Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
...
:-)) And less snow for water for the populace is only one of the signs
you've written about......

I keep wondering if it will take famine
conditions in the first world before some people finally manage to join
the dots.

i suspect there will be food riots and troubles in
poorer countries again long before you see problems
in the first world countries.

Yup.

the first world has
the resources to ship foods around.

Yup, and does do that now regardless.

only when we
get some rather unlikely multiple year droughts in
several of the large grain growing regions in
combination with wars which disrupt shipping would
you see a large famine in the first world.

Well Oz has certainly had the multiple year droughts in grain areas and
I have a vague memory that Russia had too. Can't quite see the shipping
disruption on the horizon.

right, at the moment the risk isn't that
high. multiple year droughts are not widespread
and we had a good harvest last year. if this
year is bad and next year is bad then you'll
certainly see it in the news.


at the moment i think we're on the edge and could
be mostly ok, but it means making some changes.
improving ground and surface water regulations,
putting the land back into the hands of people
instead of corporations, having more diversity and
protection for wild spaces, funding restoration
and replanting projects, increasing wetlands to
help with flooding and droughts, improving irrigation
and monitoring of ground water pumping.

:-)) In short, I think you have joined me in my 'when pigs fly' view of
the possibility of the dots being joined?

i'm seeing some good signs here or there, but
it isn't enough yet, so yeah.


boycotting products from companies or people
who poison is one immediate thing that i can do
and that shifts at least some production towards
more sustainable methods. growing my own food
using sustainable methods is another. at least
then i know some wild creatures have a home that
isn't being poisoned.

We have a wonderful garden for other creatures. Some I could do without
liek the blasted rabbits and the snakes but the others are all well
worth observing. For example; we spend a lot of time watching the
antics of birds and the last time I bothered to aks Himself (who is very
keen on birds) he had recorded seeing between 60 and 70 different birds
types in our garden. We make sure we do our pruning to avoid nesting
times and we keep many plants that are supposedly weeds because they
give food or shelter for wildlife. We do fight about Queen Anne's Lace
though. He always pulls it out when he notices it because he thinks it
will go wild in his paddocks. I have finally mananged to stop him
ripping out my verbasums now as I finally corrected his
misidentification of them.

yes, living as a cooperative between more than one
person is a challenge. i lose garden spaces or plant
diversity here when Ma decides to smother a garden or
mows down some of my plants and it doesn't get replanted.
right now i'm going to lose another garden this year,
but pick up a few more next year or the year after.
depends upon what i can get done.

there's probably a few dozen rabbits around here and
i surely don't need any more, but our main veggie gardens
are fenced and don't get too many rabbits in them. the
fence is more to keep the deer out than the other creatures.
i have more damage from woodchucks that climb through the
fence. i hope i've discouraged those enough this past
year that we don't have them back this year. we'll see.
the birds we have are not too damaging to veggie or
my strawberry production, they get at some of the bushes
that have berries, but we don't eat those berries so
they are welcome to them. no major fruit trees growing
either as of yet, so all birds are welcome here. if
they eat a few of the strawberries i don't mind, there
are enough, they make up for it in bugs they eat.

i'm actually surprised by how well the gardens outside
the fenced areas do, some do get raided at times, but
i rarely lose an entire garden's production. planting
multiple crops, some intermixed, etc. seems to keep them
from finding everything. these sort of experiments
continue as i get time for them.

today i got a first look at the south drainage situation
with the melting snow coming off quickly. the ground is
still frozen and the water is coming across the surface.
not too likely we'll have any flooding this spring as we
don't have a lot of snow cover and the forecast isn't
pointing at heavy rains yet. the nights are still mostly
near or below freezing so that is actually a good thing
as that will keep the trees from budding out too soon.
i was worrying the other day that it was getting too
warm too quickly again, but so far so good.

queen-annes-lace is one of those weeds that will colonize
our clay soil, but the cover is so poor that i don't really
like them, instead i'm adding fennel which is much more
edible and provides more shade. there's no danger of there
being too little of the lace as it abounds along every
roadside like the dandelion or chickory. i'm also adding
short round carrots to the mix of plantings this season.
they might work in our heavy soils. we'll see what
happens... every season is a new adventure...


songbird