Skip to main content

The future is coming on quicker than we think....A call to arms

I started this blog for a few reasons and I never intended it to serve the purpose it does now.  I'm trying to pass on information in a variety of ways to help others.  I'm trying to help others learn from my mistakes.

While my blathering may seem trivial.  It's not, for we have to put ideas and concepts out into the world so that they are be built on, improved, discussed and debated.  That's how we make progress.  That's how we build a better world. 

Currently I'm still recovering from one very bad day when deer rampaged trough my garden and ate or destroyed roughly two-thirds of it.  I had invested a bit of money into it when it came to soil, fencing, containers and what not; only to lose part of that investment to deer.

To deal with the deer, I'm going to have to possibly invest more and buy electric fencing or a variety of chemicals.

I'm reminded of William Alexander's semi cautionary tale of gardening from his book The $64 dollar Tomato.

It's a fun and compelling read about hubris and obsession and was one of the many books that started me on the path that I am on. 

Unlike Alexander's book, I'm trying to keep things small and simple.  The more complex something becomes, the more time and upkeep it requires.  If I wasn't so damned worried about possible future issues I would be perfectly happy to simply say "screw it" and buy my overpriced peppers and hummus from the local grocery store.

The problem is that the last thirty years of my working life have been all about understanding trends and data.  The data is all indicating a very nasty future.   If the current trends hold then I'll be in my mid seventies to early eighties when the shit hits the fan.  This is based upon current economic and environmental models that place an economic and societal collapse somewhere around 2040 - 2050.  

So in other words I'll be old or dead when the end comes and my legacy will hopefully be the fruit trees and edible lawn that I leave behind.

However my generation's children....and our grandchildren...will be the ones that will have to deal with our failures.  Frankly we are not going to avoid it, but we can do what we can to push it back a few years or lesson the effects of it by the actions we take today.

Which of course, brings me back to the garden.  

I would love to be able to get to a point where I'm not only producing enough food for my wife and myself, but being able to store it as well.  We are far from that point and this is only the second year where we have tried to grow more than peppers and tomato's.     The deer invasion was a major setback.

Then reality knocked at the door again in the way of the Canadian Wildfires  

Generally speaking the air quality where I lived was never an issue.  We generally had "moderate" air quality days where we live and are far from the city where other factors could have made the air quality worse.   At no time did are lives look like a hellscape.  

However the fires and their aftermath did bring up some interesting questions.  What type of plants might do well in the coming heat of climate change?   What type of plants might help improve air quality?  Or thrive in less than perfect air quality?

While there have been lots of studies about indoor air quality I'm not sure if there are any studies about how to grow food in situations where the air quality might not be that great.   Some trees from example are well known to remove toxins out of the air, and a few are even edible.

Knowledge of gardening, even if it's just a small indoor garden, becomes a survival skill.   It's something we need to pass on now.  There are lots of little skills we can learn and pass on that will be helpful to someone and at some time.

The future is looking darker and bleaker than it did before.  We were just given a glimpse of a likely future recently.   A warning no one in power will pay attention to, but we must.

Like it or not the government won't save us nor will some the the carbon capture technology that is being promised ready or even feasible.

So learn what you can about gardening, foraging, survivalism, organize, prepare and do what you can do now.  Because that clock is ticking and it's not going to stop.




Labels:
Location: Stoneboro, PA 16153, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

Unplanned and Unprepared. Life Happened.

 It's been a bit.   When I started this blog I was in a stable place and a stable condition.   I thought that I was done with moves and surprises.   I would have been perfectly happy to just work for another five or ten years till I retired.    If I'm being completely honest with you but since moving back to Western PA just about six years ago, things have been odd at best and difficult at worst.   I've questioned why we moved but for better or for worse, this is home. Then I lost Facebook and that was one of the drivers, if not the main driver that drove people to this site.   Then my job situation changed drastically.   At first it was fine but it was clear that the company really didn't have a spot for me, and as they transitioned from "work from home" to "return to the office" it became hard for me to justify a commute of over 100 miles each way.   The jobs that I worked after that were temporary in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Acting in our best interest.

** The majority of this column was written nearly two years ago, however for a lot of reasons, has been updated and ready for publication now.** Recently a friend of mine and I were talking about some changes in our area.  We have had three solar farms built recently and there is talk about a wind farm. She brought up how wind turbines are responsible for killing birds.  That's a known fact that everyone can agree to, however exactly how many birds and what to do about the bird strikes is up for debate.   This conversation tells us a bit about the type of people we want to be.  We are going to have to make trade offs in the future and we need to determine what those tradeoffs will be.   Wind turbine's are constructed in a location that meets certain criteria to meet it's full effectiveness.   What happens if location X is also the breeding ground of a nearly extinct bird?  Can they still breed if the tower, or solar panel or geothermal ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Honoring the past - Thinking more about "invasive" plant species.

 Recently I've been giving some thought to invasive species.  I had received both positive and negative feedback on the blog post concerning kudzu and recently I came across a very well hidden, and very small, wild cherry tree while doing some yard work.  Since it's against the house it would have to be removed since the root systems could damage my foundation.   A buddy of mine at work was asking if I was going to transfer it, his logic being that it was a fruiting tree that would not only attract a variety of pollinator's but that the deer would eat the bark and cherries, keeping them away from the garden (which Sue and I swore we were not going to do this year).  It occurred to me that I was going to have to do a slightly better job of identification, since black cherries are native to America , where as other types of cherries are not.  Being able to make a precise identification would be helpful.   I used to be able to identify all these tre...
Post a Comment
Read more