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#Post#: 292--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Eddie Date: May 12, 2021, 4:49 pm
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[quote author=Cam link=topic=22.msg288#msg288 date=1620792922]
[quote author=Eddie link=topic=22.msg268#msg268 date=1620743028]
Not all permies are full of woo, but the idea of permaculture
appeals to woo-woo people. Everybody has some kind of bias.
Farming can learn from permaculture. Permies can also learn from
good farmers. I don’t know of too many people getting fed an
adequate diet from a food forest. Maybe somebody, but I’ve never
seen it.
Be careful. It looks like you’re setting yourself up for a life
of hard work. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice job writing
code?
[/quote]
Gee when you mention the hard work...maybe I will do software
development instead. Or not. I've got minor scoliosis which
leads to chronic minor aches in my midback, and sitting still
for long periods tends to make it worse. So a desk job is not
for me!
Regarding the food forests, Digwe made some good points. As a
food system they take a relatively long time to really 'take
hold' and begin producing, largely because of the woodier plants
like trees and brush that take a lot longer to reach maturity
than say certain annuals. That's not to say one couldn't get
most if not all the necessary food from a food forest, it may
just take longer. But what becomes clearer to me is that growing
all your own food - no matter how you go about it - is very
intensive. Planting, growing, weeding, harvesting, storing, on
top of all the other daily chores people need to do. It
highlights the importance of having a community to depend on. I
see that here at this homestead a lot: buying bales of hay from
a farmer a couple of kilometers away, getting expired meat from
the local grocery store, etc. Stuff that could potentially be
grown on this homestead that would take either too much time,
money, or people to be successful is instead outsourced.
And regarding planting spuds, I think we gotta get on that here.
Lots of big projects on the go so they're on the backburner, but
maybe I can do that. We will see about those taters.
[/quote]
Just kidding. But I see my son, who is a good artist with an MFA
from one of the best schools in America.....at age 33, wondering
how he’s ever going to afford a home or kids or even a good car.
The older you get, the more such things matter.
#Post#: 294--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Eddie Date: May 12, 2021, 6:09 pm
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He got a 50% ride to SAIC (School at the Art Institute of
Chicago) and was still 80K in debt when he graduated. That went
for tuition. The first year he applied, they accepted him, but
he told them he couldn’t afford to come....so the next year they
sweetened the deal and offered the scholarship.The money, as I
understand it, came from one or more anonymous donors. SAIC has
some very successful grads, like Jeff Koons and LeRoy Neiman.
They gifted him with a great work-study job in their in-house
fab facility where he learned to do a lot with various CAD/CAM
machines and their 3D printers. That’s what he lived on, with a
small stipend from me to cover the shortfalls.
It’s probably the only time he’ll ever work in a high rise
studio overlooking Lake Michigan, lol. SAIC is right downtown in
various buildings near the Art Institute. Now he works for Crate
& Barrel building sets for their catalog shoots. Fake kitchens
and such as that. He hates it, but it pays the bills I guess.
They (he and his bride) want to move back here....not sure how
that will work out now that Austin has gotten so crazy expensive
all of a sudden.
I think the kids should get advanced degrees, personally, but
I’m not sure the math really works. But you need to have
something that sets you apart from the herd these days.
#Post#: 307--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Digwe Must Date: May 13, 2021, 7:20 pm
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Eddie
You are correct. No amount of Permaculture will replace what we
have now. Good. What we have now is killing us.
As you know from getting a PDC, permaculture is not designed for
a capitalist system of economics or agriculture. It is
post-collapse strategy. Plenty of folks with an entrepreneurial
bent have made permaculture profitable within the current
system, but the last chapters of the Designers Manual make it
pretty clear that the rapacious behavior necessary to maintain
the modern corporate capitalist system is incompatible with
Permaculture.
"I respect anybody who even tries to grow food, anyway they want
to do it. But I live in the real world."
This seems to imply that I do not live in the real world. Let's
see, I just got in from planting spuds and hooking up the
irrigation (a month early!)[b][/b]I've been planting some
jostaberry and currants that I propagated from cuttings. We've
been planting seaberry as a living fence experiment along a
fenceline. I helped out the mama goose with one of her goslings
and I'm getting a set-up for new chicks ready. (Bielefelders,
Brahmas and Jersey Giants!) After I finish posting here I'm
going to harvest greens for dinner, try to work on pollinating
an Asian pear that is off by itself, fit the new bar on a
chainsaw and get ready for a load of oats in the morning. Of
course I'll be feeding the critters this evening. If I can get
my aging ass out of bed early enough tomorrow I'm going to
butcher a sheep before I get the oats.
We have over 125 species of medicinal plants. My wife works on
them throughout the year. Do they work? Until my recent hernia
surgery I hadn't seen an MD since 1992. Yeah they work.
We need to start on this years firewood very soon. Usually I
start the winter with two years supply. I was unable to meet
this goal last fall due to injury. I'll be making up for the
cushion I had to burn this past winter and hope to start the
winter with about 14 -15 cords. Having two years supply insures
one against gas shortages or parts disruption - or injury. We
have hand tools available if suddenly there is no fuel for the
chainsaws. Given a years supply in reserve as a head start I
could -as of now- supply us with wood by hand.
What do you find fantasy-world about this?
Frankly, being up to my elbows in compost is far more "reality"
than most folks in the developed world can handle. Most of the
IT cubicle clones wouldn't know reality if it bit them in the
ass or unless they had an app for it.
A "real world" example. This just showed up in my mailbox.
Lawton has a food forest in GREAT climate for rapid growth and
evolution. He says it far better than I can.
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElMlBO--0XQ
"That’s part of the problem. And after you’re gone, whose to say
it gets to mature? I hope it does, btw."
Any project that involves trees that can live 150 years is
obviously multi-generational. You see that as the problem. I
see it as the solution.
The design is not for us. Frankly, I'd like to go fishin'. We
have a mission to hand this off to those who find it valuable
and will carry on. I'm very encouraged that those young people
exist. Increasing degrees of observation and creativity will be
necessary to adapt to changing conditions on the ground and the
evolving human drama. We've tried to create a platform that
will allow for the possibility that the human need for good
work, dignity and joy can be fulfilled even in bad times. As a
fellow named RE said many times "Save as many as you can."
Might we fail? Sure. We could burn all to hell this summer -
or next. I could tip over tomorrow. The local right wing
militia might fulfill their threats. I might drop a tree on
myself.
So? Who has a guarantee for success? For me the effort is
worth the effort.
Exactly what is more secure and stable for the long term about
fossil fuel agriculture turning oil into food?
Texas is vast and I can't claim much familiarity at all. Is
your part of the country in what was traditional Commanche
territory? I just saw a very interesting video on the tribe.
Fascinating history in the early 1800s.
It seems like you are east of the Pecos? About 50 years ago, or
so, there was a movie starring Paul Newman about Judge Roy Bean.
As I recall it was set about 1900 WEST of the Pecos. My
favorite line of the film was "Only bad men and rattlesnakes
lived there." Hard country.
Okay, the sheep are pissed.
PS To the person who privately asked if I am a Marxist - sure,
Groucho was my favorite.
#Post#: 308--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Cam Date: May 13, 2021, 7:51 pm
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[quote author=Eddie link=topic=22.msg292#msg292 date=1620856176]
Just kidding. But I see my son, who is a good artist with an MFA
from one of the best schools in America.....at age 33, wondering
how he’s ever going to afford a home or kids or even a good car.
The older you get, the more such things matter.
[/quote]
I'm going to be taking a full welding course this fall at my
local college and I am very excited. After that I think I'll be
getting going on the electrical apprenticeship. We'll see where
I go from there. I'm lucky in that I don't have a passion per
se, just a lot of interests. As long as one can get by doing
what one really loves, I say go for it. Everything is easier
though when you make more money.
#Post#: 309--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Phil Potts Date: May 14, 2021, 1:19 am
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I know nothing of the art world, but will venture my opinion. If
you were to shop at Coles and then take the 4c a litre discount
on your receipt into a Coles express fuel station, put in 25
litres and get a 1$ coffee, my opinion here is worth what you
paid for the coffee.
I was very good at drawing when I was a kid, I guess I just had
a good sense of proportion and depth. I think it probably can be
trained but I had it, a steady hand helps. I remember when we
all had to paint a 'sneaker' as it was called then. A converse
basketball shoe that was ubiquitous before cushioned 'runners'
and then other types of sports shoes came out. There was just
the basketball and the 'volley' tennis shoe, worth about 6 and
4$ and just one brand of each. Basketball shoe came in blue or
blue and tennis shoe came in white, or white.
I was talking with another kid, one Steven Corner, in class
instead of paying attention and he pointed to all the shoes on
the wall and said 'i did that one, which ones yours? , pointing
to mine. I pointed to another painting of someone else's, just
hoping it wasn't his.
Later in junior high school I was rolling little balls of clay
and throwing them up to the fan to see where they would be
launched and who they would hit. The art teacher, a Mrs Banks,
burst into tears and ran out of the room. A few of the more
mature students said, 'look what you've done, dickhead'.
Apparently because I was wasting great potential, since I wasn't
the only one screwing around. I went out and said sorry and that
guilt made me keep taking art class right through year 12, which
was a big mistake because it was 3x the work of any other
subject and I really wasn't interested. Here's a funny thing; I
must have been a natural doomer even then, because of the two
pieces I did instead of the 5 required, as I had no inspiration,
one was a balloon with a hand holding a needle next to it. The
balloon was blue with white at the poles and the American
continents smack in the middle, East Africa visible on the left
and Spain on the right.
Really funny story: When I was out on exercise in the military,
I took my knife and a piece of wood out of the fire and carved a
figurine of a naked woman. I used the darker burnt part on the
outside as the nipples and the lighter brown wood for the rest.
When it was finished, one of the guys said, 'can I borrow that
to jerk off?' and another said 'im next!' and another 'then
me!'. I said 'hey! She was my girlfriend', because it was of the
last gf I had, an Indian.
In reality I wasn't interested in art at all. I simply had
nothing else to do and had full testicles, wistfully
reminiscing, leading me to make it. You need to have something
to say, some message to express, to be a real artist is what I
think. Other people can be trained to do what I could,
practicing painting bowls of fruit and then you probably are as
good as da Vinci or Michaelangelo technically, their works were
simply commissioned to express the ideas of the patrons not
themselves.
I believe that ever since Andy Warhol set up a stack of bean
cans and sold it as modern art, anything is art, and so nothing
is art and shock value sells, eg '**** Christ'. I suspect that
today only that type of message can get patronage easily. For
other artists now, it has far more to do with personality and
who you know, than talent and creativity. Yoko Ono was slammed
as a talentless plagiarist before becoming a professional widow
of a real artist and then lauded for 'influencing a generation
of artists'. Rembrandt or Picasso today would be noticed like
one hand clapping, or a tree falling in the forest. They would
roll in their graves to see the crap made famous by Pro Heart
and it's probably even worse since him.
Some Jewish wise man said there's three things a man should do
before dying: plant a tree, write a book and have a son (because
they all outlive you). My eldest son is shrivelling his
testicles with steroids and if he doesn't stop will probably not
pass on any genes. Sometimes talent is just squandered like
that. Ever since he was 13-14 he would work out for hours and it
made sense as an athlete. State champion of the 400m and came
3rd in the 100 for his age nationwide, still in school, an offer
from the national institute of Sport to go to Canberra, a
chance to represent the country. Instead 5x week in the gym,
injecting steroids, and borrows almost 50k for a 4WD with a 6.0
V8, still a 4th yr apprentice. If you think Schwarzenegger etc
are fine, about 15 yrs ago I had a patient who had cut off his
**** because of 'roid rage', or it wasn't working. Any
suggestions, I'm all ears.
#Post#: 313--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Nearings fault Date: May 14, 2021, 6:10 am
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Keep an eye on the financial picture but do what you love. The
trade and apprenticeship route worked for me. There is an upper
limit on earning potential but the reality is there is a similar
upper limit on most degrees. The exception seems to be STEM
degrees if you have the drive for them.
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