Boo Hoo, What To Do?

I’m on Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation monday morning posts like flies on half composted chickens. He has a particularly good one this week, but I gotta chime in on one of the comments that appeared there:

Yes, we are moving closer to the edge. And I do think people are feeling the “eerie vibe” you speak of. But most of the talk these days seems to be of raising awareness and changing policy…. oh, and increasing our consumption of all those shiny new green products.
Truth is, even people who care and are fully aware of what is happening get up in the morning, drive the same route to the same job that they afraid to lose since they have no safety net and a ton of debt. So what is this family to do, living as they are, paycheck to paycheck, no healthcare, needy kids, maybe needy parents? What are we asking them to do with all the information and warnings about climate change? Pile everything they own into the aging SUV and head… where exactly?
Posted by:Francesca Johnson | April 28, 2008 at 01:56 AM

Boo Hoo, what to do?

I’m not asking people to do jack shit. Well, I take that back. I’ve asked my brother repeatedly to get his ass down here and start building a cob cottage before economic collapse forces him into a tent down here anyway. I’ve begged the wife’s sister and her husband to chuck the deathburb in Topeka and drag a trailer down here. We’ve offered the guest house to my mother in law a dozen times but she is comfortable in a rental house in a former cow pasture subdivision 5 miles from the nearest grocery store. And maybe the guy who answered the ad for “doomer wanted – free room and board for farm help” will actually come down for the summer.

It’s like pulling fucking teeth, man.

So no, Francesca, there really is no Santa Claus. All is not well enough to just go back to sleep. I saw the writing on the wall and pulled all kinds of financial machinations to get out of the house in town and onto the farm. My arms are sore from shoving potatoes in the ground, only one more 50# sack of seed spuds to go. Then I get to start in on the beans and corn. The fruit trees beat the frost this year so if I keep them sprayed I buy myself a couple of hundred hours over a rocket stove canning fruit later in the year right after a couple hundred hours of doing the same with tomatoes and peppers. I’ll squeeze next winter’s woodcutting in there between my blissful state of consciousness raising episodes weeding the garden. Oh yeah, the goat milking, chicken tending, and everybody’s favorite game show, “Fatten the Hog!”

Etc, etc, yeah boo hoo. So to respond to the money shot:

So what is this family to do, living as they are, paycheck to paycheck, no healthcare, needy kids, maybe needy parents? What are we asking them to do with all the information and warnings about climate change? Pile everything they own into the aging SUV and head… where exactly?

WTF are these people holding on to? A shitty job in a shitty town with a shitty mortgage payment or a shitty rental house is nothing to hold dear to your breast. Why not drop back 15 and punt? Sell everything but the clothes, cast iron, tools and dog, load the family jalopy and head out to Dicksville or Cuntlick and knock on doors until you find a farm where there is the old unused house the grandfolks used to live in on the place and trade out some work for a squat? For that matter, beg for barn space. Or a tent site by the spring. There are too many good folks out here in flyover America that would jump at the chance to give a family a new wholesome start for restringing fences and other odd farm labors that have gotten pushed back for too many years.

When you truly swan dive into the wide world of poverty fresh air, food stamps, and the free clinic are all there for the taking. Why work for an asshole sticking tab A into slot B 50 hours a week to buy crap that is given away through church charities? Even deadbeats that are too lazy to work or cut wood get their propane tanks filled via energy assistance programs. If you haven’t got shit but love where you are, no, don’t leave the comfort of Plasticland. But if you’re fucked, like the example above, and it sucks where you are, staying put in the face of economic meltdown is suicidal and homicidal if you have kids in your life. Make sure you know the location of the nearest FEMA camp and don’t waste any time running there as soon as it opens… you’ll get better bunk space that way.

I’ve heard some really idiotic excuses for staying in the wage slave mill over the years. Shit like we’d move to the country but where would the kids go to college? The wife/ husband just got a raise so we should be okay for awhile. When the second car gets paid off. Just put my mom in the nursing home and need to be close to visit. Finally got the yard looking nice. Don’t want to take the penalty cashing in the 401k. And my all time favorite – What will we do with the cats?

Correct, correct, true, true, there aren’t places for the entire population of City of the Dammned dwellers to relocate to. maybe slots are available for only the first half million or so. Act now! Offer expires when the lights flicker…

So I’m just blathering away here, nobody is listening, nobody is moving, no one dooming. Wanna relocate here? Use the comment function. I got plenty of space to park on.

Thoughts On Food Doom

Well, looks like the worldwide grain shortages have started in earnest. I’m sure anyone reeding this is up to speed on the details – I don’t cater to the daytime tv and fox news crowd y’know. I don’t even want to take the time to support the statement with facts, the world can no longer produce enough grain to meet the needs of world’s population – deal with it.

The poor as usual are the first to take the hit. First world cattle, hogs, and chickens trump some poor bastard in Bangladesh. Indo-China is next, and we just take the African Horror Show as a given. I’ve been waiting for months for the price of oatmeal to at least double since the oat crop was so pathetically low last year, but there must be a shitload of it in the pipeline so the price increases haven’t worked their way to the retail level. My personal food doom will be when oatmeal doubles.

Grain crops are funny things. I can turn a goat loose in the woods, bring it in at night and milk a thousand calories out of her 9 or 10 months out of the year. Twenty minutes cuttin’ eyes and dropping potatoes into the ground yields about ten pounds per total hours spent on the job. Hell, even peas and beans are pretty much a low intensity conflict. Blackberry season may be sweaty and sticky but the food value per hour is astronomical. Compare all that to growing grain crops. A one man band with a shovel and hoe just doesn’t have a chance at feeding the family on a wheat crop. You need machinery and shit. I planted a few garden beds in winter wheat just to see what they would do, and I’d say they are not doing much. Nice and green and pretty, but every clump is going to put out a seedhead that will probably take more calories to cut, dry, thresh and grind than it will yield.

Corn may be a bit easier, but forget about trying to feed all the chickens I have running around here on the fruits of my own labor in a corn patch. I have the luxury of buying chops for 6 bucks a bushel to feed these damn roosters ’till they are 8 or 9 months old and have to be pressure cooked all afternoon to be edible. Eggs at 2 bucks a dozen pays for the feed and all the eggs we can eat so no problem. Doom will mean that those hens won’t be running loose – chicken tractors for them and intensive feedings from the worm bins for the cockerels destined for the pot. Using the food chain principle of 10 calories of corn to make one calorie of chicken makes me figure my birds won’t be like the big fat 50 cent a pound leg quarters you get at Vole-Mart. More like scrawny assed birds used to flavor cowpeas and turnip stew.

It’s kinda interesting to think about being that close to food. A garden for fresh vegetables is one thing, but growing food to live on is another. Winter squash may not be as exciting as pizza rolls, but they grow almost maintainence free and keep for months in a cellar. Taste buds in revolt because even hand selected apples ripened to perfection and turned into canned applesauce for winter treats don’t have that familiar yummy factor that comes out of a five pound bag. (four pounds now, but they didn’t raise the price..) Mean beans again and again simply because they plant everywhere, patiently wait to be picked whenever you get a break and have the time, and store without hassle. Same thing with onions. Eating beets just because they have a different flavor and it’s not a cabbage.

At least shrink wrap will be a thing of the past.

The Shoes Are Off.

Spring.

Usually the shoes come off as a pagan alternative to Easter, but Christ rose pretty early this year. Stupid Moon… So the shoes came off today and boy is my life easier. I hate coming in and out of the house taking the shoes on and off because with all the shit and dirt around here the floor is a mess if I don’t. Every time the wife mops all I can think about is the three bucks a new sponge mop head goes for. Now the foot dunk bucket is outside the door and no more tracks.

I call what’s going on outside “tater rain”. Seems like at potato planting time all it does is rain rain, rain. The old timers (fictitious characters to which just about anything can be authoritatively attributed) say get the taters in before the peaches loose their blossoms. Here’s hoping for a late bloomer. No panic – they’ll get in when they get in. I’m just enjoying the redbuds in flower, the clover coming up, and the chickens laying 2 dozen egg a day.

Got 4 goats milking now. The wife has her creamer and cheese again. Cottage cheese for me and the pig gets the whey. Perfected the sourdough bread recipe and the starter gets fed everyday. Y’know… I got a lot of things to feed around here. Sourdough culture, the worms, chicken cat dog pig goats, and #1critter. Not to mention the huge new compost bins I made out of all that walnut lumber. It’s 8pm and I just finished milking the goats and checking the chickens. And folding the load of laundry. Made dinner, too. I claim “retired” when pressed for information regarding my employment status. I get the veiled deadbeat look when the fact that my wife teaches at the college is added to the mix. Hehehe, judge me from behind your 9 to 5 slave station… I’m eating good, no middle age pot belly…

And running around barefoot.