Water As Precious Resource

People used to think about water as an infinite resource. They could use it, abuse it, pollute it and sink their garbage into it with impunity, it would never run dry and would somehow clean itself of sewage and chemicals and industrial waste. This short-sighted view of life’s most precious and necessary resource justified the great post-war “turf boom” expansion of the population into designed suburbs of cookie-cutter houses with neat green lawns and homeowners’ associations that decided they could dictate what residents were allowed to plant, whether there could be a few weeds in the mix, and how often those green expanses of useless grass had to be watered and dosed with chemicals in order to maintain the cookie-cutter expanses of identical expanses of useless grass.

Now that we know water is a lot more precious than we thought, that climate change is imposing long-term droughts on entire swaths of the earth, that unwise allocations have drained ancient aquifers, and that a lot of the water people have to drink is polluted by things nobody really wants to know about, it’s a good time to re-think our entire approach to water. This is yet another necessary change in humanity’s relationship with the natural world that must start in the countryside and outer ‘burbs with motivated individuals who will commit to doing things differently, and educate their neighbors about how it’s done and how great it can be made to look.

Most of the surface and groundwater on the planet is salty. Shortages of fresh water have led to conflicts and open warfare through history. In Bolivia the American corporation Bechtel has attempted to corner the water market in order to privatize it, even making it illegal for individuals to harvest rainwater from their own property. Their model for this ridiculous legislation comes from Colorado, where it’s also illegal to harvest rainwater (because it diminishes downstream supply).
Continue reading »

Earth Day ‘08

In honor of Earth Day (April 22) and Earth Week (April 20-26), I went on over to EPA’s Earth Day Events & Volunteer Opportunities page to see what’s happening in my neck of the woods. I live in region 4, which includes the entire southeast plus Kentucky. If you’d like to pick up on some opportunities in your region, just click on the map and the list comes up.

In Atlanta the Children’s Museum is sponsoring one of the biggest regional events for kids. EPA has a character called “Mother Earth” who will distribute vegetable seeds and help children plant them in pots, and she’ll be giving away sun visors for the “SunWise Parade” through the museum. Sounds like fun, but I’ve no little kids and it’s way too far to drive.

Lots happening in Florida, but I won’t be there until Saturday - for a funeral, alas. Knoxville isn’t that far to go for their Earthfest event on Saturday, but I’ll be in Florida then. Oh, well. Looks like there’s just not much happening - at least, nothing government sponsored - in my Western North Carolina mountains. But wow! I’m looking out my window right now at the new green baby leaves on my hardwood forest, at gorgeous sprays of white-white dogwood scattered throughout, the red azaleas are in full dress around my garden bench, the tulips and cala lilies and jonquils are everywhere, wildflowers are popping up in the garden terraces where I didn’t plant them…

There are some great ideas available on the International Earth Day site, and interesting news and projects on the EarthdayNetwork website.

Hmmm. I’m guessing the best thing I could do today is sip some nice fresh mint tea while sitting on my garden bench planning all the hard work I need to do to get the place in order. It’s a perfect 72 degrees and the sun is intermittent. Happy Earth Day and Earth Week, all you hopeless nature-lovers!

Links:

Earth Day goes political and corporate
International Earth Day
EarthdayNetwork
EPA’s Earth Day Events & Volunteer Opportunities

Algae Biodiesel Steals the Show

Will bee offers a very cool post today on his blog RideLust, Solazyme’s Algae-Derived BioDiesel Passes Defense Department’s Cold Weather Testing.

I particularly enjoyed the lede…

In a recent news release from Solazyme and as reported at this years Worldwide Energy and Trade Show yesterday, their algae-derived biodiesel has passed its Department of Defense cold weather testing. To demonstrate the performance and readiness of their product an unmodified Ford F-450 diesel was driven to the conference fueled by Solazyme’s biodiesel by former Director of the CIA, James Woolsey.

Hahaha!!! Man, I’d have paid real money to see that! There is a real future here, and some folks have been putting in some serious R&D to make it happen. Go on over to RideLust and read the whole thing, it’s definitely worthy!

Home Grown Revolution

Here is a wonderfully entertaining and inspirational video about “urban homesteading” and modern Victory Gardens, brought to us by Peter Seller’s cultural arts class at UCLA using clips from Treehugger TV’s Path to Freedom. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!

Home Made Goat Cheese… Yum!

As we prepare to replace the fence posts and fencing around the garden, I’ve been considering a fenced area on the other side of the garden, or perhaps on the upper terraces, for a chicken coop, a little barn-shed and a couple of milk goats. It would be a big step for us to go into livestock (that’s not dogs, cats or doves), but with the food shortages expanding and the prices rising fast, it might be something that makes good sense.

The folks we bought this place from some 15 years ago raised goats and horses, also kept bees. I’d love to get some bee boxes, know right where to station them at the edge of the woods facing the garden. But we’ve plenty of wild bees and other insect pollinators for the fruit and vegetables and wildflowers. I’d be doing it for the honey! Chickens will have to be well protected from foxes (we have a couple of fox families on the property, and we don’t plan to kill them). We used to keep chickens in the fenced back yard of a house in town when I was a kid, they aren’t difficult if they’re protected.

My experience with goats hasn’t been so encouraging. Got our first goat in Virginia from a friend. She was half alpine, half Nubian, the cutest critter God ever made! All legs and full of energy. By the time she’d grown up enough to breed (yes, they have to be bred regularly in order to give milk), she was convinced she was a dog. Who ever heard of milking a dog? She made an great pet, but we never had her bred.

Continue reading »

Time to Buy Your CSA Memberships!

CSA - Community Supported Agriculture. The CSA ‘movement’ in my state (North Carolina) organized, promoted and maintained per resources and educational materials by the state’s Cooperative Extension Service, the outreach arm of the state’s Department of Agriculture and land grant universities. It’s all about small farms, sustainable agriculture, natural and organic methods, and best marketing practices for what is produced.

CSA member farms offer fruit and vegetables, flowers and landscaping plants, eggs, milk (dairies specialize in cows or goats) and cheese, pasture-fed meat, and some even participate in the AgriTourism initiatives to bring urban families and tourists out to the farms for tours and work opportunities. Consumers can purchase from favored producers at local farmer’s markets, or do what we do - buy a “share” of the coming season’s crops in the spring when the farmer needs the funding to cover seeds and the costs of getting the crop in and going.

Continue reading »

Spring Tonics Present Themselves

Vitamin-Packed Goodies are Popping Out All Over!

I’m sure most people as as glad as I am that “Standard Time” was shortened significantly this year, having never quite made the adjustment to early darkness in the first place. Springing the clock forward early just puts us back where we were anyway all the dark winter long. Easter’s early this year too, and as my mother used to say, you can’t be sure it’s really spring until Easter.

Of course, last year we suffered a hard Easter freeze in mid-April that ruined the fruit and mast crops irreparably - even fooled the dogwoods that were in full bloom! So while garden preparations are proceeding apace with the march of March, and potatoes, lettuce and peas have been planted, we’re not ’safe’ to really get things in the ground until late April.

Despite this, the daffodils are in glorious bloom along with forsythia, the crocus have come and gone, the lilies are growing fast and everything’s budding. All I can do is hope the fruit and mast aren’t ruined this year by another late freeze, but there are many things growing right now that a homesteader can make good use of just because it’s there. All of these goodies are packed with vitamins and serve to help prep the system after a long, slim, dark winter.

Continue reading »

Paint-On and Print-Out Solar Cells

Great news this week on ScienceDaily, picked up by Nanotechnology News and other outlets that researchers from Swansea University have developed a paint coating for steel buildings that will generate electricity even in low light situations.

Note that this isn’t solar panels on the roof, but the enameled coating on the siding itself. Meaning that metal buildings - including garages, barns, equipment sheds, airport hangars, outlying megachurches and community buildings could all be generating electricity (some from the infrared spectrum current solar cells cannot capture) while they’re just sitting there enclosing space. Put a few regular panels on the roof too and it could be generating more than it uses on a regular basis.

But when I went looking at just how innovative this development is in the overall scheme of things keeping affordable alternative energy options safely insulated from regular people who might just put them to work, I found that the idea isn’t all that new, and isn’t anywhere close to being marketed to consumers of things like metal buildings (commercial or residential). Why do you suppose that is, given the sheer amount of money being funneled into research and development, as well as into actual production?

Continue reading »

Hemp: Our Original Industrial Crop

Back when the country was new, its beloved “father” and gentleman farmer George Washington advised…

“Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere.” [1794]

It was the #1 cash crop in the 13 new states just as it is the #1 cash crop in 50 states today. As a fast-growing “weed” that requires no pesticides or herbicides and very little fertilizers or irrigation, the close-packed stands of 8-9 foot tall plants provided more biomass per acre than any other crop ever discovered, bred or engineered. Its fiber content is 2 to 3 times as great as cotton per acre, and is both softer and stronger than cotton. Hemp paper lasts hundreds of years and can be recycled more often than tree pulp papers.

Hemp’s high cellulose content is a fine base for plastics - composites made with hemp are now used by Mercedes Benz to produce auto bodies and dashboards. Hempseed oil is both more nutritious and more economical than soybean, peanut, sunflower or canola oil. It burns brighter than any other plant oil, and can be used to produce non-toxic diesel fuel, paint, varnish, detergent, ink, home heating oil and lubricating oil. It is as easily converted into ethanol as corn, but can be grown in a much wider range of climates and conditions.

News organizations warn that we are facing a worldwide food shortage in part brought about by the diversion of staple food crops to ethanol and biodiesel fuel production, worsened by reliance on unsustainable agricultural practices and chemical pollution of once-rich “breadbasket” farmland. Our reliance on foreign oil has caused 2 wars in this first decade of the 21st century and killed more than a million people with violence. America alone has sacrificed more than 3,000 soldiers and left some 30,000 returning veterans with life-crippling injuries. Pollution from fossil fuel burning contributes to another few hundred thousand premature deaths worldwide every year. Global warming, if unchecked, will eventually kill tens or hundreds of millions more.

The answers we seek for the future may require a re-examination of our past. Perhaps George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were right. What might be accomplished if we did NOT spend 4 billion dollars a year trying to prevent farmers from growing industrial hemp?

Links:

Fossil Fuel Cuts Would Reduce Early Deaths, Illness, Study Says
1997: Canada Repeals Hemp Prohibition
Energy Farming in America
Hemphasis: Hemp as a Fuel/Energy Source
Vermont House Approves Hemp Bill
Hemp-based biodiesel, NOT ethanol

25 Alternative Energy Strategies - 5

In this, the last five items in the list of 25 strategies, a look at community efforts to become self-sufficient is in order. While an energy self-sufficient homestead can exist in any rural environment, the more neighbors (no matter how spread out) who catch the bug, the more resources are available to be developed for the good of all. It’s the natural ‘next step’ in extending the idea of energy self-sufficiency toward the broader society.

The real “trick” in items 21-25 are the collective will to work together and agree upon sustainable agricultural, building, energy production and distribution practices.

Part 5: Collective Strategies for Communities

When FDR was elected President in 1932 - in the midst of the Great Depression - he addressed the awful situation by means of the “New Deal.” Tucked away in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 which established the huge public works programs, was the Subsistence Homestead Communities project. The plan was to relocate some of the idled workers from over-populated industrial areas into planned subsistence communities they would build for themselves with government money.

Read about the Cumberland Homesteads project for yourself, it gives a rough idea of the rewards community development can reap, even if the whole thing is privately financed by the motivated homesteaders themselves (as it must be today). Sure, there are many grants available for rural community development (such as state agri-tourism initiatives) when there is someone skilled in applying, from all sorts of government agencies federal and state. And some resources available from corporate largesse these days as well.

Continue reading »