2012 alt op #3 Cheap, easy food in your yard

            Been kind of on a downer the past two articles haven’t I. So let’s just suppose that I’m wrong. Those things I’ve been yapping about just won’t happen. I’m fairly sure they will, I just don’t know when, but I’m willing to admit that I could be wrong.

            So, how would you like to find out about way’s to grow nice healthy food in your own yard?  A place where you can control what goes on them or in them? I’ve mentioned this to a few folks around here and been told that it costs too much and is just too much work to keep a garden when all you have to do is drive to Wal-Mart to buy food. Yeah, it costs a bit but its still less than you’d have to pay for all the city water, the herbicides, the insecticides and don’t forget the tilling, the hoeing, the planting and all that hard work.

            So what if I said you could get together with a few neighbors and set up your front yard, back yard, heck maybe even one of your fields if you have several acres, so that after that initial hard work you almost didn’t have to do anything. Well, maybe walk around clipping a few limbs or bushes and such and just dropping them on the ground. No more tilling or plowing. No more herbicides or insecticides or even gasoline for the tiller or diesel for the tractor. Maybe you’d need a little oil and gas occasionally for the chain saw.

            Impossible! Nope. I’ve seen a video of how it can be done. Even in our drought prone area with only an initial input of city water. Yeah you will have to keep working it, but it shouldn’t be hard if you’ve planned it right. The cool part is you can tweak it as it grows.

            What the heck am I talking about?  I’m talking about a food forest. It doesn’t have to be big either. It can be your front yard, back yard or both. It can be out in the pasture behind your house or around your barns. It is complicated to explain. You start with a ditch and some weeds.

            This is a special kind of ditch called a swale. It’s dug along the contours of the land with the soil from it piled up on the downhill side. The bottom of this ditch is not compacted or covered with clay or water proofing and it is kept as level as possible. Yes it will catch all the rain runoff from uphill. That’s the whole idea, to catch that water and hold it there until it soaks into the ground. The “weeds”, the specially selected weeds, are planted on the mound of dirt below the ditch. These will be the fast growing, nitrogen fixing and soil building plants that also make food for you or your animals. There will be ground covers, bushes and even trees of a type you might normally rip out of your yard or pasture. Mesquite, clover, alfalfa, hairy vetch, even bluebonnets! You’d plant lots of those and among them you plant things like fruit and nut trees and trees for timber or firewood        

            One big trick is to mark the trees that will eventually be your food trees because all the others are going to be chopped on and their limbs dropped around the fruit or nut tree nearest them. Meanwhile down on the ground you’re also growing sweet potatoes, tomatoes or whatever, wherever. So all you need to do is go out and pick them. Sound good?

            “But what about the bugs and weeds!?” you may well be asking now. Simple answer: forget about it! If you design it right there will be so many different flowers, scents, colors and shapes that the bad guy bugs will be all confused. Meanwhile there will be lots of hiding places, nesting places and such for critters who like to eat bugs. That would be good guy bugs, and various kinds of birds, amphibians and lizards that won’t be killed by the poisons if you don’t use them.

            Yes, I remember the plague of grasshoppers we had this past summer. The answer to that is simple. More ground birds such as turkey’s and guinea fowl should solve the problem and they taste good to. I’ll say more on this later. Meanwhile you can go to Permies.com to have it explained better.

2012 alt op #2 More gloom and doom with a ray of hope.

             Was I gloomy or what last week? Actually in my opinion (and that’s what this article is anyway, right) I wasn’t being gloomy! I was just being honest. Absolutely everything we do now days is either made of or fueled by oil. Most often it’s both! Even our economy is dependent on it! Why? Because everyone, top down to you and me, has wrongly assumed that we could just keep making more and more of everything, selling it and then taking home an ever increasing paycheck. That whole idea is based on the assumption, also false, that there will always be an ever increasing supply of three things: 1. Cheap energy, 2. Cheap material, and 3. People to make products at low cost and buy products at a high cost. Here’s a clue for you. Every one of those things depends on cheap oil! 

            Now, if you did your homework assignment that I gave last week, you already know that living out here in the sticks we are in big trouble when the oil runs out. No more delivery trucks showing up at our local grocery store or restaurants. No more gas delivered to the two local gas stations or the prepackaged foods they sell there either. Even the DG will run out of stuff because the folks who sell them the stuff they sell us can’t make anything or even manage to send out what they have made!

            Yeah, I know. Seems I’m just making it worse aren’t I. Well that’s cause I think we all need to decide right now what we want to do when oil gets so pricy we can’t afford to use it. Are we going to crash and burn right along with the economy or are we going to survive?

            I vote survive.

            Here’s how. Stock up now on the one thing that energy we are using so lavishly can get us that can be used and used well after that energy dries up like our ponds did last summer. That one thing is knowledge. Not how to shoot guns and kill folks but how to grow food and feed people without chemicals of any kind. You won’t have a choice about doing it organically because all those chemicals, fertilizer, insecticides, and herbicides almost all come from oil. Heck I can’t even think of any non-organic things like that that DON’T have petroleum products in them somewhere! Even some so called organic products do!

            Where can you get this knowledge? There are lots of places on line (like permies.com) and then there’s the library here in town and the ones in the other towns nearby as well as the big one up in Commerce on the TAMU-C campus. In fact on Jan, 28^th at the Rockwall library from 10am to 4pm there will be a little get together where you can swap seeds and watch some video’s about how some other folks have already survived the oil suddenly not being there and how to grow lots of food in an urban environment without all the chemicals. If we start doing this kind of thing NOW we might not even notice when the oil does dry up. Next month I’m planning on showing even more videos here in Lone Oak on ways to grow organically and cheaply just about anywhere. I’ll tell you when and where later, when that’s all ironed out. 

2012 alt op #1 Oh, woe. The end is near. Again.

             Well, going by the prices at the gas pump I’d say we were well past “peak oil” now. For those of you who just said, “Huh? Wassat?”   Imagine that nasty old bell curve you always hated for your English or Math teacher to grade to. You know the one where the folks who scored the average grade were the ones at the highest point and they all got ‘c’s while those at one end or the other got either ‘A’s or ‘F’s depending. Only in this case instead of representing the class scores on a test it represents the oil left that we can cheaply or affordably get out of the ground! So let’s say that a point to the left of that big middle hump on this chart would be a point in time when we still had oodles of oil down there. A time when if we poked holes in the right spots that black gold would just jump out of the ground and beg to be used. That would make a point at the very top of that hump a point where we would be about half out of the stuff we could get hold of easy.

            Guess what. We are on the right side of that little hump now and sliding down fast. Yep. There is still oil out there, BUT! And it’s a whopping big but. It is starting to take more to get the stuff out of the ground, lots more. Worse, part of the greater cost is the products of that black gold we have to spend to get more of it. Yeah that’s kind of convoluted I know. What I’m trying to get at here is that we are rapidly approaching a catch-22 situation where it costs more in gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum based chemicals to get oil out of the ground than we CAN get out of the ground. In simpler words: We goin’ broke folks.

            Yeah. I can see some of you out there saying “So! Aren’t you the one yelling about green power, solar panels and windmills and all that other stuff.” Yep, I sure am but I have to point out a sad truth by asking a question. What do you think is needed to make those nifty keeno things that make electricity out of wind and sunlight? I’ll tell ya. You need plastic, a lot of plastic, and a lot of energy to make and transport the things to where they can be used. Where does that plastic and energy come from? Fossil fuels, mostly oil that’s where.

            So we’ll go back to coal, you shrug. Ah, but there we run into another problem. Unless you like the really harsh and odd weather we’ve been having. That’s that global warming you might not want to believe in kicking in. Then again, with coal there is also the simple question of if you want to be able to breathe or drive your car. Personally I prefer breathing. It makes living easier that way.

            Now, I think I’ll assign some homework. Sit there and think of all the places you go from your home and how you get there. Think about the work you do and what fuels that work you do or even makes the materials you work with. Now, what will you do when the oil runs out? How will you get to work, to the store, raise a garden, or even just go fishing? How will you eat? How will you stay warm in the winter or even cook your food? I’ll give hints next week.

Alt Op. # 50 End of the year

Well, this is the last article I’ll write. This year, that is. There will be more next year, unless some weirdness intervenes.

            But what shall I write about now? Traditionally, articles, news reports and such tend to go over the major happenings of the past year and a few try to predict what might come to pass in the coming year.

            Last year gas prices went up. At one point they got near $4 a gallon or more, I stopped looking. Other sad things happened. Some good folks we will miss passed on. No not the big name stars though that is sad for their families; I’m talking about the everyday folks we will all miss meeting down at the Lone Oak Grocery, the Buffalo Grill, just passing in the street or getting e-mail from (Sorry, Boe. Even DSL won’t connect to Heaven.) Some really bad folks also left this mortal coil in the past year. They aren’t missed and I won’t waste more time on them.

            There were glad tidings as well. New lives came to give people joy. Some have two legs, wear diapers, and cry a lot. Others have fur or hide, hooves, horns or at least flowing mains and tails. Yeah, I’m an animal lover. Sue me for cooing as much over a picture of a puppy, a new foal or goat kid as I do over a baby human.

            As for next year, well, it looks to be more of the same as it is every year. We will certainly be entertained by the politicians as they jockey for position in the presidential race. Some will surly get a kick out of arguing politics with friends and family which can be an enjoyable pass time if it isn’t taken too seriously.

            I’m looking forward to spring and to planting something tasty both on my property and over at Community Seeds. I plan on trying some techniques I’ve been reading about that can let you grow tomatoes and other plants without bothering to weed, fertilize or even water them. I will be talking about these methods more in next year’s articles. After all I am an opinionated gal and happen to think these Permaculture ways of doing things is a darn fine idea.

            In fact there is only one part of the Permaculture idea’s that I have a personal problem with. You see, Permaculture believes everyone should cooperate. I can cooperate fine, but I’m also a loner at heart, with a bad habit of hauling off and trying to do things beyond by present physical abilities. Why? Because I hate waiting around for someone else to get the time to help me, then having to try to explain why I don’t want whatever it is done the way they are used to doing it.

            Hmm. Sounds like I have my New Year’s Resolutions right there. “Be more patient, especially with yourself as well as others, and try to remember to ask for help when you need it!”  What’s yours?

Alt. Op. #49. The oldest fossil fuel and why it is NOT a green energy sorce

            Dang, it’s happened again.  I recently heard an otherwise intelligent, knowledgeable person say something I see as totally ignorant. Maybe he really doesn’t know. Maybe he just doesn’t realize the full parameters of what he said.

            “Okay, Montgomery,” I can almost hear some of you sighing out there as you ask the question you know you’ll likely wish you hadn’t. “What did this poor fellow say that got your tree hugging underwear in a wad?”

            To which I would reply: “Gee, I didn’t know underwear could hug trees.” At which point you would glare and I’d get back on track.

            What the fellow said was: “Nuclear reactors give off no pollution.” Oh, I wanted to jump on that immediately but was in a public meeting (Not to mention the glare I got from the guy in charge of that meeting).

            Now I’m guessing that there are those of you out there who just might agree with this guy. Even I must admit that if you look at it from just the right direction you could say he was absolutely right. A nuclear power plant does NOT give off carbon dioxide, smoke or anything else. All you see coming out is just white billowy steam from the cooling towers.

            I heartily disagree that nuclear power plants are non-polluting (pardon my snicker). The first part of the pollution they, and all other fossil fuel powered plants cause is the process of getting that particular fuel, be it coal, oil, gas or uranium. Yes. Uranium is a fossil fuel. It is one of the oldest fossil fuels in fact being left over from the formation of the planet. Yes, there is a good deal of Uranium here in the states. It just happens to reside in formations about half way up some mountains in the North West US that are sacred to the Native Peoples of that area. The most economic way to get at it is to just rip off the tops of the mountains. So what, you may have just shrugged and thought. Let’s put it this way. How would YOU react if, being a Christian, you were told they’d discovered that the material used to build the corner towers on several of those big churches in New York had gold in them and the government was going to let a company rip the tops of those towers off to get at it. Oh, they’d put a roof over what was left and make it all pretty again, sort of, so that should be alright, right? Yeah, I know. You can’t even imagine such a sacrilege. Other than that, out west there would be the complex and really unfixable environmental damage not just from the mining of the uranium but from the refining of it into fuel rods for the power plants.

            As I said above there is no nasty Carbon dioxide produced by a nuclear plant but there is a waste product. Waste even by my broad standards (Waste = a product that hasn’t got a use). That waste is the used up fuel rods. Nope they have no real use once used except to be wrangled over about where they will be stored until they stop being radioactive and how to keep them out of the hands of terrorists, etc.

            Speaking of radioactivity; what do we do with the old, no longer safe to use, outdated nuclear power plants anyway? There’s all that big area, that huge building that really can’t be used for anything else because, duh, it’s radioactive in a lot of spots.

            That’s the pollution we face from nuclear power plants that don’t have any problems. These plants can have problems because they were built poorly. Trouble can come from poorly trained or inept operators. Problems can also come, as we know, from the plant being situated near earthquake zones, placed where it could be hit by tsunami or threatened by wild fire. Add all of that in and we have a whole lot more to worry about.

            Nuclear power plants are non-polluting my, ah-hem, tree hugging underpants.

Alt. Op. #48 Fire Departments, Mention of South Fulton, and some history

            My goodness! Aren’t we all glad we don’t live in South Fulton! Saw this on the Yahoo page and wondered what the heck happened until I read the story. Seems that if you live outside of South Fulton and don’t pay the $75 yearly fire protection fee to the South Fulton fire dept. they won’t put a drop of water on your burning property or do anything unless a life is in danger.  The Mayor of South Fulton defended his city’s position by pointing out that if they did go ahead and put out the fires of those who hadn’t paid the fee then there would be no incentive for folks to pay the fee that helps with the up keep and maintenance of the city’s fire equipment. I’m guessing it also goes a way’s toward paying the firefighters, their health insurance and other such as well.

            Believe it or not that’s the way a lot of fire departments were set up back when they were first being organized. Later the insurance companies got in on the deal to. In fact those insurance companies actually funded some of the fire brigades and those brigades were not allowed to fight fires on property NOT insured by their ‘boss’. Back then a lot of commercial buildings especially, had big emblems painted or bolted on them to indicate which insurance company covered them and thus, which fire brigade could save them.

            Later someone got the idea of paying fire brigades for fighting fires. Then you’d have the sight of two or even three different and competing fire brigades showing up at a fire and fighting each other rather than the fire! But that was then and South Fulton is, thankfully, THERE!

            Here in Hunt County we have several all volunteer fire Departments as well as two different paid departments. One of which is in Greenville and the other in Commerce. The department in Commerce is aided by the Commerce Emergency Corp which is also an all volunteer group. There are even volunteer fire departments in neighboring counties that will respond into Hunt County if one of the Hunt County Departments needs help or, for some reason can’t respond themselves.

            Some of you may ask: “And just what would keep an all volunteer department from responding to a fire or medical emergency call!” Not, thankfully, that you didn’t pay your fire fees! Not here! Here the problem is often simple man (or woman!) power. Here, depending on the time of the incident, there just might not be any one in town who can respond! The members of the various fire departments, being volunteers, must also work for a living as well as do other things like mow the lawn, do the dishes, cook supper, take the kids to school, go to school functions, go shopping or even, just kick back and enjoy a well earned beer. Now, if they’ve just taken one sip of that beer and a call comes in, they can’t respond! That is for their and your safety! Then there is the problem caused by the fact that most folks work on first shift. That means there are few folks handy for anything during those hours. Just those who are off work for some reason, work for themselves, don’t have a job, or work on second or third shift.

            “Say!” you may think about now. “What’s the alternative opinion in this article?” Well, It’s not really alternative at all, I suppose.My opinion is that it would really be nice if we had some second or third shift workers on the Lone Oak Fire Department. Heck, retirees who are still active enough to get out there and beat down a grass fire would be good to!

            Of course if finding out about the South Fulton fire department makes you feel like  maybe you should send some cash to your local volunteer fire department. I’m sure they’d appreciate the donation. It’d sure help pay for gas to get to any emergency's.

Alt. Op. #47 What-cha gonna do when the well runs dry?

            My fingers are cold as I type this.

            No, the power is still on or I couldn’t be keyboarding this into the computer. No, I haven’t turned the central heat off. In fact its set at a temperature that lots of folks considered comfy this summer if maybe a little warm.  I set it at 66. So I’m used to seventy or so! I usually had the central air set at 75 during the day and 69 or 70 at night during the summer. Most of the spring and fall I didn’t even use it.

            Problem is this cold snap has got me to thinking troubling thoughts. This nice house of mine, while I appreciate it and am grateful to have it, has its draw backs. While it is well insulated it isn’t oriented so that the longest side faces south so that I could catch the winter sun for extra warmth. The Law said, I was told when I requested that orientation, the front of the house had to face the nearest public road. That road runs north/south so now the longest sides of my house face into the morning sun and the setting sun. Not a good thing during the summer. I am trying to think of ways I can afford that will capture that passive solar energy and use it to good purpose. Right now I’d love it if I had a small narrow green house on the south end of my house.

            The most troubling thought I have about this house is that it is an ALL ELECTRIC house with central heat and air. Yes, I do like the central heat and air. I remember all too well my old house where the temperatures during high summer and low winter would make it nearly impossible to use the kitchen and made the bathroom seem more like an outhouse. (Ever set on a really cold toilet seat?) Why does the fact that my house is all electric bother me? It’s great now, but what do I do if the power goes off for some reason? And stays off for a long time? I know there are some of you out there shrugging and saying, “Pack up some clothes, your dog and cat, and go stay with relatives or friends.” So, what do I do if I can’t for some reason? A blizzard for example, or a region wide power loss due to ice, wind, or some other weirdness that can and has happened elsewhere could keep me in place for a long time without power.

            I know others of you out there are just grinning and shaking your heads. “Silly girl!” you say to yourselves, “If it worries you that much just go buy a nice big generator.” To which I reply, “So how will I pay the ridiculous cost of the gasoline or diesel to run that generator?”

            By now you are all rolling your eyes and thinking, “Give us a break, Montgomery!” To which I tartly reply. “NO. I will not. I want YOU to think about how you would live if the electricity went away.” I mean that. How would you cook your food? So you have a grill outside. All well and good, but then what do you do if it’s raining out and you don’t have a covered patio, deck or some other safe place you can use such a thing. Don’t even think of bringing it inside the house, you’ll kill yourselves! Speaking of inside the house, how will you stay warm if it’s cold, or survive the heat if it’s hot out or even open food cans with no power opener?

            My point is houses should not be built with only one source for power, for heating, cooling, cooking and keeping food. Yes, electricity is convenient and easy. But it is also easy to interrupt and often hard to reconnect. Think about it.