Future Proofing - a couple more ideas.

I just thought I would add a couple of things to the list.

I started learning to play this in February.  I'm finding previous music studies (basic piano & violin) a great advantage.

• Learn an acoustic instrument.  Music brings joy & that is important.
• Keep all those old vinyl records & build your own wind up gramaphone (and when you find out how, let me know please).  Or if you are flush buy an antique working one - not as easy to find as treadle sewing machines, and much more expensive I expect.
• If you read a really good book - on any subject - and you think you might want to read it again, or refer to it (e.g. books of practical skills), then buy it in HARD COPY for your library.

All the best,

Ravs.

Fight for the Future

It is easy when reading about climate change and peak oil to get into a panic.  Easy, but not useful.  So whenever I start feeling this way I try to step back and think about what positive steps I can take to mitigate the situation, remembering that I am only one person with an individual set of skills, resources and emotional energy.  Nobody can do everything.

So, here are some ideas, in no particular order.  Some are things to help my individual family, some are about my local community, and some are concerned with the wider national & world community.  Some are things I am already doing, some are ones that I am considering & others are ideas for the future.  I think these are important issues because I believe we are going to see significant effects, if not within my lifetime, certainly within that of my children.

The Long Emergency

Book Review: The Long Emergency - Surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century.  By James Howard Kunstler.

This book took me a long time to read.  Not because it was boring, far from it (and anyway, if a book doesn't get me interested after a couple of chapters, I no longer waste my time trying to read it), but because the content was so thought provoking that I often found myself stopping and staring off into space for 10 minutes at a time while I digested a passage.  I would daydream & contemplate 'what if' scenarios stimulated by the things I was reading, or think about the particular interpretation of history that was being presented.

The other reason was that it is pretty heavy subject matter, and sometimes I needed a break from it, or conditions (internal or external) weren't quite right to give it the attention it deserved.

This book is definitely worth a read if you have any interest in how we got to here, and where we might be going as our fossil fuels, primarily oil, get harder and harder to obtain.

Although USA centric, the analysis of world political, social, technological and even climatical history and their interactions, bringing us to the society we know now (and Australian is similar enough to the US to draw many parallels) is incisive and comprehensive.

The book was published in 2005, prior to the GFC (Global Financial Crisis), but it has the best explanation of the causes of that, and a prediction of the tipping point even, that I have come across.  It now makes sense!  And I finally found out what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually are; "...giant 'government sponsored entities' (GSEs), Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (FederalHome Mortgage Corporation). Fannie Mae was started as part of  New Deal policy to stimulate the housing industry.  In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson privatised Fannie Mae to get it off the federal budget......Its sibling, Freddie Mac, was created in 1970 to prevent Fannie Mae from monopolising the entire secondary mortgage market."

Another quote that struck me & made me smile & nod concerns large corporations.
"By 'corporation,' I mean a group enterprise given the legal status of a 'person,' with 'rights,' but in fact devoid of any human qualities of ethics, humility, mercy, duty, or loyalty that would constrain those rights. As Wendell Berry put it, "a corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.....It can experience no personal hope or remorse. No change of heart. It cannot humble itself. It goes about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a bigger pile of money." "

The final chapter, predicting what society might look like in various regions of the US, is really interesting.  The arguments are based on the underlying attitudes that exist in those regions (and you will recognise many of the stereotypes here), the climate, topography, the style of society that is there now, and resources, especially water.  It images are even quite funny in parts.

One term used in the book that might be useful to remember is 'Solar Carrying Capacity' - it refers to the number of people that can survive in an area (up to and including the surface of the earth) based only on the natural solar energy available.  This includes the ability of the land to grow crops.  Due to the extra (stored) energy available from fossil fuels, we have been able to increase the carrying capacity of many areas, and hence the whole world.  As fossil fuels decrease in availability, this carrying capacity will inevitably reduce - or so goes the argument of this book, and it is a convincing one.  We would do well to be prepared.

Ravs.

PS While looking for a picture for this post (was having trouble uploading from my computer) I found this site post-carbon-living - I was going to do a follow up piece on ideas for getting prepared, looks like I may not have to now (but I still might anyway).

Easter in the Garden

We stayed home for Easter - so I was able to get out in the garden for a couple of hours each morning while it was still cool.

I worked pretty hard because after today I won't be able to do any heaving lifting for a few weeks - spinal fusion at C6/7 etc.

Just before the weekend I received a box of plants from the Diggers Club, comprising: 2 x Natal Plum, Acerola Cherry, Stevia (sugar plant) a sugar replacement, Yacon, Comfrey, Dwarf Apple Tropical Beauty and some seeds.  All edible, and the plum, cherry & apple specifically suited to our climate in Brisbane.

Natal Plums

Supposedly the Natal Plums make a nice hedge, so I have planted them against the fence where they will get plenty of sun.  Because the soil is pretty poor in this spot I broke it up with a mattock, then inverted an old pot with the base cut of over the spot and filled this with good quality soil and compost.  The cherries are planted in this.  The idea being that they will get a good start before their roots hit the poorer, harder, clay soil beneath (and the worms will have time to work on this too).

I got all the others planted at all (no heavy digging soon remember).

I also constructed the second raised bed.  After leveling the site (just where the edges would sit, not the whole area) it took 5 minutes at most to put together with the help of SMD.  Thanks to all that preliminary work I did last week.

Then I had to put the protective edge (split irrigation pipe) along the top.  It was so much easier this time with a brand new hooked blade in a proper Stanley Knife!  However, care is recommended.

Pinky Finger - left hand

This happened when I slipped with the knife while trimming the pipe to length.  Luckily the blade was brand new, clean & sharp.  I continued the next day, much more carefully!

And the result:

Hope you had a happy Easter!
Ravs

Grinding!

I mastered a new tool on the weekend.
Well, maybe mastered might be a bit of an exaggeration.  But I did overcome my total fear of it - laziness being the driving force.  Using a hacksaw wasn't an option due to access angles and the risk of damaging my knuckles, and a file is slow and puts my teeth on edge.
So what was the tool?

An Angle Grinder!

And why was I using it?

Because I couldn't get screws shorter than 12mm - and they poked out from the 'decorative' wooden corners on my garden bed.  Making them both decorative and dangerous - like cactuses.

What do you think?  SMD says he's happy now, the bed looks more 'finished', though I still have the irrigation pipe top edging to finish.

Bed with 30 x 30 mm corner profile pine.

To fit these corner pieces, which I do admit I like, and make the beds a little safer for kids to run around, I had to unscrew the ends from the bed.  I did this one at a time, rather than disassemble it completely.  Then drill through the sides with clearance holes for the wood screws, hold the corner profile in place, screw, grind the screw ends off, then refit the end piece with the help of SMD to hold it in place.  Then do the same for the other end.

But having solved this design problem for the one bed already constructed - I was able to pre-prepare the pieces for all the other three beds.  Using a production line method to avoid wasting time changing tools continuously.
Drill the holes through multiple sheets of corro at once.  Screw all the corner profiles in place.  Grind the ends off all the screws.  Screw the structural wood supports in place on the end pieces.
And this is what is sitting in my shed as a result.

Sides with decorative corners & ends with structural joiners already in place.

It will now only take a few minutes with an extra pair of hand to put each individual bed together.  But I don't know how long to fit the protective edge on the top yet.

I highly recommend starting with one, almost a prototype, to iron out the bugs, and increase the quality and efficiency of the remaining builds.

A good morning's work.  Thanks to 'Ian Across The Road' (IATR) for the loan of the angle grinder.

And this is some of the soil that is going into the first garden bed.  It is what is left of the straw bale raised no-dig bed that I grew my potatoes in.  Beautiful stuff.  Full of worms, some 6mm or more thick.  Photo doesn't really show how rich & loamy it is though.

A composted down 'no-dig' bed.

I'm still (slowly) working on the second instalment of 'Organic Certification', and reading a couple more books I intend to review.

May your gardens be ever fruitful.
Ravs