comrade simba

“I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware”

I have no clue where that phrase came from – it has resided on a scrap of paper on my nightstand for years. Sometimes it’s a bookmark. But whenever I come across it I’m slapped out of my task oriented nature and into awareness of right now and fear that I am wasting life by letting it go by unnoticed.

Hell, it’s summer already. Did I fully engage in spring or was most of it spent scurrying around in great plans for the year and making a few bucks on the side? I run too fast and think too far and forget to put in yellow squash. But I have built in lots of reminders to keep me from being oblivious to life as it is happening for too long of a time period. Like, using milking time for chanting mantra (left teat Om, right teat Mani, left teat Padme, right teat Hum…). Green tea three times a day on a bucket in the garden. Tibetan prayer bell over the stove to ring at dinnertime.

In all things turn the mind towards the dharma

So there is this “spot” in the awareness when thinking shuts off, when looking, hearing, etc. are operating without being focused on anything in particular; that non-dualistic state of pure being. I can get to that spot anytime I just stop doing whatever I’m doing at the time and reach for it. Then “poof” I remember the dog’s dish is empty and the truck bed needs cleaned out for the next day’s load of horse poop and nothing is thawed out for dinner whose night is it to cook blahblahblah…

The distractions are killin’ me

I don’t want a trip to Disneyland or a new set of clothes. Don’t want to go out for entertainment. I want to spend more than a couple minutes a day in “the zone” and for that I simply have to stop trying to get anything done. Then it all gets done. Hmmm….

I finally got a copy of Kunstler’s Long Emergency from the library and took a day off reading it. Now, I’ve been a “peak oiler” for a long time and quite a bit of my head space is devoted to figuring out how the hell modern man is supposed to time warp back into 1930 (if we are lucky – 1840 if things go bazzoo). If everything becomes extremely local think about all the lost skills that are going to have to be resurrected everywhere. Can’t pick up a pair of shoes at Vole-Mart so where is the cobbler? Who’s weaving cotton cloth? The basket makers?

Suppose I’m actually competent enough to grow all the food the family needs, keep the wood fires burning, critters alive and breeding and not fall victim to some gummint sponsored population reduction plague or marauding horde. All the little things are really baffling…

Canning jars. I got a pile of them, lots of caps and lids, but when the gum seal doesn’t work after 3 or 4 uses what the hell do you use? Where does “gum” come from? The enamel wears off of cook pots – who and where is the glazier? Tires go flat and wear out – buggy maker and wheelwright? Unless people get it together we’ll be grubbing in the dirt with pointed sticks barefoot in a filthy animal hide. What skill do I have that is not dependent on modern materials besides cobbing up a rocket stove?

Granted, there will be a lifetimes worth of scrap material from abandoned structures after the first wave of die-off occurs or Phoenix Arizona just gets too hot and dry to live in. Dismantling and scrapping ought to be a worthwhile pastime. Give a whole new meaning to “garage sale”. There are millions of old shovel and rake heads laying around in sheds and dumps – I could probably make a living whittling tool handles. But we won’t easily come up with decent fabric looms with the materials that make up a sewage treatment plant. (oooh, there’s the heat risers for my rocket stoves!) Eventually the stock of existing bars of soap, razor blades, TP, tupperware, and sponges will run out. Every item like this has got to have a replacement produced by someone within reasonable traveling distance. Or do without. How furry do our wives get and man, I grow one helluva beard in six months.

I guess my niche will be in garden vegetable seed, laying hens, and rocket stove building. It would be nice if I learned how to make shoes out of tire tread and cowhides. And pigskin work gloves. Bet I’ll be wearing a coonskin cap in the winter.

What could your niche be?

My favorite weed showed up in the garden over the last week – purslane. Once I figured out that using its properties for my benefit was easier than eradicating the stuff weeding has been a lot less of a chore.

Not that weeding is really a chore – mostly it’s pulling something up to make room for something else. The only time I actually “weed” is when some stuff I don’t want is getting ready to go to seed. If I don’t get it out I’ll have another million of them next year.

So the garden is a riotous mass of green – some you can eat and some you can’t. Purslane falls into the eat category, either me or the pigs. It makes a thick carpet that inhibits other weeds, looks pretty, and pulls out easily. Propagates easily – just pull it out and throw the plant on bare dirt. The plant holds enough moisture to grow and put out more seeds, and if you chop the stuff up every piece seems to root itself and make a new plant.

The guy whose place I sort of caretake once a week for moneymoneymoney asked if I could do his Mom’s house, too. Now, my friend has got lots of dough, but his parents are just filthy rich. Been paying some old guy 75 bucks a pop to mow up their lawn (cancer struck so gotta find new help…) and, yeah, it’s a good sized yard, but not acreage or anything. Just one of those fancy places up in what the locals call “Snob Hill”.

They are cool people, though – I’ve known them for years and felt like I ought to charge less ‘cuz that’s way overpriced, I think. But I quickly got a hold of my senses and decided that not only do I need to charge that same price as the other guy, but find “extras” to do and dazzle them with the comrade gardening skills. Think I’ll bring them some fresh spinach and lettuce this week. Get ‘em hooked on the garden fresh produce and soak them at New York Organic prices.

See, that mean streak of mine is kicking in. French Revolution type eat the rich thing. The man made his wad sitting around an office selling overpriced hearing aids to old people, soaking him back is fair enough, right? Ain’t that just bitterness and envy? How come I can’t just muster up some good ol’ capitalist greed? How come I just don’t do it for less, after all, 50 bucks would more than cover my fuel costs and net me 10 bucks an hour including travel time on a day that I go up to mow my mother in laws yard anyway? I hate my moral awareness sometimes…

The worst part is that my bashed and crashed Lawn Marauder just isn’t up to specs for such a high dollar yard. So I went out yesterday and blew 300 bucks on a self propelled Toro – rear bag/mulch/side discharge combo unit. Pickup truck was full of horse poop so I took the wife’s PT Cruiser to get it. Overalls were in the washer so I was wearing my one pair of good jeans. Got that third person look at myself as the Lowe’s guys were loading the mower in the back. Fuckin’ suburban yuppie. “no, no, most always I have pig shit on me! I grow all my own food! I crap in a bucket! Really! I’m poor, I’m poor, I’m poor!”

‘Cept for that house sale money just sittin’ in da bank. Like I say, just try and spend 15 minutes in my head…

Here’s the link..

The idiocy begins. Farmer Jed is gonna put drought ridden cotton fields in corn ‘cuz if rain comes he’ll make a bundle at the ethanol plant. Ooops, didn’t rain – time for a fed drought bailout.

Same thing with da soybean. What the hell is wrong with people? That corn is gonna fail big time, and all the food that could have grown there won’t exist. Snake eyes on the big crap shoot. Putting exhausted fields into corn production when they need to lay fallow. One big fucking corn party to break the back of the last family operators left. My heart bleeds…

If I was farmer Jed with a few thousand acres that the bank owns 98% of and a good million dollars worth of implements not yet paid for I’d walk the fuck away after a big auction. Just bail out with a travel trailer hooked on the old F-100 with a camper top over the bed filled with seeds, shovels and blankets. Mow suburban lawns for vittles. “Will work for food, not slave away for agribusiness”.

I accept that it is a waste of my time to try to grow spring broccoli without a greenhouse to start plants in. So I put out a bunch of cabbage in it’s place. I get about 70 gallons of greywater a day for the garden, so just because I have space for 10,000 sq.ft. of garden I’m not putting any water loving plants in the other 9,000. That’s for fodder beans, squash, and dumb turnips. I don’t live in a mental Las Vegas or Disneyland where wishes come true. I live in a cold hard reality where the people are gonna scratch the crop ticket and drive the price of food out of the reach of another 29% of the population. The 3rd world is already under nasty food shortages. I suppose any American making less than 80K a year is a suffering mass…

Paid 10 bucks for a sack of oats for the milk goat. She puts out almost a gallon a day. Cut out the oats and it’s down to maybe a half gallon on the lush vetch pasture. After the coming corn fiasco oats will be 15 bucks. Bye, oats.

Shot one of the pigs today. Sickly little runt stopped eating. Yah, I’m farmin’ now – said stupid $30 weaner pig ain’t worth a vet trip. As I walked to the pen with a .22 i only wondered if I could save a 15 cent bullet by using the framing hammer. Shooting an animal used to be a big deal. Now it just gets tossed on the compost heap and on to the next chore.

I’m getting to be a hard sumbitch. Bullets solve problems. When nutless soccer dads get jobless, homeless, and hungry don’t come ’round and annoy me. Shut up and dig. Yeah, I’ll take all the “empowered” women I can get – they can empower a water pump and millstone.
I have sent out many offers to drill a deep well and pull in a house trailer to family and friends. No takers. Maybe I don’t want a bunch of latecomers pitching tents and hauling buckets up from the spring. I’m a doomer – the future is crystal clear to me, sooner rather than later. This stunt of shoving corn into dry dirt on the chance of making a quick buck solidifies my certainty that we are screwing ourselves as fast as we can.

I blew about $200 on one of the high dollar U-bar broadforks from Lehman’s. Justification? Well, I ain’t turnin’ the whole garden with a shovel – that’s a young man’s occupation. And the nice mongo Troy Built tiller I got for a song years ago needs some major carb work and rear seals. That’s an easy 200 dollar bill. Not to mention a gallon of gas, oil change, spark plug etc. From here on out Mr. U-bar only asks to sorta stay out of the rain to protect his tough powder coat finish…

So after the three little pigs get done munching all the growth and rooting up the ground in their 16 x 16 foot pen I go in with the U-bar. Takes about twenty minutes to break up a 4×16 bed working first sideways and then longways. Kinda chop up some clods with a rake and it’s ready to plant. Not hard at all, just nice steady work. Don’t even breath hard, and yeah, I smoke…

I’m not doing that weird double digging deep bed crap – waaaay to much work for me. But Mr. U-bar gets as deep as the tiller ever did and doesn’t chop up roots, just lifts them up nicely so I can pull ‘em out. I won’t be propagating that pesky vetch anymore. That tiller made a nightmare a month later. Beet roots and soil critters will break it all up over a few year’s time.

One things for sure – I’m in no big hurry. It’s nice to hear songbirds while working the soil rather than wrestling with a noisy fumey rototiller.