The City Mouse in the Country

 Recently there was a study about carbon sequestration in farm land.  The idea - say it with me now, is a simple one.   We remove carbon dioxide out of the air and store it in plants.  That's what plants do right?  It's called the Carbon cycle . Well...yes.  It actually does work.  All we really need to do is stop plowing.  We grow low growing plants - like milkweed; which by the way butterfly's love so bonus points - which have been showing to store carbon right after the harvest, we then increase the amount of permanent grassland.  We start to practice agroforestry and lot more and restore the wetlands!   CRISIS PREVENTED!!!   Wow!  That was simple.  Good job everyone; see you next Tuesday at the Vegan BBQ and bowling night. On a small scale it really is a simple solution and I'm doing a bit of that myself.  I've let part of my yard go wild and it will, one day, be absorbed back into the forest from which it came.   It's a natural carbon sink.   Her

 Sometimes I think I'm more in love with the idea than the actual practice. I'm basically a lazy man, more in love with the concepts of homesteading and building an edible lawn/food forest than actually putting in the hard work to make it happen.   Sometimes however, things happen that present you with unexpected opportunities....if your smart enough to take advantage of them.   Recently we had a series of wind storms move through the area, the winds toppled trees, caused several electrical outages and even managed to damage roofs and homes in the area.  Luckily no one to my knowledge was hurt and the damage was minimal.  We did lose power for a few hours but never once considered running the generator as we were tucked in all cozy and warm. A decent sized maple tree did came crashing down in my yard on Saturday night and proved the old adage that if no one is there to see it, it does not make a sound.  Neither Sue or myself was aware of the problem till Sunday morning.  It was

          By the time I actually post this, Earth Day will have passed and honestly I could not think of a better way to celebrate Earth Day , than talk about the health of the planet and my personal healthier living goals.  No, this is not an ego post.     However the two are intertwined.   There are only a few people on this planet that still deny that we humans have a negative impact on the planet.  We, as an entire collective species, also don't seem to care.  Frankly if we would have started changing things around 30 years; we may not be in the mess we are today.  But, here we are.     That being said I'm not a climate scientist.  I don't have an advanced degree or specialized knowledge or even a crystal ball.   What I do have is a sense of history, an ability to take a large variety of data and connect the dots.  After all, I've made a living out of educated guesses based on the data I have at hand and I've been doing it fairly well for nearly 30 + years.