comrade simba

For the whole time I have lived out here in the Sustainable Living Unconventional Testlab I have had a love/hate relationship with garden tillers. I have a big ol’ rear tine Troy Bilt monster from the 70’s that has lain idle since the first year from mechanical problems and my desire to do everything the hard way like a good hippy should. But, with doom looming so near I said WTF, I gotta get serious about the garden and got the new carb on it so that it ran long enough to shred the old belts. Got new ones, fired it up and a few passes later blew a compression ring. Shit. So I borrowed the neighbors piece of shit front tine tiller, tilled their garden spot first on a sharecrop deal, and beat myself to death manhandling it through all the rocks.

Time passes, the next generation of weeds takes over and it’s now fall garden time. I’m sorry, I’m not in my thirties anymore and it’s hotter than hell out there. I just don’t have enough groovy in me to want to use a turning fork over that much ground when Vole-Mart had a 195cc front tine tiller on sale for 299. I caved.

So I have energy slaves at my disposal now. Half a gallon of gas and maybe an hour’s work and 2000 sq ft of churned dirt is laying there with a “plant me” look. Poof, just like that, right?

I’m not getting into how much work it would take to grow 300 bucks worth of turnips to buy the tiller. Blow jobs at the bus station would be easier than that.  Suffice to say that I could have forked up the garden in a couple of eight hour shifts, raked it down to a fine tilth in another eight, whereas a minimum wage quickie mart job would have taken a week and a half to net the cost of the tiller. 60 hours of wage slavery and a couple of gallons of gas ain’t really a bad deal to turn over a 1/4 acre in an afternoon, eh?

So, at best just to “break even” that tiller has to run three more seasons maintenance free plus gas. Hahaha, like we got three years before the paper bags come out on all the gas pumps. That dead 9N tractor behind the barn isn’t going to get an engine kit in it anytime soon either.

Last post I wrote about not selling the farm stuff due to a certain amount of ingratitude and lousy return on labor. The real issue is a whole lot meaner than that – we are going into the shit doomwise, I have worked my ass off around here to gain quite a bit of self sufficiency, and I have a problem delivering stuff to someone sitting on a couch in the air conditioning with a great big fenced off suburban yard. Grow your own damn chickens.

Not one person I have sold anything to even slightly believes in doom. Oh yeah, they may be turning off lights switches and using energy saving bulbs to save money, but it’s just an economic downturn to them, not TEOTWAWKI, not SHTF, not the end of the non negotiable American way of life. I just don’t want to do anything for the sheeple, not even sell eggs for 5 bucks a dozen.

Shit like “they taste so much better” is not what I want to hear. I wanna hear a tirade about the noxious crap enslaved battery hens get fed and a bit on the toxic nature of the food supply in general offered up to us by our corporate masters before I am willing to deem you worthy of my wholesome fare. Unless you’re my Mother, but that’s an off budget operation anyway.

But this is all self important blather from a complete zero in the grand scheme of things. Mostly I’m just tired of trying to figure out how to fit in a lifestyle in a world that doesn’t give two shits about whether I live or die. I don’t have a bunker so I can’t survive fallout. I’ve never been an entertainment TV fan so the whole election thing is too boring to concern myself with. Conspiracy theories are like Harlequin novels and I don’t have any vested interest in any of them. All I know is that prices are rising so I can’t really drive around anymore without a true purpose, I gotta garden to afford to eat, cut wood to stay warm, and be prepared to use the spring if I want water. The last thing in the world I need is the added, unnecessary complexity with somebody else’s grocery list.

Wall Mart has a 12″ Yard Man tiller on sale for 300 bucks. I have 2000 square feet to turn over for the red bean and cabbage patch. It’s 95 degrees outside. Fuck Peak Oil. Of course, by buying a gasoline powered trinket I am guaranteeing the complete and catabolic collapse of society before first frost. I’m sorry, folks… my apologies.

There’s your tinfoil… Blame Comrade. bwahahaha!

I’m done with egg, milk and cheese sales to other people. It’s been hard keeping up with feed price rises – where I used to sell surplus eggs for 1.25 last year to get my family’s share for free I now have to charge 2.25 and it will be 2.50 as soon as the next price hike goes into effect at the feed store.

And somebody bitched.

Fuck ‘em. Eat your ethanol offal laced Vole-Mart battery eggs for a buck forty-nine. Complain about the texture of my 3 dollar a pound fresh goat cheese? Well, go pay whatever for the store bought shit. I’m tired of sterilizing jars and hand delivering the milk to your door anyway. I can get enough for my family just letting the goats run through the woods rather than pumping them full of ten dollar a bag feed just so I can generate a surplus… to buy more feed.

I guess I hit my first wave of personal collapse. It’s been a really bad week all around – the summer heat is on, the weeds in the garden are winning and I’m just generally burned out. Got a summer cold, too. While suburbia may be starting to die from 4 buck a gallon gas, I’m not immune to the ravages of Powerdown either. It’s just a little different out here in the sticks, or perhaps it’s all in my mind. I’m the one who sees two potential shovel handles going into the gas tank on the weekly trip to town to sell eggs and mow the Mothers’ lawns. A day off the farm is a day lost – the weeds get a free day to grow, the goats and chickens get cursory care, but mostly I lose my sense of timelessness. I get home late, sleep too long the next morning and screw up the morning routine. I used to be real proud of the farm bounty I had for sale, but now I don’t want to turn loose of any of it, at any price.

For some insane reason I’m going to devote garden space to red beans, even though they’re a buck a bag at the store. I’ve been accused of growin’ shit just to see what it does. Had to buy a pound of them anyway since I planted okra for the hell of it.  Soon we’ll have “Okie” night – red beans, rice, and okra for supper. C’mon down for dinner, but I ain’t selling you any…

survivalistnews.com asked “What is your opinion on the tomato?” His T.V. must be broken, too – ain’t doom exciting?

Webster says either fruit or vegetable – I say it’s food. Two schools of growers, also, the Fussy Stakers and the to hell with ‘em crowd. I start out every year as the former, and switch to the later right about now. Those beautiful open pollinated Peron Sprayless heirlooms are scraggling up the wire trellises but the idiot planted paste jobs and volunteers from last year’s rot tosses are holding their own against 4 foot weeds. I just discovered more of them today hacking a path to where I could see some more cucumbers poking up through the poke weeds. Since this phenomena has occurred every year I’m of the opinion that timing is everything.

Blah blah “sow indoors 8 weeks before last frost and transplant..” blah blah reads the packages and gardening sites. The problem I run into is sunny window space. C’mon, man, I’m not a suburban gardener growing a couple of plants for decorative salads – I want inundated by tomatoes for months to put a few pounds on the pigs, fill a hundred square feet of shelving with canned stewed and eat them while weeding like apples from a tree. Sacrifice a peck or two in a tomato fight with my kid so’s I don’t get too old too fast. I wind up with foot tall plants with six leaves struggling to get some light ‘cuz I don’t have a greenhouse or cold frames or any of those fancy poly tunnels yet. And I always get a gardening fit mid january and start seeds a good two months before I should so my tomato plants are near death before they ever hit the ground. The first batch, anyway. The second batch goes out this afternoon – nice healthy paste and slicers that can race the first killing frost. Half of them will be green when I pick them the day before the weather channel says *klaxon* frost warning *klaxon* Wrap them individually in newspaper and shove them under the furniture for storage. We usually have window ripened tomatoes through february, and a carpet stain or two.

Perhaps next year I’ll get it right. Sow just before last frost and plug them into the ground before they get spindly.

Maybe I’m getting a little harsh watching the world fall apart from runaway consumerism but anybody who buys a store tomato trucked in from god knows where has less sense than god gave a small duck. Or maybe I should spread a little of that harshness over to the farmer’s market guys selling a tomato for 50 cents apiece when an individual plant that takes a total of 15 minutes of work yields at least a bushel throughout its lifespan. Pull out your shirt tail, make a bowl and take as many as you can hold for a couple of bucks – that’s the way it ought to be in a world that isn’t deranged… charging buku bucks for food so’s you can pay your cable bill.

Somethings wrong – seriously wrong when what people are willing to pay is grossly higher than the energy it took to grow/produce it for food, and bitch about the price of gas at the same time. Pay a buck for an ear of sweet corn and be put off by 4 dollars for 200 slave equivalents running the 52 inch John Deer mower topping off an inch of grass over a three acre front lawn? Plow it up and plant tomatoes and green beans ya fuckin’ idiot.

Me, Bwana, great white forager found peach trees were growing all by themselves on the farm when we got here. Woo hoo free food you might think, eh? Well, if the freak frosts don’t kill off the buds the bugs decimate the crop if you don’t spray. So I gotta feed DOW chemical or whoever makes Fruit Tree Spray twenty bucks a season to get a few bushels of peaches and stuff. Yea, there are homemade concoctions to keep the fruit eaters at bay, but powering down to 100% self sufficient ultimately leads to applying the stuff without the plastic sprayer from the vole mart or some lifetime indestructable one in a Lehmans catalog for the price of your first born.

Get the visual of ol’ comrade out there in the orchard climbing up trees and slinging gourd fulls of some plant substance soaked in hog urine or some shit like that around. I got it hard enough finding time to hang the laundry on the line let alone brewing up potions like some mad scientist. I’m still working on how to grow chickens to slaughter weight without commercial feed or corn chops. All I’ve managed so far are scrawny birds suitable for the stew pot or canned up as the new tuna replacement when a fast meal is needed. Perhaps this is the way it is just going to be when the easily accessible inputs of the petroleum age go the way of the dinosaur.

It may seem as if I am torturing myself by using the scythe instead of the gas powered sickle bar mower, but it’s really practice. Or an experiment to see if and how things can be done “the hard way”. No task is insurmountable given enough time and creative energy, I just hope time doesn’t run out too soon. It’s a bitch being one of the few nutjobs who don’t believe the grocery stores will stay stocked for long, or that UPS will bring all your shit to you in three days. I don’t see Super Nonnegotiable American way of life Man swooping down from Mt. Cheney, though…

Blackberries are coming, it’s 90 by 9am, and the rain finally stopped. Green beans everywhere, and I found out what cucumbers are for – no, get your mind out of the gutter… We are keeping a bowl of sliced cucumbers and onions in the fridge soaking in a little bit of salt, pepper, vinegar and sage. Come in all hot from outside, get a big drink of water and grab a handful of the cuke mix. Cools you down about ten degrees real quick. Turns out that’s one of those common knowlege southern poverty jewels that has escaped a white bread like me… hell, I was a grown man before I got turned onto biscuits and gravy.

Making war on the Perilla Mint in the goat’s back yard. Giving the scythe a good workout where the rocks aren’t laying on the ground too high. Weed eating the rest. That’s some hot nasty work and my ass is kicked by noon. Nap and putter in shady spots until critter time rolls around again in the evening. Rocket stove gets fired up for canning season this week, and cowpeas go in where a weed patch comes out. Idiot planting time – no rows or nice 4 foot wide beds – just shove seed in where I can. Maybe next year the garden can look good enough for a garden magazine but I’m only going for bulk food production right now. High hopes for massive amounts of winter squashes, and if the potatoes can stay alive for another month I ought to haul in well over 500 pounds.

Dark again. Time for bed. Get up at 5 and do it all over again…

Every year I forget how busy this time of year is, But this one is going down in the record books.

I’m sorta into chicken raising full time now it seems… every 3 weeks another 18 pop out of the incubator. They go to “nursery school” and the ones they replaced graduate to kindergarten, bumping the grade schoolers into jr. high and I gotta do something about the high school yard cuz all the boys are starting to fight with each other. Oh, yea, you gotta visualize 4×8 chicken tractors all over the yard that get moved every day. Hey, it cuts down on the mowing…

I hung the chicks/chickens for sale sign out front today. The goal is to sell half of them to buy corn to feed the other half that we will eat, and that will bring us up to 80% self sufficiency. 85 when the wife mass produces potato chips, he he.

I’d love to post earth shattering revelations but it’s dark and I gotta go to bed. Company coming for Independence Day wipes out tomorrow’s free time, although I may squeak out another couple of thoughts.