comrade simba

“What’s going to happen?” is the big question. I’ve gone round and round, with and without my tinfoil hat on, and every time I sit on the stump in the garden I have the answer – but the words aren’t there. But I finally got today – “shopping is over”.

For our whole lives, and most of our parent’s lives, too, shopping has been a given. You get an idea for something wanted, jump in the car and go get it. The last decade or so if you were running short of cash it went on the credit card. “Broke” is relative. The booming economy we’ve had made it assured that you’d make more next year than this year. Jobs everywhere. Dirt cheap financing. Etc. I want it, I can have it now is damn near cellular knowledge, and the end of that is going to be the biggest shock JQ Public is going to face, as trivial as that sounds.

On the stump today I wanted a Coke. Three or four years ago I wouldn’t have had a problem with hopping in the car and driving the eight miles round trip to the nearest quickie mart and buying a twelve pack for a couple of bucks. Today it’s over five bucks, plus gas costs which are a factor in any distance calculation at 4 bucks a gallon. So I made coffee instead. I can get some Coke on the once a week shopping trip to town, but the same thing is going to happen next week as has happened for months – I’m going to be looking at Coke and once again decide that I don’t need it at 5 bucks a 12 pack. Or donuts, or steak, or a new shirt, plastic widget, whatever. I leave the store with beans, rice, raisins, peanut butter, salt, and the like.

And I’m a fuckin’ Doomer. This is all voluntary – I derive a certain pleasure out of powering down and living simple. Collapse will be when somebody stares at the bank and credit card statements and realizes “I can’t have that new _____ I want”. Ever. Not being able to afford some purchase has been quantified by not wanting it that badly in the first place – something else was more desired at the time. Screw the golf bags – I’m getting the boat motor this month. Collapse is letting the golf club membership expire. For those on the lower end of the spectrum the option of switching to a cheaper brand of beer has disappeared – no beer is the new reality. Fishing a smokable butt out of the ashtray isn’t just for bums anymore, it’s like a little gift from God. Not going anywhere on the weekend (except maybe to the pawn shop) feels like house arrest for go go shop shoppers across America, I’m curious to see what sort of mean cornered rat behavior will surface when consumer addicts can’t get their fix.

I don’t even think war will fix it. I see no evidence that personal sacrifice for the sake of the nation can be generated in a population that has been subject to the war on terror for so long it’s just background noise. Fuck you, gimmee is the national creedo – people are more likely to slip into the neighbor’s back yard and swipe the aluminum can stash off the porch than to help him dig a garden. I’m not even sure a fix is necessary – this country is so fat that we could drop down the consumer ladder by orders of magnitude before any real hardship is hit. Foreclosed and evicted? Move in with Mom and Dad or rent some cheap dive that’s the envy of a third world tin shacker. Bank bellies up – who cares? Didn’t have any money in the account anyway. Job loss? Woo hoo! I can now use the ER instead of paying the insurance premiums and we get Food Stamps! But that void in the psyche every time you pass a WalMart is going to be so sadly uncomfortable… “I wish I had some money to buy something… anything. It’s just not fair“.

The American Way of Life is still non- negotiable, it’s just that one by one, folks won’t be in the game anymore.

This is our fifth growing season out here. The first two years was mainly hacking out scrub and mending fences from 20 years of neglect on the “Old Bartley Rental House” as it is known by the locals. Goofed up a few times trying to work with somebody else’s lack of vision just because it was there and seemed easier at the time. Back in the early 50’s electricity and propane was all the rage so retrofitting this place to accommodate all things peak oil hasn’t been very easy, and some of it is just going to have to be put up with. Like the garden area being uphill from where the gray water line runs out of the house, shade trees being on the southeast, and the long axis of the house being oriented to taking full advantage of that summer afternoon sun blast. But five years of planting stuff in all kinds of experimental ways has shown me what works well and gives indications that this self sufficiency thing is doable.

Right now we have enough raw calories in storage, canned up, and in the ground to make it through to next spring even if an EMP turned all things fucko bazzoo.

The key was to finally wrap my head around the idea that ultimately, everything has to go to the garden. How and when to put what where is like a puzzle – and I spent a lot of time trying to fill in large hunks of similar background colors instead of finding the corners and edge pieces first. Here is the first installment of the mechanics of what worked…

Raking up the fall leaves and dumping them into in four foot wide windrows covered with a two inch layer of manure is the place to plant the early squash. No matter how much rain you get the squash roots don’t rot and there is a super rich humus zone where the dead leaves come into contact with the manure. The best part is the pile stays moist with very little water in dry spells since it’s basically mulch pile. So the yard gets raked making the wife happy, the barn gets cleaned out for good critter housekeeping, abundant squash to eat and lots left over to feed the pig and chickens. Once the plants are exhausted in late summer, fork or till the whole row into the ground (noting about 5 billion earthworms) and its a cowpea patch. And if you don’t know about cowpeas – learn up. Ultimate doomer crop. Grows anywhere under any conditions. Inoculate them the first year to make sure nitrogen fixing bacteria are in the ground, pick the pods when they dry up brown and stuff ‘em into feed sacks for shelling during the long winter nights by the fire (family bonding and all that shit). Once the cowpeas get done with their thing sow winter wheat or rye or some other cover crop in the bed. There’s your corn bed for mid spring planting.

Spring is nice to see after spending all winter in battle with the woodstove but it quickly becomes a nightmare of too much to do all at once. So far, every year I have fucked up and tilled up the whole garden plot with grand visions of thousands of square feet of lush kitchen vegetables only to wind up with a giant weed patch from all the disturbed earth not getting planted in time ‘cuz the damn lawn needs mowed or some shit. No more of that insanity – winter wheat over everything besides the squash/melon leaf windrows. Chop it into the ground when something is ready to plant, and if it has headed up it’s chicken feed and straw for nest boxes and corn mulch. Where I planted winter wheat last year I did not have a weed problem this year. Repeat – no weed problem, just a nice loose earthworm laden bed suitable for the early spinach and peas or whatever. But I wanna talk corn… and that’s a post all by itself.

What is it with me and crap in buckets, anyway? My doomer buddy turned me onto the maggot bucket. Five gallon bucket with two rings of1/2 inch diameter holes drilled about three inches from the bottom. Grass or leaf layer in the bottom third, some old rotten thing that flies have laid eggs on goes on the clippings, and cover with more leaves or whatever. Snap lid on and hang it a couple of feet off the ground in the chicken pen. Maggots hatch, eat and squiggle out the holes and fall on the ground. The chickens just hang out waiting for manna to fall from the sky.

Too cool. I’m just driving down the highway and see a raccoon roadkill on the centerline, slowed down enough to reach out the door and fling it into the back of the pickup. The flies had done their work and the day after I put it in the bucket it’s maggots foaming out of the holes. Happy chickens. Free chicken feed, happy comrade.