Surviving the Suburbs

Building a Library

2009-12-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

My email signature used to be When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes (attributed to Erasmus), and I used to joke that if I were going to max out my (fictitious) credit card, it would be at a bookstore.

When we went on our honeymoon, Deus Ex Machina and I spent most of our time exploring as many quaint, independently-owned bookstores in the Rockland area as we could find.

There are books on every flat surface in my house, including the floor.

My favorite piece of furniture is shelves.

My favorite website (other than my blog, that is ;) is PaperBackSwap.com

That I am a booklover, a bibliophile, is well documented.

I like to read a book slowly, to read a few paragraphs, and then set it down and savor what I read.

I like to have certain books so that I can refer back to them. Some books leave a mark after I have left them, and I'll think about the stories or the characters - almost as if they are true memories of true events. I know ... that sounds a little out there, but anyone who loves books and loves reading has the same affliction.

When I go to my favorite independently owned bookstore, the owner always asks if I have credits, to which I almost always reply, "I don't bring books back. I hoard them!"

Erasmus also claimed: I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.

And it's that attitude that makes it very difficult for me to enjoy borrowing books from the public library. I do enjoy going to the library, but not to borrow the books (I love, to literally, lose myself in the stacks, and just breath in the book-scent), because, as much as I like having books around me, I don't enjoy taking them back.

Which is why I've spent the better part of the last three decades of my life building my own home-library.

At first is was fiction, especially American fiction, because that's what I was studying in college (B.A. + 21 graduate hours in English ;), but over the past several years, my focus has been more on non-fiction, especially anything to do with self-care and self-sufficiency.

At this point, we have quite an extensive library.

In a lower energy future, I don't think book publishing will die. We will always have books, and even with all of the wonderful digital readers available these days, there will always be books, because people just like them.

That said, given what I know of our lower energy past, I do believe that owning a library, like mine, will be for the Gatsbys in our world, and the average joe, like me, won't have the extra cash to be able to afford to buy books in the quantities I have them (hence, Erasmus' statement, above - books were, at one time, very dear).

Which is why, if we're going to be prepping for a lower energy future, amassing a library NOW should be considered as important a part of the process as storing food ... and firearms ... maybe even more important.

If I were going to start from square one, my first stop in starting my home libary would be my public libary. No, don't steal their books, for heaven's sake! Several times a year, libraries hold "Friends of the Library" sales, during which bags and boxes of books can be purchased for only a few dollars. These books are typically donated books or discontinued books - that is books that have been on the libary shelves for a long time without being borrowed. They are pulled from the shelves and sent on to a new life, hopefully, in someone's home library.

While really good "how-to" books are typically in short supply at these types of sales, there is always a lot of great fiction. My mother loves Friends of the Library sales. She will buy several dollars worth of paperbacks and send them to us. Contemporary fiction abounds at these sales, and certainly, having a lot of "escapist" literature in a world that is falling apart is wonderful. I would also search for books on lists like the 100 Best Novels, most of which are classic and timeless, and the lessons to be learned span generations. I have many of the books on both the "Board's List" and the "Reader's List." I highly recommend collecting as many as one can find, cheaply.

For fiction, I would never pay full price. In fact, if I can't find them used at the library sales, at thrift stores, or at used bookstores (in order of cost), I look on PaperBackSwap.com, but I really like to save my credits (because each credit costs me the price of shipping one of my books to another member) on PBS for hard-to-find or out-of-print non-fiction - likePossum Living by Dolly Freed, which is on my wishlist at PBS. I also, occasionally, get books from Freecycle. It's a great resource for contemporary fiction, and the books are being given away. If library building is the goal, then collecting whatever one can get, free, is well advised.

There are many books for which I would, simply, pay full price, because having the book will enhance my life, especially, in a lower energy future. I spent almost $30 on Carla Emery's classic, The Encyclopedia of Country Living, which I, now, see is on sale for two-thirds what I paid.

But that is sometimes what happens, and I don't regret paying more by buying it more quickly. It's like with other prep items. Buy it now and spend more, or buy it later and risk not getting it at all. I chose to err on the side of caution, which is how I normally operate when it comes to books.

Another book that I paid full price, and for which I would pay full price again, was The Forager's Harvest. We have several wild edibles books specific to our area, but what I like about Forager's Harvest is that it also has recipes. It's one thing to be able to identify and harvest the plants. It's something altogether different to know what to do with it once one has it. Since most of us are grocery-store grazers, wild harvesting is something very new, and we need all of the information we can get. It's a really good idea to start finding the books, and learning as much as possible, now, while the grocery stores are still available.

I also have a lot of book on herbs, especially with regard to herbal medicine. My favorite and most consulted is Andrew Chevalier's The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants, and another one that I will, likely, use, the worst case scenario is Where There Is No Doctor, a copy of which Deus Ex Machina's lovely aunt found for us for free at her local recycling center (another place for free books, by the way). I've already read through it, and the book has a lot of good advice and information - most important of which is adequate nutrition, clean water, and good sanitary practices are the best health care. I definitely can not argue with that.

To round out my library are dozens, upon dozens, of books about how to do this or how to do that. We have books on how-to raise animals (including bees), brew beer, make cider, grow all sorts of gardens (from four-season to hydroponic), fill a pantry with home-preserved food, bow-hunt, skin animals, tan hides, build stuff (from cabinets to solar homes), teach poetry, write a resume, start a business, and just about any other subject you might think of. Go ahead, ask me. I might surprise you.

And then, there are the children's books ... oh, my ... overflowing shelves ....

If I were starting from square one, though, and I didn't have any books at all, and I had to pick just five, I would find the most comprehensive resources on self-sufficient living I could find. Those listed above are a good start: Carla Emery, for all around country living ideas and information; forager's harvest for an all around wild edibles book (but in this case, I'd also find something specific to my region); Andrew Chevalier's book on herbal medicines; almost anything by Tom Brown, but Field Guide to Living with the Earth has been particularly useful, and Stocking Up.

That's where I'd start for the non-fiction.

For fiction, I'd start with the 100 Best lists or with the American Library Association's Most Challenged Books list, because those books are the ones with great stories, impeccable writing, and lessons that we need to remember.

Books are invaluable. In today's society, we don't value them like we should, or like people used to value them. In my grandmother's day most people had only a Bible, if that, and anyone who had more books was rich. Books were a luxury, and in a lower energy world, may become so, again.

I recently read Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt. The book is about a mythical place where volumes of lost literature have been stored, and the group of adventurers who go in search of the place. It's about a world without books. No books. The thought makes my skin crawl.

But after reading the book, I had to consider, which books would I save for posterity, which ones would I want to save that would represent my culture to a future world, and I don't know which ones, but I do know, that as long as I have a little money, I'll buy books, and if any is left, I'll buy food and clothing. Because I can grow food, and I can make clothes, but books ... well, without books so much knowledge is lost ...

... and if the world as we know it is going to end, the biggest tragedy would be the loss of the incredible wealth of information that is contained in our books.

Cake - Make Mine Chocolate, Please

2009-12-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

The first line of today's article on The Automatic Earth is: He really said it. The nation must "continue to spend our way out of this recession".

The he referenced in the statement is President Obama.

I'm sure Ilargi has some wonderful arguments. I just want to, kind of, think out loud about that statement.

There's a law of finiteness. Everything on earth is finite. There's this much of everything we have. Some things seem to be in infinite supply, because they don't ever get used up, but in reality, those things are merely recycled, infinitely, like water. But there really is only as much water as there is, and then, there is no more. If we, humans, could figure out how to interrupt the watercycle, and somewhere in there, start consuming the water so that it couldn't be recycled (like we did with oil), then we'd learn about the law of finiteness, pretty damned quick.

But let's concentrate on that statement: we must "continue to spend our way out of this recession."

Who, does he suggest, do the spending? The fact is that Deus Ex Machina and I make XX dollars per year, divided up into weekly (or monthly, in my case) pay checks. A portion of that money is taken by the government to run its various programs. Some other sum goes to the insurance company so that we can be comforted by the idea that in the event of a catastrophic medical emergency, the cost of our care is covered (minus the deductible, of course). What's left is ours to spend at our discretion.

We pay a portion to the bank that holds our mortgage for the privilege of continuing to live in this house. We pay a portion to the grocery store for the foodstuff and other goods they purchase from manufacturers and stock in their stores. We pay a portion to CMP for delivering our electricity. We pay a portion to the gas company for delivering our propane so that we have hot water. We pay a portion to the phone company so that we have phone and Internet service.

Some of our money goes to local farmers for our food. In fact, we'll be paying for a quarter of a cow and the butchering fees sometime this week. Last weekend, I gave the farm store $85 for produce and apple cider (which is fermenting right now to make hard cider ... yum!).

Our dance school gets a portion each month for the girls' classes, and we give a bit to the music teachers for lessons.

Then there are things like maintenance and repairs on the cars and gasoline for getting around, and other little miscellaneous expenses we should track, but don't.

Whatever's left after we've done all of that is what we should be using to "spend our way out of the recession", but truth be told, after all of that, there isn't much left.

People, who are currently unemployed or who make less than what Deus Ex Machina and I make, are living at or below their means (that is, not buying on credit cards or taking out loans), and don't have that little bit of extra to spend their way "out of the recession." Almost all of what they make goes just to pay for the daily cost of living in this country - rent, food, gasoline, electricity ....

I think such a comment is ridiculous, and short-sighted, and misguided, and uninformed, and misleading. I think it's an idiotic comment to make, especially to a nation that is struggling just to not be hungry or cold. Ridiculous and naive. It's akin to Rousseau's princess exclaiming "Let them eat cake."

Ha! That's exactly what it is.

"But Sir, the people have no bread to eat."

Says Monsieur le Presidente, "Let them eat cake!"

Of course! Why didn't we think of that? Let's just "spend our way out of the recession." Gimme that damned credit card. I'm a-goin' to Wal-Mart to buy me a flat-screened tv so that I can watch Dancin' With the Stars!

And back in 2001, when the jets hit the World Trade Center, we were encouraged to continue going about our daily lives - go to the mall, go buy stuff. Retail therapy is strong medicine.

But at some point, we have to wake from our spending-induced coma and look around at where we really are.

If I have four oranges, and I eat four oranges, there are no more oranges until the tree produces next year. If it's a bad year, and something happens to the tree, I may not get any more oranges at all.

It's that simple. There is only as much as there is, and when it's gone, that's it. Even a child can understand that concept.

I wonder why our leaders in Washington can't seem to get it. We can't spend what we don't have.

School Food

2009-12-10T05:55:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading an article entitled Fast Food Safer than School Cafeteria. The school lunch program is operated by the USDA, and according to the article was created so that farmers could unload food that they couldn't sell otherwise.

Does it not bother anyone else that the food our school-aged children are eating is, basically, garbage?

Well, at least that explains the smell in the school cafeteria.

Jack Frost ... the Little Beast

2009-12-09T19:00:00.001-08:00

Around 1:30 the snow changed over to rain. The problem is that six inches of snow followed by a steady, driving rain results in three inches of heavy slush. It's a mess, and after dark, when the temperatures drop, the slush turns to ice.

Shoveling snow can be hard. Shoveling slush is incredibly difficult. Shoveling slush turned to ice is all, but, impossible.

I knew that I couldn't just wait until Deus Ex Machina got home. I had to shovel the drive-way and especially at then end where the snowplow had left the iceberg-sized blocks of snow. Gotta love that plow!

The wind was blowing outside, and although the little wooden weight that attaches to the string attached to the striker between the music tubes fell off last year, my wind chimes were singing whenever the wind gusted particularly fiercely. Hanging where they are just under the eaves, I figured they'd be silenced by ice today, but we haven't had enough snow on the roof yet to melt across the chimes and encase them in ice. Soon enough, I guess.

There's something about being outside on day like today. It's quiet. I live close to one of two major roads that go into my town, and so (especially during the summer) we get a fair amount of traffic. It's usually a pretty steady flow, and the noise has become a sort of under tone in the symphony of our lives. As such, it's absence is heard more than its presence.

On days like today, there is little traffic. Mainers know, when the weather is bad, stay home. The loudest sound was my shovel scraping the surface of the driveway and that forlorn song of the windchimes.

I never felt the rain, and it wasn't until the water from my drenched hair dripped down my nose that I realized I was getting wet. I was wearing one of my fatigue jackets from my enlisted days and a pair of unlined leather Army work gloves. I will say one thing about the military - they may pick the lowest bidder to manufacture the soldiers' clothing, but Army gear sure is rugged. I never felt the rain.

And I only knew the wind was blowing when the trees swished noisely around me, and the wind chime tinked over my head.

I cleared the driveway, as best I could. I had to leave something for Deus Ex Machina ... lest he start to take me for granted ;).

And I also unstuck my wash tub, which I'll bring inside in a day or two.

There's still snow on the ground, and if we don't have any more rain in the next sixteen days, even if the days are sunny and in the 40s, we'll have a white Christmas.

Chances are better, though, that we'll have a day or two more of precipitation in the form of snow. Maybe this time, winter is honest and truly here.

Or, maybe the Universe will melt what's out there, and I'll be given one-more-chance to pick up the toys and tools and store them away before the next "real" snowstorm blows through.

Oh, the weather outside ...

2009-12-09T13:26:00.000-08:00

... is frightful.

**

But the fire is so delightful.

** As you can see, I still didn't take the reprieve nature gave me to clean up and "winterize" the yard. I think my wash tub might, actually, be frozen to the ground ;).

"Phenomenal Cosmic Power ... Itty, Bitty Living Space"

2009-12-09T07:49:00.000-08:00

I used to be a huge fan of I Dream of Jeannie. I always thought it would be so very cool to be able to blink, and voila! anything I desired would be manifest in front of me.

I know that I wasn't alone in those feelings. In fact, the show addressed the issue of having so much power at one's command in one of the later episodes. In an attempt to prove that she could live without her powers for a day, Jeannie transfers her ability to Tony, who, in the face of having so much power, contemplates all of the good he can do.

Jeannie, having lived with this power her whole life, tells him that she understands how he feels, but warns him that what he does will have a ripple effect. Fixing a drought in one part of the world could create a devastating storm some place else. It's all well and good to want to fix the world, but, unfortunately, that's just not the way things work.

The message is that we can't *fix* the world, that things need to be able to work through their natural cycles. Sometimes life can be cruel, but that is part of living in this world where we live, and we can only do what little we can do in our little part of it.

That's what I was remembering this morning when I was reading the article Cash for Caulkers.

The idea is that by providing stimulus money to homeowners for energy updates, jobs will be provided.

I just wonder where the money is coming from. Who is going to pay for this "stimulus", and all of the other stimuli the government has given us? We think they're doing us some big favors, but consider where the government gets its money, and then, ask yourself if your pockets suddenly feel lighter.

... but I also wonder what the ripple effect will be.

I wish I could believe that it would be that simple, that there would be enough people out here in the real world (as opposed to the fantasy island that is Washington D.C., where for a small fee, Mr. Roarke will make all of their dreams come true) who could actually afford the energy updates, insulation, new appliances, and new windows to be able to take advantage of the (up to) $12,000 in rebates.

I wish I believed that there were enough people out here who are comfortable enough in their current circumstances to take advantage of some of these programs, but I don't believe it.

The thing that bothers me the most about the proposal, however, is that this type of program is already in place. We already have a program that provides rebates to homeowners who transition to more energy efficiency. If such a program were going to stimulate the economy and create new jobs, wouldn't it already have?

I just don't see how this new program will be different.

I also wonder about the broader effects, because with everything there is a ripple. Even my "Break the Chain" challenge has a ripple effect. If we all, suddenly, stopped shopping at Wal-Mart, *it* would fail, and the result would be the loss of thousands of jobs.

Personally, I think it's a small loss, to see the end of Wal-Mart, with huge, potential gains, but it would take months, if not years, to see any results.

And I guess that's what bothers me the most.

The current and recent past administrations are struggling so hard to find the quick fix, and there isn't one. Throwing money at it (and at us) isn't going to make it better. Making more policies, enforcing more government control, isn't going to make it better.

In times like this, we need *less* government, not more, because the government is expensive.

But I have some insulation left over from a project that I could lend to my neighbor. Neither of us would get any stimulation money for using the insulation, but it would give me some much-needed storage space and my neighbor a warmer house.

We have half a tank of oil sitting outside, but we don't heat with oil anymore. My neighbor has five cords of wood, but no woodstove.

We're doing a "Recycled Christmas" this year with our extended family, because no one has much extra cash for gifting.

In the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, the people, afraid of losing all of their savings, make a run on Bailey Building and Loan. He knows that they don't have the money in the vaults to give all of the account holders their complete balances. He says, "Your money is in his house and his money is in your store. So, how much do you need just to get by?"

That's where we all need to be, now. Big government isn't going to save us. The FDIC doesn't have the money to save the ailing banks, and Jeannie can't blink and make it all better.

But we can take just what we need to get by, and make sure our neighbor has just what he needs, too.

It's on the small scale, local, community level that "recovery" will happen, and nothing Washington tries to do will make it better.

This "Cash for Caulkers" program will be as successful as the "Cash for Clunkers" program was, which is to say, not much, and it will end up costing a lot more money than it generates for the working poor of this country.

Recycled Christmas

2009-12-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

I have to say that for the first time, in a very long time, I'm actually looking forward to the extended family Christmas celebration :).

For a few years now, I've been doing a mostly homemade Christmas. Last year, I made several gifts including a couple of lap quilts, some games and puzzles for the kids, and some pajama pants. I like making things, but it's hard to do when I don't know how the recipient will react, and when I'm not sure if my homemade (read: time-consuming) gift will be something the recipient even enjoys.

This year, we received the invitation to the festivities, and I have to say that I'm really excited to see how it all pans out. The traditional Yankee Swap will be "recycled gifts" only. The instructions are to find something around one's house that one doesn't use and gift it. It's been a hard year for everyone, and so there is little extra cash for purchasing gifts. Most of us, however, have something back in the closet that's just taking up space. If there's one thing we, Americans, don't lack, it's stuff.

Certainly, there will be the usual assortment of things like scented body wash (that everyone loves to give and no one loves to get) and scented candles (which everyone seems to have an excess of regardless of how each person personally feels about them). There will probably be several other interesting gift packages that look great on the store shelf, but inevitably end up shoved in some nook or cranny until moving day (like the Sofa/Armchair Drink Holder Caddy).

I'm taking a different approach. I told my idea to Deus Ex Machina last night, and his response was "That's very clever."

I love him :). He knows just the right thing to say.

So, I'm very excited.

My favorite part of this holiday is gifting, and the more creative I can be with the gift, the more fun I have.

I think this year will be so much fun!

Winter Prep

2009-12-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

It actually started snowing today. It wasn't surprising or unusual. This is Maine, afterall, and it is December.

But when one considers that it was almost 70° two days ago, this snow was a bit of a surprising, and, frankly, given the temperatures for the past four weeks, it does seem unusual. Most of the time the temperature progression for us is more gradual. It's warm, and then it gets cool, and then it gets cold ... and it stays cold ... for a while ... a long while ... and it snows ... a lot ... and then it's starts to warm up a bit, and the snow starts to melt, and we make maple syrup.

The summer this year, wasn't terribly warm, and the fall hasn't been exceptionally cool, either. As such, I've allowed myself to be rather complacent about the coming of winter. I didn't put up as much food as I should have, and I've put off doing a lot of the pre-winter outside chores. Toys and bikes still litter the yard and the summer funiture and patio umbrellas aren't tucked into their winter home, ready for their annual hibernation.

It's been a weird year with lots and lots of rain. I stopped by the farm store today for winter vegetables (a local farm is offering winter storage crops this year for the first time ever and will be open two weekends in December and two weekends in January). The owner was commenting that, because of the unusually warm November we had, they had a lot of things they would not ordinarily have ... like tomatoes - certainly from the greenhouse, but tomatoes, nonetheless, from a small-scale, local farm ... in December - unheard of!

As I was driving out there, I noted that I'm not alone in my complacency. I saw several outdoor patio umbrellas still shadowing the wrought iron patio sets, a few of which still had the chair cushions on them.

I don't know why I noticed these things, and really, until I got home and thought about it, it didn't occur to me that, until today, it didn't really seem like winter was here.

I hear we're supposed to get three inches or more, which really isn't a lot of snow, for us, and as the ground is still more muddy than frozen, I don't expect it will last very long.

My bigger concern is not the snow, but rather that on the heels of this snowstorm will be one of our notorious ice storms. They happen a lot, but unlike snow, the ice will usually cause a great deal of damage to trees and power lines. We'll lose power, because that's what happens when the heavy ice adheres to the not so resilient wires.

I think we still have time to clean up the yard and put things away, but I also think that time is running out, and I need to stop stalling, admit that winter really is here, and put that patio umbrella away.

Food, Glorious Food!

2009-12-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

One of the most discussed topics on my blog when I first started blogging regularly back in 2006 was our transition to local foods. I joined the One Local Summer local food challenge for two consecutive summers, and it changed our entire lives.

I was incredibly passionate about the local foods movement then, to the point that I annoyed a lot of friends and family members, but in November 2007, my passion for local foods resulted in my family being featured in a story in the local paper, and so I felt validated for what some people may have deemed rather overzealous behavior on my part.

I'm still quite passionate about local foods.

And I still annoy friends and family members.

But, mostly, I'm okay with their (sometimes not so) gentle ribbing of our food choices (like Deus Ex Machina's brother-in-law making fun of the fact that I won't buy a $20 butterball turkey, even though it's a great deal, because it's not "local").

Today, at the grocery store, there was a vendor from Cabot cheese. He started his spiel about how his display was sponsored by "Maine dairy farmers" (and I said to the girls, but loud so the guy could hear, "Like Mr. our local dairy farmer"), and how great their cheese is. Deus Ex Machina held up the two pound block of Cabot cheese we had in the cart to show the guy, "Hey, look. We're already buying the cheese", but the guy kept talking, which was fine, because he handed Deus Ex Machina a coupon for $1 off two items, and he was giving the girls bracelets and pencils and everyone free cheese samples.

So, we took the coupon, and I asked Deus Ex Machina, again loud enough for the guy to hear, "Do you want some sour cream (which we normally don't buy) or more cheese?" He shrugged. I went up the aisle to grab another two pound block of cheese (we freeze it and grate it later), and when I came back, the guy was still trying to sell us Cabot products.

I held up my hand and said, "Preachin' to the choir!"

Then, I felt bad for being rude. But, seriously. We had something like $20 worth of his sponsor's cheese in our cart and had told him that we always buy this brand. We were already sold! So, like, shut-up-already-no-offense.

Cabot cheese is local to me, and since we started our local diet, there are only three creameries from which we buy cheddar cheese: Cabot, Pineland Farms, and Silvery Moon Creamery. Of the three, Big Little Sister likes the Cabot cheese best, and so that's the one we get most often.

I wanted to tell the guy that all of our dairy is from "local" dairy farmers, and if he'd looked in our cart, in addition to the cheese, he would have seen the Kate's butter.

If he'd have looked in the cart, he would have seen a marked lack of fresh foods. No meat. No produce.

All of our meat is local.

All of our produce is local.

We don't buy either from the grocery store.

He'd have seen a pretty marked lack of processed foods, too.

Our "local" diet has resulted in our eating a lot of "whole" foods. That is, food that is as close to natural as we can get it, and much of which is purchased fresh and processed in our own kitchen, like cucumber pickles, applesauce and strawberry jam.

I found this website today, when I was looking for information to debunk the myth that butter fat is bad.

I liked this quote:

Don't be afraid to eat real food. The closer to nature, the better it is for you. Choose foods in their whole state. Do your best to avoid processed, prepackaged foods, especially those that are reduced-fat products.

When we started eating a local foods diet, the first thing we had to cut out was processed foods, because even though there are some processed foods that are manufactured here in Maine, I couldn't verify the origins of some of the individual ingredients.

In the beginning, our local meals were pretty simple, and I always felt like they were missing something, and they were - bread, pasta or rice. I grew up with the base of our meals being bread or pasta and meals without one or the other just seemed ... lacking. Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, grains just aren't grown in Maine.

We still eat a lot less bread than we used to eat, and now, instead of thinking that our meal of roasted chicken and salad is incomplete without some dinner rolls, it seems natural, and it's always filling (especially when the salad is topped with a homemade dressing made from real cream, mayonnaise, a splash of vinegar, garlic and herbs :).

The result of cutting out processed foods, because they weren't local, has been that we've become markedly healthier than we were five years ago, when we were eating a low fat diet, consisting of lots of processed foods, in an effort to control our weight.

Is it ironic that we were fatter when our diet had less fat? Deus Ex Machina, at his heaviest, weighed thirty pounds more than he does right now, and he lost all of his extra weight simply by changing his diet. He's at his ideal weight, now.

It may seem funny to people who talk to me about the way my family eats, and to hear my assertions, "Oh, we don't eat ...." It's probably odd that we don't eat at McDonalds, not because it's crap food, which it is, but because McDonalds isn't "local", or that we don't drink Pepsi or Coke, because neither is local (and because they both contain high fructose corn syrup, which we definitely don't eat, and wouldn't even if it were local!).

In the end, though, I feel comfortable with our choices. We're healthier for it, and our food tastes really good.

But there's another reason why I've so fully embraced the local foods movement, and that has to do with food security. If we change our diet now, while we still have a choice, and become accustomed to eating real foods from local farmers, when processed food because more scarce in a lower energy future, my family won't suffer from food fatigue or hunger.

We'll already know where to get our food, and if dinner consists only of smoked rabbit, roasted potatoes, and chunky, home-canned applesauce ... well, that would be no different than usual.

Keep Manhattan, Just Give Me That Countryside

2009-12-03T20:28:00.001-08:00

With a nod to the popular 1970s television show, the recent Wallstreet Journal article entitled Green Acres is the Place to Be was timely for me, given my stream-of-consciousness post about moving to the country.

The interesting truth is that I'm definitely not alone in my desire to be free and independent from the grid :).

I guess this is where the 1970s back-to-the-land movement meets the 1990s Tech Boom ;).

Don't miss this NYTimes video on the same topic.

I Learned

2009-12-03T20:13:00.000-08:00

While answering German vocabulary questions today on FreeRice.com, I learned that der Kunstler means "artist." So would Herr Kunstler fit the title Mr. Artist?

I thought it was pretty funny.

I'm probably easily amused.

But I will say that both my German and French vocabularies will be much improved by the end of this project ;), and I may even be able to identify countries in parts of the world other than Western Europe and North America.

Free Rice

2009-12-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned before, Deus Ex Machina and I have challenged ourselves to feed the hungry this month using the website FreeRice.com.

Basically, you answer questions in a number of different categories (I kick ass in French vocabulary and English grammar, and Deus Ex Machina is becoming quite adept at identifying various famous artists) and for every correct answer, a specified number of grains of rice are donated to feed the hungry.

We don't have a daily goal, but we know that it takes just under twenty thousand grains of rice to feed one person for one day. Our current daily total averages out to about one meal per day for one person. It's not great, but it's something.

And every little bit helps, right?

Is anyone else doing the challenge?

How have you fared so far?

From Nothing to Less

2009-12-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

A link from The Simple Dollar led me to this story. It's touted as being a good example of someone who is reduced to living paycheck-to-paycheck. I'm not sure that I agree that it is a very good example, though, because I think the author spends a lot of time blaming her partners for her financial decisions. While I don't disagree that one's partner plays a significant role in one's financial health, I don't think it's fair or prudent to blame our troubles on other people. We have to take responsibility for our actions.

In short, I don't think it's a typical living paycheck-to-paycheck type of story, and really, I don't think most people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck are doing so because of some catastrophic event in their lives (like a job loss or a medical emergency), but rather due to a series of bad choices and misunderstandings of how the system of offering credit really works.

So, here's what I think is a more typical living paycheck-to-paycheck story.

Back in the day, college freshmen and sophmores didn't have credit. Those first two years are, usually, pretty lean from a financial perspective, but living on campus and having a meal plan means that the basics are covered. Most college students have someone who's interested and willing to send the occasional care package with snack food and toiletries. So, really, there isn't much need for money.

For whatever reason, that changes during junior year when the credit card companies suddenly take an interest in the soon-to-be college graduate.

I got my first credit card at the beginning of the first semester of my junior year in college. I was preapproved, and I was so grateful that someone thought me worthy of such a risk that I gladly accepted the offer.

I promptly charged $500, which I thought was my limit, and when I reached the limit, I put the card away until I could pay down the balance. I thought I was being so responsible. I was preapproved for a $300 limit, but didn't read all of the fine print literature that came with my card. Oops!

What did I buy? Clothes, mostly. And stuff. Nothing of any significance, and mostly it was a couple dollars here and a couple of dollars there. But see? That's how it starts. It's only a couple of dollars, and it's easy to dismiss a $10 purchase, every few days, when it's on a credit card. It doesn't feel like "real" money ... until one has to start writing the check each month to pay down the balance.

I had trouble paying the minimum payment.

See, before I got the credit card, I was a poor college student with only the occasional spending cash. I worked work-study jobs and/or minimum wage jobs (back then minimum wage was $3.35/hour), and while at the time I got my first credit card I was working full-time, I was also not living in the dorms, and I had rent and other household expenses.

So ....

I did so well with my first Visa, that the oil companies started sending me their cards, and I gratefully accepted a Chevron gas card. It was awesome, because the card was not just for gas. If the Chevron station had a convenience store, too (which most of them do), I could get anything they sold there ... on my card. Gasoline, soda, milk, butter, ... hotdogs for dinner when the pantry was bare.

And then, American Express, which was a "charge" card, not a "credit" card back then, offered me one of their cards. A charge card is one where you can charge as much as you want, but the balance is due at the end of each thirty-day billing period. It's not a credit card, and they don't want you to carry a balance. It's a little like taking a cash advance. They give you the spending power now, but in thirty days, you have to pay it back - in full.

I didn't use that one much, at first.

As I started having access to all of this great "free" money, the desire for new and shiny started to build, and I decided that I needed some new furniture for my lovely apartment. I bought a gorgeous, glass-top, octagon shaped kitchen table with four chairs (from a discount department store which shall remain unnamed ;), and a very large entertainment center with a brand-new color television set on which to play the Nintendo games. The stereo with dual cassette and an AM/FM tuner was a very nice addition.

Those weren't the most expensive, though. The $400 (remember, back then, minimum wage was $3.35/hour) full-wave waterbed and the $600 contemporary plush couch were two rather pricey items, and rather than being credit card purchases, they were finance company purchases. I didn't think much about the 12% interest. What was a couple of extra dollars per month above the cost of the couch?

When I started college as a starry-eyed eighteen year old, I had $0 of accumulated debt. When I graduated as a financially immature twenty-two year old, I had accumulated $16,000 in student loans, $1200 in credit card debt, and $1000 in finance company debt.

Probably not bad, considering what some college grads leave college owing, but I didn't have any job prospects.

And I decided to move across the country. The bill for the moving van in which to transport all of my (not so) new and (no longer very) shiny furniture went on the American Express ...

... as did most of my living expenses for the next four months. I ended up taking a job working minimum wage at a convenience store/gas station, because even though I had a college degree, I was in a town with which I was unfamiliar, half my stuff was in storage, and I was staying with family members, who could only host me for a very short time (four weeks), I had to take the first job that came along. I had to find my own apartment, quick.

I made just enough to cover my rent and utilities. Groceries and gasoline were, mostly, paid for with the Chevron card, and the balance was not creeping up, but soaring, like an eagle on a santa ana wind.

I called my parents. "Please help me!"

They did. They came with a convoy of pick-up trucks to carry me and all my stuff back to their house. They paid off the American Express bill for me and helped me get my college transcripts (I'd graduated, but left the University owing a little money from my last semester) so that I could apply for a job doing something other than working at a convenience store.

They lived in a fairly depressed area of the country, and jobs for people with college degrees just weren't available. In fact, jobs for people without college degrees were few.

So, I did what any normal person would do. I went back to college to work on my Master's degree.

And I started to achieve some modicum of financial stability.

My college loans were deferred, because I was a full-time student. Financial aid paid for my tuition and books with a bit leftover to pay a couple of months' worth of rent, and I was lucky to secure a work-study job on campus as a Graduate Assistant, that actually paid about twice what I could have gotten working minimum wage.

The credit cards were gone and paid for. My parents gave me their old car, which was paid for (I only had to pay the insurance bill).

Things were looking up.

I bought some more furniture, and lots of other silly stuff.

Then, the school year ended. I was offered a job as an editor for a small-town newspaper in southeastern Kentucky, and I turned down a summer job on campus to take it. The job never happened, and so I was unemployed for the summer, I wasn't taking classes (and so no financial aid), and there was very little money for paying bills.

I got behind, again, and out of desparation, I ended up taking a job that I thought was exactly what I wanted, but ended up being nothing like I'd envisioned it would be. My income tax return for that year included about $3000 worth of "job related" expenses, and among the poor financial choices of that year included a $125 loan from my boss that was never repaid, a $75/month payroll deduction for some sort of insurance policy in case I ended up with cancer (there was also a regular insurance deduction), and about $200 worth of bad check charges. I lasted just under a year at that job before I had to find another job.

Moving twice in one year included moving expenses, like a U-Haul and apartment deposits and utilities deposits - none of which is cheap.

I landed a job as an assistant restaurant manager for about the same salary as I had been making at that other job, without all of the extra deductions, and I thought things would be great.

I had a nice apartment in a decent complex (with a pool and a "community room").

I hooked-up my phone ($50/month) and cable ($60/month). I bought a "new" car from a buy here/pay here lot, because my credit was still pretty shaky and I couldn't get a regular car loan ($150/week). There was the electric bill ($60/month) and rent ($450/month). Plus, the student loans (which were mostly deferred during this time, but I did make a couple of payments), a finance company bill ($177/month), and things like food (varies) and childcare expenses ($50/week).

The household income was about $2000/month. The monthly expenses (not including student loans or food) was over $1600/month.

When people talk about living paycheck-to-paycheck, that's the kind of lifestyle they have. It's not any different from what other people have. There were no extravagant purchases - just furniture and clothes and electronics and cars - regular stuff we all have and all want. None of it was top of the line, either, and most of it was bought at the not-to-be-named discount department stores on credit cards. I didn't have diamond rings or fur coats. I never had a tropical vacation. I was living the average, every day, American life - paycheck-to-paycheck, and sometimes I had to decide which bill would remain unpaid that month, and if I made the wrong choice, I would have to answer to the always really big and really intimidating repo man.

It's easy, too easy, to get into that sort of situation, especially when credit is so easy to come by. I was a college student with three dependents, earning $4000 per year at my minimum wage job, and when I applied for credit cards, car loans, and personal loans through finance companies, no one turned me down. I was naive and immature in my understanding of how credit works. I figured if they thought I could afford it, then it must be true.

It took me many years to understand that those companies don't really care if I can afford it, or not. They'll get their money - one way or another.

I think it's true that people who've never been in that sort of financial situation just don't understand how easy it is to get there.

I've been there. I don't forget.

I know, now, the key is to adopt that old fashioned idea of saving, and the antiquated notion if one doesn't have cash, one doesn't buy it.

How very simple.

How very wise.

How very much I wish I had known these things, back when I knew it all.

Over the Hill to a Tiny House in the Maine Woods

2009-12-02T18:28:00.000-08:00

Some friends of ours often speak fondly of their someday farm. They live in a suburban/urban area, and in a lot of ways, their life is just like ours (except they don't have any chickens ... yet :). Right now, they are caretaking at a local farm while the farmers are away on vacation, and as I follow their adventure, I'm a little jealous (milking the cow and making all that cheese!), but having really thought about, and experienced in a very small way from my own suburban homestead, what a real farm might be like, I know that I don't really want to be a farmer (although I still very much want to be a self-sufficient homesteader).

The other day, I was roaming around on Realtor.com. I do that occasionally. I'll pick a town, usually here in Maine, northeast or northwest of us, and I'll look to see what kinds of properties are available.

The other day I found one.

It's just exactly what we've always said we wanted - off-the-grid (solar powered, wood heat) home on eight acres, mostly wooded for a price we could totally afford. If we bought it, sold this house, and moved, we would reduce both the time on our loan and our mortgage payments by half what we owe on this house. In fact, if we could get what we believe our house is worth, with the equity we could just about pay off the other house.

Only, the house is a little smaller than the five of us would be comfortable living in - especially when we're stuck inside for so long during the winter. At just over 600 sq. ft of living space, it's less than half the size of our house. The kitchen was even more sparse than even my tiny kitchen having no cabinets instead of just the four like we have right now, and while I wouldn't mourn the loss of all of the stuff we'd have to give up to move to such a tiny house (except my books! Oh, not the books!), I would be sad to lose space for canning and storing all of the food we preserve. It has a basement, but from the pictures, the basement was small - and it was full of washing machine, the battery system for the solar array, and some odd-looking metal storage tank, neither Deus Ex Machina and I could deduce the function of from the pictures.

We could, definitely, have the life we've been saying we want. We'd be off-the-grid and our living expenses (and living space) would be a quarter of what we have. In fact, we could probably live off my small income ...,

... except that, if we bought that house and moved, I would lose my income, because I'd be too far from my client's office to be able to provide courier service three days a week, like I do now.

... and the girls would lose their dance classes, because we'd be too far to commute to their dance school twice a week for classes.

... and we'd be moving away from my daughter and her family, which means I wouldn't see my granddaughter very often. I definitely wouldn't be able to babysit (free) for them, which is important to all of us.

**(... and Deus Ex Machina would have to quit his job, which is, actually, a reason to consider the house ;)**

All of which got me to thinking about what it is I really want.

I, occasionally, dream of earning a living off my farm, but up there, I would have some serious competition, I'm afraid, and I'm not sure I could make a living with farming. I'd have to do something else to earn the small income we'd need to pay the few bills we'd still have.

Plus, I'm getting a little too old to pack it all up and move north to start farming, especially with my very limited knowledge and experience.

On the other hand, I'm also getting too old not to.

It's quite a conundrum. Hurry up ... no, wait!

I'm at the point in my life where I have just about as many years left to live as I have lived, but at this end of the life spectrum, time seems to move much more quickly than it did when I was younger.

It's like I've made it to the top of the hill, and the down side is exactly as long as the up side, but, I'm going downhill, and so the momentum carries me toward the bottom much faster than I was able to climb to the top.

From whence comes the analogy of being "over-the-hill", I guess ;).

I'm middle-aged, which is often considered a time for crises, especially among upwardly mobile men, who, at this point in their lives will decide to buy sportscars, order toupees and cheat on their wives with very young, buxom women, but I'm not sad that I've reached this mid-point in my life. It's almost, kind of, like I've come to that place Robert Frost made famous in his poem, The Road Not Taken, and I can decide to shuck it all and move north and have eight acres and freedom, and a lot of hard work, and maybe I end up in a worse situation than I'm in.

Or not.

I guess, at this point, I'm thinking I'm getting older. I see my neighbors across the street, who are empty-nesters. Their childern all live nearby and during the winter, one of the boys comes over and shovels, because neither of them have the physical strength to do it. They are as much older than I am as I am older than their sons.

I'm getting older, and there will come a time when I will need people around me to help me - to just survive.

I'm getting older, and the time that I may not be able to shovel my own driveway is not as far away as it was when Deus Ex Machina and I started dreaming our farm dreams.

There are some interesting things happening in our life right now, things that will be potentially life-changing, and we may, yet, decide that we're not as old as that gray hair and those crow's feet make me look, but we may decide that we are exactly where we want to be, and stay here, and continue to move our current house off-the-grid (the question remains, is it easier to take an on-grid house off or to put an off-grid house on?).

I'm envious of my friends with their down-on-the-farm vacation. I think how nice it would be to have a cow to milk twice a day and so much milk that I'm scrambling for ways to use it.

But I'm also pretty content on the Wyvern Heath with my chickens and ducks and rabbits ...

... and, maybe, someday, I'll convince Deus Ex Machina to get a couple of goats, which would mean fresh milk without all the work of having a cow :).

Labels

2009-12-02T16:30:00.000-08:00

Like many people I've met in my travels around the blogosphere, I named my nanofarm. I call it Wyvern Heath, but only to myself. It's not official or anything.

I chose that particular name, because our homeschool is the Wyvern Academy. Why we chose to name our homeschool is a pretty involved story, but the gist is that we had one formerly publicly schooled "student" and wanted to give her a school identity (when one is thirteen, such things are important). We even ordered t-shirts, jackets and backpacks with our school logo, and at the end of each school year, our portfolio is, basically, a yearbook - very much like the ones school kids get. One year, we even had it professionally bound. It's a very nice keepsake - a kind of scrapbook of our life that year.

I chose *heath*, because it means a place on the outskirts of a town, and my suburban home seemed to fit the definition - maybe not literally, but in spirit, I felt ;).

I thought about having a lawn address plaque made with our nanofarm name. Most of the farms around here that have names have plaques. In fact, the farm where we go for our outdoor class has a very nice one on the corner with a sign stating that they want our leaves (for composting :).

I haven't decided, however, where I would put it, and whether it would be something that I would want staked in the yard, or an address plaque that I would mount to the side of the house.

For a long time, we didn't even have a number on our house - not because we didn't have a number. When we first bought our house, Deus Ex Machina's father and step-mom gave us a tiled number set for sticking to the house, but we never put it up. I couldn't figure out where I wanted the address plaque to go, and so it stayed in a cabinet.

And then, we just bought a small brass number to mount to the side of the house. Sometimes simplicity wins.

I'm still thinking about the plaque on the lawn with our nanofarm.

Of course, a lot of people might argue that a couple of garden beds, a few ducks and several chickens does not a farm make, and I have no business naming our quarter acre anything more than its mailing address.

Maybe I'll wait to get the plaque after I've talked Deus Ex Machina into getting the goats.

Still ... the Wyvern Heath. It has a nice ring. Don't you think?

Shifting Standards

2009-12-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article today. This quote was disturbing:

"We are subjecting millions of people to a standard of living below that which they could achieve if the economy were at full capacity. Underemployment means that many more people who can't spend as much as they otherwise would."

First off, I don't know who the we is that he is referring to. Who is subjecting these people to a standard of living below that which they could achieve?

And second, why is it such a very bad thing that people can't spend as much money? I mean, I know all of the economic reasons, and how everything is inter-related - less spending=more layoffs=higher unemployment ... yada, yada ... but less spending means those companies who are manufacturing things outside of the US might be compelled to bring production back to the US, because they're paying more to ship the stuff here from overseas than they're making, and that would mean more jobs. It won't happen overnight, and things will get much worse before they get better, but wouldn't that be a wonderful goal to work toward?

Personally, I'd be willing to accept a lower standard of living (still not sure what that entails) and a reduced ability to buy all of the things I want if I knew the result would be to make our country more self-sufficient - like it used to be.

Of course, just the fact that we're griping about our standard of living, when, quite frankly, we have one of the highest standards of living in the world is incredulous. Everyone, who wants it, has access to electricity, and even in some of the most remote, desolate places of these United States. With only a very few exceptins, we all have access to clean drinking water, on tap. Eighty percent of Americans have access to the Internet - at home. That's a pretty significant number, and belies any argument that *we* are suffering.

One family featured in the article had their power disconnected when they were unable to pay the bill. They had their gas cut, too, and had to spend the summer cooking outside on the grill. Man, they had it so tough.

I joke, but seriously, what's bad about cooking on the grill for the summer? And even if it extends into the winter ... well, there are worst things.

What amused me, as I was reading the article, is all of this talk of deprivation for things like losing electricity for a short time or having to cook outside on the grill, while so many of us eco-freak-o bloggers are trying to reduce our consumption, and even going so far as to voluntarily cut our grid connections for a weekend to see how we'd do without the grid, and to patch any potential holes in our preparedness for a lower energy future.

We're all trying to figure out how to live without our gas and electricity, because we know we can't depend on unsustainable luxuries, like grid power, and while we're practicing our little scenarios, this guy is working his ass off, and not seeing his son, just so that he can maintain the grid connection.

The dad is hopeful that they'll have the gas back on soon. I wish I could encourage him to work less at trying to keep his family connected to the grid and a more at reducing their need for it.

We had our monthly outdoor skills class today. Among the many things my girls are learning in this class is to be comfortable and safe with using a knife. Today, they carved figurines to give as gifts.

And we gave our immune systems a hardy boost with hemlock tea, which is rich in vitamins A and C, and has been used for centuries for treating colds and flu symptoms - much better than the flu shot ... or tamiflu.

For us, it's about learning to live more simply. The class is part of it. Learning to tan hides is another part. Having smoked rabbit meat from rabbits we raised for our Thanksgiving feast is another.

We're slowly taking our house off the grid, and in a few years, we hope to be, mostly, self-sufficient.

I wonder what the author of the article, and the people featured in the article, would think about our standard of living.

We're warm. We're clothed. We're fed. We're healthy.

Can it get any higher than that?

Time

2009-11-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

It's still warm here.

I know.

There are a lot of people who would disagree with that first statement, and argue that it's never truly warm in Maine. Things like temperature really are subjective, but for Maine in November, 50° is warm, and that's what the day-time temperatures have been.

While I make progress every year with living with the seasons, sometimes I defer to what I think it should be rather than what it is. Like right now, we're having 50° days, but it's November, and my brain tells me that being as it is November, it's cold out. So, instead of enjoying any of the warm(ish) sunny days we've had this month, I'm holed up inside in my wool socks and fleece pants and sweatshirts.

Of course, the flipside is that since it hasn't been terribly cold, I've been lax about getting everything buttoned down for winter. Since the weather hasn't really turned, I've been putting off a lot of the outside chores, like building the new duck house. I just keep thinking we still have time, while at the same time, knowing that time really is running out for us to get that project completed. The ducks need a winter shelter. The chicken coop is big enough for all of them, but ducks like it really wet, and wet isn't good for the chickens.

But instead of taking time to build the duck house, or being outside during this extended time of crisp, cool fall days and enjoying some outdoor cooking on something like a fire magic grill, I'm inside huddled next to the woodstove, which is only just hot enough to keep the chill out of the air and barely heats water for tea.

Deus Ex Machina has been better about making use of this extra time we've been given to be outside than I have, but mostly, he's been working on his hides. The problem is that it's still warm, and warm weather means rain, not snow.

Rain makes things wet.

He has the hide all stretched, but without a shed or a garage or a basement or a carport or even a large overhanging roof, there's no place to put the hide to keep it out of the rain.

Last night, we had to go to one of those big box home improvement centers, because we needed some stuff to build a shelter for the hide he's working on right now. We fashioned a rudimentary shelter out of 2x4's, sawhorse brackets and 4mil plastic sheeting. It works, and in the spring, we can use something similar as a greenhouse to get an early start on some of the vegetables we'll want.

While we were at the home store, I couldn't help but fondle the fire magic grills. They are so shiny and pretty and ridiculously low priced this time of year.

In the backyard, the plastic covered hide shelter is set up next to our brick fire pit. It'll be a good place for Deus Ex Machina to work the hides. There isn't a lot of room inside his little tent, but at least it will get him out of the rain, and with a fire in the fire pit, he can be a little more comfortable, too, while he's out there.

We have time off from work and other time-sucking responsibilities Thursday. It is supposed to be cloudy, but it doesn't look like rain is in the forecast. Maybe I'll brave the wind and chill and get outside long enough to smoke the rabbit ... or maybe I'll just fire up our sad imitation of a fire magic grill, put the woodchips and the rabbit on the shelf, and go back inside, venturing out only to check it from time-to-time ;).

Deus Ex Machina will be home. It will be a quiet, slow day of doing not much. He'll probably spend most of his time off in the backyard working the hides.

It will be a lovely day, regardless of the weather, and one in which we're reminded that every hide tanned, every rabbit smoked, every improvement to our homestead gets us that much closer to a time when we won't have to waste time doing things that don't enrich our lives.

And that will be a nice way to show our appreciation for the time we do have.

I'm Going to Smoke Again

2009-11-20T06:32:00.000-08:00

The other day, before Precious' birthday, Deus Ex Machina went out shopping. Shopping is not something either of us really enjoy. He likes it even less than I do, and usually it's a chore we do together - shopping for the girls' gifts - which makes it not quite so awful - you know, misery loves company and all.

But my friend was coming over with her kids for a playdate before they headed south for the holidays, and there was just no other chance for us to get out together. So, he went alone.

There were a couple of very specific things Precious wanted. One was a union suit that she'd seen at the Army Barracks, which is both one of our favorite places to shop (I mean, for a thrivalist it doesn't get much better for finding all kinds of cool gadgets and sturdy cheap clothing) and a regional store.

Even though we knew we could find the union suit at the Army Barracks, they only had one, a red one, and we weren't sure it would fit her. We thought we would have a larger selection at one of the Big Box camping stores. Surely, a place like that would have long underwear.

And they did. The two-piece sets. For about four times (at $20 per piece!) what the union suit from the Army Barracks cost.

He called home so that we could discuss what to do. We decided he should go over to the Army Barracks. Then, he told me that he found something for me at the camp store, but he didn't tell me what. I just couldn't imagine what it might be. An LED lantern. A nifty knife. A solar shower. A composting commode. That .22 I've been eye-balling in the catalogs. The possibilities were mind-boggling.

When he got home, he handed me two bags of woodchips for smoking meat on our barbeque grill.

The man doth know and love me well ;).

During the summer, I bought woodchips from a vendor at the Farmer's Market ... just to try them out. It was one of those impulse buys, and I thought it might be itneresting to make smoked chicken.

I seasoned the chicken per usual, and then, we put it on its perch (a can filled with seasonings and inserted into the cavity so that the chicken is in an upright position while it cooks), and both the chicken and a pan of woodchips were placed on the barbeque grill

Oh, my ... taste buds singing the hallelujah chorus!

It was the best chicken I have ever had.

Seriously.

And we all know I eat a lot of chicken, because ... well, I raise it, right?

It was like bacon, only not so salty ... or greasy. It was nothing at all like bacon. It was better. Crispy where it should be crispy, and juicy and tender where it should be juicy and tender. I craved it for weeks afterward.

When we harvested the rabbits, I decided that the best way to cook the meat would be to smoke it on the barbeque grill, the way we'd done the chicken.

Unfortunately, I'd only purchased one small bag of woodchips from the lady at the Farmer's Market, as a trial, and after the success of the first smoked chicken, the plan was to get a few more bags - maybe some different types of wood (I'd purchased applewood for my trial run).

When I went back to the Farmer's Market a couple of weeks later, with the intention of getting another bag, school had started back, and half the vendors who were there during the summer, were no longer selling their wares, including the woodchip lady. I was bummed.

I tried chipping my own log ... with a hatchet. It didn't work very well. Grilled rabbit is okay, but it's definitely not the ode-inspiring palate pleaser the chicken was.

Two of the rabbits Deus Ex Machina harvested are in the freezer, and now, we have the woodchips Deus Ex Machina found at the camping store.

Thanksgiving is next week, and really, if one realizes that Thanksgiving is not about turkey and television, but about celebrating the bounty of the harvest and the generosity of the Earth during the past growing season, then one understands that this day, above all others in the year, is a locavore's ideal.

Several years ago, we were featured in the local newspaper for the all local Thanksgiving dinner we'd planned, which mostly consisted of the typical Thanksgiving Day fare.

I remember, at the time, there was a discussion in the locavore circles about they types of food we typically serve this time of year. If Thanksgiving really is about celebrating the bounty of the Earth, then the question is, if one lives in a place where cranberries don't grow, does it make sense to have cranberries at one's Thanksgiving Harvest feast?

And it really, kind of, doesn't.

I do happen to live where cranberries grow and so they will be featured in our celebratory dinner, but if the ideal is to celebrate nature's gifts from what we were able to grow, then we should have a few things that aren't typically on the menu.

Like smoked rabbit.

And we should also feature some of the things that nature grows without our help.

Like lobster.

This year, I'd love to ignore the hundred years of silly tradition and serve foods that really are representative of the Earth's gifts to those of us who happen to live in the coastal northeast.

If I could, I'd serve smoked rabbit, fresh greens salad, pickled beets, and potatoes - all grown on our quarter acre ...

... and lobster, creamed corn, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and baked apples (simmered in our own maple syrup) - all grown within 10 miles of where I live. It would be a true Thanksgiving feast - the shear volume and diversity of local foods where I live is incredible - and it would truly illustrate how much we have to be thankful for.

Especially Precious, who got that union suit she really wanted, and she hasn't taken it off since her birthday.

Does that make it her "birthday suit?"

Spare Change

2009-11-30T08:50:00.001-08:00

FerFAL has a very interesting post with a forty-five minute video.

Early in the video he makes an important point ... a very important distinction for those of us in the United States (because despite what reports are telling us, we really aren't in recovery). He says that the economic collapse in Argentina was not the end of the world, but it was the end of the life most Argentines had known up to that point.

When I talk about TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), I'm making the same distinction. I have never thought that the events we are experiencing are a herald to the end of the Earth and the end of the human race. I don't think the world is going to blow up, and we're all going to die.

I do think that things are changing, and for those people who aspired for Robin Leach's champagne wishes and cavier dreams, the changes aren't going to be welcome.

I think we're all going to be poorer, and there will no longer be this hero worshipping of the people featured on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

The days of recreational shopping when we all needed at least one (fill in the blank with the name of some useless piece of cheaply made crap - probably manufactured in China) are over.

Things are changing, and slowly enough for most of us to react, but if we insist on holding onto the past, we'll end up clutching dust, and little else.

My family and I are prepping ... but not really.

What we're doing is simplifying. We're trying to learn to live with less money by paying off bills and by learning to do without a lot of stuff. In the future, money may become worthless, and, therefore, the less we need, the better off we'll be.

What we're doing is skill-building. In the future, replacing broken stuff with something shiny and new may not be an option, and so being able to make our own or repair what we have will be imperative.

What we're doing is following the advice: Do what you can with what you have where you are.

That's what we're doing.

How about you?

Music Alone Shall Live

2009-11-28T20:18:00.000-08:00

Back when I was a Girl Scout, we used to sing ... a lot. Singing in rounds was very popular and one of the songs we used to sing went:

All things shall perish
From under the sky.
Music alone shall live.
Music alone shall live.
Music alone shall live.
Never to die.

I was going to quip something along the lines of if a tree falls in the woods, but no one hears it ..., but I don't think that hearing and responding to music is a uniquely human thing.

My friend, SnitchMom, was over the other day, and we were having a philosophical conversation about eating choices. The gist was, plants are living beings, too, just like animals and to insist that it's inhumane to eat animals, while one consumes plants without thought or reverence for the life taken to provide nourishment seems a little ... well, hypocritical. I was a vegetarian for a lot of years, and I chose not to eat meat, because I felt like if I couldn't kill it, I shouldn't eat it. I've never had a problem with ripping a carrot from the ground and hacking it up to make a meal.

But I respect the fact that the carrot does have a life force, and when I pluck it from the ground and shove it into my mouth, I consume that life force. To me, it's not a great deal different from taking the life force that was one of our rabbits to nurture my body. Both things must die so that I can live.

Of course, there's the argument that plants don't have a consciousness, but studies have shown that plants actually respond to sound. When exposed to different types of music, plants grow better, or not, depending on the music. Disjointed music, like a lot of rock music, had a less positive affect that softer melodies, like music of the spheres wind chimes.

Music is a big part of my family's life. We listen to music all of the time. Each of the girls has an iPod, which she has loaded with her favorite tunes. In addition, all three of my little girls (and my granddaughter :) are dancers, which is heavily dependent on music and rhythms. Little Fire Faery has been studying the violin for the past year or so. Mama-Daughter played the clarinet, just like her mama (me :). Prodigal Son was in the high school marching band and played the bass drum. Deus Ex Machina played the saxophone, and for his college sufficiency project he composed and recorded a song (to which his daughters choreographed and performed a dance as a gift for him last holiday season).

It's that time of year, again, and while I love the season - I love the weather, I love the slowing down of things, I love the tucking in and settling down next to the fire with a book or some simple project - I don't love feeling pressured to find that perfect gift for everyone. Don't get me wrong. I love gifting. That's my favorite part of the holiday. I just wish it wasn't something that was expected of me, and that rather than waiting with open hands, we, as a society, expected not to get any gifts at all, so that whatever we received would be a pleasant surprise.

I wish we were all like Eeyore, Thanks for thinking of me, instead of the Chipmunks, Me, I want a hula hoop. It would certainly take some of the pressure off of trying to find that perfect gift, if I knew that no matter what I was able to give, the recipient would enjoy receiving it.

This year, I think my gifts will be music. I'm not sure in what form, however. A music of the spheres wind chime might not be terribly appreciated by my daughters, although every time the wind blows (which is a lot where I live), they would be reminded of their gift.

They have instruments. Little Fire Faery has a violin. Precious has a ukelele. Big Little Sister has half-sized acoustic guitar. We also have a keyboard, a clarinet, a saxophone, several recorders, and a whole orchestra's worth of percussion instruments. I have a full-sized acoustic guitar I've been teaching myself to play for about eight years. I don't have a very good teacher, unfortunately, and so I haven't made much progress.

While we strongly believe in the unschooling philosophy, and we encourage our girls to be self-learners, for some subjects, having a teacher is just better. Music is one of those (foreign language is another). We've considered the gift of music lessons, and that will likely be something they get.

Of course that's a hard gift to wrap, and so, maybe, I'll have to reconsider the music of the spheres wind chimes so they'll have something under the tree. I'm not sure our music teacher would be happy stuffed in a box with a bow :).

More on Outdoor Cooking

2009-11-14T21:09:00.001-08:00

Several days ago, my son-in-law went hunting, and he shot a deer. It was an eight-point buck. Deus Ex Machina is tanning the hide. I helped build a frame to stretch it on.

Other than the hide, the nice thing about having hunters in the family, especially my daughter’s husband, is that we always get a share of the kill – which is fair, because we always share our domestic meat with them. This evening, they took home a package of bacon, and they’ve already taken a couple of chickens.

So, for dinner last night I made deer burgers. Yes, it’s November, and yes, to do the burgers justice, I grilled them outside on the gas grill. I mean, you can’t just fry deer burgers. A good burger is grilled over a low flame to seal in the juices.

We have this crappy little grill. I mean, it works, but only just. Because it sits outside, rain, snow or the occasional sunny and dry day, all year long with no cover, we’ve had to replace a few pieces that rusted … and then there was the time that I left it on the “ignite” setting for a wee-bit too long, and it caught fire. The front still bears the scorch scars.

But it works.

And it serves many functions. Last winter, during the power outage, we used it as cold storage.

The winter before that (before we had our new and improved woodstove), when we lost power, we used our grill to cook all of our meals. We even baked muffins and cooked eggs in the shell on the grill outside, in the bitter cold.

Our grill is an oft-used appliance. In fact, we’d probably use it more than we do if the igniter weren’t broken (I think I may have melted it). Lighting the gas grill with a match is kind of scary. As such, during the summer, whenever we end up at one of those home improvement stores, I always gravitate toward the grills. I like the ones that look like the Viking grills. They’re sleek and sturdy. I think it’s probably that stainless steel veneer.

Our grill is just a grill, and when we lost power and had to depend on it for most of our cooking needs, we realized how limited it was. Yes, we did cook muffins and eggs, but the muffin bottoms were a little singed, and because our grill is pretty small, we could only cook so many things at a time. It’s barely big enough to fit one of our home-grown chickens. Some of the Viking gas grills are huge and have some incredible features, like ovens and warming trays. Heck, they’re even fancier than the stove I have in my house.

We’re hoping to build an outdoor kitchen area somewhere on our property (and we haven’t decided if it would be better to put it in the front, where there are no gardens or farm animals, or in the back where there’s a bit more privacy). Our neighbors gave us a sink. I’d love to be able to get a Viking grill, or something like it, for a lot of reasons.

The most practical reason is that a gas grill would be much easier to use than an open fire during sugaring season, as cooking with gas provides a more consistent heat. Our current grill is just too small to do the job. One year we borrowed a turkey fryer from a friend, which worked pretty well, but we really needed a larger surface area. We’ve found that a more shallow pan with a larger bottom works better than a deep pan, like used in a turkey fryer. Unfortunately, our little gas grill is just too small for the size of pan we’d need to most efficiently boil the sap.

The most impractical reason is that they look cool, and even with my wanting to make us poor, there’s still a little bit of that suburbanite lingering.

We’ll keep looking for the best solutions, though, and maybe next summer, we’ll get started on that outdoor kitchen … after we build the new duck coop, and the wood shed, and the ….

Outdoor Cooking

2009-11-11T18:22:00.000-08:00

When we started powering down, one of the problems I had to solve was how we were going to cook without fossil fuels or electricity. During the winter, it’s easy. We cook inside on the woodstove. It proved invaluable during the power outage last December, but even when the electric stove is working, we still use the fire heated surface for cooking and heating water for tea. In fact, this evening, part of our dinner was prepared on the woodstove.

During the warmer months, however, when we don’t have a fire in the woodstove, the only option is to cook outside. I have read accounts of people using solar ovens this far north with some degree of success, and, of course, during the summer, when the sun is higher in the sky, the solar oven would be okay, but there are times (like the last couple of years when we’ve had rain every day for a solid month in the late spring/early summer) that the solar oven wouldn’t be much use.

As such, our only option for cooking outside is fire. We hope to build a rocket stove (plans for which can be found at a number of different sites online and can be as simple as a couple of cans or as complex at Kate’s masonry rocket stove), but for the moment, our choice is a fire pit.

On a whim a few years ago, I decided I wanted a brick patio, and so when someone on Freecycle was giving away bricks, we filled up the back of the SUV and hauled them all back to our house. I still don’t have the patio, but we did use several of the bricks to make a very nice fire pit.

In March, last year, Deus Ex Machina built a quickie outdoor fire pit in the back yard during the sugaring season (because you just can't cook that stuff inside). It takes a long time to boil sap down over an open fire, and it requires constant vigilance (i.e. standing outside feeding little sticks into the fire so that it stays blazing), but we ended up with two gallons of outstanding syrup, and so it can’t be called anything, but, a success. We'll do it again, next year, probably the same way.

In May, we used our fire pit on yard clean-up day. We ended up burning most of the assorted construction flotsam and jetsam that always seems to accumulate (there’s more back there, now, and so I guess our fire pit will be getting some more use next spring, too), and it really made a huge difference. We even celebrated by eating dinner outside at our “new” (found) picnic table.

An open fire pit isn’t the most efficient for heating or cooking (although with our cast iron camp stove we made a nice stew over the fire for our “Doomer Dinner Party”), but for now, it’s our best choice for moving our kitchen outside during the warmer months.

Our neighbors just gave us an old stainless steel sink they replaced in their workshop. Hopefully, in the spring, we’ll be able to build an honest-to-goodness outdoor kitchen, complete with a sink, a cob oven, and maybe even a (second-hand) granite countertop.

But I think we’ll keep the fire pit, too … if only for the ambience it provides – and it’s a good place to burn all of that scrap wood, too.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

2009-11-17T08:26:00.000-08:00

Don't you just love those old Westerns where there's a triangle dinner bell attached to the porch eaves, and someone comes out of the house and clangs the bell when dinner is ready?

Yeah, I don't have one of those. My kids prefer the Ma Kettle approach, which is me, yelling, "Come and get it!"

I don't do that either ... most of the time ;).

I do have a garden bell, though.

For many years, at the family holiday get-together of Deus Ex Machina's family, we've participated in a Yankee Swap. For the first few years, I tried really hard to buy a nice gift for the swap, something I thought people would appreciate. Often is was something I already had, which I really liked, and thought, maybe to share the joy, and so I'd buy one to put in the swap.

Each year I was reminded of how my view of things vastly differs from so many of the people in my life (I have more to say on that, but not today), and almost invariably, I ended up coming home with the gift I'd added to the swap. Eventually, I figured out that the best thing for me to do was to buy something I wanted, but didn't have.

A couple of years ago, my contribution to the Yankee Swap was a really nice chime, and I did bring it home.

It has a beautiful tone. In the summer, when the windows are open, I listen to its song, but even when the windows are closed, on particularly windy days, I can hear it singing outside in the breezes.

It stays outside all year long, but during the winter, on the worst of the worst days, when the wind is, quite literally, howling outside, the garden bell, like the garden, is silent, locked in winter's icy grip.

I miss her voice during the winter, but I know it's time for sugaring when she starts singing again.

Who knew something as simple could mark the seasons in such a profound way?

Local Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T03:48:00.000-08:00

I ended up cooking a lot more and a lot longer than I had intended. Basically, it started when I got out of bed and ended about 4:00 - when we sat down to dinner.

It felt like I had done a lot, but when I started counting up all of the things I'd made, it didn't seem like quite so much.

I started by deciding that today would be a good day to process those apples that have been sitting in the kitchen for a little longer than they should have. We had about a bushel, which filled four quart jars with applesauce ...
... with enough left over to have applesauce for dinner, and there were enough apples for a beautiful pie (which I didn't get a picture of, as it was gone almost as soon as it came out of the oven).

At the end of the day I'd cooked a total of four pies, two loaves of tomato-herb braided bread, roasted potatoes, smoked rabbit, and three lobsters, and I baked a jar of the creamed corn I canned a couple of months ago (which ended up tasting like buttered popcorn).

Everything was homemade, from scratch, and stuff just takes a long time to cook. I have to give it to those pioneer women, for whom today's sort of meal preparation was an everyday affair. It's not even like I made a lot. It's just that everything took so darned long. Of course, I probably could have cut about three hours off the process if I hadn't decided to make applesauce today.

Precious and Little Fire Faery thanked the lobsters before we put them in the pot. They named them, too, which didn't deter Precious from eating them. She knew that they were for dinner, and it was okay.

Talk about being in touch with one's food.

The smoked rabbit was just exactly what I'd hoped for - delicious and juicy and perfectly seasoned.

It was a good meal, and everything was really tasty. I'm not embarrassed to toot my own horn ;).

Mama-Daughter was supposed to come over with her husband and my granddaughter, but her husband wasn't feeling well, and so after we ate, I took a share over to them.

While I was in the kitchen, Deus Ex Machina was in the backyard wrestling with the numerous hides that are in different stages of the tanning process. The neighbor's son came across the street to chat, telling Deus Ex Machina that he'd witnessed a deer get hit. The police tagged the deer, and then gave the carcass to our neighbor's son. He asked Deus Ex Machina if he'd help him butcher it.

So, there will, likely, be another hide to tan.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year. We're definitely well-fed - and almost entirely from our local foodshed.

Without looking for elaborate recipes, and without making special trips out to buy food, and without working very hard at all, we had a Local Thanksgiving dinner*.

I received a note from the farm where I had a CSA membership. They're opening their farm store for the winter.

If I was ever concerned about our food security, this year has taught me that if we just look for it, the food is there.

We have a lot to be thankful for.

*Non-local ingredients were the sugar and spice(s).

I Am Thankful

2009-11-26T04:30:00.000-08:00

After my rather strongly worded anti-turkey post, I thought I should follow-up with something a little more humble, because I do have a great deal to be thankful for.

I am thankful for Deus Ex Machina. He has changed my life in so many incredible ways. He has made it possible for me to explore lifestyle choices from the safety of my home, and if I misjudge and threaten to capsize us, he's right there to provide the balance. Without him, without his support (both emotional and financial), I would never have been able to embark on my homesteading adventure. I might not be able to be the local-foods snob that I am. It's only because we have so much that I can turn my nose up to foods that don't meet my rigid standards. I know that if we were hungry, I'd take whatever we could get - even a McDonald's hamburger ... or a $20 factory-farm raised turkey from the grocery store. I'm thankful that we don't have to.

I'm thankful that I have such an easy life - one that allows me to be a stay-at-home mom, a writer, a poet, and a farmer. I can be whatever I want to be. I don't have to struggle just to exist every day, and if I can give anything to my children, it would be that.

I am thankful that I can read, and that I live in a world and a place where my gender didn't prevent me from getting an education.

I am thankful that I have healthy children. I am thankful that I have a healthy body. I am thankful that I live in a healthy house on a healthy piece of land.

I am thankful, daily, for the enormous blessings in my life.

And today, on this day when thanks is what we're giving, I am thankful that I have been given this venue in which I can express my thoughts and opinions ... and that there's someone out there who actually wants to read them ;).

Today, I am thankful for you.

My wish for you is that you have as much to be thankful for as I do.