communities

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?

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 speaking of Peak Oil, may people frequently highlight the need for security and self-defense against random aggressors. While it is clear that the security environment in a post-Peak Oil world will be far more volatile, few have given a thorough look at the nature of the threats we will face. Will it be bands of crazed suburbanites, oppressive government regimes, or legions of foreign troops that pose the greatest threat? This writing is intended to provide a thorough and objective look at the future of personal and community defense so as to guide us on the most effective ways to prepare strategies.

Systems Engineering is a poorly-named field -- it's not so much an engineering discipline as a structured process for producing a design. Just as we can design a homestead , we can apply the Systems Engineering process to develop lasting documents.

The experiment I propose is this: can we apply the elements of the Systems Engineering process to create a constitution that ensures a sustainable and open community?

Exciting news! Zachrey is a resident of a sustainable community located near Taos, NM called Greater World. Every home there is an EarthShip and it is one of the greenest communities around. Zachrey has agreed to share his experience and insight here at PeakOilDesign in the Community Organization Forums. Please feel free to post any comments or questions for Zachrey there.

I would like to give a big thanks to Zachrey for sharing his time and I look forward to learning about how one sustainable community is making it happen!

(For more information on Greater World, please visit Zachrey's website.)