comrade simba

Got some new critters over the last month. First, a milking Alpine goat. She puts out almost a gallon a day on a half coffee can of corn chops and oats. Nice girl- doesn’t kick when you milk her at all. Her papers say her name is Sandpiper but I call her Sandy. How novel, eh?

Next up is Jack the Burro. Took over a year of looking before I found a young jack ass. Not a miniature, but smaller than the full size model. 6 months old and strong enough to let my 5 year old go for short rides. Got lots of plans swirling around for a goat cart. No more humpin’ wood  out of the ravines in the wheelbarrow!

I got a couple of weaner pigs a few days ago. Put up a 16 foot square pen out of hog panels in a weedy spot in the garden and they have just about finished rooting the whole thing up. I’ll add three more panels to one side, open it up and run them into it, and just keep leapfroging the “pig tractor” through he pasture. Plant soybeans and corn behind them so that by fattening time they will have grown their own feed!
Of course, the spring load of new chicks are on their way. This year I bought everything I need to breed a couple of different usefull strains – silver laced Wyndottes to mate with my Hampshires to make red sex links. And a batch of Orpington that make good broody hens. Just getting tired of buying chicks every year…and ducks are on the list.
Oh yeah – and my brother’s cat. Pukes everywhere so it’s now and outside kitty. Hasn’t nabbed any of the dozens of mice in the barn yet… stupid cat.

Figured out why my Australian Shepherd can’t herd – no Australians around. His bark function works well, and we haven’t lost a chicken to ‘coons since we got him. Good doggie.

Posted a link to something I surfed up on the home page at www.csimba.com in the “must read” area. Must read – that’s hilarious…

Don’t often post links but I really got fired up about this one: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0309-22.htm

Screw the fat cats and woo hoo to small scale farming all in one!

I’m back from Lowell and on the road (bwahahaha) I thought a lot about my whole sense of recycling. Most of this was posted on the message board…
I shit in a bucket, not because I want to save the environment but because it makes fertilizer. It is a net “input” to the farm, since some of what it comes from is generated off the property. Basically, nothing organic that is generated here leaves here.

I don’t generate toxic waste on the farm. I don’t buy toxic cleaners, pesticides, insecticides, etc. I go to the quikie lube for oil changes because they will reclaim the oil. There are heavy metals in some inks used by the junk mail industry that I’m not fucking responsible for. I’m tired of composting that stuff. I don’t want the residuals in my garden or on my lawn. From here on out it’s going to Mom’s house out with the trash to the landfill that is NOT in my watershed.

I’m sick of feeling responsible for all of civilization’s ills. Driving westbound into St Louis there was a view of The Arch, and in the foreground you are driving past a monster landfill, complete with blowing trash, erosion ravines, and the toxic moat surrounding it. It hit me that even if ten percent of the population made a Herculean effort to eliminate almost all of their material consumption, the goddamn demolition projects that tear down old buildings and factories to make way for condos wipes that gain right out. Pity the landfill when Pittsburg gets renovated.

Mindless consumerism appalls me – not only because of the waste generated but also for resource destruction. There is no solution to the effluent of civilization’s bunghole. Take your old computer to an electronic recycle facility and it ends up in a toxic dumpyard killing the residents of some poor village in India that bases their local economy upon material disassembly. Oh well, not in my watershed. Who needs plankton anyway? I have never bought a new computer. So many people just give away their old “slow” ones. Like 650 is slow? Don’t buy new cars either. Come to think of it, my involvement in the retail industry is about zero. Recycle like a fiend, or just don’t contribute to the consumer mill. Which has a greater net effect? Pretty heavy stuff. It’s a sad state of affairs out there, and even cultivating your own garden may not be a big enough blinder.

The local chicken plant has its lagoon on top of a losing stream that is the cause of the pollution in Grand Lake nearby. Another one dumps crap in the river that runs a mile away from me. McChicken sandwiches are essential nutrients. .0001% of the population can pluck and cut a fryer. The rest buy Tyson products at VoleMart. I’m a simple idgit- that plant is killing the river? Shut it down. End of story.

Just got back from driving my nephew to Lowell, Massachusetts. Between driving at optimal speed and drafting trucks I got 31.5 mpg until the pothole crew between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton Pennsylvania caused a 20 mile jam. I bailed at the first exit I reached after sitting for two hours watching the average mpg gauge drop and drop and drop. Coming back I said screw gas mileage and kept it at 6 over the speed limit. Made it in 24 drive hours, rather than the 30 it took on the way up. Grand total extra cost? 12 bucks.

So the theme over the next few posts will be what’s the damn point of bustin’ ass to be environmentaly friendly when the deck is stacked? Got a lot to talk about and just wanted to refresh the blog after a long absence…