From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

WISDOM FROM A GREAT FRIEND -- THE LIGHT OF THE NEW PARADIGM SHINES THROUGH

In the "old days" Scott McGuire -- AKA "Hawkeye" wrote some stunningly beautiful pieces for FTW. He lives up in Ashland and he's not only the best green-thumb organic farmer I've ever met -- in my humble opinion, he's a spiritual giant. He sent me this post about a week ago and I guess I had a senior moment. (I am 58 now... ;-) -- Did you ever meet someone who was your best friend like ten minutes after you met them" Hawkeye has saved my ass more than once with a gentleness that I cannot describe. He has two of the cutest kids I've ever seen, a great wife, and a slightly crazy cat. Please listen to him. Oh, and Hawkeye... I'll save my gold to buy seeds. We'll be able to buy a lot more that way.

MCR

FROM HAWKEYE

I love the idea of this thread with its own playlist so before I post here's my background of choice: Beachcombing by Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler:

They say there's wreckage washing up all along the coast
No-one seems to know too much, or who got hit the most
Nothing has been spoken, there's not a lot to see
But something has been broken, that's how it feels to me
We had a harmony I never meant to spoil
Now it's lying in the water like a slick of oil
The tide is running out to sea under a darkening sky
The night is falling down on me and I'm thinking that I
Should head on home, been gone to long…

I have to put in my two cents here about the soil building idea and also tweak a few priorities.

For those seriously interested in energy addiction recovery, the garden gate into the plant kingdom beckons wide. And as we remember and re-learn what-all it takes to feed ourselves, we'll find soil building is only one part of the picture. Yet having ground to grow on, any kind of ground, is the third most important thing. Even crappy soil can be improved if you have the second most important thing, water. Carving up lawns is a great idea; strips of sod can be stacked back-to-back to make a superior compost called turf-loam. However, so many lawns are nothing but sponges saturated with herbicides and other toxic residues. The ground underneath must then be loosened, aerated and re-mineralized to grow anything decent out of it.

The first most important thing, the thing you need to have if soil and water are going to be of any use to you at all, is seeds. I must disagree with all the rapture around gold. Right now we need to be investing in seed supplies. We must OWN the seeds if we ever expect to be able to grow the plants. I don't care if you don't yet know your ass from an asparagus; BUY the seeds right NOW for the plants you're going to want to eat.

Also, now is the time to purchase quality hand tools (the best ones are imported, American brands suck). A fork and spade, flat metal rake, hoes and scythes can all be rescued for a few hundred bucks. But if you don't have seeds in your pocket, you won't get very far in feeding anyone when you have to. If the S is really so close to HTF, then to hell with gold, you guys, buy greenhouses, windmills, bicycles, carts, tools, hoses, threshers, winnowers and PVC pipe! While gold may remain the standard between investors, seeds will become the currency between eaters. Invest in the Plant Stock Exchange!

The thread about manure is not just talking shit. It highlights my favorite on the Top 10 List of Peak Everything, Peak Nitrogen. Ultimately, the only sources of plant-usable nitrogen that don't come from natural gas, come from the Legume Family (elitist Soil Bankers) and the asses of animals. All of the manures have their virtues, however take caution with horse these days because of nasty heartworm medications passing right through. Not everyone will be able to have animals, but everybody can possess seeds of legumes to grow the fertility- building plants for the compost.

The transitional ecosystems of our very near future must first take root in our hearts and minds before they will ever be able to express out of our hands and muscles. We will be able to grow whatever we need, but first we have to get tighter with the plants. For instance, forget about all the fuss around the cannabis flowers, we need to be growing the stalk for the fiber and the seeds for the oils. Any true patriots out there have seeds to the Jeffersonian strain? There are riches lying in the roadside ditches of the Midwest.

Highly recommended: Anything by John Jeavons' Biointensive growing methods. Comprehensive and concentrated knowledge, skills and wisdom. And a great seed catalog. Permaculture is a wonderful context for ultimate solutions, but we'll all need some more grounded horticultural skills to get there.

This year I'm organizing a CSA around my 2/3's acre rented backyard.
(Check out PeakMoment TV's tour of my place:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOaPFt_ajvU#GU5U2spHI_4 )

I will grow vegetables, flowers and herbs for 10 families, and they'll pay the rent. We'll also be giving away gardens to single moms and old ladies the way Dan Barker did for over a decade in Portland (over 1400 gardens for FREE). Home Gardening Project:
http://www.jeffnet.org/~hgpf/

If the game is really going to become about feeding ourselves, then the Mayans are right, it really is the end of time as we know it. The collapse will either happen within days, weeks, months or years, but they're all just some dead Emperor's slave- boxes. The recovery will happen during a growing season. Is it THIS one? If you think so, then get growing.

Any post-petroleum life is going to be all about getting back on plant time. THIS growing season is our moment of now. The window of opportunity to harvest true wealth opens wide every spring. Peace is growing. Growing as much square footage as you can turn over within walking distance of where you live. No matter how small doesn't matter at all. At this point all we can do is plant seeds anyway. And all the ideas for a better sustainable life are seeds right now. It's up to us to sow them well and soon.

Loveya Mike. Come home any time.
************************************************************************************

MIKE RUPPERT ON SHORT LEAVE FROM BLOG

I mentioned this was coming. I have a ton of critical legal stuff to do, along with work on the new book. It's necessary, and it's all stuff that's been needing attention for a while. Now is the time to deal with it. I'll be a very happy guy when it's fiished. I'll stick my head up as I can. In the meantime I leave you in Jenna's capable and magnificent hands.

MCR

*************************************************************************************

Jenna Orkin adds:

Business Confidence in BRICs Plummets
Qaeda Commander Warns India of Mumbai-like Attacks
Beware of Energy's Robber Barons
NATO Says Members May Use Iran for Afghan Supplies
Russian Arms Sales Hit Post-Soviet Record in 2008
Japan Ready to Offer $17 Billion to Asia
Banks, Funds, Insurers Cut 312,500 Jobs in Crisis
Downturn Slashes 20 Million Jobs in China
That's "twenty million," as in a thousand times twenty thousand.
Chinese Cautious on Treasuries
The Story The Media Won't Touch
DEA Quits Bolivia on Morales' Order
United States of Africa Still a Dream
A Federal Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration
Dubai: The End of World Headquarters
Scroll down:
"Dubai is a giant Ponzi scheme that will make Bernie Madoff look like small change."
Spinach and Peanuts With a Dash of Radiation

Thanks to Rice Farmer for the following:
Crime Scene Investigation
US Army Lab Freezes Research on Dangerous Pathogens

37 comments:

v said...: Panasonic to fly home workers' families over bird flu fears

V(incent); 10:53 PM
Rice Farmer said...: I could not have written it better myself. From the outset I could tell the writer has a passion for the soil and growing things. Yes, get seeds, tools, and whatever else you can. And get started this season, because what budding gardeners need most is EXPERIENCE. Even with expert guidance, you are going to make lots of mistakes. Learn from them.; 3:38 AM
Barry said...: Mike, you can keep your gold and have your seeds too. The beauty of seeds is that, in theory, you only need one - and a place to plant it - to start a collection. Half-a-dozen plants will yield hundreds. But you have to start collecting now. This is something we all can do if we can find some soil nearby, and it only costs about fifty bucks to start a few different varieties. Heck, find a couple of friends to split the cost of the first envelopes of heirloom seed, and one can start a diverse seed nursery for about twenty bucks. And you'll get some fresh food to eat as well!; 4:28 AM
Peter J. Nickitas said...: Blogsters, sisters, and brothers:

Here is a fresh article on the National Guard:

http://www.truthout.org/021109J

Support the troops: bring them home and keep them home.

Peter J. of Minneapolis; 6:37 AM
Diaspora said...: Seeds, that’s the route I have taken. I have purchased enough for many years and if I have no other arrow in my quiver, I can always barter with seeds. Here’s a site I deal with that I know to be reputable. http://www.survivalistseeds.com/Home_Page.html
Be careful! Some of the other outfits charge your card and never deliver. For long term survival it is essential that you get the right kind of seed. Heirloom is what you want.

ABOUT SEEDS (from the seed savers exchange)
One kind of seed, called First generation hybrids (F1 hybrids), have been hand-pollinated, and are patented, often sterile, genetically identical within food types, and sold from multinational seed companies.

The second kind of seeds are genetically engineered. Bioengineered seeds are fast contaminating the global seed supply on a wholesale level, and threatening the purity of seeds everywhere. The DNA of the plant has been changed. A cold water fish gene could be spliced into a tomato to make the plant more resistant to frost, for example.

A third kind of seeds are called heirloom or open-pollinated, genetically diverse jewels that have been passed on from generation to generation.
With heirloom seeds there are 10,000 varieties of apples, compared to the very few F1 hyprid apple types.

The Mayan word “gene” means “spiral of life.” The genes in heirloom seeds give life to our future. Unless the 100 million backyard gardeners and organic farmers keep these seeds alive, they will disappear altogether. This is truly an instance where one person–a lone gardener in a backyard vegetable garden–can potentially make all the difference in the world.

Bill Gates knows what the stakes are. He and the NWO crowd established a “seed vault” at the top of the world but I doubt they have any plans of sharing them with the rest of us. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529

Mike, may God Speed you on your journey!; 6:44 AM
Unknown said...: As regards soil improvement and restoration, check Terra Preta:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

It is an ancient method for soil fertility enhancement with charcoal. Lately gets much attention from scientists.; 7:01 AM
gaelicgirl said...: Thanks, this is a wonderful post that makes my heart sing. And he's correct. I subscribed, for my husband's bithday, to the Seed Savers Exchange, a terrific organization that has been around since, I believe, the 1970s. We just got their "big book" of seeds available, and it's a fascinating read.; 7:02 AM
Unknown said...: @Scott:

good thoughts and wonderful work in your garden. while using N fixing plants to improve soil is the way to go, peak N is not a situation we are in. there is plenty of N in the air. just in case you are not aware there are two movements going on: wind to ammonia (http://strandedwind.org/) and ammonia fuel (http://www.ammoniafuelnetwork.org/). to most of peak-aware people, Matt Simmons is not a unfamiliar name. in several of his interviews, he has talked about the project to build a wind farm off the coast of Maine equivalent to the capacity of 5 nuclear power plants to meet the energy need of Maine -- especially in the peak season of winter -- while using the surplus power generate to produce ammonia in off-peak seasons.

jsb; 7:03 AM
Anonymous said...: Interesting comments and timing from Hawkeye regarding seeds and the Mayans.

I paid a visit to the Temple of Kukulkan just last week. While I was in the area I spent some time observing local settlements and core infrastructure of the local Mayans who live nearby. In the event of a catostrophic economic collapse, the indigenous people whom we currently view as impoverished will have an immeasurable wealth in contrast to the average US resident.

Why? The answer is simple: seeds. These people establish ther own resources at a very local level. Water is collected in cisterns. Food is grown in private gardens. Livestock is maintained on individual properties. Shelter is meager in contrast to our standards, but is fully sufficient. And the cost to maintain and grow is measured in individual output rather than in dollars or cents.

And what kinds of resources do you see when you walk onto a property? Hawkeye already called it: wheelbarrows, bicycles, rakes, carts, hoses, etc. It's not rocket science, but it takes a little bit of forethought and planning to enable us to ramain viable when the economy fails. The poorest of the poor can do it. We can find a way to do it too. It's a matter of willingness.

People should also make sure to buy non-GM seeds. If you live in an area where there's potential for cross contamination with GM seeds (a neighboring garden, for example) you might consider using some mesquito netting to protect yourself from cross pollination. I don't know how feasible that will be in practice, but it's something to consider.

Finally. when you see folks like David Rockefeller and Bill Gates teaming up to build a private seed bank on a remote arctic island, you have to look at their efforts from a practical perspective by asking the question: "If they're preparing a contingency plan to maintain an uncontaminated seed supply, that means they must have identified a risk that justifies spending 100's of millions of dollars. Should I be doing something to follow their lead and prepare myself to face whatever disaster they feel may threaten the global food chain?"

I believe that most of us on this blog already know the answer to that question.; 7:34 AM
Unknown said...: Beware of Energy Robber Barons (Jenna's link) deals with the trouble India is having with projected pipelines running through Pakistan. If there were peace in the region, that might work, but obviously post-Mumbai there is no reason to hope for it. So who gains from roughing up the situation?

http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2007/0419india_riedel.aspx US-Indian Relations: A New Agenda for a New Era Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy April 19, 2007 —
When President Bush signed the US-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement on December 18, 2006, a new era began in the US relationship with India....India will be one of America's most crucial partners in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the rapprochement with India began under President Clinton and is one of the few areas of continuity in foreign policy between the Clinton and Bush teams.

...Sales of nuclear energy plants will be only one facet of the increasingly complex US-India economic relationship.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2009/02/09/2003435610
Defense industry salivates at arms-hungry India

Tell me again why American drones are rocketing Pakistan?

also, SEBASTIAN RONIN REPLIED:

Re "We don’t want to go there." Of course, no one WANTS to go there. But here again, the sentiment implies that there is some kind of magic will that can alter history…

eyeballs, an after thought: By resorting to Hobbes are you not in fact justifying and endorsing the Leviathan?

Holy cats, NO! I’m far more comfortable with anarchy than Hobbes was. But then I grew up in a very stable – boringly stable – society that is now coming to an end. Who knows what I (and others who are not ready to admit it) may be begging for later? My comment was (and I know you disagree) that people can do things right now to knit themselves together: throw the deck chairs into the sea and strap ‘em together one way and another, bringing along food and water, a compass and a first aid kit. While it’s true our ship is going down, it MIGHT NOT be true that we all have to perish painfully or all at once. If we can even eke out a continuity of decency among the sighted few, for long enough, there may be something on the other side of this catastrophe.

Or not. Worth trying NOW, though, really. Eh? I mean as opposed to just talking about it as the water swishes around our knees.

The excellent piece by McGuire on seeds, etc. gets right to it.; 7:55 AM
Unknown said...: Can we get a list of good seed companies to order from? I checked http://www.survivalistseeds.com/Home_Page.html, but i don't need $130 worth of seeds and the site says they're not for weekend gardeners, which would be me.; 10:38 AM
v said...: ”TEXAS CRAFTS PLAN FOR MEXICO COLLAPSE”.

V(incent); 10:44 AM
Unknown said...: A very important book in this regard is "Saving Seeds" by Marc Rogers. Or some other source of that type of information.

Some plants, its as straightforward as growing them and saving the seeds, but there are lots and lots of variations. Many edible plants are biennial, not producing seed until their second year. Some can be overwintered in the ground (depending on your climate extremes) and some have to be dug up and stored in a way that they can be replanted when conditions are suitable. Lots of edible plants will cross with others of the same kind and often will cross with dissimilar plants in the same family and produce likely unusable, oddball zombies. Maybe you could eat such a zombie, but its likely to be infertile and certainly won't breed true to the characteristics of any of the original plants. So there needs to be appropriate separation of the plants you intend to be seed bearers (sometimes as much as a mile), or else you have to plan to raise seed plants of some varieties in different years, or divvy up the seed raising with others at different locations, or you'll simply have a mess. The point is there's plenty to learn and you don't want to learn this kind of thing the hard way.

In that vein I think a worthy bit of advice is to put a note on the bathroom mirror that says "make mistakes faster". I know from experience that a real pitfall for some people can be thinking too much and trying to get it all right the first time. Just start, or speed up, making mistakes, so you get on a learning curve. You're going to make plenty of mistakes anyway, so just relax your sphincter a little bit and give yourself a chance to learn some things instead of making yourself crazy with everything there is to accomplish. Then you're on a path--a sustainable path at that.

And though its been said a couple of times already, I'm going to reiterate the importance of "The Humanure Handbook" by Joe Jenkins. The subject, in my eyes, is not fundamentally about making yer doodoo go away, its about recovering nutrients. And you don't need a $1500 composting toilet to do it. All you need is a couple of $5 plastic totes from Walmart and some red worms, or as we called them when I was a kid--shit worms. Eisenia Foetida. Jenkins recommends specically, thermophilic composting, but I have several years of personal experience that red worms will do the job. And those wiggly little boogers won't miss ANYTHING. Not to mention that over time you'll have enough worms to feed chickens or other poultry, or you can just let them die off (kind of like we're going to do).; 11:49 AM
gaelicgirl said...: A great place to start for seeds:

www.seedsavers.org

"Since 1975, Seed Savers Exchange members have passed on approximately one million samples of rare garden seeds to other gardeners. We are a non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.

Learn more about us and our mission"; 12:23 PM
Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...: Yo, eyeballs, re "My comment was (and I know you disagree) that people can do things right now to knit themselves together."

Not exactly. I agree that the survialist community is up and running to various degrees of success, from people who have been at it for years (Alpha/Rubicon), to middle of the road (I'm in here somewhere), to bug out with a back pack newbie. This very string is proof of that. There will be small pockets of negative entropy, ranging from individual homesteads to communities.

My interest and concern is what will be happening in the surrounding sea of chaos, i.e. the continent, Turtle Island, with a population of about 340 million, the vast majority of that urban and totally out to lunch re what is happening to their lives. That is what needs to play itself out.

There is a certain amount of self-interest in at least attempting to sketch political templates so as to even marginally temper the collapse. A variation of the type of scenario that you laid out the other day is in the cards, IMO. Do we watch from a safe distance (a safety that is not guaranteed, i.e. can the turmoil jump the buffer zone from urban to rural?) or begin to build new institutions, i.e. decentralized and secessionist, to defuse the situation and its horror.; 1:30 PM
Spårare i Sverige, Trackers in Sweden said...: Geography is one of our interest.So when an island disappears for geopolitical reasons it should be a big news! Should it not?
Here is a story of how an Mexican Island vanished from maps and earth because it defines where the borders are put, borders which decide who gets the oil...
Maybe its old news, but it just got posted here is Scandinavia so I am sharing. Thanks for a great blog./Ptarmigan

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/diciembre/juev11/mysterious.html; 1:34 PM
prettywitch13 said...: gaelicgirl,

While you are here, I wanted to thank you for the www.ascentofhumanity.com link. Very intuitively poignant and profound.

I've been passing it around quite a bit.

Thank you!; 1:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Wow! I am grinning ear to ear as I read Hawkeye's thughts. He couldn't have hit that nail on the head any better. I am a urban- guerilla vegetable gardener myself...a new breed of revolutionary. Shit, legumes, and a fortunate lightning bolt! There's plenty of nitrogen we just need to fix it.
Wasn't it John Seymour who said that we are essentially eating the sun when we crunch into our veggies? Sun = Nitrogen = proteins = life.
I think I'm going to munch on some sun, I'm getting hungry thinking of all the fresh veggies flourishing in my winter garden here in the South of Spain!
What a shame we can't post photos on the blog...I could inspire some of you with the possibilities when you possess determination, an abandoned public piece of land and a good pitch fork...oh and a good back!; 2:05 PM
gildone84 said...: Antibiotics Research Is Losing The Battle to Bacteria:

http://sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/17640; 5:29 PM
RanD said...: Sebastion-- I could not more perfectly concur with your Feb 11, 1:37 PM observations and sentiments. No one, from my wife's & my perspective, gives due consideration for the time invariably required to move from one form of long deeply rooted thinking and behavior (i.e. 'lifestyle') to one that is significantly if not entirely unexperienced [sic] and thus effectively unknown and thus, in the short term (at least), seemingly virtually undoable once seriously, rather than merely imaginatively, attempted.

My wife and I know this and express ourselves from much experience in these matters. We have been gardening and seed-saving all our lives, in numerous locations with pertinently differing conditions, been proficient at hunting & gathering (h&g), have over extensive periods of time been successful at directly producing and h&g harvesting 70% to 80% of our meat and vegetable needs, and commonly had ridiculously small pecuniary means relative to 'the norm', and frequently lived even below 'the line' (as we do now) which 'the system' uses to hypothetically separate the impoverished from those that are doing okay. We also know what a challenge it is for long-running all-American types to move from a nuclear family lifestyle to anything smacking of communalism. Most of us just ain't been bred that way.

We're also always debt free, pay cash for everything, work very hard, are retired, and live very well -- according to our standards. We've also been successful free-enterprising entrepreneurial types, know the ins and outs of capitalism, the Fed, fractional reserve monetarism, the profit motive, why 'the flow of money is wealth' etc etc etc, and exactly why what's taking place on our planet today is taking place. We also know as well as you that 'the end of this system of things' is in sight.

So it is that my wife & I equally know both what we and what all other FTW folks are talking about and feeling when it comes to what the human condition at large is facing in terms of current global-wide actualities. And, ultimately, this is why 'RanD' consistently emphasizes investing at least some time in that which is of ultimate essential value before it is impossible to any longer to do so. And to do that, from our perspective, means becoming as "comprehensively aware of reality" as possible before 'the end' gets here.

*******

Just felt it was time to let you know we think you're cool and regularly on the same page as us; and we're going to be viewing "Ronin" tomorrow nite (and hoping it'll be good, of course).

Cheers; 6:08 PM
Unknown said...: riots spreading through europe:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKLB77261720090211?sp=true

Emanuel; 7:08 PM
Stacy Brittain said...: Thanks, Mike, for posting Hawkeye's message...I'm out to find a scythe as soon as I can as well as some new seeds.
:-) Great word to us all to get prepared for growing.

Thank you,
Stacy; 8:16 PM
Anonymous said...: Re: we will be learning from the 3rd world soon.. that was in my thoughts recently as well. strongly. been watching the tribes series and also reading a lot about primitive techniques in different climates which is part of my research on where to live, to know that I can support myself, friends and family on the land if I have to fall back to that.

The rant starts out with a great quote about mushrooms and how they help restore the forest after a fire.. will we be like the mushrooms after the coming forest-fire like die-off?

http://infopatriots.blogspot.com/2009/02/mushrooms-and-our-purpose-in-life.html; 10:23 PM
Jeff said...: I thought everyone might like this,at least get a laugh out of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QovBLFZhQME; 12:02 AM
Paul Davis said...: (UK) Oil industry needs tax breaks to avert slump

The UK oil industry has asked the Government for tax breaks to prevent a collapse in drilling activity in the North Sea that could lead to the loss of up to 50,000 jobs in Britain.; 12:48 AM
Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...: Quote taken from article, "Catastrophic Fall in 2009 Global Food Production:"

http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/02/2009-global-food-catastrophe.html

"The world is heading for a drop in agricultural production of 20 to 40 percent, depending on the severity and length of the current global droughts. Food producing nations are imposing food export restrictions. Food prices will soar, and, in poor countries with food deficits, millions will starve."

For pics on the severity of the global drought in China, see here:

http://epochtimes.com/gb/9/2/7/n2421016.htm

Add into the Chinese mix 29 million unemployed migrant workers, as reported recently in here by MCR.

Further add into the mix Ban Ki Moon's ongoing pleas for global aid to the "bottom billion," most recently voiced at Davos.

The notion of "die off" will never make it onto the front pages of the corporate media. Post-Peak Oil, climate chaos (i.e. global draught), financial meltdown, etc., etc., etc., all are entered into play. As Heinlein has phrased it: peak everything.

We bob towards and into the perfect social and political storm, some vessels less flimsy than others. Those not tied firmly to their respective masts will be washed overboard. IMO, the pending "feast of consequences" strips bare the luxury of hypothesizing about and forecasting for same, my own inclusive. The immediate environment always dictates; it does not suggest. The trick is to clearly perceive the signals, responsibly interpret the directives, and as humbly and courageously as possible, adapt accordingly.

We scan the turf before us, make our best guesstimates, and prepare accordingly. May God's speed (however one understands that) be with us all.; 2:56 AM
Anonymous said...: Great read. I've said it here several times that we must protect our seed supply because of sinister corporations like Monsanto. They'll starve millions in the end. "Seed to Seed" is a good read to learn how to save seeds.
I'm still constructing a small permaculture design around my house. Informed my Dad (and business pardner)last month this is my last year to continue to farm our entire 7,000 acre operation (5,400 acres are rented), so I can focus on farming the way it was intended in the beginning - pure and natural.
Hey Shorebreak, I just got back from Mexico (my honeymoon) and visited two Mayan sites (Tulum and Coba) and am still fascinated by their farming skills. We still have a lot to learn. Stay strong everybody. Love and Light. Thanks Mike and Jenna again for all you do here.; 6:07 AM
gaelicgirl said...: prettywitch13, I'm very glad that you liked the link, and that you're passing it on! Thanks for letting me know.; 6:12 AM
Anonymous said...: I highly recommend seeds from Johnny's Seed catalog, for those of you (like us) who have short growing seasons. Johnny's specializes in organic and heirloom seeds, and they're a pleasure to work with.

Also, good to buy seeds that are not hybrids. The seeds that are produced by hybrid plants can't be planted themselves, so you always need a fresh supply of seeds. (This stinks, because my favorite cherry tomato will always be the Sweet One Hundreds...damn...)

Ummmm...anybody in southern Colorado want uncontaminated horse shit? We've got plenty! :-); 6:43 AM
Anonymous said...: I also recommend "The Wild Food Trail Guide" by Alan Hall. It's my favorite guide to wild edibles. Every year I've been trying to learn to identify one or two new wild plants and incorporate them into at least one meal. My favorites so far are lamb's quarters and purslane--good in "weed salad" :-).; 6:54 AM
RanD said...: Feb 12, 2009
Here you go Tim, and all you FTW folks in general --

On LIFE and DEATH:

Humankind's both ancient and modern perception/concept of (i.e., belief in) "death" developed at some uncertain many numbers of years long ago during the beginnings of our species' literal develop-'mental' process, when our forebears' then comparatively much less mentally-intellectually developed minds observed that human bodies regularly (if not necessarily always) are born with the abilities to feel, think, express themselves, freely move about etc, and thus be more or less happy and normal "living" beings; which, for not comprehensively understood reasons, would also one day stop moving, breathing, and talking, and thus stop being "alive" altogether, whereafter their physical flesh would become stiff and cold and begin stinking and rotting away and progressively reducing to end up little more than a mere scattering of bones. They also saw that all other self-reproducing physically alive things from trees to toads were, in their own respective ways, in principle, similarly disposed to be born, live, and die and also succumb to apparent virtual non-existence. In fact, what a convoluted tangle of evidence, uncertainties and misperceptions this whole business of life & death must have been for them... just as it evidently continues being for us today.

Like wow!! What in the world is going on here?! This is mysterious stuff! Is that really going to happen to me, too?! What in the world is this all about?! Am I really going to die?! Oh my gawd I can't stand it, it's scary! What does this mean? This is nuts! Who invented this terrible situation?!... and WHY?! This must have something to do with the demons, the gawds, the worms, bugs, the smelly water, eating the flesh of certain animals, those damn plants over there... and... then there's all those sneaky snakes and all those strange distant lights in the sky!!! Geeeze! Life's a bitch and then you die!

So, using today's words of somewhat more or less advanced and precise understanding, we might fairly conclude: whatever exact thoughts long ago transpired in the relatively scientifically naive minds of our ancient forebears concerning their world became the seeds of what we continue producing to generally believe today in ours, including: Ta-Da! "Death occurs when our bodies die!" There's of course much more to it than that.

Evidently, without question, bodily-alive physical birth and no-longer-bodily-alive physical death happens. Living organisms' bodily births & lives and some-time-later bodily deaths are perfectly normal, consistently self-evincing routine aspects of our overall Earth-based human experience. All we can conclude from the perspective of sound physically based science, however, is that "every living organism's physical body's eventual death evidently represents a single episodic completion of "LIFE's" infinity of physically embodied experiences. Therefore, the real question to ask ourselves is what happens to those suddenly dead bodies' respective "living essences" -- i.e., their "thoughts" ("minds"), and their "feelings" ("spirits") -- whose systemically entwined and intimated presence throughout that inherently inert if remarkably sophisticated physical structure -- are what made that body "alive"? And what kind of reasoning would make the phenomena which define "life", itself -- i.e., "one's self conscious mind & spirit" -- synonymous with what is evidently the inert mere "physical body"?

Such questions are of course denied validity by exponents of an exclusively materialistic reality, where such a conspicuously biased nonscientific premise invariably runs up against its own self-imposed stone cold vacuum of terra cognita thereof life, spirit, and mind not even existica. So, if one wants information from beyond where exclusively materialist mind sets want to look, one needs to implement unbiased, pure-and-genuine scientific methodology -- alone -- to learn about inherently incorporeal phenomena that others deny even exist. (Which, btw, is exactly what strict scientific methodologists began successfully doing several years ago now -- under the ingeniously face-saving aegis of quantum physics. Thank GOD!)

*******

As RanD has said before: there are evidently three intimately correlated yet fundamentally self-distinct existential phenomena which comprise the archetypal foundation of our currently manifesting Universe; and our integral, uniquely human relationship to/with our currently manifesting Universe linguistically self-evinces the fact that we are produced directly therefrom our currently manifesting Universe and are therefore direct extensions thereof said Universe.

As RanD has also said before: the three fundamental criteria which comprise the archetypal foundation of our currently manifesting Universe are the actualities of 1.) physical matter/energy, 2.) the progenitive essence of existence, it-SELF (i.e., "life", "GOD", "the Great SPIRIT", "reality", "everything that exists"), and 3.) the Mind of GOD, which is the very first-born out of GOD and which Jesus of Nazareth referred to as "the/his/our Father in the heaven(s)". Moreover, all three of the above have long before RanD been collectively/traditionally fully consciously correlated and referred to by the human species' more existentially perspicacious types as, respectively, the "body", the "soul", and the "mind" of the human organism -- which criteria precisely reflect the archetypal foundation of the Universe of which humankind is, collectively, the most advanced product-extension.

Also as previously said by RanD: physically structured devices/bodies are inherently ephemeral, thus "die", and thus meet the criteria by which the human mind defines "death". As for the progenitive essence of life, it-SELF (i.e., "GOD", "the Great SPIRIT" etc), however, "life" is definitively impossible of "death"; in that if the Paramount Singular Source of everything which meaningfully exists should be capable of dying, then upon the actual death of everything meaningful's Source of existence, nothing could ever exist again, forever, if GOD -- i.e., "life it-SELF" -- truly "died".

As for the first-born out of GOD, i.e., "the Mind of GOD" -- being GOD's own SELF-consciousness of GOD's own eternally living nature -- it is also evident that the human mind, which is a direct extension of GOD's Mind, produces ever-changing thoughts in respect to the nature of the intrinsically alive and thus never dying --and yet ever-changing -- reality of which the Mind of GOD is produced, which is GOD. Thus even the Mind of GOD, which manifests collectively as the minds of humankind as they variously occur throughout the infinite field of existence, is/are ephemeral. And so it is that the good and better minds of women and men alike are always given to change/evolve their minds to serve good and ever better purposes. And so it is that thoughts and ideas, like physical structures, are also inherently ephemeral, and thus ever subject to the Universal Process which is systemically correlated with the cyclic phenomenon of physically-embodied birth, life, & death. Whereas GOD, being the Great SPIRIT which manifests GOD's SELF as Living Essence throughout the infinite field of all living things as their own individualized living spirits, reflects GOD and GOD's infinite number of living spirits thereof GOD's SELF as a unified eternally alive phenomenological constant that never knows death.

And so it is that all living species' physically-alive members' embodied spirits -- only --likewise, never die. And, as for uniquely humankind's species, it is precisely via fully assimilating such knowledge as is being given here that one's personal human mind -- which fully consciously knows the eternally alive SPIRIT which is its life --secures to itself eternal life.

Sincerely, RanD; 8:01 AM
Donald said...: Lucas -

One good source for heirloom/open-pollinated seeds is http://www.bountifulgardens.org/

They also carry some great books on getting started in gardening - check out "The Sustainable Vegetable Garden" and "How to Grow More Vegetables".; 8:55 AM
Pandabonium said...: Catastrophic Fall in 2009 Global Food Production
The countries that make up two thirds of the world's agricultural output are experiencing drought conditions.; 10:41 AM
Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...: Mr. and Ms. RanD:

Olive branch accepted. =;-D But please, I ask you to not so much as even consider attempting to tell me how, what and why I should conduct my faith. Re so-called death, I would've fallen back on the short version: energy cannot be destroyed; only the media through which it flows alters.

So we trudge forward from the present...which, I believe, both of us know is the only intersection of time and space that exists.

We breath in, we breath out, just like the seasons of Gaia and the ups and downs of her attendant civilizations.

BTW, the movie is Hollywood fluff. It’s good Hollywood fluff, but Hollywood fluff all the same.; 11:37 AM
tim said...: RanD;
Correct me if I'm wrong:
When a critical mass of humanity has had enough of this world with its war, corruption, competition, etc, they will evolve to a world without war, corruption, etc. That is a Spiritual world without rape, murder, competition. They will identify with their Spirit (no longer manifesting a physical body) and no longer manifest war, rape, etc. Those that choose to "go to hell" as you once said, are those who like competition and war and they will get a world like that which is still body-based and full of rape,murder,competition. You are literally talking about a critical mass of humanity evolving to a spiritual state without physical bodies. Is this a correct enough summary?; 12:31 PM
Roert oilcrash.com said...: Fill up your attic with brand new shoes
a pair a week until the oil-crash news
pick sizes and styles that will sell and last
because when there’s no cars shoes wear out fast

Don’t tell a soul (I intend no pun)
you can’t defend against a grim mans gun
pack some for you - you’ll need some too
and maybe some tacks and maybe some glue

and all the things that strugglers need
some axes and shovels and long-life seeds
and fishing tackle and guns and bows
and books on things that nobody knows

and needles and thread and lots of wool
and keep it up ’til your attic is full
tell no-one at all not even your kin
just store it and wait for the fun to begin

and maybe those shoes will be worth more than gold
and worth more than diamonds whenever they’re sold
and with care and with skill your attic will be
a bank for your future, just try it and see

Murray Hobbs 2003 (ish?)
www.oilcrash.com; 9:57 PM
Peter J. Nickitas said...: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and the Daily Telegraph brings frightening news from Eastern Europe, courtesy of GATA:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4623525/Failure-to-save-East-Europe-will-lead-to-worldwide-meltdown.html; 10:49 PM

From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

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