet and tart.  If we wait the one more day then we just listen to the Chipper's sitting on the rock saying how sweet and perfect they are while we get none.  Every once in a while we get a really sweet one and we get so happy we could dance.


I guess that we are OK with a tax imposed by the locals.  I think my goal is to get a large enough patch and crop that we all get a good amount to eat.  My dog seems to be selectively blind to chipmunks when they are eating our strawberries.  Other times she chases them all over.

I got the plastic covering off of the low tunnel for the season.  It seems warm enough, and enough of the seedlings have been started that it was time.  The low tunnel really works great for us.  We harvested carrots until late February, and fresh greens year round because of it.  Not bad for being up here in NY state.  Elliot Coleman, a writer and market gardener up in Maine, has written about harvesting year round using low tunnels.  I Highly recommend reading his books if you want to grow, and eat year round from your own garden.

Low Tunnel frame with cover removed for summer

The down side of the Low tunnel use for me has been the covering.  I used very inexpensive and thin plastic that I already had and it worked great, held up to the weight of 18 inches of snow, stood up to high wind, and let in allot of light.  After one season the UV rays degrade it so much that is just starts to shatter.  I end up with this:

 Low tunnel cover, cheap plastic sheeting
after a season and a half it is basically trash.

I HATE THROWING THIS MUCH PLASTIC IN THE TRASH!   But I guess it is not so stable that it won't degrade eventually if left in the sun.

I think that this year I will spend a little more money and buy the kind of plastic covering that is made for this application.  I'd rather not use plastic at all, but I really can't do the whole thing in glass, but I have considered using fiberglass siding/roofing that I cover my woodpiles with.

The hope is that the stuff made for this, like the stuff the farms & nurseries use, will hold up longer to the UV rays of the sun.

After a week of no rain and some warm temps we watered everything yesterday.  We used all 250 gallons (aprox.) of rain water from the rain barrels, and a bit from the well.  All the plants should enjoy a good sunny day today with nice moist roots.

The yellow peas that were planted earlier in the Spring are starting to put out pods.  I turned over much of them to help enrich the soil, but kept a few patches to gather seed from and possibly to use as ingredients for soup or some part of a meal.

Community

2011 Spring Harvest Dinner, Palisades, NY

Yesterday we attended the Harvest Dinner at the Palisades Community Center in Palisades, NY.  This dinner was a way to mark the end of their Winter Farmer's Market and a fund raiser for the Center.  Tables were set up long, end to end and tickets were sold that were used as money for the purchase of your food items.  A hot dog-2 tickets, BBQ chicken-5 tickets, glass of wine-3 tickets..........

It was an interesting experience to dine and mingle with folks I don't know, but in a setting that made it feel as if we were all part of some large family reunion.  The bell in the old school house rang to get our attention for the raffle.  Young people had matching aprons and helped out in many different ways, including a group of giggling "tweeny" girls selling the desserts.  After, when it was all closing down, many people stayed and help to put the place to rights, folding chairs, clearing debris, getting tables and everything else back inside or to owners.

I guess in a larger sense it was a family reunion.  Aren't we all of the same family?  The Humans, or an even larger family, the Earth's inhabitants.

This kind of event, this kind of experience is for me just what walking A reasonable path is about.  It is getting off of the expressway and enjoying a slower pace.  It allows for familiarity, and this familiarity can then breed affection, from affection we can make way for compassion. 

Yesterday we discovered another form of community:

3 of the Gang of Four (so far), named: Hall, Liv, Bath, Bed

Walking across the floor of the hallway, then the living room, then the bathroom, then the bedroom we discovered this little family of young mice.  Here is where the internet changes things in a large way.  Google search: feeding baby orphaned mice.


Last week after finding evidence of larger mice inside the house I set traps.  After a few days I had killed 3 mice and slowed the signs that anymore were around.  Until yesterday.

Some might say "Karma is".  I while warming these little guys in my hand and trying to get them to take the fortified water from a dropper I couldn't help seeing the irony of worrying, and wanting to save these little guys when I had probably killed their parent(s) last week.  I don't like killing anything, including the mice I wish would just stay on the other side of the walls or out in the 73 square mile of state forest that back my home, but our health has to be preserved and the mice just don't seem to understand the rules.

I have no idea of wether or not they will survive, or what I will do with them if they do.  I know that if they do not survive I will be very sad.  If the do survive I will be very troubled as to what comes next.  I suppose letting them out to become food for the local wild life is probably what will happen.  They could just end up coming back into the house and eventually cause me to set traps once again, only to kill them later.  Life is not always easy to understand, at least for me.

Yes, I have tried the live traps but no country mouse around here seems tempted by those things.  I suppose a cat could be considered, but my 8 year old socially dysfunctional dog would try to eat it, I believe.  My dog is a little scared or intimidated by the mice, go figure!

Come passion

How beautiful it seemed for me in moments small, as when the sunlight that filtered thru the trees and then the window lit onto my face just before I woke up in the morning and was the first thing I saw in the new day.  How awesome as when I lay against the warm granite of Half Dome and look out at Yosemite Valley 2500 feet below me with the mass of that great rock pushing up on my belly and out towards space as the force of the spinning planet tries to throw it off like a kid on a merry go round.

At some point the realization of the wonder of this life had born in me a deep and passionate love for Life itself.

As I stopped putting me at the center of all I believed meaningful, as I let go of the measures of humans and started trying to take up the measure of earth and time beyond my life, the miracle of the cycle that is Life began to sound a song, pure and familiar, from a composer who's orchestra was surrounding me, above, below and within me.  Not only was I the listener, but also one of the players.  I have no score in front of me but can hear the notes that want to be played when I listen to the sound all around me.  I long for harmony, to be harmonious, to play my part loud and committed and well, with passion.

Come passion, come pain.  How hard it is to love and know that all things change.

As I begin to comprehend the magnitude of the wonder that is this awareness, I am also challenged by the understanding that life and death are not separate, that they are parts of a larger cycle.  Suffering is an inescapable part of this cycle.  I begin to see suffering equal to effort, equal to struggle, equal to awareness.  I start to feel a seemingly unlimited compassion for all things.  All things struggle, suffer in the effort to be and at some point all things change from one awareness to something else.  All things die.

 "Friendship to all living forms, 

delight in the qualities of the virtuous ones, 

unlimited compassion for all suffering beings, 

equanimity toward all who wish me harm, 

may my soul have these dispositions now and forever."

-- Jain prayer

(a friend told me that some of the Jain's have starved to death rather than kill another living thing by eating it.  I have to admit that it is a logic that has bounced around in my head, a conclusion to a line of thought.  In that perspective it makes the end of ones own life much more acceptable. )

I would like to treat and be treated with compassion, with kindness, with love.  I haven't always been, nor will I always be treated so. I haven't always treated other's so.   Life is hard enough just to exist.  Nobody, no thing, needs to be treated with other than compassion.


I have a life to live out.  The cost of my life will be that of other life.  I can take that other life with respect and gratitude while also nurturing other life, or, I can be ungrateful, unaware, and propagate suffering.

To kill is easy, all one has to do is exist.  But to nurture life and celebrate Life one has to live.

Selfless awareness allows familiarity. Familiarity allows affection.  Affection allows love.  Love allows compassion.


A road is a cut thru an existing environment, forced upon the landscape, in spite of what was there before.  A Path will wonder around a rock or tree or a field of flowers, or along a stream and is influenced by everything that was there before.  It becomes a familiarity, like a whistled, or hummed tune. (a concept put forth by W. Berry)

Not life in the fast lane, but rather, A reasonable Path.

Barrel Oops! again

Barrel Hoop MicroFarm

76f, sunny and breezy

I really don't want to have a thread of entries that start with "Barrel Oops" but if I do I would rather that they are of the sort of the last entry and not of the message of this entry.

Lucy died.  She was at the bottom of her pond this morning.  The very troubling thing is that I am not sure why she died and am probably even more to blame because of my ignorance.  Desi seems OK, but it is hard to tell with fish.  I can't even hear them complain as I can with my dog.  By the way, yesterday was Chilly's (my dog) 8th birthday!

Now I have heard comedians do routines about just flushing gold fish down the toilet and getting another for their kid, and a lot of people wouldn't be to bothered by the loss.  I am very aware of the roll of death in the cycle that supports us all, and that I'd only known this fish for about a day.  This doesn't do much for my feeling of failure at stewardship over another life.

No, there won't be a big, or even a little funeral or anything like that.  Lucy will probably have a chance to continue on as food for the soil that will allow plants to live and grow and maybe then animals to eat those plants and continue the cycle.  What there will be is contemplation on the role I have chosen as steward to other lives.

We have a goal to get and raise chickens, a couple anyway, for eggs, maybe some for eating.  I am a bit nervous because of not wanting to have the chickens suffer or perish in the same way as Lucy, because of my ignorance or inattention.  Plants seem a bit more hardy than animals.  Maybe that is just my perception, but my perception is all I have isn't it.  The transferred squash looked wilted and dead in yesterday's heat, but this morning they all had stood up and seemed like they might just make it.

Part of why I chose the Barrel hoop for my symbol of the farm was because it is a circle.  A circle of life, can represent a cycle that we are all in.  A circle can encompass all that is what we know or are aware of.  I have come to believe that the farm is very circular in it's nature, if it is a good farm, or garden.  It can be self contained, defined in a circle.  There is what is outside of the farm and what is inside.  Little need pass in or out of the circle in order for it to function in a healthful manner.  The circle also defines the cycle of growth and decay.  Balance is a result as well as a barometer. (these ideas I am taking almost directly from Wendell Berry and thusly, from Sir Albert Howard)

The barrel hoops I found, or they found me, and the idea of their place in this place was quickly obvious.

The native americans were said to have put a fish in the ground with every corn seed during planting.  I guess I have an idea of where I will bury Lucy.

Barrel Oops!

Barrel Hoop MicroFarm

In the last post I was mistaken about Wendell Berry's book "Bringing it to the Table".  It only has 3 sections not 4.  By the way, I did finish it and as is the case with everything I have read of his so far, I was very glad to have read it.

potato patch

The other correction took place out in the real world.  After reading in "Carrots Love Tomatoes" By L. Riotte, that squash can be inhibiting to the growth of potatoes, I moved the squash out of the potato patch.  They looked so good and so far along that I am a little bit worried for their survival from the transplant.  This morning as I looked down upon them in their new homes some were standing up and looking just fine.  Hopefully, they all will adjust.  Hopefully, the forecast of thunderstorms for today will not produce hail that will smash all the young plants.
I am now going to crack open Sir Albert Howard's "the Soil and Health".  This book, and the other have been praised by Wendell Berry, who I think of as one of the most articulate and wise voices alive with regards to agriculture and the much needed place of agrarian values in our society today.

Lucy & Desi arrive!

We are a mini-step closer to being a micro-farm as of yesterday when Liz brought home "Lucy & Desi". They are 2 (gold)fish that are now living in our micro pond/macro-aquarium.  It is, like all else here, a work very much in progress.