Brad’s Take

Geekdads at Wired.com report on the book, “Little House On The Prairie”, Pa Ingalls – Pioneer GeekDad?.

Using few tools, the book follows Pa Ingalls as he builds a house – using nails when he gets to the roof. The door, without hardware?

“First he hewed a short, thick piece of oak. From one side of this, in the middle, he cut a wide, deep notch. He pegged this stick to the inside of the door….”

For other pioneer, geeky gadgets – a frame to make bales of hay in, by hand, and mangers to scalding tubs – check out Farm Appliances and How to Make Them, George A. Martin, copyright 1887, 1999. (Lyons Press, Amazon.com)

Coming out of a local restaurant tonite, I noticed the front plate on a truck. “Oklahoma Dressage Association”.

Dressage (I was told, something like “training” in French) is about riding a horse. Riding in a standard-sized arena. Riding standard test patterns.

The competition test might include various gaits – the walk, the trot, the canter. Maybe a variation on speed – a relaxed trot, a working trot, an extended trot. Maybe a change of direction – and accompanying change of “lead” – which leg moves forward first, on the horse, in the given gait. It matters, in circles, in corners, etc. The horse is much less likely to stumble over its feet or miss a stride if on the correct lead – which is the rider’s responsibility to train for and command.

But – Transition? This “rich people” exercise of buying expensive horses, buying expensive feed, hiring teachers and trainers, renting stable and practice space? Learning to work with livestock, understand “what goes in, must come out”, understanding that nutrition and practice are essential to get the expected results when you climb aboard?

To learn about finding feed, dealing with people that know hay from supplements from complete feeds, to meet people that understand large animals as livestock, as companions, and as competitors.

You might never use a horse as transportation. But being able to raise, train, and work horses takes a lifetime’s experience – and learning can start in a couple of months. Working horse farms depended on the adults knowing how to care for their horses and other livestock, and we are sadly poor in this tradition. By learning the discipline and precision of dressage, we prepare our children, and ourselves, for thinking “outside the car”. If and when the need comes.

At the least, dressage teaches the rider precision, respect, consistency, caring for the horse and learning they are dependent on the comfort and communication to and from the horse. By striving to achieve, riders learn to apply effort, overcome problems – and meet their test.

Call it cogeneration, call it Combined Heat and Power (CHP). Say you are harvesting the waste heat created in generating electricity, and using the heat and the electricity.

The DOE is spending $156 million to explore returning to the central steam plant model.

It seems to make sense – but will require many miles of piping and many tons of concrete and a lot of (union?) labor to dig the access tunnels, install the steam distribution lines, and rig buildings to make use of locally generated steam for heating and cooling. Not to mention the new, locally (Not In My Back Yard?) sited cogeneration units.

If we can get past what we have today that wasn’t around last century when it worked – that is, lawyers and protesters – we face a daunting obstacle.

Steel.

America used to make steel in large quantities. But mining ores creates rubble, slag, and refining ores creates toxic piles of slag. Working steel is dirty and energy intensive.

A tremendous lot of steel made in America has been rusting away for decades, in auto salvage lots, in scrap yards, in abandoned farm and industrial machinery, in untenanted buildings.

China.

But not all the unused steel is simply rusting away, waiting to be captured and reworked to build today’s equipment and cars, and tomorrow’s steam lines.

A whole heck of a lot of scrap steel, brass, and other scrap metals have been sold and shipped to China. Some comes back as gadgets, tools, and other products, but much went into building their new factories and machinery – and won’t be coming back to us at any price.

CHP – Combined Heat and Power

So I see this CHP as being primarily distraction from the Obama administrations actions they want less scrutiny toward, and a way to buy off tree-huggers looking for real change. Because laying or updating new steam lines will be minor issues – once we find the steel to make the piping and build the CHP plants.

Oh, and we need to find the fuel to fire all these new plants.

First, the way Wal-Mart has been dropping product lines and raising food prices continues.

The Great Value store brand pudding cups I like – still gone. And there are other products that they have dropped since the last time I got it. It isn’t really drastic, and they move stuff around rather than leave blank shelves, but they are changing.

The Peak Oil premise claims that the end of cheap energy will make shipping food more expensive. And the increase in energy cost will also make food unavailable.

The crunch in credit availability means that businesses have to operate using cash instead of credit. This means that having very much product in inventory doesn’t make sense. Changes from volume buying practices will also increase pressure to raise prices.

The Ekco 1045659 Can and Bottle Opener – the “Miracle Turn”

Ekco makes a nifty can opener. It has been around for decades, works nicely. Chromed steel, it is moderately inexpensive, but doesn’t look sleek and sexy and big plastic handles or nifty “easy” motors. You spread the lever from the handle, slip it onto the lip of the can, squeeze the lever and begin turning the thumb dial. Cut the top of the can off, and voiler! an open tin can, just like Grandma did it.

It seems that the only major distributor still carrying Ekco products – is Ace Hardware stores. Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc. have all dropped the very functional Ekco steel gizmos for plasic and nylon handled stuff with better markup. I keep mine in the drawer, so appearance doesn’t matter near as much as the fact it doesn’t bind up like the others, or take up as much room in the drawer. The one I use today I got at a flea market some 6 years ago or so.

So I thought I would plan on a replacement – eventually they start to rust, and .. stuff happens. Anyway, I looked at a couple of stores, didn’t find what I wanted. I Googled Ekco can openers. I found that World Kitchen distributes the Ekco can opener to Ace Hardware stores. And Brandt’s Hardware in Ponca City, OK, doesn’t carry the one I want. But they would special order me one .. er, three. Three is the minimum number the store could order. So I have three spares – ought to last me and my nephew for years.

This is the Miracle Roll model. The Miracle Turn is similar – except no handles. A tab latches onto the side of the can, and, with a minimum of operator skill, easily opens a tin can. It is smaller, easier to pack of you need to, and works well. But I wanted the 6 3/4″ long handled version.

The scary word – scarcity.

There are often ways to work around high prices during recession and inflation. But scarcity – too few products for the demand – that is really tough to get around. For necessities – scarcity will equal violence.

Can openers are a luxury. In need, you can bash a can with a rock or rod or another can until one splits – and you can try to catch the contents. Use a screwdriver to pierce and pry – that would work. A knife, that would dull the blade, but solve the immediate problem of getting into the can. Just beware – cleanliness counts. And dull knives cause more injuries than the sharpest knives – and the best knives are may break or shatter.

But what happens when the stores in town no longer have Ramen noodles – or boullion cubes? What when the last gas station open runs out?

When the tires that have gone to $100 and $150 each aren’t available for that 1991 Ford Escort Wagon? (down to a single tire line in this size, at Wal-Mart).

Truly green

High prices are an annoyance, compared to scarcity. Instead of hollering about making Hummer’s “green” – how about requiring a standard tire size, a “green” wheel for each car that takes a standard size of tire?

Why not focus now on adapting to a reduced set of standard maintenance items – so more people are likely to have access to the tires and windshield wipers and other needed replacement items?

Standard bicycle tires, too.

The local store/deli I eat at – Snyders Chicken and Catering, 3151 W. North Ave., Ponca City, OK – has gotten more expensive. The chicken is just great – the best in town. The meal I get most often, though has gone from about $4.50 last fall to $6.10. That makes a 35% jump in inflation.

It is happening at Wal-Mart, too. Beanee Weanees, the short can, GreatValue store brand, have gone from 58 cents last summer to 86 cents this week. For me that is an inflation of 48%.

Everything is going up. Let’s not talk about Propane and gas prices, on their way up again, both.

And that “incentive” tax credit? Up to $800 for $20,000 earnings? That seems mostly like 4% – much less than inflation since last November by any count.

Fedex, UPS, and the Post Office keep raising their prices – which ripples through to affect everyone once or twice over as companies absorb extra costs – and taxes, and costs of borrowing money – and raise their prices to recover some of those expenses.

The story at Wal-Mart is even worse for me. I like the 10 cent Great Value brand Ramen Noodles. Only they aren’t available any more – off the shelves, no space for them. Only the Ramuchen at 13 cents. GreatValue pudding four-packs at 88 cents? Gone. Only the Hunts at $1.00 so far. That looks like 30% and 12% inflation right there. The Sam’s Choice plastic wrap? Gone. And that was a really good weight, easy to use dispenser box, at a moderate price.

AT&T bought out Southwest Bell telephone service here. And my bill went up from $59 a month, gradually, to $71 last fall. It still climbs by nickels and dimes, but I changed to a long distance company that charges less ($4.64 last month, vs. $34 with addons and fees).

I work part time at the local theatre. Until the minimum wage went up last summer I was making $0.80 more than minimum. Not I get $0.30 more, and expect to lose that in July when the minimum wage goes up next time.

That is – Barack Hussein Obama is going to have to do a hell of a lot more to repay me what he has cost me this far. And he should keep in mind that the KGB is predicting the US comes apart and unglued by June next year – well before the next elections. The rationale is that the government goes broke, and the states stop sending money in to be wasted. That scenario was apparent to Moscow 9 years ago – why the Democrats don’t see the danger this week is a moral and political conundrum (puzzle, that is). Seriously – Pandarin’s map shows the states divided 6 ways, and each group dominated by a foreign country.

I got some more garden seed ordered yesterday – some oilseed sunflowers, for salad oil. I found this writeup on hulling the seeds and extracting the oil. If I can find some sugar beet seed, I want that for horse feed (the beet pulp). I don’t plan on competing with sugar companies – yet – but the beet pulp will help with the livestock, that and the vegetable oil. That and the half dozen chicks growing in the barn, I am starting to plan for the future.

Yep, our president is a mighty handsome man, and he will tell anyone how smart he is. It is the graft, corruption, kickbacks (like giving Chrysler to the UAW), and ignoring the needs and rights of working Americans I detest. I like a cartoon I saw yesterday, “Obama has the *pork* flu – keep him unconscious, every time he wakes up he spends a trillion dollars!”

But I’m not bitter.

Transition. When you believe that change is coming – real change. As in, losing the ability to afford electric utilities. As in, losing easy access to nationally distributed food and supplies. As in, reducing your carbon footprint.

But what about your footprint?

In times past most shoes were made of leather, not plastic and other petroleum products. Shoes that expected to wear out the leather soles – and have them replaced. Several times. Shoes with cord, maybe, for laces – but maybe leather lace, too. Shoes that you polish with Kiwi or other waxed blackener or brown color, or even clear. A shoe brush that lasted for years and years, a rag for applying wax and buffing to a shine that reflected your pride in appearance, and indirectly a mark of character.

So, what shoes will you buy, next, if you are building your pantry to last through the beginnings of the end of cheap transportation? And have you identified someone in your neighborhood that works leather and can provide the leather necessities when plastics all run out – or have you started lining up leather supplies, tools to work it, and the skills to be a resource for your community?

Peak Oil posits that energy will get more expensive, that demand will outpace the supplies of oil and other energy sources. They call this the end of cheap energy, and see the result as partly depriving the economy, and people, of petroleum products, but more immediately, pricing public utility electricity and other economic commodities outside the reach of the average American.

More than half of Americans, according to Peak Oil, will be unable to pay for utilities, by 2012.

Is the electric grid about to shatter?

We all know about what ice storms do to electric power. In places where the power lines are still strung on poles, and around trees, the lines come down. Or a car knocks a utility pole over. Or a squirrel gets fried in a substation and lights go out for several blocks.

Or there are too many air conditioners running, and people experience “brown outs” as the voltage on the line falls when over-demand for the energy available. Or the power company pulls a “rolling blackout” – when the power company deliberately cuts off power to a segment of their customers. Then turns it on as they turn off another segment.

Stacking another layer on a house of cards

There are experimental installations in Ohio for transmitting broadband Internet hookups over the power grid. Talk and technology is progressing for “smart meters” – meters that charge different rates according to varying schedules. And can turn off your power if the meter “gets the signal”. Or when your neighbor opens his garage door?

Increased exposure to risk of failure of the grid.

Wired covers a story from the Wall Street Journal, about foreign adversaries targeting the electric utilities.

Peak oil advocate focus on surviving without the utility grid. And they want to develop local sources of food and expertise.

Perhaps an intermediate step would be to return to regional and local sources of power, not just personal solar panels.

Just as chickens in California and sheep in Wyoming won’t feed anyone, if the cost of getting them to hungry people is too high for the hungry people to afford, I am not real happy about losing power in Oklahoma so that California air conditioners keep running.

Parasite regions.

I have nothing against California, I lived there from 1984 to 1989. But even then they were making stupid choices, legislating away their ability to live on the water available, the ability to generate the power they consume, or to raise the food they eat.

Southern California is merely one of the best recognized regions for making foolish energy and food choices. Most cities require vast regions to supply food for their people, power for residences, commerce, and industry, and often rely on tourism for enough revenue to support themselves.

i drive my tractor in pearls…, writing at My Modern Country Home, takes pride in the independence of the Oklahoma state constitution. I wonder – is she comfortable that Oklahoma could supply enough energy for Oklahoman use, if the national grid came apart?

Linn Cohen-Cole writes on OpEdNews.com about H.R. 875 – the proposed new Food Safety Administration. Goodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands

So, look again at what has been exciting us – Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands. – and realize that they are not only wonderfully healthy but fun and naturally community building. And more, they are a real economy and deeply democratic – and just at a time we need something that works economically, that supports our democratic rebirth, and that protects food itself and our easy access to it.

And it is all those things that threaten the corporations … which is why we now have these massive “fake food safety” bills in Congress. Everything is going under thanks to these fools, and they wish to be there like vultures to make sure that every drop of blood that can be sucked out of our resources and us, is theirs. To wit, they must get rid of such good and innocent things and yet truly powerful things as:

Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.

And how will those who contaminate our country’s food with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and more, do that? Why, by setting standards for “food safety” that are so grotesquely and inappropriately and even cruelly applied to a local, independent farmers and ranchers that there is no way they can manage. Imagine your being faced with a 100 page IRS form and facing a million dollar a day penalty for screwing up. That would be in the ball park of the impossible complexity mixed with threat facing our farmers.

Fertilize your garden of field with Monsanto product, and you get the MSDS (material safety data sheet) for your records. But for compost? Or using a cover crop?

How do you “prove” the seed you plant is “safe”, that is, meets Monsanto-provided specifications? Try getting approval for organic sources.

This is one very scary threat to farming, to gardening, and to local food sources.

Transition Culture does a review on the classic gardening book, “How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible“, by John Jeavons.

Actually the title is “How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine”. This is an introduction to biointensive gardening/light farming. And it works.

The review on Transition Culture includes related books, and is worth a visit. Transition Culture – “An evolving exploration into the head, heart, and hands of energy descent” – is about

How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations.

You don’t have to believe the world is changing, or coming to the end of an era of cheap energy, to want to grow more of your own food in your apartment or garden.

Suggestion 1: Micro forestation homesteading.
Goal: provide livelihoods, manage forests, provide food and lumber.
Problem: Threat to Western US forests.

Wired.com reports that many forests are suffering, in the Western US. The extended droughts have stressed trees, and the warm, dry temps (and decline of beetle predators) have encouraged proliveration of dark beetles and other pests and threats to trees.

Proposal: Create micro-forest homesteads. Stipulate that tree population must be maintained, average tree maturity must be maintained, homesteader must reside on the homestead for 10 years to take legal possession – and may *never* allow the tree population nor tree average maturity to decline, or the property reverts to public lands, and the homesteader is guilty of trespass and malicious mischief, and defrauding the US Government.

Sustainable forest as a means of making a living is achievable. One example in Oregon is now in the third generation of the same family, with no decline in the health of the forest. People needing a dependable livelihood can use a low-maintenance, minimum impact pair of oxen or horses for micro-logging efforts – retrieving specific hardwoods that threaten overcrowding, infested trees, and maintaining and replanting the property. Focus on minimum forest impact instead of “efficient” dozer roads and truck roads.

Suggestion 2: Urban gardening and cropping.
Goal: Improve agricultural utilization and food production with reduced transportation cost.
Problem: Increases in food prices, increasing threats to national production of food.

Urban gardens, similar to the WWII “Victory Gardens”, can utilize vacant lots, some of the building roofs that are starting to appear in various cities as ways to reduce heat concentrations, window boxes and patios are all potential garden spots. From raising a few herbs for garnish, to complete food sources for vegetarian diets and low cost protein and vegetable supplements, most people can be encouraged to learn about and practice gardening and small scale crops.

The USDA, rather than it’s historical support for chemical and machinery companies, can best serve America by focusing on increasing the amount of food available to consumers, rather than managing grain markets.

Suggestion 3: Local food sources
Goal: Reduce cost of transportation of foodstuffs
Problem: Relying on single regions of the nation for producing a Nation’s worth of food imposes an enormous burden on food prices, for transportation.

1) Create a shelf-label system for selling food products, to show the distance from producer to the shelf for each brand and type of canned and prepared and fresh food. Make consumers aware that their hamburger was produced 450 miles away, that this broccoli was sent from 1500 miles away, and that pumpkin was grown 4 miles from the store.

2) Establish a voluntary Farmers Market label, for “local” being within 15 miles, “regional” within 50 miles, and “national” greater than 50 miles from the market. Encourage consumers to look for these labels, and Farmers Market operators and vendors to use them for each batch of produce.

3) Encourage restaurants to label “local” and “Regional” preparations.

Suggestion 4) Drop NAIS
Goal: Save money, increase food production.
Problem: NAIS imposes costs, invades provacy, and appears likely to provoke black markets and scofflaws, abuse of office and scapegoat prosecutions. All without benefiting livestock industries or public health.

The National Animal Identification System appears to be a warm, fuzzy, “let’s keep everyone safe” kind of program. The reality is that permanently marking livestock is nearly impossible – just check the Racing industry to find how often a mature identification system can break down. Now imagine tracking wildlife that mingles from one group of livestock to another.

A greater threat to the nation’s health is unregulated people, entering and leaving the US without review of vaccination and health history.

The burden of NAIS regulations will force many small owners out of the business – or force them to conceal their activities. Black market food and reduced production both will raise food prices and diminish supplies.

Surely there are better uses for the people and money and effort NAIS would cost.