Lessee… grew about 85% of everything we ate, 50% of which was derived from Big Ag grain products to power our meat machines. Used 200 gallons of propane, ran through at least 1000 gallons of gasoline, and averaged 750 kW of electricity a month.
You might say we trashed our landbase from selectively cutting a couple dozen truckloads of trees off our 50 acres but I cleared all the junk out of the head of the ravine above where the spring begins to flow that former inhabitants used as a dump. Used no pesticides or industrial chemicals and composted everything that could be put to better use than tossed in the trash truck that comes by my mom’s house on Tuesdays. I flushed very few toilets this year.
I refrained from being a good citizen by blowing off the local voting rituals offered up to us. Bat down a tax raising issue one yer and it just keeps coming back until it passes. What’s the point? When it comes to politics I just buy more ammo and avoid discussions with the true believers, left or right. The last shred of huzzah for this pathetic excuse of a democracy evaporated… about the time the turnip crop matured.
During the last half of the year I was a one man economic stimulus package… 18,000 dollars of manufactured materials and compensation to the slaves I had working for me went into the rental house that caught fire in May. Another 14 to go and then the rest of the insurance check goes to the wife’s new kitchen and a tractor for me. Gonna get a diesel one… just so I have the option of going fuckin’ green with biofuel in some far distant future when the resource wars have used up all the resources and we’re back to using digging sticks to plant soybeans… to run the tractor and FEMA, DHS and military vehicles.
Stopped using credit cards for anything that could be bought without them. Fuck online bank billpay – I’d rather wait in line at the cable office listening to some fat crackhead trying to convince the clerk she paid the bill a week ago. Shopping for Chinese slave labor products without giving the CC companies their 3% per transaction.
Bottom line – slightly subnormal consumer class behavior ruled the year. The farm increased its fertility, and I think one person built a rocket mass heater due to my demo at the Farmer’s Market. I believe he’s heating one of his commercial greenhouses with it.
Better luck next year, eh?
I have read you for a while but never commented… a lurker I guess
? Great post.. and the tone seems to cover the quandry felt everywhere at the moment… what is up? Perhapes it will turn out one can be “ready” (mostly) or perhapes the lack of understanding prevails with everyone really not getting it? gonna be an interesting year no matter what… one hopes the behemeth moves much slower than our imagination… that we inflate at steady pace.. pay the welfare checks… reward those with a fixed mortgage who now pay off with cheaper dollars… “deleverage” the rest of the middle class down a notch or two of properity… end the year with the market in the mid 9000’s.. a win? a bullet dodged? ha!
Hey Chic, thanks for the comment. Nice screen name – doom has gone sorta mainstream and it’s now hip to speak of stocking up and simplifying etc etc, so long as nothing of real convenience is sacrificed. It’s cold on the porch when I piss in the milk jug… I’m going to visualize you as someone other than the lip gloss in one hand and AK47 in the other type, okay? Heh heh.
Comrade’s predictions for 2010 coming up on the next post. Your take dovetails with much of mine.
People have no clue. They think we’ve got it made because we can live on so little. Run vehicles on free WVO, moderate solar power, well, septic, small garden, etc. I’m appalled at how tied into the system we are. Really don’t know what most people are going to do. Fasten your seatbelts, rough roads ahead.
Keep up the good fight!
“…so long as nothing of real convience is sacrificed..” Right on as usual, Comrade.
I’ve given up, mainstream doom, collapse any minute, hyperinflation…blah..blah..blah..
Got too much of my own crap to worry about. From what I’ve seen there’s too many “Wanna-Be” doomers and preppers out there, talk a good talk, but when TSHTF, their gonna be S.O.L.. For us living on less is “mandatory” now, lucky we were already close to living the life earlier.
Looking forward to your “Prediction” post, hehe, can’t get any worse…er..can it?
Happy New Year to you and the family, Comrade….
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Bought more shit. Cleared out about as much clutter as we took in.
Composted a ton of dog shit. The bin’s gone fungal. I could keep feeding it for years now.
Spread some dog shit compost. It’s doing well feeding the butterfly bushes.
The job’s got my head firmly shoved up my ass. As long as I’m going to be working these stupid ass hours I ain’t going to be growing shit.
Basically going nowhere. Only inches closer to shitting in a bucket.
Little by little here.
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