The James Hand Washer – “Honey, what are we doing?”

Our new hand powered washing machine arrived yesterday. Ten minutes from cutting the tape on the box to running the lever sloshing around a load of clothes. We use 7 gallons of bathwater and some soap for the “wash” cycle – run through wringer – another 7 gallons of bath water for the first rinse – run through wringer – and 7 gallons of fresh water for the final rinse – run through wringer – hang ‘em on the line..

At the end of this my wife gives me a look and we both know the answer to the question she is posing, “what are we doing?” Some would say going off the deep end – I say committing to peak everything. There is no doubt left in me at all that the farm will have more than sporadic electricity in a few years so it makes sense to blow stupid amounts of Fed Res Notes for a contraption that make the most mundane chore of all more pleasant than beating clothes on rocks.

Now we can check laundry post-crash off the list. Pork and chicken, check. Dairy products, check. Eggs and vegetables, check. Corn meal and wheat/oat flour, check – thanks to the Country Living Grain Mill that set us back $375. Wood for heat and cooking, check.

I’m actually begining to relax about the shit hitting the fan these days. If it all comes apart next Tuesday we are sitting a lot better than anyone else we know, and give me another year to deal with pumping springwater up the hill to the house and metal roofs on all the buildings to catch water and I’m good to go in the grand scheme of things.

Of course there is always infection and marauding hordes to worry about. Perhaps a wood gas generator will keep me focused…

Technology in Powerdown

Just read a book tittled – Better Off, Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende. The guy goes and lives with an Amish/Menonite group that got bummed out by all the gadgetry in the Lancaster community and followed a basic tenant of “no motors, no electricity”.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that – the appropriate use of motors and electricity. It takes a motor to make a reel mower or a hand washer, but no juice required after that. A wooden spindle on a donkey cart sucks ass, but a bearing set is cool. Bicycle factory good, Hummer factory bad. If a microwave is an absolute necessity in your life, your life probably sucks.

So anyway, the Brende’s did very well for a year and a half and then found out the wife was allergic to horse dander, and headed back to Boston. Found a new location in a nice village somewhere and did great until the Wal-Mart moved in and wiped out the town. Now they live in downtown St Louis running a rickshaw business and making soap. Har har har. It’s easy to live simply suckin on the fat of civilization, but that sure isn’t sustainability. Would you give up air-conditioning to keep the ball bearing plant operating? Would you even go halves or thirds with the neighbors to share a lawnmower?

Feeling Like it’s Pointless Today or Maybe Just Ridiculous?

My head is in one of those fog states – can’t get a clear view of anything. It’s hot and muggy outside after the sun has been up for a few hours so for the most part I stop working and just mill around. Ponder the coming oil crash and general doom sets in. Go give the pigs some water and sit for awhile. Take the scythe out to the weeds and whack some stuff that will grow back again. Mope a bit. Make the boy lunch and stew about needing metal roofs for catching rain water.

Then a switch flips and I get a kick out of how easy everything really is. Got goats for milk, chickens for eggs, pigs for pork, and in ten minutes I can dig up more potatoes, onions, and green beans than we can eat in a week. All for the price of some feed corn and a bit of electricity. A gallon of gas to get to town. Maybe thirty bucks a week. Of course, that dovetails into the reality of Peak Everything – where the end of the world as we know it rears its ugly head. That feed corn is gonna take a lot of work to grow, the power will be out, and I still don’t have a donkey cart built for the trip to town. On the bright side, the list of shit to do won’t include remodeling the damn bathroom and I won’t have to worry about running the well dry filling up a stupid $60 plastic Vole-Mart swimming pool – no electricity to run the pump.

It’s just a never ending merry-go-round of whiplash that’s bumming me out. The amount of stuff I would have to do living like Cro-Magnon Man is probably less than what it takes to be “civilized”, but having one foot on each side of the fence takes twice the effort it seems. Why do I have to build fence? Because of the traffic on the highway out front. Post oil I’ll let the goats free range. 4 out of 5 neighbors around here won’t be around once the power goes out so we can run naked and seriously reduce the laundry chore. When sugar disappears our taste buds will come back to normal and turnips and beets will be yummy, not to discount delights like ripe blackberries in the bush. I’m sure my attitude will improve once the internet goes down and I’m weaned from several hours a day of surfing my favorite doomer sites, hehehe.

Perhaps I’m just soaking up as much lazy time as possible, gearing up for TSHTF. I’ve never been an industrious person constantly engaged in productive activity, but today I discovered if you crush up a citronella leaf and rub it on your exposed skin the mosquitoes don’t gather for a meal. I’m pretty sure I just gave up my cash jobs for good – chasing Federal Reserve Notes doesn’t seem to make much sense anymore. The cash on hand will rebuild all the roofs and guttering on the buildings for rain catchment. Stocking up is ridiculous when the future is making do without or making it yourself. All I really have to do to avoid Severe Clinical Depression is stay away from the clinic…

Baby Goats

My wife and son went to spend the holiday with her sister in Topeka, so of course all the pregnant goats are popping. Two sets of twins so far, and one more big ol’ doe to go. I am pretty tired to put it mildly. Goat vigil – jeez.

WooHoo looked like she was getting ready so I went into the house for towels and stuff. Came out and there’s a baby goat on the floor. 10 minutes later I helped her with the second one. That was around 5pm, and by dark Zoomer looked like she was steppin’ up to bat. I was concerned about her ‘cuz it’s her first kidding, and by midnight I finally threw some blankets down on the milk stand and packed myself in for some napping. Kinda like those trans-continental bus trips back in my twenties. Nothing. At dawn I gave up trying to sleep and started chugging coffee. Let Zoomer out of the barn to go eat while I milked Sandy the milkgoat, and sure enough, halfway through I heard the Blaaaghh. Got to her and there’s the baby goat on the ground. Just like WooHoo, she wasn’t getting up and figured it’s possible she could have twins on a first kidding. Yep. 10 minutes later here came the other. Glad I was there, for she had a rough time pushing it out – I helped pull since this one was backwards.
Mabs, the herd matriarch is just messin’ with me. Starts bawling at dusk So I figure it’s another night in the barn. Put a cushion and a pillow in a wheelbarrow – construction worker’s recliner – and had a better night. No goat. I hope she holds off until the family gets back. The boy wants to see what its all about. Wife, too, and I could use some sleep! But it’s time to go milk Sandy and Mabs is way out there in the pines. Damn goat…

Update – Mabs came through a day later – one baby girl. My son discovered it when my wife sent him out to investigate a moan. (we set up a nursery radio in the barn). Life is good.