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.

Maybe we need to rethink invasive species???

Hi. As the writer of the post and feel that I need to clarify something. I do not advocate the planting of invasive species. The point that I'm trying to make, and clearly didn't, is that perhaps we should be thinking about an invasive species in a different light. Apples, figs and other crops are clearly non native to America and Europe but are widely cultivated because they have use to humans as a food source, animal feed, etc. Kudzu is an edible plant and although it is clearly harmful can it be used someway by humans? It's a food source, it's been used as a cloth and is showing some use as a building material. All I'm trying to do is to create discussion on how we can use invasive plants in new ways.   It's mid April here in Western Pennsylvania and so far it's been warm and wet.  The buzz of lawnmowers fill the air as I gallivant through my back yard collecting dandelions to make some tea and bread with them.  I had always known that they w
Post a Comment
Read more

Why didn't Erie, PA develop into a bigger city?

          Recently I had to travel up to Erie, PA for business.   It's about an hour north of me and is a rather small city, having just under 100 thousand people living in it.   It played an important role in the founding of America,  - where it was the headquarters for Oliver Perry's flagship Niagara during the battle of Like Erie in the war of 1812 .            It was also a important shipping center, being Pennsylvania's only access to the Great Lakes which was the easiest way to trade with parts of Canada at the time as well as move goods to the cities of Detroit and Chicago, which in the mid to early 1800's were just starting to develop.  It was also directly north from Pittsburgh which was a major industrial city at that time.     Yet Erie never really grew beyond it's humble beginnings and I wondered why.   Like any good sleuth I turned to the internet where I found mostly wrong answers.    Many people thought the port of Erie was to shallow to handle most
3 comments
Read more

Don't leave the rural areas behind.

This blog was started because I had lived most of my life as an urban dweller; I wanted to record my adventures as I tried my hands at different things and I never pictured this blog would become what it did. Country life suits me in some ways.   I'm at a point in my life where I can appreciate looking up into the night sky and seeing thousands of stars, just like I did as a kid.   I just love how the moonlight bathes my beautiful sleeping wife in a creme colored light.   Country life is more peaceful and a lot more hard work than I would have ever expected.  While my neighbors and I may not agree politically or philosophically, my new lifestyle has given me insights on how they view the world. This brings me to my main point.   Here in rural America we simply don't have public transportation, nor do we have a lot of manufacturing or diversity or hospitals or even great education...and if we are going to move forward with a brighter greener future that we all want then we canno
2 comments
Read more