comrade simba

A few posts ago I mentioned that everybody seems to be pissed off at the emerging surveillance society, but where were all the punk rockers taking iron pipes to traffic cameras and shit like that?

Here’s a doosie:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/04/21/20090421photodeath0421.html

Some guy pulls up next to the guy in charge of monitoring cameras and blows him away. Pow, just like that. This guy obviously was really against traffic cameras, since he had camera spoofing covers on his license plates.  This isn’t just a random shooting, no matter how crazy the guy looks on his mug shot.

Now, here’s a quote from one of those weenies in charge from the article:

That has been the objective of photo enforcement’s vocal opponents from the outset, said Jan Strauss, a former Mesa police chief who added that Sunday’s shooting smacked of vigilantism.

“If you hate photo radar, and you want to have an impact, you shouldn’t be doing anything like vigilantism,” she said. “If you don’t like it, go to the public forum. Start a public debate. Going out on your own, breaking the law doing destructive things isn’t the answer.”

Funny thing is, they shut down the “mobile-enforcement vans until they can reassess their security procedures”, and bills are in front of the state legislature to ban the program altogether.

Some other guy got a year’s probation for taking a pickaxe to a camera, and was cheered as a hero by “the people”. Which, of course, caused the other guy to up the ante.  Betcha the next pipe wielding freedom fighter doesn’t just get probation – that poor schlub is going to be made into an example.

If I had to put money down on the outcome of all this, I’d bet that the cameras will stay in place and the program expanded just to show the proletariat that rebellion will not be tolerated. You and I both know that it wouldn’t take too many violent actions to make it real hard to fill those employment vacancies, to put it mildly.

I think we are living in “interesting times”. It’s like push is coming to shove, and the margionally stable are cracking up under the pressure imposed from above.  Cornered rats will bite,  and TPTB may be on the verge of misjudging how far they can push without sending a game changing number over the edge.

Anyway, here’s a pic of the first incubation of the year:

On the first day of the month a new batch goes in, and 21 days later they hatch. The roosters are destined for the table and the hens will be sold to pay for feed and the electricity to run the chick machine.

Which chick is the one really pissed of at me and my camera, ho ho!

I got this from Survival Acres:

A demonstration against government waste and high taxes outside the White House on Wednesday was halted after a suspicious package was thrown over the White House fence.

U.S. Secret Service officers immediately cleared Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest and Lafayette Park just north of the White House shortly after 2 p.m., forcing about 2,000 protesters to the sidewalks north of the park. Journalists at the White House were ordered back inside the press room.

A robot was inspecting the package, which the Associated Press reported appeared to be a box of tea bags. Tossed package ends D.C. ‘Tea Party’

He posted his thoughts on the matter,  and here’s mine -

What an absolute joke. Pathetic. Toss a box of tea bags and the entire group of demonstrators is told to go away… and they do. Without a peep or fuss.  “The Free Speech Zone has been moved to a more obscure location and all press must stop filming at once.”

So there’s one for those that speak of “revolution”. Imagine the bored order given by the SS in charge – “Aw, crap. Look, herd those sheeple out of my sight and  get a fresh pot of coffee and some more donuts in the press room for the mouthpieces, okay? And make me some of that tea while you’re at it.”

I think a more appropriate “protest” would be 2000 people hauling 2000 wheelbarrows of steaming horseshit to the gates of the White House, dumping it, and then just walking away. Maybe put a jug of iced tea on top of the pile. That says “we know you’re not listening, but fuck you anyway.”

On the bright side, that’s one more piece of evidence that the populous will never rise up to the level of becoming a dangerous mob fanning out into the countryside looting small farms and homesteads like mine.  I ought to get a 1/4 mile of POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS tape and string it across my road frontage. Odds are good that it will stop all unwanted traffic onto my place.

Whatever.

The April rains have set in, and I’m resting a bit before getting after it again. Time to catch up on the surfing and Taekwondo practice. My kid and I test for our red belts on Thursday.

And eat! Man, I feel like hollering a Chris McCandless – “where are all the animals – I’m fucking hungry!” I forgot the calorie burn that happens when I come out of my winter hibernation. I was milking the goat the other day and I just started milking straight into an empty coffee cup and chugged it since my blood sugar levels were plummeting to zero. Good thing the milking stand isn’t higher off the floor…

Kunstler has written a couple of good ones lately – you gotta keep in mind that for me, “doom” is just cheap entertainment. My personal economic crises are along the lines of how to sell all these damn eggs and cheeses from the chickens and goats. Whether the Chinese continue to buy our crap securities so we can continue to buy their crap isn’t something I’m all wrapped up into. Domestically, the pitchforks probably won’t come out this growing season either, except by whackjobs like me that actually cut hay with a scythe. Did I mention I haven’t got the tractor running yet? Got the parts in a box and here I sit typing away… what’s important at the moment is throwing out some more clover seed on the skidder trails during breaks between rain showers.

The sun is supposed to shine tomorrow, perhaps I’ll get the panels on the greenhouse roof. Looks like I can make a small salad tomorrow – the first one of the year out of a radish, some asparagus and spinach. One last tidbit – the other day I castrated pigs for the first time. Slice, slice, pop, pull, slice, pop, pull. Move on to the next chore… Nothing seems like a big deal anymore, I guess it finally happened – I became a gnarled up old grizzled farmer type somewhere down the line. I showed the wife a “red neck” last week when it was warm enough to strip down to a tee shirt and get some gardening done.

It’s been a long road from Venice Beach…

Busy busy busy… spring is now full on since the peach killer frost came and went the other day. I have a million things to do and since everybody is so interested (I can’t keep up with the email – I’ll get to it eventually) I’ll give a quick run down of what’s happening.

Here’s this year’s pigs:

click for big pic

I’ve had dead pigs in the house on the kitchen floor when it rained on butcher day,  so live pigs isn’t too much of a stretch. The wife said “bring ‘em in when I came home with them from the sale barn and it was going to get real cold that night. Next day I hooked up a nest for them with a heat bulb in the barn. One night was enough – even I gotta draw a line somewhere.

I have come to the conclusion after 3 years of effort that you cannot keep goats in where you want them. So I’m switching gears to keeping them out of where I don’t want them, in the yard where the fruit trees are trying to grow. So far, so good, I’m reasonably confident that I can leave the farm in the afternoon and when I get home in the evening the trees won’t have suffered a goat hit. 32″ field fence (hog wire), three strands of barbed above that, a post every 12 feet and a fence stay in between posts. Kinda high dollar, but I can run pigs in it also, and it’s a one time deal. Finally accepted another reality – wood posts have to be at least 2 1/2 feet in the ground. I’ve gotten tired of chipping through that last 4 inches of Missouri rock and tried to skate on two feet or so, but I’m even more sick of resetting the post to its proper depth eventually. Just get ‘er done right the first time.

I got 30 hens laying close to two dozen eggs a day on 6 bucks a week”s worth of corn chops and all the grass and bugs they can find.  Making 10 bucks a week profit on egg sales, so that will feed the pigs. The goats are pulling their own weight, too, all the milk and cheese we need and two cheeses a week for sale pays for their feed. We have a freezer full of pork, lots of food dried and canned, so at the present time we’re 99.9% self sufficient. Eating spinach that overwintered straight out of the garden. Radishes coming up, too.

The great spring clean-up continues. I’m finding the bottom of the junk zone and the material piles are getting used at an alarming rate. It sure helped having a new stuff moratorium last year, ho ho! I think I’ll have to pen up the chickens to keep them from scratching up the newly uncovered areas that I intend to plant with flax and jerusalem artichokes.

Got a doomer coming in a couple of weeks to do the room and board for labor thing. I’m happy to have the help… just hope he lasts longer than last year’s kid. Got a middle aged couple interested too. The wife won’t let me start a commune…

That’s all for now!

Figured out how to change the header image – pretty cool eh? Could have transplanted 100 cabbages in the 4 hours it took to figure it out, but what the hell…

Publicus in a comment brought up a frequent angst – when do you cut the cord of BAU and go full time a-doomin, or at least get serious about it? I’d say about last Tuesday, but you know me. In his particular case he has “family land” in rural Minnesota. What do you do when the dirt is just sitting there waiting, and you’re firmly ensconced in a job/house/school/car/credit mill?

What you don’t want to be is a refugee and bailing out with what fits in the Chrysler amounts to about the same thing. Make the move gradually if you can drive up there on the weekends, taking building materials as you go. What would be cool is to get a shipping container hauled up to the place and have it looked after by neighbors and stockpile the tools seeds linens cooking stuff etc. as you can aquire it.  If you can’t leave stuff up there due to miscreants, think about the ultimate bug out vehicle – and older 60 passenger school bus. I lived in the shell of one waaaay out in nowhere for a good while.  I see it toally feasable to pack it with roof metal, 2 x 4’s seeds tools wood cookstove etc. and just head out when you’re ready to live semi primitively. You can look around for the part time 7-11 clerk job when you get there.

The metal and lumber is for a full length awning on the door side of the bus. If you face it SSE and can score old window glass, there’s a greenhouse. Cob or straw bale the surounding parts and you’ll stay cozy in the winter and it won’t heat up so quick in the summer. Take some plastic with you and look into “living roofs”. That’s the short course in “shelter”.

Food is pretty self explanitory. Take as much with you as you can. Don’t worry too much about the learning curve when it comes to gardening – since you’ll have nothing better to do sunup to sundown than dig, plant, and weed, mistakes should be outweighed by shere volume! The Old Farmer’s Almanac will tell you what to plant when. Just flat out get after it.

Book list – in addition to the OFA, get John Jeavons’ How to Grow More Vegetables… and the rocket stove book from http://www.rocketstoves.com/

Here’s a quick shopping list:

Chainsaw -  I have an old Stihl AV28 with a 16 inch bar. Not too heavy, and big enough for what you need to cut. Anything too big for that saw needs to be left alone, and don’t go puttin’ an 18 or 20 inch bar on it in a fit of testosterone. Too damn many teeth to sharpen so you’ll put it off too long… and a dull chain will get you hurt. Hand bucksaw, Japanese Timber saw, splitting maul, wedges, single bitten axe and a carpenters axe. And so on.

Garden tools.  You can buy crap from walmart, good stuff online, or amass old tools from the auction barn, clean them up and buy new handles for them. I had the luxury of being 30 miles away from House Handle Company so I loaded up every busted  junk tool on the farm and went there, threw it all on the dock and left 120 bucks poorer, but infinitely richer in the end. You can stock up on spare handles or buy the tools to whittle them yourself. Draw knives, big ass wood file, brace and bit set, and a good knife.

Framer stuff – Framing hammer, square, 4 foot level, 25 & 100 foot tape, mason line, combo pig foot and cat paw nail puller, crowbar, 2# hammer, crosscut and ripping saw. Pencils – lots of carpenter pencils… And so on.

And so on. I could go on forever here, but the general idea is you can’t go from living in an apartment in town to out in the weeds and expect to be anything but filthy, ragged, beat up and sore even if you’re warm with a full belly. This shit takes practice. So go camping as soon as soon as you get off work Friday at 5pm until you gotta clock back in on Monday morning. If  it’s not on your own property see about camping on a friend’s creek or something. And since it’s now April you better have a bunch of seeds in the ground somewhere – anywhere, or you’re just talkin’ and surfing cable tv. Fast crash, slow crash, high crash or low, you wouldn’t be on this blog if you had a fulfilling existence being a part of plasticland.

There. You won’t freeze and you won’t be hungry. It’s a start anyway. Each individual has to decide if it all holds together for three months, three years, or three decades. Or forever.  I chose three decades and got an early start.   It took me three years to get all things chicken down pat, milk goating 4, and the 1/4 acre garden is now sustainably fertile after 5 years of shitting in a bucket and composting everything in sight. Like I said, this shit takes practice.  We’re eating good at the very least, and ready for the very worst.