Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

two more books for the reading list:

Sepp Holzer, _The Rebel Farmer_ and _Sepp Holzer's
Permaculture_ i'm reading them in reverse order, almost
done with the second. he's got many years of actual
experience with many things, so i appreciate his
writings. some things he's almost mystical about so
that isn't as much a science as a ritualized practice
but it seems to be working for him.

i haven't gotten into mushroom farming, but i did
enjoy the part of the book that gives that overview.
if i do get into it sometime i'll be sure to read up
on it.

also how he talks about fruit trees and his
methods. very low input, but you need a varied
environment to pull it off. in a modern suburban
landscape with grasses, etc and few understory
plants that support beneficials it's a challenge.
then you may also have to deal with neighborhood
politics or town ordinances for weeds/lawn care.

his main property is upland enough that he can
work with microclimates and extending seasons of
harvest by using the warmer downhill areas and
cooler areas uphill along with using rocks, sun
catchers and ponds.

also the film mentioned: _The Agricultural Rebel_.


...
Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
by Richard Manning
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-...ivilization/dp
/0865477132/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368981220&sr=1-4&keywords=Aga
inst+the+Grain

I'm about 60 pages into the book (a mere 240 pages).

i finished it two nights ago. quick read.
i'm not really sure what i think of it. as it
is a bit dated and the enemy of popularity has
turned from big-ag processor ADM to ag-chem-seed
producer Monsanto.


If you don't care for the murder rate of 20-30%, you probably won't like
the complete genocide that the farmers wreaked on the hunter/gathers.
Although farming startd 8,000 - 10,000 years ago, the full complement of
wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cows didn't really coalesce into a
suite until about 5,600 years ago, near the Caucasus Mountains.They are
identified by their pottery which is distinctively marked with straight
lines, or as the German anthropologists called them Linearbandkeramik
(LBK is the designation for these farmers who spoke Indo-European).
Farming wasn't spread by adaptation, but conquest. The LBK farmers made
it to the Atlantic in about 300 years, taking no prisoners. The
"cave-painters" (Cro-Magnons), hunter/gaterers, last stand was in the
south-west of France. The Cro-Magnon's descendants are most likely the
Basque, who speak a language like no other.

The book goes on to describe the encounter between the LBK, and the
"Scandahoovians", which was a stalemate.

A ripping good book.

i enjoyed parts of it. i have to conceed the
poorer health and starvation of some peoples under
the version of agriculture much practiced in the
past.

Famines every 10 years don't auger well for agriculturalists. It's way
past time to start humanities return to sustainable environmental
practices. It's probably an impossible dream with greed intrenched in
government.

wait until you get to the part where he talks about
China and famines (p. 71).

??????? It's the same deal, famines every 10 years.

no, he writes they have evidence of 1800+ famines in
about 3,000 years. that's a famine almost every year
to every other year.


Civil disobedience, thats not our problem. Our problem is that people
are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation
and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are
obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while
the grand thieves are running the country. Thats our problem.
-Howard Zinn

well yes. we have a lot of people in jail on
very minor things (non-violent offenders).

What we have is more people in jail (percentage wise) than any other
country in the world, 1%. Most of these people are people of color,
because the law is applied disproportionately. This is the new Jim Crow,
just in time for the Prison Industrial Complex.
The term prisonindustrial complex (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid
expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of
private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services
to government prison agencies.

The term is borrowed from the
militaryindustrial complex President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in
his famous 1961 farewell address.

he was a smart guy.


Such groups include corporations that
contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology
vendors, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activists have
argued that the Prison-Industrial Complex as perpetuating a belief that
imprisonment is a quick yet ultimately flawed solution to social
problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental
illness, and illiteracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex

More specifically see "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age
of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-I...dness/dp/15955
86431/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369114986&sr=1-1&keywords=The+New+J
im+Crow

gah! no, i'm not going there. it's all around me
already, i don't need to read more about it.

any federal or state program is always set up and
will self-perpetuate once funding gets allocated and
spent. that is why i think that we should make as
much government as volunteer or minimum wage as
possible to discourage "entrenchment" and also to make
representatives selected at random instead elected
by campaigns.


Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
-John Maynard Keynes

the alternatives are demonstratably worse as
already seen. socialistic adaptations to capitalism
are fine to protect the elderly and the poor, but
subsidies are destructive in the long haul because
they distort the market signals. of course, i've
already stated before what i think of taxation for
pollution and making sure there is recycling and
many other things. i sure know that communism isn't
functional. works ok at a small scale, breaks down
quickly once the group gets larger.

Who would know, it has never been tried.

the first few years of Christianity were
supposedly communist in organisation and
sharing of resources, but that devolves like
any other system as soon as you put money
in any large amounts into the hands of a
few "leaders" or "organizers".

however, i don't see any solution because any
system set up still has to interface with others
and that means some form of currency or government
to make sure the groups don't trample each other
or use false means of gain or counterfeit
currencies.


The U.S.S.R. was an oligarchy,
as is the capitalistic U.S. of A.

sure thing. with some regulation here or there
but the regulators can be bought off with campaign
money and lobbyists contributions. so we get the
best government that money can buy. which is also
exploitive of resources to the detriment of any
sort of sustainable future. without the environmental
groups doing their counter efforts we'd be in even
worse shape (the USSR was much worse than us in
terms of how they treated their people and resources).
so even if i don't much like what we've got and it
surely can be improved, it seems to be at least a
bit more open and changeable than most of what i
see anyplace else.

the other aspect is that we have a hugely varied
culture that some other countries don't have to
cope with. how to integrate so many different
forces and not have it all blow up all the time...


The Delaration of Independance says
"We the People". It doesn't say I, me, mine. We are all in this together
to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic
Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general
Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity.

which isn't the constitution, but i love the
language and intent.


Nothing in the Constitution says anything about banks making money at
the tax payer expense.

probably covered under "promote the general welfare"
intent above along with the clause which lets them
regulate interstate commerce as many banks now cross
state lines. as for the fed itself, that's a whole
different story and the history of that is well worth
reading up on sometime.

it didn't say anything about income taxes or property
taxes either, but once you get a governing class feeding
off the rest of the people it is very hard to break that
cycle of depredation.

as to how to regulate banking, i don't see any good
coming from the government being directly involved.
i already am having severe dislikes to the feds
current practices of transferring wealth from the
responsible to the irresponsible, but put the fed in
the government's direct control and it would be even
worse as then they'd have no check on their abuse of
the money supply. not that there seems to be one
right now anyways. if i had a better place to put my
money i'd be doing it, but the rest of the world is
not looking much better either.

my own answer is a different form of government, but
that's not likely to ever happen.

but getting back to the constitution, it's pretty
amazing how many people don't even read it once in
a while.


i think the current world is making up for it
in some ways, but the question is if it is
sustainable, and it doesn't look like it is as
most are currently practicing...

When the "free market" reigns, corporations will own the seeds for our
food, the rights to the our water, and charge us rent for the clothes on
our backs. Of course the problem may be moot if Global Warming gets away
from us, or we meet another Chicxulub asteroid.

they don't own my seeds and i'll gladly share.

The natural, free seeds are becoming fewer, and fewer. As much as I like
open pollinated seeds, I know that hybridized squash has less of a
problem with mildew. Hybridized means that it is owned by somebody.
Usually that somebody is Monsanto.

i don't think you are right. perhaps you can find
an organic source for a similar hybrid and not have
to buy from Monsanto. as there are so many squash
varieties you might even find something better.

i keep finding seed sources way beyond what i can
ever possibly use here. i don't think seed-savers are
going out of business any time soon, and the expansion
of farmer markets and people putting in their own
gardens is also a good trend in the opposite direction.


putting on some fertilizer, and then some potting soil, and lastly the
plant, with what ever potting soil is necessary to make the ground flush.
Today is sunflowers, lettuce, and potting some herbs.

i've been digging and burying more shredded bark
and wood pieces and then after filling it back in
and then topping it off with soil that is actually
topsoil (and not clay). into that went about 220
onions of three types and a small patch of turnips.

Ah, to be young again.

today is a day of r-n-r. very humid and in the
80s.

Mid 70s to mid 80s here for te last few weeks and the seedlings are
jumpin'

i'm glad they are coming along.

today looks pretty good for getting something
done outside.


if i didn't need to get areas above flood stage
i wouldn't be digging quite as much and having free
fill to put underneath is a big help too. i could
not justify spending money i don't have for 20
yards of topsoil, but i do have time and can use
the exercise. my back hasn't felt this good for
many years. thanks to chiropractor and being
careful the past year and listening to what my
body is telling me. we're trying to walk each day
before gardening. so when the day is done i'm
done too.

I hope you make it to 60 without any chronic illnesses, otherwise it can
be a real pile of shit. Good luck.

heh, allergies have always been fun, motorcycle
accident broke and twisted things so i have to be
careful about some angles and bends and then i've
had chronic back problems since i was 15. for me
to say that it is doing better is a huge improvement
in how things are going.

every day on the right side of the daisy roots is
a day i never expected. for some reason as a kid i
never expected to live past 30. having relatives
with chronic lung or back troubles or diabetes i
can see the way it can be. i've been through my own
piles so it's just a matter of keeping on, finding
what is important and working on that and not getting
hung up on what i can't do. being a systems analyst
means being able to break down a problem and work
the parts until it comes back together again. keep
the big picture in mind.


i was a bit worried by the lack of bees on the
blooming honeysuckle for a few days, but they were
out in force today. *whew!* we'll be planting
tomatoes and peppers within the next few weeks and
i'll be finding more spots for beans, beets and
peas, cucumbers, squash, strawberries are blooming
and the rhubarb is coming along well as are the
peas and onions already planted and the beets
sprouted days before i expected to see them.
the challenge is keeping the melon seeds from
sprouting and pushing up so much that they are
pushing all the beets out of the ground. i guess
that is one way to thin them...

rain due this week. we'll appreciate it. the
killdeer are still sitting on their eggs.

busy day today. i'm due for a bit of a snooze.

We had unexpected, but much needed company yesterday. Back to planting
today.

good luck to you and your sprouts.

Peppers (28) are in. Now it's on to the squash, sunflowers, and more
lettuce. Then it will be beets, onions, and the misc. The seeds for the
green beans must have been too old. I'll have to try again.

luckily they can be planted in series.
i keep planting peas and beans as much as i
can, i like the flowers and foliage as much
as the edibles.


songbird