Alt OP. #46 Weeds for lunch

Well, I finely found someplace this weekend where the folks at least half way understand me when I get off on my Permaculture stuff. I actually used the word Permaculture and Hugelkulture while I was talking to them and . . . They knew what I was talking about!!!

This place is even in Hunt County, though it is north of Greenville and even a little N. E. of Celeste on 272. The place is called Good Earth Organic Farms (they are online, look it up). You can go there and pick up some organic produce just about any old day I think. They are also planning on having more classes similar to the one I was there for when I started talking about my favorite subject.

The class was on wild food and it was very informative. Fortunately the young lady teaching the class warned us that it was highly unlikely that we would remember all of the plants we would be shown growing in the wild that day. It is fortunate because, sadly I remember only a few.

Most of them were greens, I do remember that. She mentioned Poke Salet but that is a spring green and not available right now. However, the various types of Dock are. They had some Yellow Dock growing near their hay barn and it was rather tasty. At least the younger leaves were. One of the others in the class noted that one of the Dock plants had put up stems with clusters of dark brown seeds. He asked if those were edible and the instructor said they were. Just pop them in a grinder or blinder as you would whole wheat and grind them to a flour consistency. She told us we wouldn't have to thresh the Dock seeds like we would the wheat to remove the chaff as the Docks hulls were also edible. We moved on through the sheep pastures and to the garden areas where there were various tasty goodies growing between the rows of normal garden plants. Now remember this is an organic farm so there have been no pesticides or dangerous petroleum based fertilizers applied to the fields. Thus we could simply pluck the weeds and eat. There were lambs quarters which were quite tasty as I remember. Sadly I don’t remember what they looked like well enough to trust I’d be picking the right thing in my own yard. There was also clover. Yes. People, as well as live stock, can eat clover. Another plant, related to mint she said, is one with lovely little purple flowers. Bee’s love it too for the flowers of course, but the leaves do have a hint of mint to them. Can’t remember the name. I even found out that an odd looking plant I've been seeing around my barns is actually edible. I’ve been calling it the paper lantern plant because the obvious seed pod looks sort of like a little Chinese paper lantern. It is actually called a Ground Cherry and each little ‘lantern’ carries a small cherry that is ripe when it turns a dark purple. It tastes slightly like a tomato and is related to that plant as well as the tomatillo.

One of the most surprising edibles I encountered that day was the Choke Berry Tree. Those little red to reddish brown berries that appear in the fall and then seem to hang on forever are edible!! The instructor had about a cup of the berries that she had harvested earlier and rinsed off. She put them in a blinder with about two cups of water and blended them for a fairly long time. (At least it seemed so to me) Then she strained the mixture through a “paint strainer” cloth bag she’d bought for this use and viola! Choke Berry milk.

 Ah, no. I was not overly impressed with it, but then I don’t like cow milk either. I would have added some sugar and cinnamon to the mix as I do with real milk, but others there liked it as it was. So all in all I had an interesting Sunday this past weekend.

It’s always bound to be interesting when you can say you had weeds for lunch.

Alt Op.#45 The coming Fall and What can save us

Now, as I remember last week’s article was a downer where I went on about how the economy and the civilization it supports is likely not long for this world because they are both so unsustainable. I still stand by that. Especially with all the changes in our climate that are going on.

Honestly folks this is a geologically and climatologically active planet we live on. It’s just been napping for a century or two and us short lived humans will just have to get on board with the new way nature works or take a hard fall.

Now, as I see it, one of the hang ups of our modern civilization is that it just does not allow for change. At least not change like we are seeing it now and will continue to see it in the future. We have come to depend way to heavily on Big Brother and the ever popular “Somebody” who is supposed to take care of us, our things, and our way of life, keeping it from changing, so that we can just keep toddling along with a frown on our faces complaining about taxes and how big government interferes in our lives.

Yes, we do that. Just think about it a bit.

To illustrate the point I tried to make above, here is a tidbit I read somewhere, possibly on the internet. Those areas of Mississippi that did NOT wait for government assistance or money; did not stop and ask “where’s FEMA?” or “What if we do something that will keep us from getting relief (money) from the government”, those are the area’s that were being rebuilt and prospering while those that cried about how the government wasn't helping them were not.

Yes, the places where the government finely did jump in got those nifty trailers and tons of cash eventually poured in. As far as I know a lot of those trailers are still there and some of the money has been spent fixing what was destroyed but the rest of the cash? Who knows. Yeah, I know. A lot of what I’m saying here is “hearsay” as I can’t remember where I read it or even how reliable some of the reports were. But it makes sense to me that if you sit around on your hands waiting for someone, anyone else, to do for you nothing will get done and you will be in the same place, the same situation until you get up off your buttocks, and use your own hands to do for yourself.

That brings me back to what can be done about this fall of civilization, of the economy, that I see coming. What can we do? The answer as I see it is not simple, not easy and probably not popular as it will require looking at the world around us in a new way. It may even require us to give up some old and cherished
points of view and ways of life. This complex and difficult path is, surprisingly, fairly well laid out within an idea, a way that has a name. A name that has been copy righted so that only those actually trained and
receiving a certificate stating that they have been so trained, can legally use it to describe themselves or their work with it. That word is Permaculture.

Yes, I’ve used that word a lot. I can’t afford to travel to the places where the training in Permaculture design is given nor can I afford the classes. Thus you will not hear me say that I am a Permaculture Designer. I am
just a poor old gal that is trying to use the ideas and methods of Permaculture to improve my land, lower my impact on the local ecosystem, and maybe even grow some food. To get a look at this stuff for yourself go to www.permies.com or just Google the word Permaculture.

Alt OP #44 Sustainability

As some of you may have gathered from last weeks article I’m on my sustainability kick again. Oh, and yes, that really was an opinion piece. My opinion being that Mr. Fukuoka has the right idea and that his ideas, modified to fit our climate and land will work here.

Yeah, I know. He doesn't use any of the big machinery we Americans are so fond of. No big combine rolling down the rows of corn, wheat, or even rice and spitting out tons of grain into a big ol’ dump truck rolling beside it. Just a lot of folks swinging scythes as they walk through a field, then maybe using a simple machine to thresh and gather up the grain before they haul the straw back into the field.

Sounds down right primitive. But isn't one of the problems we have right now in our nice high tech, big machine civilization unemployment? That big combine only takes one man, or woman to run it. Only one person is needed to run the truck that follows beside to catch the grain. Yeah, I know. You also need “behind the scenes” types to fuel, maintain, build, and make parts for those machines. But other things are going on back there too. Things that are, going to help bring us all down. The environment is being mauled to get the materials (metals and such) and the energy (oil, coal) to build and run those big machines. Then there is the literal killing off of every life form but the crop being grown that is done when you use pesticides, herbicides and, yes, even chemical fertilizers. This leaves you with dead, sterile soil that can’t grow anything unless it does get those chemical fertilizers. Guess where almost all of those things come from, folks.

 Oil. And oil is not going to be getting cheep ever again. Ever.

As to why oil isn’t ever going to be cheep again, I’ll leave that to you all out there. I believe it is simply because we've already pulled out all the oil that is available and that if we want more we will just have to wait the geologic eons it takes to make more. I do know that a lot of you out there think that there is this big stock pile somewhere that the country could run on for years. To which I reply. So?

So what if there is a big ol’ pot of oil stashed out there somewhere that the country could run on for what? Two years? Three? Maybe even five. Do you all realize how much oil that would be?! Just think people.
Think about how many cars are on the road right now, how many big diesel trucks are hauling produce, material, finished products or even out there fighting fires. Then there are the airplanes, the ships, the lawn mowers and the weed eaters as well as the chain saws and the golf carts. Do you really believe there is
enough room anywhere to store that much oil without someone knowing about it and blabbing?

Maybe back during simpler times. Not now. Remember Wiki-leaks. But let’s just suppose there IS such a pot of stored up oil. Now lets suppose further that we go ahead and use it. Then what? We’ll have one to five more years of living just like we are now before the whole civilization we've built on the availability of cheep, plentiful, energy falls down around our ears and on our heads. Sad thing is a lot of the stuff we think can save us, those big, humongous, wind generators, and the solar panels to make electricity when the wind doesn't blow, guess what is needed to make those?
 Yep. Oil. Cheep energy.

Might oughta think about putting in an all season, organic garden. While you can.

Alt Op #43 Seed Balls

Okay. So here I sit considering the idea of Seed Balls. I can almost see you now, gentle readers. You are either blinking and saying “Huh?” or rolling your eye’s and thinking:  “Hooo Boy. Here we go again!” Most of you are likely asking what the heck I mean by seed balls. Do you eat them or what?

Well, you toss them. As to where you toss them, it depends on what you've made them of. If you made them of a mix of wild flower seeds then you toss them into whatever area of your yard, field, or drainage ditch that you want decorated with bright flowers this spring. On the other hand if you made the balls of say, winter wheat, clover and other assorted small, winter hardy grains then you toss them around your pasture. Then you maybe shred the weeds that are all over it (well, you do if it’s like my pasture) and then just let those weeds lay there and protect those seed balls while the seeds in them sprout. Nope. You don’t plow, till or otherwise tear up the soil. The most you do is mow. Then you turn your cattle, horse, or goats out on the stuff for short times as each seed starts to mature. Ideally you've used a mix of seeds that grow and mature at different rates so that you get plant A coming up first. It gets eaten down or pulled up by the grazing critters or by you harvesting it. Then as plant B has already germinated and just started to come up you don’t have naked ground showing while the next crop comes in. Then plant C starts coming up and you graze or harvest plant B. Get the picture? There’s this guy in Japan that does something
similar with rice.

Bear with me now, his name is Masanobu Fukuoka and he’s written this neat little book called “The One-Straw Revolution.” Yes! Of course it’s been translated to English!

Mr. Fukuoka is a proponent of what he calls “do-nothing” agriculture. And no you don’t get out of doing any farming. You still have to sow, and harvest but mostly you have to watch what’s going on. He claims he can get his whole years sowing done in a week or so then just wait, and watch, while he floods, and drains, his fields. He doesn't even leave the water in his rice fields as long as most other rice farmers do. He uses no insecticides, no fertilizer (other than an occasional thin coating of chicken manure, he used to use ducks but that’s another story) and no big machinery. Not even the old style water buffalo. Yet he has harvests at least equal to the per acre output of the big factory farms in the most ‘productive’ part of Japan.

Mr. Fukuoka points out early in his book and often later on that while his methods work very well for his particular farm in his particular area of Japan, they must be tweaked to work on other farms in other parts of Japan. He stated flat out that his exact method will not work here in North America. Our weather is different, our wet seasons come at different times and, well, it’s just different here. He even points out that he doesn't do the exact same thing every year! After all one year is never exactly like the last one, now is it.
Some times the rains are a little late or a lot lighter than before. So while you planted say in the middle of September last year you have to wait until October this year. In case you wonder, I do recommend this
book to all my fellow gardeners, and local farmers. Mr. Fukuoka holds farming in high regard as both a physical and spiritual activity.

There is a good deal of philosophy in this book and spiritual references but he does not ‘push’ any particular religion. He quotes the Buddha and the Bible with ease.

Alt OP #42 . . . I hope

But first! An apology for taking so long to post more. I've been in the process of switching out computers and darned if the 'new' one, being newer, has decided it can't read the word program the other alternative opinions were written in. Sigh. Happily I am backlogged on deleting things from my email inbox and those contain the prose you see below and in about three or more future posts. All I had to do is figure out how to do it on this new interface, program, whatever you call it. But I did figure it out so here ya go. Hopefully I haven't missed any.


Enjoy. 

“But first . . .,” How often have you said or heard that? I seem to say it a lot. I hear it a lot to. Usually it works like this: “I need to hang this picture, but first I need to move that book shelf so the step ladder will set closer to the wall for me to reach where I want the nail, but first I have to find the hammer to hammer the
nail.” It can go on and on down to finding a place to stack the books so you can move the book case and end with having to dust the books before you put them back in the book case after you've finely hung that cotton picking picture!

I and a friend call this the “but first! Disease.” It’s when you find yourself standing there knowing what you want to do and going over all the things that are in the way of you just hauling off and DOING whatever it is. It has been the end of many of my pet projects. Usually, it’s because: “but first I need to get the money!” Of course that can sometimes be gotten around, the money issue anyway. The real problem is that when you try to do some things without money the but firsts pile up so high it’s just too much! You either loose track of what the heck it was you planned to do in the first place or, worse, you discover that trying to do it without an up front cash lay out is going to cost you more than that cash lay out!

Don’t get me wrong this “but first” thing can be useful when you are trying to either get out of doing some thing you really don’t want to or to point out that you really need more time (or pay!) for doing a job. “Sure I can paint your house for only a couple hundred, but first you’d have to buy the paint and brushes, supply the scaffolding, the wire brush and scrappers for cleaning off the old paint . . .” See what I mean. Trouble is we sometimes take this but first thing to extremes and let it keep us from doing things that really need doing.

Take Congress, they seem to think they really can control every single aspect of American life so as to make us all safe, secure, happy, and healthy. They and we, seem to have forgotten that while life and liberty are guaranteed by the Constitution, the only guarantee we have for happiness is the pursuit of it. If we can’t
catch the sucker, tough. They (the ones who want to control Congress, the Government, Etc.) are going to give us all kinds of goodies to make our life one of leisure, jobs that pay us loads of money, health care out the wazoo, AND lower taxes! But first! But first they have to get total control of the whole government so no one can tell them they can’t do these wonderful things for us! Uh-huh.

Yep.

Guess what. That would mean even we the people couldn't tell them they couldn't do whatever came into their little pea brains to think we the people really needed . . . Whether we wanted it or not!

Yeah, I know. I used that dreadful, anonymous “They” in the preceding paragraphs. Just who the heck am I accusing of this heinous plot anyway? Oh, just the Democrats, the Republicans, the Tea Party, the Right to
Lifers, the Right to Choosers, the Liberals, the Conservatives, and all those other folks that think they have to be the ones in charge of telling us what to do and not do.

No, I do most certainly NOT suggest we should try to live without any laws at all. I’m way to old to survive the kind of civilization anarchy would bring about. I just think all we really need are general directions like: “Don’t kill or beat up folks cause you don’t like them or just cause you can, live by the Golden Rule, take care of your self, and act civilized even if you aren't.”