I don’t know about you, but here at my homestead we’ve been watching the goings-on in New York City, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas and elsewhere across the country (including our own small city 20 miles up the road) that comprise the burgeoning and growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement. As the authoritarian servants of the richest 1% of the nation’s population have moved to isolate and abuse the professional activists, the unemployed, the homeless who have gravitated to the encampments, the juxtaposition with astroturfed, billionaire-funded “Tea Party” demonstrations where denizens were allowed to openly carry guns and assault members of Congress is dramatic. I admit I feel a little guilty to be so enjoying the gorgeous fall colors while people are putting their lives on the line to demand equality and an end to taxpayer bailouts of the criminal 1%.

It is glaringly obvious that the well-funded astroturf ‘movement’ enjoys a far greater share of our supposed First Amendment freedoms than the downtrodden 99% of people who just want to make the rich share in the suffering they order our political class to impose on the rest of us as ‘austerity’. So far the demonstrations have remained entirely peaceful even when police officers start pepper-spraying demonstrators (and their fellow police officers), or when the riot squad barrels into the crowd to choke and fling demonstrators to the ground. Reminds me of 1968. I know ‘they’ say that if you can remember the 1960s you probably weren’t really there, but that was one action-packed year full of billy-clubs and fire hoses and cracked skulls… and that was just the Democratic National Convention. It was still a bit less than 3 years before the Powers that Be started killing college kids wholesale for rudely NOT volunteering for that generation’s dirty big war, but let’s not fool ourselves. The very same thing is possible in 2011, and I’m pretty sure those doing the demonstrating across the country are aware of that possibility.

Homesteaders like us long ago gave up the idiot-box hypnosis drug, get our news from other sources – internet around here, along with the region’s college newspapers and the several alternative rags produced in the nearest city. We have moved physically to take as much charge of our own sustenance as possible, and forever plan and work for more. We’re ahead of the “income inequality” game because we care much less about being filthy rich than we care about or families, friends, environment and self-sufficiency regardless of what happens on Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. We don’t watch FoxNews propaganda or MSNBC’s endless prison-porn when we could be out there prepping the beds for winter, or digging the new spring to power the ram pump, or simply sitting on a log on the ridge and quietly watching the leaves change color.

We’re a different kind of ‘elites’ in the current sociopolitical struggles. We’re not the money-hoarders or the Snidely Whiplash home-stealers or even The Donald making a big show of firing hard working people just because we get a kick out of cruelty. I think that makes us members of the 99% who are not The Donald (or Tim Geithner, or JP Morgan or MERS or the day-traders on Wall Street). So while we certainly aren’t planning to close up the ‘stead and head for the city to camp out on somebody’s public lawn, I have gotten together with a few friends to discuss things we might be willing and able to do in support of those who have put their bodies on the line to say things that desperately need saying.

I remember the tales of apple-sellers from my grandparents who struggled through Great Depression-I back in the 1930s. Mom’s parents had to leave Miami when no one could afford haircuts anymore (grandpa was a barber), moved to my great-grandparent’s farm in Georgia to wait it out in a meager sharecropper’s shack. Aside from the vegetables and two pigs a year my great-grandparents raised for their own sustenance, there were peaches. Acres and acres of peaches in a well-kept orchard my mother remembered most fondly as a young tomboy with no financial woes to trouble her childhood. Grandpa would take bushels of peaches – his ‘share’ for helping with the harvest – to Atlanta in a mule-drawn wagon, where he sold them like apples on the street for a nickel apiece. Mom and her siblings looked forward to spending their dollar gift from grandpa’s annual efforts on big stashes of penny candy and an occasional pair of shoes. Well, not Mom on the shoe thing, she preferred going barefoot and remained that way her whole life.

Dad’s family lived in Cincinnati, grandpa was a railroad man charged with [not quite] policing the many teenaged ‘hobos’ who rode the rails in those days from city to city looking for work. Sometimes he’d bring a particularly lean teen home with him, granny would feed him well, put him to work in the back-lot garden, feed him again and gift him with bagged leftovers after a night in the barn before grandpa took him back to the rail yard the next day. Dad was 7 when the Depression began. Got a job with the newspaper hawking the late editions on the sidewalks. The paper wanted a nickel, so he charged seven cents so as to make two cents a pop. Told me people would often give him a dime then refuse change. Helps to be really cute, I suppose.

At any rate, it was clear to me all my life listening to the family tales of hardship that we are not and never were among this society’s elites. As Great Depression-II sweeps the country it seems clear to me that what the visibly courageous demonstrators need most is some of that good old fashioned food that us country folk can help to supply (since we’ve no money to send).

Which brings me around again to apples. The apple harvest here in the southern Appalachians is mostly finished for this season, but there are still orchards open to gleaning, will be until they’re bare or hard freeze, whichever comes first. A few very good apples still in the trees if you’ve got a kid or two to do the climbing, lots and lots of slightly bruised fruit under the trees for picking up. These make fine cider, and at least half an apple to slice and dry now that the wood stove is working nights. A group of neighbors and friends from the city – most kids from the community college where grandsons are enrolled – gleaned an orchard outside of Hendersonville week before last. Netted three bushels of good apples, and ended up with a full dozen gallons of pressed cider.

For a change, we didn’t donate the fruit and juice to the regional food bank where gleaned and ‘extra’ produce has been going all summer. This time we loaded it into the trunk and back seat of a little car scheduled to transport a couple of the college kids to New York so they could join the demonstration during their week of fall break. They got home Monday but still haven’t uploaded their pictures. They said they gave the apples away to demonstrators, didn’t last long but it got them a preferred place in line for when the pizzas ordered by supporters all over the world showed up. The cider made them several fast friends, heated over a little sterno stove to help take the chill off during long nights.

They said they talked up the gleaning projects and promoted the great homesteading and grower’s market ‘scene’ in our beautiful region. Don’t know if they managed to convince any of the big city dwellers to consider choosing this kind of life, but they did plant some seeds. Apple seeds, to be exact. If it all falls apart people are going to have to rearrange their lives accordingly. There’s still a lot of resistance to the idea that the 1% (millionaires and billionaires) would really let that happen, but at the point when job-insecure police forces are ordered to start bashing the heads of those who champion union contracts and middle class job security it’s darned foolish to believe they won’t. There is no social conscience where there is obscene wealth and greed for more. Never will be.

And so the pendulum swings. I don’t know any billionaire homesteaders. Would bet you don’t know any either, though there’s no doubt a few billionaires that own country estates and working farms. The economic situation is obviously not scheduled to get any better any time soon for the impoverished masses and winter’s coming on fast. Even after the demonstrators break camp there will still be great need in this country. I hope that all my homesteading readers, and all wannabe homesteaders out there growing a few tomatoes and maybe some beans in their yards, will bear this in mind when planning for next spring’s production. There is opportunity here to help, we should be at the forefront of that. No one should go hungry in this country, though millions do. Every day, even as politicians are busy slashing budgets for things like food stamps, school lunch programs, and WIC.

Politicians work for the 1%, not for the 99%. They and their paramilitary forces will continue to abuse the 99% on orders from the overlords. And no, they don’t care how many of us starve or freeze or die from simple lack of health care. The real change that must happen will come bottom-up, not top-down. Solidarity.

Occupy Wall Street

Straight from the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield, a new internet-based project to greatly expand the CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] movement into places where it hasn’t been before. It’s a project designed to connect community organizers – volunteers with a group of friends and neighbors who want to get in on farm fresh produce and other fresh foods – to buy in to local suppliers in the usual CSA manner and set up a drop-off point in their area for deliveries and for members to pick up their weekly food items. The company, farmigo, acts as the middleman to negotiate directly with growers, coordinate deliveries and scheduling, and handle the nitty gritty of the business end. It also maintains the web-based platform for people to manage their accounts, order food, and pay the fees. To support this effort, farmigo receives a 2% fee on food sold and collects this from the producers rather than from the customers.

The idea isn’t entirely new, as CSAs in some regions have already set up their local businesses through websites, and even pooled with other suppliers to make for convenient ordering of variety items and coordinate deliveries. Farmigo is pretty much the same type of thing, but on a much larger scale and including big city dwellers. The farmers, fishermen, butchers and bakers who offer products through the service still get to set their own terms and commitment periods. When you check into the website you can click on a map to receive a list of suppliers in your area with links and information on already established drop-off sites.

Farmigo also facilitates one-time ala carte purchases of things like eggs, flowers, meats, seafood, baked goods and other things that will be delivered to the drop-off point on your usual days, so the customer isn’t limited to whatever crops are being harvested at any given time on their CSA’s farm, but isn’t corralled into long-term purchase contracts with those other suppliers. This also saves the member/customer the trouble of driving around to several different drop-off points to get their food allotments. Some suppliers will even deliver to your home, depending on where you live and the nature of your orders.

Those of us who do our own organic gardening, participate in local tailgate farmer’s markets, trade with our neighbors for crops we aren’t growing ourselves, and who have turned the art of wholesome organic foods, fresh air and hard work into a regular way of [homesteading!] life, of course recognize the value of any system designed to facilitate wider participation, cheaper prices to the customer and better premiums for the growers. As CSAs and the local food movements grow, more and more people will participate, everyone will be a bit healthier, and groups of neighbors working quarter-acre or less sized organic gardens can get together and plan who grows what, pool the results together, and create their own supplier CSA group!

Because I am lucky enough to have spent the past 20 years on my little mountain homestead growing food and “fitting in” with a local culture that was here long before I was, there would be great interest in a community organizer to make the contacts with various farmers producing a single crop or two of staples like corn and wheat and oats, things many CSAs don’t produce in bulk, but which most people consume regularly as part of their normal diets. Whole and milled grains, dried beans, cornmeal (grits, hominy, whatever) in bulk would be a sure seller. Value-addeds for those non-subscription purchases, such as compotes and jam, ciders and juice made from locally grown fruit. Pickles, hot sauces, vinegars, sun-dried tomatoes and other dried foods… the possibilities are practically endless. Not to mention those free-range eggs and honey for those who keep bees – which will hopefully be me by this time next year.

The primary requirement for suppliers is that their products be grown naturally/organically. USDA organic certification is not required, but this means no GMOs, no petrochemical fertilizers or pesticides, etc. Most small farmers and backyard gardeners don’t use such things anyway, as the whole chemically-based food production system was invented for big Agribiz where the economies of scale (like 5 square miles’ worth of corn) and government subsidies disguises the true cost of the foods produced. There are farmers in my area who have rotated 40 acres in beans, corn and wheat all their lives and never managed to destroy the productivity of their land with chemical adulterants they’ve never actually needed.

I don’t know if something like farmigo would make much of a dent in my region, where local farmers and producers have been participating in CSAs since somebody first thought them up, and where local farmer’s markets are easy to find any day of the week in cities, towns and villages throughout the countryside. But this type of modern organizing and management would be a good thing even here, so there is much to learn. The more people who abandon our American Industrial Food System the better, and again with enough organized coordination those economies of scale can ultimately lower the price of good, wholesome food so that more and more people can avail themselves of it. Win-win situation, so do check around and ‘borrow’ some ideas from those who are pioneering the food wilderness.

Link:

farmigo – Locally Grown & Fresh.

The current collapse of the world financial system has revealed some structural problems in our national economy that have flourished over a period of decades as corporate interests bought politicians and lobbyists to craft legislation to remove legal roadblocks to mass theft and market manipulation. And despite some changes in the D.C. political landscape, our government remains apparently helpless to do anything about corporate malfeasance on any level. With all the bad economic news dominating the public consciousness, some issues in the food supply sector are having a difficult time being properly correlated and attended to despite the serious level of danger they present to public health.

The food supply issues didn’t begin with the market manipulations on Wall Street and from there to exchanges all over the world. Though for many people the first alarms went off as the CDS fraud crashed the economy in 2008 and the financial players went looking for other markets to wreak havoc on. They seized on commodities – staple foods from the agricultural sector increasingly dominated by multinational corporations like Monsanto, ADM and Cargill. As a traceable beginning in 2008 to what this year became the “Arab Spring” movement across North Africa and spreading to the Middle East and southern Asia, food riots broke out in Egypt and Syria and portions of India as well as elsewhere when people could no longer afford to feed themselves and their families. Things have only gotten worse in the years since, and Americans are slowly waking up.

In 2011 a full quarter of the U.S. population are dependent on food stamps. As unemployment keeps on rising, the government strangely keeps slashing the food stamp budget to appease nutty Republican radicals who insist those hardest hit by the Great Recession are just “lazy” and undeserving of aid that might require corporations and billionaires to pay taxes. Why one of the political parties in our nation believes that Americans will quietly and without complaint starve to death in the streets in order to protect billionaires from paying as much of their income in taxes as their chauffeur does has never been explained by the financial sector’s pundits at the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Major cognitive disconnect.

But serious food supply issues encompass much more than just market manipulation and governmental paralysis. Consider some of these issues while attempting to get a picture of how dire the overall situation is…

Honey Laundering: China’s at it again – Adulterating pet and human foods with melamine wasn’t bad enough – though one corporate scapegoat was executed by the Chinese government hoping to save its place as cheap ingredients supplier to the world – the latest food scam involves honey. Not just fake honey in those little bee-shaped plastic bottles, Chinese honey brokers are creating honey by mixing sugar water, malt sweeteners, corn/rice syrup, barley malt and a variety of unrefined sugars. Failure to police storage requirements has resulted in heavy metal contamination as well, primarily lead.

If you’ve been thinking about beekeeping for honey (and handy pollinators), this is the year to get busy on it. Extension services in many rural counties offer literature, evening classes, and instructions on building hives. Agents often know who in the area builds hives for sale, and aren’t shy of giving out that information. Many people who are trying hard to eat better and healthier are being taken in by the Chinese honey scam, and big food processors using that fake honey in their supposedly ‘natural’ food lines are risking their markets. Grow your own honey or buy locally from someone honest.

Time to re-engineer the meatpacking sector – Late July brought the second largest tainted meat recall so far, when Cargill’s meat packing division recalled ~36 million pounds of ground turkey products tainted with a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella. The biggest recall was in 2008, when a slaughterhouse in California recalled 143 million pounds of beef due to allowing downer cows into the mix. The dangers to public health from e.coli, salmonella, listeria and other bacteria, and from adulterants and contaminates are high, yet our government doesn’t give the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] the power to force food recalls. Companies have to do this voluntarily, and they don’t often volunteer until people start dying and CDC tracks the source down.

If your family eats meat, now is the time to seriously consider raising your own or contracting with a neighbor who raises meat animals. A side of beef from a calf pastured for a year, dressed whole chickens raised happily free range, maybe rabbit stew meat, a slab of locally smoked bacon and/or ham… buying from known sources or doing it yourself could easily save your family’s lives. The more that control of our commercial food supply gets concentrated into the greedy hands of a few, the more danger is present overall. Avoid it like the plague it truly is.

The Nation has a good article looking at How change is going to come in the food system despite united resistance of the big corporate players to cater to public demands for better, less adulterated and far less fattening foods. There is a lot of good information in this article’s analysis to arm yourself with when next you try arguing with a friend, relative or acquaintance about the importance of healthy food and the severe shortage of it in our commercial food supply.

And finally, the good news. The New York Times informs us that vegetable gardens are booming in a fallow economy. We homesteaders have of course known this all along – and have done more than our share to get more people digging and grow the local markets – but we should always welcome mainstream coverage that helps to spread awareness. Recent movement in many states to allow the use of food stamps at farmer’s markets and bulk purchases straight from farmers are helping more people to get more and better food than they could purchase in the grocery store.

Many localities are also sponsoring seed exchanges through the Lions or Ruritan, sometimes through local Chambers of Commerce, 4-H and FFA clubs at high schools. These have committees in charge of getting open-pollinated seeds from local gardeners and farmers, packaging them, and then distributing them free in the late winter and early spring to local residents planning their season’s garden crops. Local schools and civic clubs are offering gardening classes and contacts to suppliers of tool exchanges, equipment like chicken coops and bee hives, and farmers who sell chicks, calves, kids and kits to those wishing to raise their own meat animals. Local butchers are making a comeback, and in many states the Extension Service offers classes all the way up to Master Gardening certification. So get busy, and get your neighbors busy making best use of all these developing local alternatives to Big Ag and Big Food, Inc. We will be a much happier and healthier nation for it, and probably much smarter as a people for our awareness and direct involvement in this most important aspect of everybody’s lives.

Links:

NYT: Vegetable Gardens Are Booming
How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System
Time to re-engineer the meatpacking sector
Honey Laundering: tainted and counterfeit Chinese honey
Risks of tainted food rise as inspections drop

In my last post, Hunger in America, I mentioned several ways we homesteaders could participate in helping to get food into the bellies of our neighbors who are going hungry, and whose supplemental aid is being slashed wholesale by the government. The situation is not going to get better any time soon, so an expansion on the notion of gleaning fields in your rural area is timely.

On a visit to my sister who lives south of our homestead near the South Carolina border brought the situation home to us graphically last week. I’m sure most have heard about farm labor shortages in a number of states this season, which have left fields planted in the spring and early summer to rot in place. On our drive to Sis’s we go past a fairly extensive truck farm with acres of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, melons, pumpkins, sweet corn, etc. that until last year supplied area groceries with fresh local produce and a big produce stand managed by the Mexican-American family who owns the land. We noticed with some shock that the crops were literally rotting in the fields right next to the road and going back for half a mile in both directions – something we’d never seen before.

When we got home I fired off an email to our regional food bank about the situation, suggesting ways to get in touch with the owner of the crops and perhaps setting up a gleaning operation that would salvage what can be salvaged. Even volunteered myself and at least a couple of grandkids for the operation if I could have a bushel of too-ripe tomatoes out of the deal to preserve.

I heard back early the next morning from the Gleaning Coordinator regionally for the Society of St. Andrew, and the mission’s on asap (still waiting to hear). Have the grands out raiding the grocery store back alleys for boxes and crates, so we’ll be ready. Another farm a few miles south has offered its potato fields for gleaning as well, so we’re hoping for a big turnout. I’ll be bringing garden gloves, snippers, a big straw hat and lots of spring water, luckily the heat is back down into the 80s during the day now that the 95-100+ heat spell has broken. Will bring the pitchforks and spades as well for the potatoes if we get that far.

Seems that farmers who are suffering the shortage of field workers are beginning to hear about gleaning, and are offering their idle fields to those who are willing to work for free just to make sure the food gets to hungry people. Most of us live in rural regions and know our neighboring farmers well enough to keep up with what’s happening locally. I encourage my readers to start keeping track of harvests and contacting their neighbors about gleaning what the machinery leaves behind to be donated to food banks. Some areas have fraternal organizations like Ruritan and such with women’s auxiliaries who will get together and can up quite a lot of the donated fresh produce so the very ripe food can still be salvaged.

And don’t forget to allot some time out of your own busy schedule to help out in gleaning the fields. It’s time spent with neighbors and new friends on the front lines of fighting hunger, it helps establish some new working coalitions that will be important as things get worse in the political world, and it can be quite a lot of fun. The apple harvest starts early next month in the next county over, and many of the big orchard owners encourage gleaning once their main crops are in. People bring their big cider presses and keep a steady liquid supply coming from slightly bruised fall that the children gather, and sometimes bluegrass bands will set up in the shade to pick and grin and keep us singing on the job.

If you find some fields that are either not being harvested or are freshly harvested with leavings, please do contact the Society of St. Andrew or organize through your own local food bank and/or civic club to salvage the food. Don’t forget to let your local high school and community colleges know that gleaning operations are ongoing, these can be an excellent source of able volunteers. Some schools will even give the kids credit for their work as part of social service requirements!

Sigh. As the Kabuki in D.C. continues into yet another week/month of grandstanding on the budget and raising the debt ceiling, a good many of us homesteaders are watching our state governments engaging in the same kind of bad budgetary theater as summer hits hard (and early). This year it looks a lot like neither the weather nor government policies care to offer any help to rural America, where the ‘Great Recession’ is a whole lot more like a Great Depression.

In Washington the drastic budget cuts are of course not hitting ADM or Cargill or any other giant Agribiz subsidies – mostly used to grow bioengineered corn, soy, etc. for animal feed. Rather, cuts in the USDA, EPA and FDA budgets are targeted at conservation, extension, research, renewable energy and rural development programs. Less money for inspections and enforcement, less for policing big livestock operations, less for wetland set-asides, etc., etc., etc. The slashing goes on and on, and bodes ill for just about everything that counts in this world. As if this wholesale gutting of all programs geared towards sustainable agriculture, responsible land use, regulation of pollutants and development of alternative crops isn’t bad enough, they’re also slashing food assistance programs like WIC and food stamps.

The Rodale Institute has a very good overview of how the Republican’s scorched earth policy is targeting small-scale farmers, organic growers and specialty farm/homestead programs that have been important to those of us actually engaged in trying to live sustainably on the land. With $39 billion in cuts to conservation programs aimed at protecting environmentally sensitive areas and $350 million for the Organic Transitions Research Program, it seems quite obvious that today’s politicians don’t have much of an appreciation of what it takes to grow and market nutritious food.

Meanwhile, here at my homestead where the summer crops were planted late due to too much rain and some concern about fallout deposition of cesium from Fukushima (which was high in this area), the rain finally did slack off. To nothing. Haven’t had more than a few drops in over a month, and issues with the cistern have us on water rationing in the household – there’s nothing to irrigate with. That hasn’t been an issue most years given that average rainfall here is ample, but this year’s shaping up to be hellishly hot and dry. I can do nothing but wait and see which crops make it through to the next rainy spell, keep some potted seedlings in reserve to plant REALLY late if need be. If it’s to be a super-hot summer, it could last well into November. That’s enough time for most things, even if planted late.

Below are some good articles and resource collections so that we who will be most affected by what Washington (and our state governments) do about the coming second dip of the Great Recession. I urge all my readers to educate themselves to what’s happening nationally and locally, and get involved. Call your representatives. Write letters to the editor. Bring up the important issues at the farmer’s market and at church and at any other community meetings where people who are also affected can be found. Money is just paper and computer data these days. Wall Street’s paper is even less than that. But everyone has to eat, and if there are no food producers people will starve. Our land, our labor, our crops are much more imp We must speak out. We must speak loudly. And we must enlist all the help we can get.

Links:

Agri-Pulse Communications
Rodale Press
Rural Resource Guide [NC]
American Farmland Trust

I read an announcement today in our local paper about the 12th annual Blue Jean Ball, a yearly fund-raiser for our regional food bank. It’ll be happening on the river on my birthday, so yes, I am planning to attend. There will be food from 20 of our best local eateries and four of our excellent regional bands to keep things lively. Should be great fun.

We relied upon the food bank for snacks and cooking class supplies some years ago for the state funded after-school program we managed for at-risk and adjudicated teenagers. On food-run days we often encountered people we got to know who managed other charity programs, houseparents from area children’s homes, and even state workers for the various social welfare agencies in the region, gathering supplies for bags and boxes of emergency food and toiletries to give to abused women, poverty-stricken families and the recently-dispossessed. The number of people in need goes up every year, even as the U.S. government has been gouging necessary aid like food stamps and WIC so they can keep on lowering taxes on billionaires in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s.

I live in a region of the country – southern Appalachia – that is labeled “Economically Depressed” even in the best of times for the rest of the nation. Our only decent-sized city (Asheville) ranks 7th in the nation for percentage of the population going hungry. The surrounding, mostly rural counties are much worse off, and the situation has been deteriorating steeply since 2007.

The World Hunger Education Service provides an overview of statistics from 2008, including an increase in “food insecure” households in the U.S. from 15.8 million in 2007 to 17 million in 2008. They also do a good job of tying this increase directly to the increase in poverty over that year and every year since. Feeding America conducted a hunger study in 2010 showing a 46% increase in hunger in America since 2006. Its network of food banks across the country is feeding an average of 1 million MORE people a week than in 2006, and it’s not slowing down as the price of food skyrockets along with the cost of fuel.

The New York Times reported in 2009 that hunger was at a 14-year high, an increase over those years of 13 million people, putting their figure from the USDA at 49 million American citizens without consistent access to food. Given the deep cuts in state and federal support for food programs this year as Republicans strive to make good on their campaign promises to their corporate sponsors, everyone paying attention is expecting the 2011 numbers to be much higher.

We who grow, lovingly tend and harvest, then faithfully preserve as much of our family’s food supply as we possibly can tend to be more aware of some of the issues involved in rampant hunger outside the D.C. beltway, in ways politicians just can’t match. We are known to often give a lot of our own produce away, trade it with others so we’ve got more variety, and don’t mind sharing what we’ve got with friends and neighbors. I’ve been known to donate boxes of squash and peppers to the food bank, and helped to establish a “shares” food program geared for a rural county where almost everybody’s growing a garden and doesn’t mind planting a little extra for free seeds and feeding the hungry.

I urge all my readers to check in with their local and regional food banks, see how they can contribute to the good efforts, either in produce, time or money. Food banks need all the help they can get, so if your homestead is big enough to be growing some acreage in food crops, most food banks will happily organize teams of volunteers to glean your fields when you’re done harvesting. Just get them to sign a liability waver (in case somebody steps on a rusty nail or something). They will gladly take your leavings and give them to people in need. Heck, you could mention this sort of thing to your farming neighbors next time you have a get-together, see how many will join the effort. Too much is wasted in this country, too many people go hungry.

We can all be part of the answer to that pressing issue.

One of my granddaughters is graduating from high school next weekend, she won’t be 17 until a week later. Yes, she’s extremely smart and plans to be a surgeon, has already been accepted to an excellent school with most of her costs covered by scholarships. The two eldest grandsons will be starting their final year in college this coming fall, though of course no one knows in this economy if there will actually be jobs for them when they graduate.

As the world and national situations get continually worse and worse, the subject of education and its value in whatever kind of society we all end up with when the chaos of massive changes is finally over is a pressing consideration for a great many parents, not just dedicated homesteaders who are at the leading edge of change. As the reactionary forces embodied by right-wing Republicans in state governments and in D.C. seek constantly to destroy the system of public education, parents are often left to wonder if the kids are learning anything at all that might help them do well in life.

Public schools, private schools, charter schools, magnet schools… the choices often boil down to how much money parents have to spend, and out on the rural homesteads of America there usually isn’t a lot of money because it’s all gone into establishing and constantly improving on the choice to go back to the land and ‘ground’ the children in a way of life we consider more honest and broad-ranging than the more urban lifestyles we left behind.

Depending entirely upon the family situation, income, distance from schools and transportation, there is another choice that many parents both urban and rural are making these days – Homeschooling. This can involve parents teaching their own children, or it can involve certified tutors/teachers who manage a group of children from large families or cooperatives of families in a one-room schoolhouse situation. Or it can involve rotating parental teachers each offering their own knowledge and specialties over periods of weeks or months.

Children who are home schooled still have to take those approved achievement tests every year and demonstrate proficiency in the basic subjects required by legislation such as NCLB. There are websites that offer tools and lesson plans, shops in many towns offering books and supplies, and there are organizations for home schoolers where issues can be discussed, other people’s experience can be shared, and hints on the best approaches can be formulated. I’ve included some links below for those interested.

For whatever reasons, it is safe to say that the home schooling movement does include a good many rural homesteaders. If you are among them, and your child has reached the level where higher education comes next, many would ask how hard it is to get home schooled children into college. Do all colleges take home schooled children? Do state colleges welcome home schooled students? What about private colleges? Are scholarships and grants available to home schooled students?

It takes a good deal of dedicated research for families to find answers to all their questions. Depending on your reasons for home schooling, you may find SuperScholar’s list of The Ten Best Colleges for Homschoolers to be a valuable resource. Check with a local organization as well for state colleges and community colleges that welcome home schooled students, and with the proprietors of materials distributors in your area for information about financial aid. Many religious denominations offer scholarships through their private schools, as do some organizations.

As the summer progresses I’ll take a look at some of the educational alternatives homesteaders in my region have established, how well they’re working (or not), and what I can find out about colleges here and what they require – besides the SATs – to accept home schooled students. Along with hopefully helpful lists of resources, forums and advice for homesteaders who wish to educate their children outside the government system. The sooner parents start thinking about their options and doing their own homework, the better prepared they will be to accomplish this very important life-task while doing right by their children. So stay tuned, homesteaders!

Useful Links:

Best Colleges for Homschoolers
Homeschool.Com Community
Homeschool Central: Resources
Wiki’s Extensive History and Overview

Earth Day 2011 is officially marked for Friday, April 22. There are events scheduled all over the place, through the Earth Dar organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In my region – the Southeast – there are a host of events planned in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and elsewhere, but in my own neighborhood [North Carolina} the closest event takes place downtown Asheville in conjunction with the WMCA, where grandson works. The focus will be healthy living (and a lot of fun and games. And music!). I encourage readers to check on events in their area, or renew their efforts to ‘green’ the planet within their own circles by sponsoring community gardens or joining a CSA or helping populate a local tailgate farmer’s market.

While I need to go ahead and plant potatoes and corn this week despite the continuing plume of errant radiation still coming from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, today I’d like to talk about resources for community gardens. There are often grants available from community funds, corporate set-asides and governmental agencies that can help establish community gardens. For homesteaders offering or hoping to offer CSA memberships or Agritourism adventures, it can be a great promotional asset to be part of such a project in your local town, especially in conjunction with your homesteading neighbors.

A good community garden helps to educate people in your wider community – potential steady customers in the ‘Local Foods’ initiatives homesteaders everywhere are involved with – and encourages people of all ages to get their hands dirty, spend some time in the fresh air getting exercise, and get involved with the details of how food is grown and protecting it from harmful pollution. Gardening can open minds and hearts. It fosters a sense of belonging among diverse people who might otherwise not know each other, and gives people a good reason to pay more attention to healthy diets, sustainable food production, and freeing themselves of some of the ‘hidden’ carbon footprints that come with our modern factory-farmed and petroleum-dependent food supply.

The American Community Gardening Association has a wealth of information about how to start and maintain a community garden, with an entire section of resources to help pay the development costs. Never forget that communities have resources of their own in the form of unused municipal land, church and civic groups, social and business clubs, children’s and youth programs, etc. that can be put to good use.

The Municipal Research and Services Center also offers good advice, instructions and resources for those who wish to start a community garden. Many of these resources are sources of funding for such projects above and beyond what you may be able to receive from local and state sources.

The Garden Web forums offer an opportunity to connect with people all over the country engaged in the same kind of projects, and learn from their experience as well as ask questions and get answers from people who know what they’re talking about.

In the end there are lots of things people can do to mark Earth Day and express some support for the idea of a cleaner, healthier planet. But getting directly involved with the kind of ongoing projects that bring home the message of Earth Day 365 days a year can be a lot more satisfying. We who strive to be as independent and self-reliant as possible in this age of ever-increasing dependence on corporations and faceless governmental bureaucrats have been leading the way all along. Some of us came to our chosen earth friendly lifestyles early on, some of us are just starting out. But as always, it’s the mindful decision to do it that counts most of all. The more we share that mindfulness with others who may be so confused by the valuelessness of 21st Century America, the more small steps are made toward reclaiming the close relationship with the natural world that is our birthright.

The official theme of this year’s Earth Day is “A Billion Acts of Green.” People all over the world are pledging to plant trees, clean up waterways, use less electricity, recycle more. buy local… you get the picture. Every little – and large – thing we can do to help others take the first steps down the Green Road helps. We have made our own personal decisions and acted upon them. Don’t ever discount the influence such things have on the more timid and tentative. Each person can make a difference in this world, through each person we touch. So get busy reaching out to your community!

Links:

Earth Day 2011
American Community Gardening Association
Municipal Research and Services Center
Garden Web

Despite what my trusty Geiger counter tells me about the presence of radioactive isotopes in my air, water and ground, it’s in the 80s here in the mountains this week and things really must be planted. After several days of steady rain when levels were up around 10 mcrem/hr here on the mountain, we got a break yesterday when it fell back to entirely undetectable. Today it’s up again to an average of 5 mcrem/hr, which I’m guessing is going to be our new ‘normal’ background. At least until Fukushima stops dumping, and that may take months.

So I’ve turned some beds, busted up the clods, and scattered seed for salad greens and bunching onions. I figure what we’re getting here of airborne radiation is primarily iodine-131, which has been showing up in milk in various states closer to Japan than mine. We can live without fresh milk, dry works just as well for baking and cooking, was processed long enough ago to be free of radioactivity. Butter is a bit more worrisome because we go through a lot of it here on the ‘stead, cheese less so due to the fact that it tends to get aged pretty well. After 4-6 weeks even relatively high levels of iodine will decay away, since its half-life is 8 days. Nothing that I can plant right now would have detectable levels left of iodine by the time it’s ready to eat, so I feel pretty good about that too. Cesium is a bigger problem (134 with a half-life of 2 years and 137 half-life at 30 years), but that will be much more of an issue at and near Japan as well as in seafood and seaweed. What will make it here won’t be more than after a Chinese bomb test.

According to my calendar, I could risk planting corn and beans at this point, even though last frost date is officially May 10. In this my 19th gardening year here, I’ve never seen it freeze that late. Blackberry winter always hits during the first week of May, but it hasn’t been below the 40s in all those years. My biggest plans for the upcoming weekend are to organize the ‘shroom hunters planning to converge here. It’s morel time, it’s scheduled to rain, and we are very much looking forward to the feast.

Meanwhile, my local plant supplier – Painter’s Greenhouse has changed hands. Steve and Susie Painter have chosen to retire, transferring the business to the Owens family. The focus has changed from landscape and houseplants to garden vegetables and herbs, which can be purchased by the dozen for not much more than the cost of seeds and potting soil. I got some heirloom tomatoes and very good non-hybrid peppers last year that did so well I still have some in the freezer. The tomatoes were viney enough that this year I’m planning on just letting them hug the ground, there isn’t a tomato cage anywhere tall enough to handle them. A 3-4 inch layer of straw on the ground should allow for good fruit without having to be off the ground entirely, and Painter’s should have bales of straw as well.

I encourage readers to check out their own local suppliers and give them their business. They will pay attention when you request they offer heirlooms and open-pollenated varieties, as these are in great demand these days. If your homestead doesn’t have a local supplier, you might look into the idea of becoming one yourself! At Painter’s there are weekly sales events in season with cook-outs, local bluegrass bands and lots of diversion for the kids so you can roam the greenhouses at will. These have proven immensely popular, and they often allow local artists to set up as well. Our potters and ceramic artists are gaining quite the regional reputation, and there’s just nothing more glamourous than having a few unusual pots and planters decorating your porches with great greenery planted within. Supporting local artists is always a good thing, and helps to establish great networking opportunities to grow homestead viability in a number of creative ways.

Remember that local networks of sales and barter tend to keep what’s valuable circulating locally instead of just enriching some faceless corporation somewhere. When thinking about growing things from the ground up, it’s good to remember that can mean much more than just fruits, veggies and herbs. The same is true of local Farmer’s and Tailgate markets, CSA cooperatives, etc. So when you’re surfing after a long day doing work about the homestead, don’t forget to do some localized searching for developing cooperatives in your area that it may behoove you to investigate and/or join!

Here it is late January of 2011, and this blog has been sorely neglected. The last year has been filled with lots of projects and ‘the usual’ upkeep and maintenance, so what I’ll do with this post is catch up a bit during the mid-winter lull in outdoor and garden activities.

Last winter at this time there was a solid foot of compacted snow and ice coating the homestead, and the last of it didn’t finally melt in shady spots until mid-March. Having marked our 18th solid year here – which has allowed us to get a ‘feel’ for the way weather and seasons can vary quite a bit and still be considered somewhat ‘normal’ – last winter was something quite else. It wasn’t unusually cold, per se, but the temperature hovered at or below freezing so steadily that the 6-8 inches of snow that fell weekly never got to melt before the next storm hit. In a ‘normal’ winter here in southern Appalachia it is above freezing about half the time, usually in the 40s or 50s about 3 days a week averaged between cold snaps that have taken temps as low as single digits. But those kind of frigid nights have been rare, less than a handful a year.

So, given the possibility that climate change will cause changes in my region that we’ll have to be ready for, I went looking for reliable information and reasonable projections from climate scientists about what we should be ready for. I’ve linked some below, which readers may wish to check out for their own preparations. In the end, best estimates I found for my little microclime are an eventual rise of 2º overall and about 4 inches of extra rain per year. Not too bad, but may cause an eventual orchard switch from apples and pears to citrus and peaches, vineyard replanting in figs (or some such semi-tropical crop).

When spring finally did come, it came hard and fast. Everything bloomed at the same time, so I was very pleased to note that our bee (and other insect pollinator) populations show no signs of significant decline. The war with carpenter bees that have been eating the house and outbuildings for many years does appear to have finally turned in our favor, though the number of carpenters and other bumbles helping out in the garden hasn’t diminished. All we ever wanted was for them to go eat some dead wood in the forest instead of eating our house. We may be winning that argument at long last!

After about four weeks of colorful spring it went straight to hard summer. Hottest summer on record, though not nearly as dry as I’ve seen on occasion. A ‘normal’ year will bake us with 90+ temperatures a few times, about as often as we get those three or four day cold snaps in the winter. In 2010 it was above 90º solidly for two and a half months. Got over 100º six times, was absolutely miserable. We’ve got no air conditioning, never really needed it here on the mountain. Last year hubby and I went ahead and slept out in a tent for days at a time because the house never managed to get rid of the heat during the night. Of course, it probably didn’t help that a kitchen remodeling had the entire south wall open to the elements for two months (a project originally scheduled to take no more than six weeks total. Ha!). So sleeping out was some peaceful relief.

The kitchen project wasn’t done until the week before Thanksgiving, so work on the disc golf courses that will get them on line for tournaments with the regional DGA had to be put off until this year. That will be a good project to document as it proceeds, yet another way to glean a little income from living way out in the boonies and doing for yourself.

A second grandson moved in last January after his Mom and Step father lost their home in Florida and moved to California seeking work. This grandson is very energetic and eager, it’s nice to have some dependable help around the place. We’re poring through the incoming seed catalogues now planning for the coming season. As Great Depression-II grinds on without relief, we’ll have to put some serious energy into putting in some staple crops (wheat, corn mostly) up at the high field as well as growing and preserving an adequate food supply. Energy prices are rising fast as if to forestall any possible economic recovery in the provinces, so those items will also take some doing to get around for the immediate future.

My mother used to tell me great stories of her childhood during the first Great Depression, when her family had to move from Miami to rural Georgia to live in a sharecropper’s shack on her grandparents’ peach farm. Her parents didn’t have a good time (Grandpa never got over it, died shortly thereafter), but Mom had a blast and didn’t mind being poor at all with so much to learn and do. We may end up having to host many more family members here on the ‘stead before it’s over, so I’ll be using some of Mom’s stories to help manage the stress of surviving.

All in all, it looks to be a busy and productive year with lots of things to write about that readers may be able to learn from and put to use toward their own living arrangements in these troubled times. I am relieved to be back and revive this blog, hope to enlist some new writers on subjects of interest, and maybe gain some regular readers interested in alternatives. Happy 2011, everyone!

Links to Climate Change Data:
[Be aware that different sources use different models for projection, government sources tend to use best-case models, others lean toward worst-case scenarios. Allow for inaccuracies when looking at your own region's future.]

EPA: Future Climate Change
UK Met Office: Climate projections
UCS: Global Warming
GEOS Institute: Local Climate Change Projections
US Global Change Research Information Office
PennState: Consortium for Atlantic Regional Assessment