A Walk in the Garden

After all the politics, it's time to get back to what really matters: Good food, good people, good times.

I've put a lot of my time on this blog into talking about how important it is to get out there and grow your own food, on whatever scale you can manage. So can I walk the talk? Well, it's only early spring, but I have lots of leafy stuff in the ground, at least. Whether or not these will yield remains to be seen, but I have high hopes.
Here we have pumpkins that sprouted in the compost and which I transplanted into the ground, along with a few self-sown tomato sprouts that came up from the compost too. I guess I'll learn how well Pumpkins and Tomatoes play together.
You might remember several months ago when I got all keen and planted a whole lot of pumpkin seeds on the top of our section in the hopes of a bumper spring crop. Well, since then I have learned that pumpkins don't grow during the winter. But guess what? They have now decided to crop up like mad. I'm going to have to do a whole lot more weeding to give these all room to grow.
Here are some of the tomatoes we planted on the doorstep (full credit to Dessert Chef for nurturing these little guys from seeds to the handsome chaps they are becoming).
And one lone broccoli survived the cats, the frost, the wind and the moths and has actually started to look like a broccoli (if you look really close).

Check here for before pictures of the tomatoes and broccoli above.

I also blogged about planting some potatoes which I had sprouted on the kitchen windowsill.
Here's one of them, the smaller one no less. Encouraged by this, I've put a couple more in the ground and have more sprouting as well. At this rate, I'm going to run out of room!
But it's good to know that I have the best help that love can buy:

The Grand Illusion

A few years ago I had a flatmate whose name now eludes me. He was an Australian guy, travelling with a German girl (whose name was Lisi and may have actually been Austrian), and they rented a room in our Brooklyn (Wellington) flat in the summer of late 1999. Accordingly, in those heady days of pre-millennium angst, there was much talk between those flatting there at the time or visiting (I seem to recall tents on the lawn at New Years, and more people than I care to remember sharing one little bathroom) about what the fateful tick-over into the dreaded year 2000 would really mean. We worried not so much about whether the Student Loan Office computers would sieze up and lose all records of any money we might owe the Government (we were pretty sure they'd have that well covered), nor about whether the videos we had hired on December 30th might be 1000 years overdue on January 2nd, so much as whether or not the archaic missile systems of post-Cold War Europe would poop themselves and rain nuclear armageddon down on the rest of the world.

That, of course, never happened.

I remember talking to this flatmate, let's call him Oz, over a cold beer on a hot afternoon, and being awed by his world-weary wisdom. He mused that it would not be nuclear war that would bring an end to the granduer of the 20th Century, but that the demise of Western Civilisation, not just in the moral sense that the conservative right have been lamenting for sixty years now, would come about when the whole grand illusion of the world economy caved in on itself. America, he predicted, would bring about its own undoing when all the false realities of its financial system were laid bare, and everything would fall from there.

I'm sure that I don't need to summarise for anyone reading this just what has happened to the world markets in recent weeks and months. But here are a few things to consider, thinking about what Oz said to me that day 9 years ago:

• Last week, Wall St crashed further than it did in 1987, despite an injection by the US Govt of about 1 trillion dollars, suggesting that, like most things that are fundamntally flawed, simply throwing more money at the problem will not fix it.
• Iceland is bankrupt. This is a country we're talking about. An entire country. Bankrupt.
• Inflation in Zimbabwe is running at 1,000,000% per day. When faced with numbers like that, how can money mean anything at all?
• The Large Hadron Collider cost around 5 billion pounds over the past ten or so years, making it the most expensive science project ever. Yet the US Govt spends 1 billion dollars a day on its military activities in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. After 7 years of this, how many worthwhile science projects that might have helped avert the global climate and food crises we're facing now might have been funded instead?

My question is this: Why could our world leaders not anticipate what has happened, given the pain and suffering it is causing and going to cause to so many, when a bright young tourist, who worked odd-jobs to pay his way tiki-touring around the globe, saw it coming at least a decade ago?

I would hazard a guess that the answer is that they always knew, but because the illusion is so deeply entrenched in the financial practices and the psyches of pretty much everyone on the planet (apart from those lucky subsistence hunters of the deep Amazon or nomadic herders of Inner Mongolia or Patagonia), there really was nothing they could do but wait for the dream to shatter. To try to fix it would have been to perpetuate the very fallout that we are now witnessing, and no-one wants to be remembered for unleashing such a thing on the world.

As someone said, to believe in the American Dream, it's best if you're asleep.

For another very lucid opinion on what has transpired and what is yet to come, check out this interview with Charles Hugh Smith.

And to bring it back down to earth, for those of us who can never pull the great puppet strings that rule the world, it's just another reminder that every day we should be striving for self-reliance, instead of depending on the world out there to provide for us. If you were in Iceland right now, you'd be wishing you didn't have to wait for the next boat to come in bringing your winter food supplies, because that boat isn't coming. And that is a very harsh reality to be facing, when it is not your doing that has brought this about.

I'm constantly inspired by the people I see making inroads into self-sustainability. Apart from the obvious examples like the Dervaes and Gallimaufree, Patrice Farmer is a single mother who is managing to raise not only her daughter but also several chickens and a garden that puts mine to shame, all the while doing so with a crippling bone disorder (arthritis I think - correct me if I'm wrong, Patrice). As I read her blog, I'm reminded that I have no excuse not to do more to break away from the grand illusion before my family and I become victims of its collapse.

The Politics of Dependence

It's an election year. Now, I have no plans to make this site political, but a thought did occur to me on the way home.

For fear of bringing the full terrifying weight of the Electoral Finance Act down on my head, no parties will be named in this post.

It seems that we have a major party who would be happy for the bulk of the population to depend on the government. And there is another party who would like everyone to depend on the business sector. There are several smaller parties who advocate various positions in between these two. But it seems to me that there is only one party who continue to push for people's right to depend on themselves, and to suggest that the government ought to be willing to support such endeavours.

When we were in Melbourne last year, I noticed that the Victoria State government was paying a rebate of 50% of all costs to people who were installing their own rainwater catchment systems and solar panels (Please, correct me if I'm wrong - there's nothing worse than the fall from a high horse when you're not really in the saddle). Here, it will cost a minimum of about $3000 to retrofit a small solar water heating system in an existing home (its cheaper if you install when a house is being built). Then, if you qualify, the government will pay you up to $500 towards the cost of interest on a loan to pay for said solar water heating system. Which is a start, but is it enough to convince people that its worth the investment?

People need to be encouraged to do more for themselves and to rely less on either A) the government, or B) the consumer market, but the costs of becoming even marginally self-sufficient are awfully prohibitive. Also, the long-term effects of such a societal change are at odds with the overall agendas of both the major parties in this country (and probably in most countries, to be fair). Increased self-sufficiency, while better for the planet, the small community and the individual, is detrimental to the mass triumvirate institution of bureaucracy, industry and corporate greed. If people learn to look after themselves a little better, we won't need the massive machine that grinds away consuming our energy and absorbing our productivity.

There should be one issue that matters more this year than we've ever admitted to before now, and that is the simple fact of how we can best be at balance with our planet in a time of rampant consumerism and depleting resources. Just a little something to chew on as the election campaign gets underway.

And that's me for politics for now. If it takes your fancy, you can always follow some of the links on the right for more comprehensive coverage.

I have 11 Minutes

So, I have 11 minutes in which to write this post. Then I have scheduled the rest of the evening to serious writing work. Last time that C and Isaac were away for a few nights, I took upon myself the all-important task of clocking Halo at long last, and in that I succeeded. But such opportunities for focused work are few and far between. May the chapters fall beneath me this week!

9 Minutes, after that scurrilous intro. Onto the matter of these soaring petrol prices, which have, incidentally, just seen a slight fall. Transit tells us that car use in Wellington is down 8% on this time last year. What does that tell us? Yes, Sherlock, people are using cars less, probably because they can't afford petrol. It also means that, being less cars on the road, people like me are spending less time in traffic, thus burning less petrol, thus reducing the demand for the stuff. Win Win! It also suggests that for every 100 people who have sworn up and down that they can't do without their cars, 8 have found they in fact they probably can. The question now is whether or not the public transport system can sustain this upward trend.

6 Minutes. There was a great discussion regarding slow cooking and cuts of meat on Radio NZ today. The link is here, but as it will be gone in 10 days, I will endeavour to find the link to the recipe and put it up here too (but not with only 4 minutes to go).

Camera has been hijacked, still replete with photos from the two recipe posts I have drafted. Since I will not have it back until Thursday, as it is currently assigned to the task of Recording The Childhood Years of My Beloved Son, there will be no more foody photos before then. Stink eh.

2 mins (better abbreviate). I think the key to getting the slow cooker working is getting the volume of liquid right. Too often I find my meals are coming out too watery. Normally, I would have the option of rapidly reducing excess moisture away, but with the slow cooker there is no such option. There have been some slightly-less-then-successful meals slow cooked over the past couple of weeks, but also one fantastic triumph. Will get there when the camera returns.

Times Up! Must Publish!

(For the Record, then spent 4 mins proofreading and correcting mistakes - never pays to rush, does it?)

And on the subject of gardens

Getting back to my previous post regarding growing stuff, thanks to Jack for this link:

Don't Give Up

To quote briefly:

"Yet the sun still shines down on your garden, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organised vegetable patch (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden centre), you can grow the proverbial free lunch - CO2-free and money-free. This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we're counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you're getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labour that, having replaced physical labour with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.) Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment."

Whether you're converted and like to be preached to, or are in need of a bit of convincing that there's something we can do about our vampiric energy needs and its environmental impact, this is a well-written, well-thought out article, imho.

G Y O: Grow Your Own

Here's a list of good reasons to grow something - ANYTHING - at home:

1. It just tastes better;
2. It's relaxing and rewarding;
3. It reduces your carbon footprint;
4. It reduces demand on the agricultural industry, thus easing the strain on the environment;
5. It just tastes better.

There are more good reasons, but just to be balanced, lets consider the cons as well:

1. It takes time, patience and care to keep anything alive and growing well;
2. Not everyone has the space to grow a lot (though most people have the space to grow a little);

That's me out of cons. Comments in the positive and negative will be appreciated. :)

Here's the historic- enviro-political side of it: The Industrial Revolution was the single most significant change in social dynamics since nomadic herders thought to build houses inside walls and call them cities. The IR saw a mass migration of rural people into the cities, where they went from growing and gathering their own food to working in factories and relying on an emerging transport industry to relocate food to them from the countryside. The Oil Age simply mushroomed this trend, until now, 100+ years later, the majority of the population of the Western world wouldn't know where to start if they had to plant a vege garden. We rely on an increasingly mechanised agricultural industry, which is driven to meet demand and extend profit margins. In doing this, it continues to consume disproportionate resources and to pollute and sterilise the earth that it works. As a result, those same toxins that deaden the earth and have turned the central prairies of the Continental United States into a dustbowl and poisoned New Zealand's waterways make their way into our food, and into our bodies.

As the true impacts of Peak Oil start to bite, we will notice more of what we have been seeing for the past year, specifically soaring food prices as a result of rising fuel costs and the demand for crops for biofuel. How people and communities respond to this will be a matter for serious debate, very soon. It already is.

In parts of England, Europe and the US, there are entire communities that are self-sustaining, producing their own food, generating their own power from solar and wind, and recycling ALL their waste. Ultimately, this Self-Sufficient Carbon-Neutral Village concept will present itself as a viable social model in a Post-Oil Age. However, the reality is that the process of urbanisation that started in the 1800s has left about 95% of us city-bound, with neither the financial resources nor the knowledge base to remove ourselves to the country and start a new life. The question is; what can we do right now?

As with any major change in our lives or our societies, we must start by taking baby steps. The simple answer: grow what you can. Pot herbs on a windowsill, grow tomato plants on the balcony, plant a lemon tree. The first great shift in social dynamic before the nomads built cities was when the hunter-gatherer cavemen started planting crops and harvesting them to provide a more certain source of food. If cavemen can do it, then so can we. What is a city apartment but a glorified cave, after all?

Over the past 5 years or so, we've successfully grown corn, strawberries, tomatoes, lemons, beans and all sorts of herbs, on the small suburban sections that we've lived on. We've just planted out broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower in pots for our winter harvest, and on the weekend I'll be planting pumpkin on the top of the section.

It's a start. And aside from all the other reasons, my main desire to grow and pick and eat food that we've grown ourselves is still the most selfish one: It just tastes better!