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We moved in to our new house (5 acres!!!) in the middle of May. This meant that we didn’t have time to get any gardens ready, but we still did manage to get some things in the ground. PE is working on some lovely permaculture gardens for next spring that we will post pictures of soon! There are already 2 apple trees, 2 pear trees, lots of black walnut trees, and some wild blackberries on our property. Other than that we have a fairly clean slate to work with! As our friends say, we have less work because there isn’t anything to undo :)

After the last post about taking care of our friend’s chickens, the same friend decided that she had the itch to incubate some eggs! She decided that she was going to get Araucanas (they lay light blue eggs) and asked us if we wanted some. We decided that with our new knowledge of how easy chickens can be that we would go for it. We should be getting them sometime in November and are really excited about it! PE junior is also quite excited, he really liked going over and taking care of the chickens (including throwing food down on the ground for them to scratch).

Plant something: 7 tomato plants (from a friend who had extra) using a cool method (direct planting into sod) that some of our favorite CSA farmers taught us! 2 chocolate bell pepper plants and 2 yellow bell pepper plants using the same method. In our fall garden that I made using 3 boards and lots of organic soil (that I bought because I was itching to get things planted!) we have beans, peas, lettuce (several varieties), carrots, radishes, marigolds, and a really small variety of corn. We have 3 whiskey barrels that I planted grape tomatoes (a huge hit with my 2 year old and his friends!), basil (purple and regular), sage, parsley, and spearmint.

Harvest something: Tons of tomatoes, lots of bell peppers, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, basil, sage, parsley, and spearmint. PE has been experimenting with some hay cutting and putting it up in our small barn.

Preserve something: I did several types of tomato preservation (before we got late season blight ARGH!). A couple of times I made a big pot of tomato sauce for dinner with carrots, zucchini, etc. (from the great farmers market that we have in town) and froze the rest in ball jars for later. I also made salsa and canned it, cold pack whole tomatoes (which I did not like the results of, but I will wait to make a decision if I will do it again until I eat them!) green tomato salsa, and green tomato chili sauce. We went to a friend’s house the day she was working on canning a deliciously wonderful smelling tomato sauce (the kind that baked in the oven for 4 hours!) and helped her so in exchange we got a jar of the sauce. We also made tomato paste using her cool hand powered food mill which she later brought all 3 jars over for us! She calls it PE junior sauce because he was such a good helper making it :) I also went to a friend’s farm with PE and his parents and PE junior and we picked 32 pints of raspberries! So lots and lots of jam in July. It is so good on fresh baked bread. I also made basil olive oil and froze it. The next thing for me is canning all of the pears from our trees! I’m excited to try out some different recipes and figure out what we like. I also need to get the rest of our herbs in and dry them/make something from all of the basil (mmm pesto!).

Waste not: Our usual compost and recycling. We took all of the CFL’s (that we bought we aren’t stealing from the landlord!) from the house we were renting and brought them to our new house. We took the light bulbs from the house here and put them back in the rental house. We are looking forward to having chickens to help with the cleanup of the apples and pears under the trees. For now the bees are in them and the deer come along and snack. The dog also does a great job cleaning up after PE jr. Also using all yard clippings, leaves, etc. on our new garden beds.

Want not: We got a Vermont Castings wood burning stove put in a few weeks ago and are hoping that we can have that be our only source of heat this winter (instead of turning on the propane heater). We also have a great exchange going on with a friend. I babysit for her one day a week when her childcare provider does not work and in exchange she gives us food from her farm, maple syrup that they make, and the latest is firewood. PE goes and uses their splitter and gets wood from their huge pile of wood that they were feeling like they would not be able to get through before it rotted. I also did an order from Raintree, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, loganberries, gooseberries, and some other things I can’t seem to remember at the moment. We have some decent planting coming up in the next week or two! I have also been working on winter type projects; knitting slippers and scarves, making draft dodgers, and my next project is making corn heating bags.

Eat the food: We made the tomato sauce, and I have grand plans for some stuffed bell peppers. We also have lots of salad and beans. I hardly get the peas inside the house before PE junior is chowing down on them, and the grape tomatoes were his favorite snack this summer. I have been considering a special snack garden for him next year.

Build community food systems: I have already mentioned a couple here (friend with chickens, making sauce with a friend, and the friend who has an established farm that we exchange with). PE is working with people at our church to create an indoor winter farmers market either at our church or another church in town. I have also been going with a friend on some farm tours around the area. I get to see what different people are doing and get some ideas for what we should do around our farm, and also meet some more people who are doing lots of the same things that we are doing. I love that we are not the crazy ones anymore!

That is what we have been up to this summer! How about you?

...Figuratively, that is. We’ve developed a great network of friends in the time we’ve lived in Yellow Springs, including several current or aspiring chicken owners. Given that we plan on roosting some birds of our own in the spring, we jumped at the chance to take care of our friends’ 6 chickens and 2 guineas over Labor Day.

Seriously, can chickens really be this easy? I know it’s supposed to be a breeze, but I spent more time taking care of the three cats of theirs than the birds. Yes, I don’t need to muck out the coop or reroute fencing over the short 5-day period, but it still adds up to less time than a litter box or walking a dog (thankfully, ours self-walks anyway...).

I stop by in the morning to let the chickens out and check food and water levels. Then a first check for eggs in the early evening (our friends’ rule – those who care for the chickens may keep all the eggs), and a return at dusk to close the coop door, check for eggs and feed levels once again, throw some feed on the coops floor for scratch, and that’s it. I envisioned chasing birds back in the coop every evening, but they are well-trained to return at dusk.

It’s certainly given both me and Crunchy confidence that we will be able to manage well come Spring when we start to build our own flock. With my frequent travels for work, we were concerned about the burden on her when I’m gone, but it doesn’t seem as though chickens will be a significant source of stress.

Now, as we start to consider pasture rotation and chicken tractoring, things get more complicated. But I’m coming to realize that some things -- like chickens! -- really do take care of themselves.

To any remaining dedicated readers out there:

I'm still kicking and remain committed to the site. We recently purchased our farmstead with 5 acres just outside Yellow Springs, OH, which of course involves quite a bit of work. In addition, work life is currently very rewarding but I've gained quite a bit of responsibility, which leaves me less time to ponder post topics during the day. And I'm trying to focus on some local initiatives. All of this leaves me less time to focus on the blog, but I'll work out a better balance in time.

FYI, I'm also currently working on a long-overdue and painful site upgrade -- so if you find things not working here, that's the likely explanation.

Be back soon! Thanks for the patience.

I've been working heavily on local community and regional planning & organization -- I'll give updates here as I consolidate some info. For now, remember to look past the glitz and glare of the financial crisis and keep an eye to the wider threats:

A key factor in how well we deal with a warmer world is how much time we have to adapt. When, and if, we get this hot depends not only on how much greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere and how quickly, but how sensitive the world's climate is to these gases. It also depends whether "tipping points" are reached, in which climate feedback mechanisms rapidly speed warming. According to models, we could cook the planet by 4 °C by 2100. Some scientists fear that we may get there as soon as 2050.

If this happens, the ramifications for life on Earth are so terrifying that many scientists contacted for this article preferred not to contemplate them, saying only that we should concentrate on reducing emissions to a level where such a rise is known only in nightmares.

"Climatologists tend to fall into two camps: there are the cautious ones who say we need to cut emissions and won't even think about high global temperatures; and there are the ones who tell us to run for the hills because we're all doomed," says Peter Cox, who studies the dynamics of climate systems at the University of Exeter, UK. "I prefer a middle ground. We have to accept that changes are inevitable and start to adapt now."

Bearing in mind that a generation alive today might experience the scary side of these climate predictions, let us head bravely into this hotter world and consider whether and how we could survive it with most of our population intact. What might this future hold?

The last time the world experienced temperature rises of this magnitude was 55 million years ago, after the so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event. Then, the culprits were clathrates - large areas of frozen, chemically caged methane - which were released from the deep ocean in explosive belches that filled the atmosphere with around 5 gigatonnes of carbon. The already warm planet rocketed by 5 or 6 °C, tropical forests sprang up in ice-free polar regions, and the oceans turned so acidic from dissolved carbon dioxide that there was a vast die-off of sea life. Sea levels rose to 100 metres higher than today's and desert stretched from southern Africa into Europe.

While the exact changes would depend on how quickly the temperature rose and how much polar ice melted, we can expect similar scenarios to unfold this time around. The first problem would be that many of the places where people live and grow food would no longer be suitable for either. Rising sea levels - from thermal expansion of the oceans, melting glaciers and storm surges - would drown today's coastal regions in up to 2 metres of water initially, and possibly much more if the Greenland ice sheet and parts of Antarctica were to melt. "It's hard to see west Antarctica's ice sheets surviving the century, meaning a sea-level rise of at least 1 or 2 metres," says climatologist James Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "CO2 concentrations of 550 parts per million [compared with about 385 ppm now] would be disastrous," he adds, "certainly leading to an ice-free planet, with sea level about 80 metres higher... and the trip getting there would be horrendous."

Half of the world's surface lies in the tropics, between 30° and -30° latitude, and these areas are particularly vulnerable to climate change. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, will feel the force of a shorter but fiercer Asian monsoon, which will probably cause even more devastating floods than the area suffers now. Yet because the land will be hotter, this water will evaporate faster, leaving drought across Asia. Bangladesh stands to lose a third of its land area - including its main bread basket.

The African monsoon, although less well understood, is expected to become more intense, possibly leading to a greening of the semi-arid Sahel region, which stretches across the continent south of the Sahara desert. Other models, however, predict a worsening of drought all over Africa. A lack of fresh water will be felt elsewhere in the world, too, with warmer temperatures reducing soil moisture across China, the south-west US, Central America, most of South America and Australia. All of the world's major deserts are predicted to expand, with the Sahara reaching right into central Europe.

Glacial retreat will dry Europe's rivers from the Danube to the Rhine, with similar effects in mountainous regions including the Peruvian Andes, and the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, which as result will no longer supply water to Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Bhutan, India and Vietnam.

Along with the exhaustion of aquifers, all this will lead to two latitudinal dry belts where human habitation will be impossible, say Syukuro Manabe of Tokyo University, Japan, and his colleagues. One will stretch across Central America, southern Europe and north Africa, south Asia and Japan; while the other will cover Madagascar, southern Africa, the Pacific Islands, and most of Australia and Chile (Climatic Change, vol 64, p 59).

Last night I went to a talk by Michael Shuman, author of SmallMart and a number of other books on building local economies. He had some fantastic arguments and ideas on why focusing on local economies is far better than focusing on globalization. Key pieces of his argument were items of which most people reading this site are already aware: Peak Oil, global warming, and collapse of the global economy. But he has a very fresh and nuanced view with some incredibly solid arguments that crush the hopes and assertions of even the most die-hard globalist. I intend to get his latest book in the near future so I can speak more intelligently on local economic issues.

This weekend Shuman is also hosting, in conjunction with the Yellow Springs Smart Growth committee (which contains a few Peak Oilers), a workshop focused on analyzing the "leakage" from the Yellow Springs local economy, brainstorming ways to refocus on the local economy, and building an executable plan for the community. I'm not able to attend but several friends of mine are. It's a very exciting prospect.

Shuman discussed last night that one key reason that locally-owned businesses are held at a disadvantage is that people can't invest their pensions locally due to obsolete securities laws. Apparently, he had conversations with the Obama transition team on Wednesday and they were very receptive to rewriting these laws. This could truly be a key piece of building post-Peak Oil economies and is very encouraging with regards to the Obama team's economic mindset. I'll be staying tuned.

We dug up a fairly reasonable 10 lbs. of potatoes, still intact after several hard freezes. While not a spectacular harvest, it was decent enough considering our clay soil, high moisture levels, and planting just a handful of potatoes (~3 lbs. worth?), it’s still heartening to know that potatoes truly can survive unharvested through a bit of winter. We cooked some up last weekend and even fed them to my office, but no ill effects or flavors reported (phew! ).

The next round of potatoes (and indeed the whole garden) will be grown in planters, as we’re expecting to move to our permanent homestead sometime during the growing season. One more new adventure in gardening...

In light of the recent reports on arctic land ice, I thought it prudent to spend some time focused on one of the other critical crises contributing to the Great Decline: Global Warming.

My mom forwarded me a fantastic presentation on some of the latest Global Warming research as presented by a professor at Iowa State University. It contains quite a bit of observed local effects and predictions for Iowa and the Midwest-at-large. The presentation can be downloaded here (Warning: Large ppt file).

I think it’s important to remember that as dire as these predictions are, rarely do they publicize what happens when the negative temperature forcing effect of aerosols (see Global Dimming) disappears as industrial production winds down. True, economic degradation may easily help us meet our arbitrary CO2 reduction goals, but we will have no salvation from rapidly rising global temperatures. On the plus side, increased solar irradiance will increase the output from solar devices and possibly help crop yields, but then again that will overall be countered by accelerated temperature rise.

Just more to consider when planning your farmstead…

In Identifying the Risks, I provided an analysis of the most likely threats a given post-Peak Oil community will face. While my conclusion was that the single greatest security threat can be characterized as crime, I would like to reiterate that there is finite -- if significantly smaller -- risk that a community might face the other scenarios outlined. These possibilities will be discussed briefly in this post and in more detail in the future.

Now that we have identified the primary security threats to our community, where do we begin defending against them? The answer, as most any military professional will tell you, is to define clear goals in an overarching security strategy.

When talking of security, we must first understand that security does not necessarily equate to military solutions. Community (or National) security includes many different aspects, the most significant of which are economics, diplomacy, information, and military power. I am reminded of the story of the blind men trying to describe an elephant: The first blind man feels the trunk and declares it a snake, the second feels the leg and declares it a tree, and the third feels the tail and declares it a rope. For our purposes, the story would go something like this: The first blind man, an economist, senses a nation’s poverty and declares it a financial problem. The blind statesman senses a dispassionate world and calls the problem a failure of international diplomacy. The blind scholar senses a nation’s misleading or absent exchange of knowledge and decries a problem of education and communication. The blind soldier senses the anarchy of militias and demands soldiers stamp out the problem of lawlessness. All are right about the example troubled nation’s security, yet all are wrong if they don’t understand the whole elephant: stability.

In the media, the current financial calamity is constantly referenced to problems during the Great Depression. But an article posted by aboutime on LATOC points out, this comparison falls exceedingly short. A much more apt comparison is to the Greater Depression, otherwise known as the Panic of 1873. Read this description of the conditions leading up to the Greater Depression:

The problems had emerged around 1870, starting in Europe. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, formed in 1867, in the states unified by Prussia into the German empire, and in France, the emperors supported a flowering of new lending institutions that issued mortgages for municipal and residential construction, especially in the capitals of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Mortgages were easier to obtain than before, and a building boom commenced. Land values seemed to climb and climb; borrowers ravenously assumed more and more credit, using unbuilt or half-built houses as collateral. The most marvelous spots for sightseers in the three cities today are the magisterial buildings erected in the so-called founder period.

But the economic fundamentals were shaky. Wheat exporters from Russia and Central Europe faced a new international competitor who drastically undersold them. The 19th-century version of containers manufactured in China and bound for Wal-Mart consisted of produce from farmers in the American Midwest. They used grain elevators, conveyer belts, and massive steam ships to export trainloads of wheat to abroad. Britain, the biggest importer of wheat, shifted to the cheap stuff quite suddenly around 1871. By 1872 kerosene and manufactured food were rocketing out of America's heartland, undermining rapeseed, flour, and beef prices. The crash came in Central Europe in May 1873, as it became clear that the region's assumptions about continual economic growth were too optimistic. Europeans faced what they came to call the American Commercial Invasion. A new industrial superpower had arrived, one whose low costs threatened European trade and a European way of life.

While the eventual end effects of the Great Depression and the Greater Depression have some parallels, the entry conditions were far different. To understand what we face economically in this first phase of The Great Decline (our current crisis), we need to focus on prior events where the entry conditions more closely match. If we ignore this prior example, we may not prepare ourselves accordingly for the fallout.

New PeakOilDesign member Nika has a fantastic and relatively new blog called peaknix. Nika is a life sciences researcher and has several blogs documenting her organic farming activities, adventures in cooking from the backyard, and liberal homeschooling. I'm very impressed with Nika's insight and all that she has accomplished in improving the way she and her family live their lives. Nika is clearly an asset to this site and the Peak Oil/sustainability communities. Her writing and path reminds me very much of Sharon Astyk and I suspect Nika will soon be widely recognized as another strong voice for sustainability. An excerpt from peaknix.com:

I guess its about waking up.

Part of waking up to peak oil is to realize that our consensus reality has been holding us back. That middle class consensus reality masked the edge-nature of our existence. We chose to believe that we were entitled.

We are not.

– Repeat after me –

We. Are. Entitled. To. Nothing.

Our gift right now is of time but its not really about bunkering down.

Its about releasing the entitlement mentality and embracing change and then understanding resilience and cultivating some level of optimism.

I am a mom of three – last winter, when I GOT peak oil on an intuitive level, the first thing I mourned was peak education.

I had to realize that there is simply no way that I could afford to put even one child through college (I went to school on Pell Grants and scholarships, my parents didn’t pay for the core costs tho they did cover food and dorm – never cheap – don’t know what Pell Grants are? Ask the republicans and Reagan specifically).

I panicked and then did that V-8 head-bonk thing .. I have known this for a long time but was never able to articulate it. It was freeing in some ways to realize that the cost of education has become CRIMINALLY expensive.

Not only do we homeschool, I intend to steer my children into organic farming internships and agricultural sciences. Not so much because that is how we will survive but because those activities will make SENSE. My job .. it doesn’t make SENSE in the transition. That’s ok, I have learned one important thing in grad school – how to learn.

I am not saying that things are peachy or that it’s the apocalypse nor am I saying that you should not prepare.