communities

Much has changed since we moved into our new place (and in the immense gap between posts), both locally and globally. We welcomed our new baby daughter in October, a great joy. In January I started my PhD in Systems Engineering in earnest and am almost halfway through a year of full-time study. If approved, my research will focus on complexity theory and energy availability and perhaps even have important conclusions applicable to Peak Oil.

Around the farm, much has changed. We’re entering our second growing season here and are much better prepared than last year. I’m focusing on no-till methods and more than doubled the number of beds from last year. We are trying to focus on rare varieties and unusual crops for a local market niche.

Many more perennials are in the ground now. Including the few things here when we moved in, we now have on the order of 60 berry bushes (cranberry, blueberry, raspberry, tayberry, loganberry, boysenberry), 6 apple trees, 2 peach trees, 1 apricot, 1 nectarine, 3 pear, 2 sweet cherry, 2 hardy kiwi, 2 paw-paw, 2 filberts, 1 elderberry, 3 grapes, 60 strawberry plants, 20 asparagus crowns, and many wild raspberries and blackberries. After gaining inspiration from attending a class at a friend’s farm taught by permaculture designer Mark Stephenson, I plan on adding quite a few more food forest elements, including nut trees, currants, grapes, and filberts.

Our few chickens have lived in a prototype mobile coop for a year, and in the next few weeks we’ll be adding 15-20 turkeys (Narraganset and Narraganset/Bourbon mix) and 20 more chickens (10 Dominiques and 10 Speckled Sussex) which will means I’ll need two more mobile coops. Goats and sheep are still down the line, but our plans for them are developing.

I’m starting to experiment with grains, with the primary goal being for animal feed since it is such a pain to get things like wheat cook-ready (although we’ll still do some of that for ourselves). We have a 20 x 20 patch of winter wheat going right now, a smaller (and less prepared) patch of spring wheat, and buckwheat will go in soon.

Infrastructure-wise, we now have a hay loft, a hand pump for the well, a movable poultry processing stand, and a wood shed. Inside, we have added insulation, installed a wood stove, and we are updating other parts. I have permanently parked the (craptastic) mower, and switched to the scythe full-time. (Note, however, I still will have a farmer friend bale the back couple acres). I’m also building a respectable collection of old saws, and will try to put them to the test this year.

While I believe very strongly that these adaptations could make the difference between surviving and thriving – or merely surviving—the decline ahead, much of the motivation for these efforts is to show that folks with no prior experience, a full-time job, and a full-time family can make these changes. Changes that reduce consumption precipitously, reduce carbon footprint, improve health, reduce bills all around, and produce happy kiddos – without unplugging from society.

Change is coming. The trick is to change yourself before things are changed for you.

In terms of post-apocalyptic prosperity, our evolving community is richer than we could have dreamed. An additional farmer friend recently bought a small farm just down the road from us, a friend who “gets it”, who grows sustainably, and is extremely gifted at it. This is in addition to our close friends doing the same thing nearby. In fact, within a mile of our place we now have 6 sustainably-minded friends across 4 acreages besides ourselves. Add to this the couple next door to us, one of whom is chef and owner of a high-class organic restaurant, with whom we’ve established an (only half-jokingly) “eggs for wine” exchange; the nearby skilled carpenter and his family (we have yet to meet); and now a much larger-scale operation by a PO-minded person discussed in this article:

From Krehbiel’s perspective, the world is not a stable place. The carbon emissions at the root of global warming are causing increasingly chaotic weather patterns that are likely to jeopardize centralized farming practices and food supply chains across the country, she said. At the same time, the oil dependent economy can no longer rely on the availability of cheap fuel for food and water transport due to the depletion of accessible oil supplies around the world, which is at peak oil. While for some, these facts may be a vague future concern, Krehbiel doesn’t want to wait around for hardship to settle in. For her, right now is the time to act, and putting some fervor into it wouldn’t hurt, either.

Sometimes I feel you can’t swing a cat around here without hitting 5 folks aware of the energy collapse –- or without getting tackled for feline harassment. They love cats here.

Of course, we’re still surrounded by neighbors who meticulously mow their 6 acre lots at least once per week (and call the sheriff on us for not doing the same –- we’re zoned agricultural, people!), others who think letting their dogs terrorize the countryside (and our chickens) is a good time, and a multitude of chemical-laden monoculture fields.

But all that will fade away with time – leaving our strengthening sustainable sub-community filled with some wonderful folks.

To paraphrase an old saying: An egg here, a zucchini there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

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.)