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That's a good approach of using the sand and throwing the seeds on to it!
Yeah, nothing seems to come easy. I can imagine the size of the de-thatcher machine.
I live at the end of an easement of three houses. My neighbors updated to a larger snow blower. Now I just shovel the area around the doors of my garage to allow entry and the husband blows out the driveway. I just change the oil and transmission fluid yearly, and gas it up at the beginning of the snow season. After a snow storm and in the sun, I clean the snow off the blades in the sun.
Yes, I remember the post describing all the scraping of the ground around the greenhouse into a Monty Don field and including the yellow rattle flowers.
In November after three days of rain a scrapped a long aisle of rotted wooded chips, now soil, into some of my raised beds.
During my walk yesterday, I saw a fellow gardener, Debbie. She is is the best organic gardener in my village. Take a look at the Red Torch Mexican Sunflower, if you have room. It attracts Monarch butterflies. I was astonished at the number of Monarchs on Debbie's Mexican Sunflowers last suumer.
https://www.rareseeds.com/mexican-sunflower-red-torch
Keep up the great work, John!
Nice seeing you again, 'bagwa-john'
On the maternal side of the family, my Grandma was a farmer; she grew a ton of food. Grandpa was a contractor bankrupted by the Great Depression, turned to fishing full time to secure food for a terrible winter of 1929-1930. Grandma could harvest the meat chickens. There was a lot of foraging for food. I admit I just can grow some food, but I don't have the background of my Grandparents or my Mom.
Yes, we are headed into very difficult times.
sumi
Store-bought veggies are already in the process of dying and losing nutrition because they have been harvested and on standby until bought. The stores spray some water on them to keep up their appearance and to keep them from drying out.
What we grow as gardeners can be harvested and used at will because live vegetables growing in the garden are in "nature's refrigerator," which is soil. So long as the soil is kept watered, we have something to harvest and eat. Plus we have great varieties to choose from.
I know a Chinese gardening couple with a large garden. Between the two of us, we grow a lot. They harvest from my garden and I harvest from theirs.
Here is a deliveries from a neighbor:
Mustard Greens
CILANTRO
I provide my barber with seed garlic and seed potatoes. I get free haircuts and eggs in return.
DIRECT FROM THE CHICKEN COOP
I have a tomato and pepper seedling program with a number of people. In return for seedlings, I get rides to garden centers.
TOMATO SEEDLINGS
As time passes, I do the same work in a little more time, with an afternoon siesta. Gardening is still an enjoyable release. For example, last Thursday, it was a winter day that was sunny with the light reflecting off my white color house, so I worked in the south garden and cleaned up what I missed last year.
Uninformed people think of gardeners as only digging a hole, plant the plant, and water; but they never realize the enormous time of the tasks preceding and succeeding the simple planting activities.
I laugh at those people who believe that in time of a catastrophe that they can live off the land. It takes a lot of land and maybe ten years of land preparation and learning the gardening skills to survive.
Thanks,
sumi
Growing your own food at home can be rewarding, but is it cost-effective?
By business reporter Emily Stewart
Updated Thu at 7:10pm 2019-12-27
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-27/gardening-growing-food-vegetables-backyard-personal-finance/11811980?section=business&fbclid=IwAR2SGO_U_YXLREQtLvNJh6rn_YI7Y0jiFXgxu2ggI95nQgdzg3aUZPZY95Q
That was an excellent harvest. All I have left are some leeks, which I have been using in preparing soups.
Happy New Year ahead.
I have little confidence in the next decade, as there might be many black swan events, sadly.
sumi
Dennis Meadows: The Limits To Growth
Revisiting one of the most seminal studies of our era
by Adam Taggart
Tuesday, December 17, 2019, 5:23 PM
https://www.peakprosperity.com/dennis-meadows-the-limits-to-growth/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Where Did We Go Wrong?
Every 172 Years like clockwork
Coincidence? 109,000 Lightnings Strike over New Zealand One Day Before White Island Deadly Volcanic Eruption – 300,000 Discharges on the Same Day
https://strangesounds.org/2019/12/coincidence-109000-lightnings-strike-over-new-zealand-one-day-before-white-island-deadly-volcanic-eruption-300000-discharges-on-the-same-day.html?fbclid=IwAR36ITFdB91FzitPQJjIfZV0mRnCkY2ya6JZblA-5qfHd-SDEq4sDAH8eSM
No doubt our "progress" has turned into "regress." Reality TV has separated many from the library. Reading the classics has been replaced by reading gossip on the Internet. Commitment to achievement principles has been dwarfed by an entitlement fervor. The survival skills base of two generations ago has been replaced by dependency on office jobs. Alas we are about to enter an age of reckoning. The seemingly strong dollar will soon be undermined by overwhelming debt; the poisoning of the environment will result in irreversible food availability; and eventually the great oil fields which allowed all of our growth to occur will take us back to the 19th century in our approach to surviving. When driving a car and living our lives, it is important to look forward and not constantly in the rear-view mirror.
My main concern, even though it is in Russia, is that are the younger people replacing the old people in the dacha arrangement. I wrote an essay for a friend today about the direction of the U.S. and hope that Russia does not follow our example.
DIRECTION OF THE U.S.
“It’s been a slow burn since 1945, when most of our food was grown on small farms and gardens [and I can vividly remember those gardens.]
Over the ensuing 10 years and more, the older, skilled gardeners began dying off and/or discontinued gardening because of age and the convenience of big box grocery stores, which were supplied food by plane from California, Texas, Florida, and even overseas. Soon the seasonal local gardens were replaced by a 12-month non-local gardening season supported by planes. Trucks were the spokes for the airplane and train hubs, in a vast hub-and-spoke national food system. The latter development was one factor that allowed the younger generation to skip growing gardens and preserving food for winter survival.
In 1956 the Federal Highway Act was passed thus adding new highways and widening existing highways; consequently, more trucks began moving food to big box grocery stores faster and in many directions. Cheap diesel prices for trucks allowed stores to stock shelves for brief periods using a just-in-time system to reduce inventory costs.
Concurrent with the changed transportation systems and development of big box stores, the topography of large and small farms, near large cities, began disappearing being replaced by housing developments for a huge post World War II population expansion plus a population flight from cities to the suburbs. Earliest was the first Levittown in 1947 built on 1200 acres of potato fields on Long Island. With many of these housing developments, the pesticides market, no longer needed for disappearing farms, was switched to the crazy notion that every new house needed a green lawn. Some home owners retained the gardening tradition, but it was my experience that many children did not often follow suit; growing food was no longer the “in thing.”
Also, the housing topography change demanded big box consumer stores located in nearby large malls to be accessed with more roads and more cars. Most farms succumbed to sale for the “urgent need” to supply Americans a place to fulfill their consumerism supported by higher post war wages.
I recall the late 1950s and 1960s period which I label the "Progress Began Regress Period" for the U.S., as it developed a foundation for further regress with excessive consumerism and a move away from traditional glass packaging to the plastic demon. Gone were the local dairy farms and the trucks that delivered glass milk bottles to the milk boxes on door steps.
The local delicatessens used stiff paper boxes to hold potato salad and Cole slaw; what was not immediately eaten was transferred to Mason jars. TV dinners and other prepared food from grocery stores supplanted an excellent home cooked meal environment. Over time and with less activity by the population, the waist lines expanded. The death of Chambers stoves, the best in the world, occurred due to less home cooking.
The 1970s included: Peak Oil on the continental U.S. 1970; abandoning the Gold Exchanged Standard in 1971 [due to costly guns and butter policies of the 1960s]; in 1973 Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, advised farmers to "get big or get out … adapt or die," believing that bigger farms were more productive [this policy was the latest step to industrialize agriculture]; plus Petrol Dollar recycling was instituted in 1974 requiring that all world-wide oil sales to be denominated in U.S. dollar thus allowing the U.S. to expand its debt capacity via a U.S. protection policy of Saudi Arabian oil resources.
We now look back at a large societal destructive mess. The U.S. nation debt exceeds $23 trillion and there is massive debt on all other fronts for unfunded liabilities, plus local, municipal, and state debts in most governmental units. Sadly our once mighty industrial system has been greatly transferred outside our borders, a national disgrace, as our payment for imports now exceeds our export income.
We on converging on many Black Swan events that could cause a collapse: we will again reach Peak Oil after the fracking fields dwindle down; we have Peak Water; Peak Soil; Colony Collapse Bee Disorder; Peak Infrastructure; and more.
The canary in the mine is that only four percent of Americans now feed the other ninety-six percent, a dangerous imbalance, in the face of a geopolitical event or an EMP. If the latter occurs, the food shelves at big box stores will be cleared similar to the clearing of food shelves prior to a prediction of a blizzard in New England. Food riots will ensue with desperate starving people in search of food on their terms.
On the surface, all seems fine, but the next financial collapse will be shock us and the world. It will be bad, real bad!"
That does not surprise me, Monk. You work like hell in your garden!
sumi
Russian Family Gardens Produce 40% of Russian Food
https://healthimpactnews.com/2014/russian-family-gardens-produce-40-of-russian-food/
The global phosphorus crisis
by Birgitte Svennevig, University of Southern Denmark
September 26, 2019
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-global-phosphorus-crisis.html?fbclid=IwAR17zXTEBM7uDlvGoRH4dXX0duWjtsv6OM5fuZs9Gfd5lLTyOnwLjFaeXwM
Phosphate pollutes Nature's waterways. Credit: Lene Esthave.
Phosphorus is an essential resource for the world's food production. Yet, no international institutions govern the Earth's limited resources. An international team of 40 phosphorus experts now express their concern and make a call to action.
Phosphorus in the form of phosphate is essential for the existence of all plants, animals and humans. On one hand, the world needs phosphate as fertilizer for agricultural food production. On the other hand, we waste so much of it that it pollutes our water resources on a global scale. Large amounts of phosphate end up in nature's waterways and must be removed from wastewater.
We need phosphorus to grow food
This has to change. There are only a few phosphorus mines in the world, and if we do not find a way to recycle our very limited phosphate resources, the world will eventually run out, and that will be a disaster: Without phosphate, the worlds' farmers will not be able to produce enough food for our growing human population, says Kasper Reitzel, a phosphorus expert and associate professor at University of Southern Denmark. He is one of 40 international phosphorus experts stating that there is a pressing need to approach the phosphorus crisis.
Their concern and call to action is published in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology.
Industries and universities together
The 40 experts are from industries, universities and research institutes in 12 different countries, among them four are from University of Southern Denmark (biologist, associated professor Kasper Reitzel, biologist, associated professor Sara Egemose, chemist, associated professor Ulla Gro Nielsen and chemical engineer, professor mso, Haiyan Qu).
Not only are we overexploiting the world's phosphorus resources, but we also waste a lot of it. Large amounts are washed off farmers' fields and into streams, lakes and other water resources, causing water pollution.
According to the expert group, no international bodies govern global phosphorus resources. Resources are managed by local or national authorities and often, regulations and technologies are not up-to-date.
The system needs change
"There is no collaboration or coordination on a global scale that takes the responsibility of governing the global P-resource, not even between EU member states or the states of USA. The EU Water Framework Directives or the American Clean Water Act focus predominantly on the ecological quality of water, and do not integrate P sustainability to a sufficient level," says Kasper Reitzel.
The experts recommend the development of a new generation of nutrient sustainability professionals. They must work collectively and interdisciplinarily to secure international phosphorus management and a clean environment.
"These people should not be simple phosphorus specialists, but rather "system thinkers" who can inform judicious decision making on all aspects of the management of phosphorus," says Reitzel.
Energy Supply System Requirements
From Rice Farmer in October
In a few posts I’ve briefly touched upon the three basic requirements (as I see them) for any energy supply system which sustains a society, state, empire, or civilization, but I have always felt the need to describe it in a bit more detail and in a more formal manner. Such is the purpose of this post. The three requirements are:
1. The system must be self-sustaining. That is, it must pay its own day-to-day running costs.
2. The system must be self-replicating. That is, it must provide the energy for building (and rebuilding/replacing) its own physical infrastructure. These costs are capital expenditures, as opposed to running costs.
3. After satisfying requirements #1 and #2, the system must still have surplus energy with which to power the socioeconomic system.
Corollary to #3: The amount of surplus energy supplied to society determines what kind of society/civilization is possible. For example, civilizations based on wood and charcoal will be totally different from, and primitive in comparison with, those based on denser forms of energy such as fossil fuels.
This helps explain why industrial civilization is tanking. Not all fossil fuels are created equal, and we are steadily moving from higher-quality, easy-to-extract fossil fuels to lower-quality, hard-to-extract fossil fuels. This transition gradually decreases surplus energy (#3) because there is progressively less surplus energy left after covering the costs in #1 and #2. The situation gets increasingly desperate, as illustrated by, for example, shale oil, which is not even economically viable. Another example would be biofuels, which — because of their low EROI values — cannot satisfy even requirement #1. In other words, if biofuels produced in the first cycle were used to power the machinery, trucks, and biofuel production facilities in the second cycle, the biofuels would run out during the production process, leaving no energy for requirements #2 and #3.
This also casts a dark cloud over renewables like wind and solar. Intermittency, variability, and the need for storage, overbuilding, and vast tracts of land, as well as other problems, lead me to believe that they cannot satisfy the three requirements, or at least that they cannot supply enough surplus energy to maintain civilization at this level. And if civilization cannot be maintained at this level, that is bad news for renewables because their infrastructure is built by the industrial system.
Another factor is the key difference between fossil fuels and renewables. FFs are actually biofuels created by natural forces. Nature produced the organic materials which served as the feedstock for FFs, gathered them up in colossal quantities, put them in gigantic pressure cookers, and let them stew for millennia. When humans appeared on the Earth, they were already finished. All we have to do is extract them from their underground containers and perform the final processing. Because our energy input is relatively small, the FF energy supply system has yielded a fabulously huge amount of surplus energy. And that is the prodigious power that built our globe-straddling industrial civilization.
On the other hand, to make biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel we must do all that work ourselves. Nature’s only input is sunlight (in the case of FFs, geological forces did the rest), so we have to produce and harvest the feedstock ourselves. As such, our energy inputs are so large that there is much less surplus energy, and in some cases none at all! As I have conceived it, therefore, biofuels are a complete waste of the FF energy used to satisfy requirements #2 and #3. In terms of this energy system, the sensible thing to do is directly use the FFs, and forget about biofuels. The real test of any energy source or combination of sources is not its EROI, but whether it can satisfy the three requirements given above. In other words, it either pulls its own weight (requirements #1 and #2) and supplies surplus energy to society (requirement #3), or it’s simply not an energy source. Many people will say that technological improvements will be made, and they are likely correct. But no matter what improvements are made, they will not cause nature to magically do most of the work for us, as it did with FFs; we still need to supply the inputs ourselves, which means that renewables can never match FFs with regard to requirement #3, i.e., in supplying society with such a large amount of surplus energy.
Many people insist that we can completely stop using fossil fuels, and power civilization as we know it on renewables alone. Think about that for a minute. Renewable-energy hardware is currently made with FFs, but we are supposedly going to operate, build, and replace all those solar and wind farms, hydroelectric dams, and other energy-producing facilities and equipment with their energy alone, and still have plenty of energy left over to live the high life. I propose that if and when we actually try to do this, we shall find that even if all three requirements are met (which I strongly doubt), the amount of surplus energy will not be big enough to maintain what we have already built. In light of the corollary to #3, that is a very serious problem. It means a long downhill slide to a much simpler lifestyle. As Richard Heinberg would say, the party’s over.
Finally, there are several peripheral items I would like to briefly touch upon.
1. I have frequently mentioned “net energy decline.” Net energy is simply a system’s “energy take-home pay” after paying the system’s energy costs. Those costs are requirements #1 and #2. And the “take-home” portion is the surplus energy left to run the economy.
2. Governments and military forces all know that FFs, not renewables, will power the victors. Thus the focus on controlling major oil fields.
3. We often hear that new technologies are going to bless us with new sources of energy, i.e., technology begets energy. I propose that it is actually the other way around. In other words, energy begets technology. Although I concede that technology does aid in obtaining more energy or new sources of energy, it’s important to realize that scientific discovery and technological advances are very highly dependent on the amount of energy we can lavish on research and development. I leave it to readers to imagine how different the world would be if humanity had never gotten beyond the photosynthetic ceiling, and we were still limited to biomass for energy.
4. Hydrogen is not an energy source!
Industrialization of Agriculture
http://www.foodsystemprimer.org/food-production/industrialization-of-agriculture/index.html
Your Food Supply at Risk: What You're Not Being Told | Joel Salatin
In the cold winter,eat ginger,can warm the whole day
David Hughes’ Shale Reality Check 2019
Asher Miller
November 12, 2019
https://www.postcarbon.org/david-hughes-shale-reality-check-2019/?fbclid=IwAR3wVFWztuSI68dOaBj9l1kTudeeSPP9FlgnBTdP90FcQDxv64D6adIhUM0
Art Berman: Houston, We Have A Problem
Nov 30, 2019
World crude production outside US and Iraq is flat since 2005
By matt
– June 10, 2019
Posted in: Crude oil analysis, Global
In the year 2005, the global crude production curve shows a definitive kink, going horizontal for several years. This caused the 2008 oil price shock and the following financial crisis which permanently damaged the world economy. It was the first phase of peaking oil production, a foretaste of what is to come.
Fig 1: World crude and condensate production
Fig 2: Declining group
Production has fallen now to 15.7 mb/d (last 6 months of 2018) compared to 24.9 mb/d in 2005. Some of the decline is a result of ethnic and/or geopolitical confrontations which are often related to oil. Sudan is a typical example:
MORE CHARTS FOLLOW
http://crudeoilpeak.info/world-crude-production-outside-us-and-iraq-is-flat-since-2005?fbclid=IwAR2FCrw4V8SpGv2muF5L4xrvSOShnn3IILoUzmdJasHYCSQj6hR-UFnJDEQ
200 Items You Can Barter After The Collapse
https://urbansurvivalsite.com/barter-trade-items-in-a-survival-scenario/?fbclid=IwAR0kHzam1UhI4paKytsEqWFUz8CBLs-ry4hfTwGHxQAngVX72AnFosfUkMc
200 Items You Can Barter After The Collapse
https://urbansurvivalsite.com/barter-trade-items-in-a-survival-scenario/?fbclid=IwAR0kHzam1UhI4paKytsEqWFUz8CBLs-ry4hfTwGHxQAngVX72AnFosfUkMc
Peak soil: industrial civilisation is on the verge of eating itself
New research on land, oil, bees and climate change points to imminent global food crisis without urgent action
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/07/peak-soil-industrial-civilisation-eating-itself?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR3SUManuZmUuhU0tV8UdxhrGV7OIHhVXm7J63119CtOlRZpmRwJLRrTLf0
Thanks, John. It's pretty solid with rebar in the grey conduit pipes driven into the ground and attached to the sideboards. The wire matting really solidified the structure. Let's see how it holds up in the winter. In retrospect, it might have been build a foot too high.
To make the structure stronger, I will turn the enclosure into a giant raised bed; the planting beds will be along the sides with an aisle in the middle filled with wood chips.
Next week will be mild with four sunny days, so I will work it into shape for spring planting. I will skip Thanksgiving and work in the garden. Someone will bring me turkey later in the day.
You've made great strides on your relatively new garden plus all of the changes to the house were magnificent.
I love the idea of a meadow around the greenhouse area. Yellow Rattle will do the trick. I have an oval of MENTHA SPICATA/SPEARMINT surrounding my rhubarb plant with mushrooms growing inside of it. We definitely need wild areas in our garden areas for the bees.
I agree. I'm cleaning out my house and renovating to have it ready for sale, when possible.
sumi
The topic of rabbits developed after all of my greens were eaten by them this past summer. They found their way into the small gaps in my fences plus they can hop a certain height. Had this enclosure built to avoid the problem next year.
Might have to move from my city property to have rabbits and chickens.
Thanks, HH
Heating a Greenhouse with Rabbits
Winter Gardening Without Heated Greenhouses
https://www.chelseagreen.com/2019/winter-gardening-without-heated-greenhouses/
The Importance of Carbon Farming
https://www.chelseagreen.com/2019/the-importance-of-carbon-farming/
4/14/16 1816: The Year Without A Summer
Where Did We Go Wrong?
Year WITHOUT A Summer--- Can It Happen Again?
Thanks for this post! Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, the retired head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University. is one smart dude that the UN IPCC should listen and learn from....
sumi
Yeah, the frigid temps are moving into New England tonight. The straw is on my garlic beds as of yesterday. 2020 could be a very interesting year for the GSM!
Thanks.
HH, yes, I read about those record highs yesterday.
I have been closely watching the cold air flow toward New England, so I moved up my planting of garlic 10 days. I've had three light frosts after these plantings and the heavy frost will arrive Friday night with 21*F. I will cover the beds with straw on Friday daytime.
I'm investigating a move out of New England to at least North Carolina. I hate the humidity, but that might change in the 2020's. It will take me two years to clean out the house and get it ready for sale.
I've been doing my "homework" after you apprised me of the Grand Solar Minimum. Thanks.
sumi
Survival Learnings From A California Fire Evacuee
They universally apply to any unexpected emergency
by Adam Taggart
Monday, October 28, 2019, 9:58 PM
https://www.peakprosperity.com/survival-learnings-from-a-california-fire-evacuee/?fbclid=IwAR3V9nJlL70U5hcvTlPQFBYlJXZidLUYo9wQhTOjKuNaROeTJoSl78213dk