Semi-Sufficent? Is that Enough?

I've written here about the folly of trying to be self-sufficient, instead turning to the notion of self-reliance, an Emersonian virtue I embrace.

Recently I read a fine post from Kirsten Lie-Nielsen, a homesteader, that she and her spouse have left farming largely behind, at least as a full-time, rural venture. This experience, one where she attempted to become an influencer but met hostility for her left-wing political views, gave me pause about how I approach rural life. 

These words in particular strike me as wisdom: 

We have no aspirations towards self-sufficiency, but a desire to experience varied aspects of life while remaining connected to our food sources. I now have a set of skills I can draw on if I find myself in the kind of calamitous situation that sections of the homesteader community are prepping for. I feel a deep appreciation for the labor of food production. I’ve also learned to embrace the freedom of progress.

When this blog began, I thought that I might use my writing skills to follow the path of a farmer like Joel Salatin. Now I've my doubts, and not because Salatin and I are very different animals when it comes to politics and religion. I deeply respect the way he manages the property at Polyface Farms, and I've had two nice chats with him about how one can run a farm sustainably. I no longer follow his blog, however, because of right-wing extremism and Doomerism, mostly by his readers, a similar pattern that led me away from another writer who once used to visit my classes to discuss his work. 

In case of a national disaster, no one is an island, no matter how many generators, solar panels, firearms, or cans of food on hand. Only community and self-reliance might ease the troubles, though I'd prefer we search for ways to avoid them altogether.  

I'll employ a simple example of semi-sufficiency here: the other day, my brother-in-law and I skidded two 12' long poplar logs out of the woods. A huge twin-trunked tree had split in a storm; we wanted to save part of it for his sawmill. Poplar is a delightful wood to work. I've made a good bit of weatherboard for our farmhouse from trees we cut, milled, and planed in years past.

I could never handled that sort of job alone. We used two saws to cut the logs (for when one saw gets pinched and stuck; it happened once to me). We then used a long cable and electric winch to skid the logs across a wet-weather stream at the back of our property, with me walking beside the skidway with a Peavey Tool to roll the logs around when they got caught on something. Finally, I got on my tractor and hauled the logs the final distance to a trailer.

No one person I know could do this. With my spouse still recovering from a broken leg, she couldn't help. So in hard times, who can you count on to help with rural work? My other best helper, who lives nearby, voted for the other side, but we get on well.

Community, despite adversity and personal differences, keeps the Amish on the land, but influencers have followers, not co-workers.

That's the mistake too many misty-eyed homesteaders make who want to be famous. 

Pride of Workmanship?

As I retire from full-time work in a month, I have been thinking about pride in one's work a great deal. I have never been fully satisfied with my career, which may be a good thing: too much complacency leads to a numbing of the soul. I would instead invent new directions to pursue. This sort of free-lancing stands at odds with the values of corporatism, including the variety now infecting higher education. Not so oddly, I find the opposite--a sense of pride in serving one's community--in small businesses locally owned. It's a delight in our time of anonymous and virtual commerce to encounter vestiges of craftsmanship and civic pride. 

So often, however, it's just the opposite.

I spotted the worst paint-job in many years recently, pictured, at a roadside place in Buckingham County. I hope the owners did not pay much for the job. The painter, using a spray-gun, clearly cared nothing about putting glossy red paint on the grass and parking lot. Ironically, the paint was not well applied to the picnic table. The finish had run, pooled, and left thin or unpainted spots.

At our own picnic table, not yet "painted," I noticed that the original finish was a good-quality penetrating stain, not paint. Stain provides a better sealant for outdoor furniture, too. It can be renewed easily without scraping, even on the oldest wood, as I found not long ago with the old fence at our rental property.

Yet someone painted over the old stain, and once you put paint over stain, there's no going back. In a year, that haphazard paint-job will peel. The owner will either have to scrape the tables down or, as I fear, toss them out and get new ones. They are not bad tables, either. I'd like to get one, sand the heck out of it, and stain it again.

Usually we take our burgers and go to a nearby pocket-park, a tiny miracle of good craftwork. It features durable picnic tables, nice plantings, and a permeable-surfaced parking area.  You don't see trash on the ground, either. I don't imagine that it cost the county that much to build and maintain. It also speaks to something so old-fashioned we rarely hear its name today: civic pride. The town government does not know the travelers or locals who might stop for a smoke break or a sandwich; the small amenity simply says to everyone "you are welcome."

Pride is a dodgy commodity. "What is the return on investment?" a wily and short-sighted American capitalist might ask.

A great deal, I'd answer, but not something to measure in dollars and cents, the false American god of our era. Especially in the mad rush of Black Friday.

Today, of all days, on Black Friday, our water heater decided to start leaking heavily. The unit, at 12 years old, still looks great, but that's the outside. Not wanting to brave the crowds at the suburban asteroid-belt of big-box stores, I went to our local hardware. They had a heater more efficient than our old one and with the same volume. It took me all day to finish the job, but we have guests arriving and they'll want hot water. "Calling some guy" would not suffice, and I've installed two smaller electric water-heaters.

I needed a few tools not in my plumbing box, one a crimper for the little copper rings that make watertight seals on Pex pipe. A novice can learn this sort of plumbing, as compared to expensive mysteries of sweating copper pipe or the cheap, easily broken PVC pipes that I find mostly good for building hoop-houses nowadays.

A young man helped me find the fittings for the new heater, after I discovered that my old pipes were about 3 inches too short to reach the new tank's inlets. The new hardware was cheap enough, but the crimp-tool cost 60 dollars, almost 10% of what I'd paid for the heater. Yet I needed the tool, badly. The young man looked it over and said "This is a nice piece. You take good care of it and it will last the rest of your life."

I joked about only needing 30 years, but his remark stuck with me. I want to hear more of that in a time of disposable products and bad paint-jobs. I do indeed take very good care of all my tools. In the end, our new water heater is no thing of beauty, but it is firmly placed, not leaking, and looks as if a professional installed it. I'm proud that by sundown, I could have a martini and say "job well done" as hot water again flowed from the taps. I'd done it myself, probably saving 500 dollars. 

You could, too.

Keeping Our Security System Local (For Now)

I cannot live without a home alarm system. It's just how I roll. Now in the country, it's good to have it include fire notification as well.

Several years ago, after a lightning strike blew up our home security system, the then-giant security firm ADT revealed that it had begun to act arrogantly toward residential customers. We said farewell and went with a locally owned firm, Richmond Alarm. They installed a new control pad, surge protector that ADT neglected, and lower monthly monitoring fees.

I consider a good home-alarm system as essential to my peace of mind as clean water. Richmond Alarm had been around a century and seemed unlikely to be going anywhere.

Then they vanished. An out-of-state firm purchased them and swore nothing would change. Within a year, an internationally owned company called Johnson Controls took the helm, outsourced customer service to an Indian call center, with nice but poorly trained workers who read scripts. I began to get voicemail reminders multiple times monthly from India, reminding me to pay my invoice. I blocked all the numbers.

I've never missed a payment, and we auto-pay. Meanwhile rates went up and local employees got the boot.

Now we are about to give Johnson the big farm boot. We considered DIY options from Nest and Ring, but in the end, our setup is complex, covering out-buildings and our home, while our data caps low. We lucked out finding a firm whose headquarters is a few miles from our farm. They can reuse most of the Johnson hardware and upgrade a few dodgy sensors to communicate with our control panel and phone apps.

All that with no hit on our puny WiFi internet data caps.

The moral here? If you live rural without broadband and need a security system, your options may be limited. Starlink's base plan provides 2 TB of data a month, as compared to Verizon's 100 GB. We don't stream media except a movie every few months. We don't watch TV series (unless we can get a DVD). The guy from our new provider looked at us like we were from outer space, but then he said "Starlink would be perfect for you if you add a doorbell camera." 

That may be down the road, or even a DIY setup. Security systems are not cheap, and monitoring is a monthly expense, but the price of a break-in is years of trauma.

Right now, I'm thankful to have a local option again. And I'll be in line for a Starlink antenna.

Image courtesy of Lorie Shaull at Flikr

Applesauce! Yes, You Too Can Can This

You need not be a can-can dancer, though that might be fun, to put up applesauce.

Our trees produced about a bushel this year, a record. We were proactive with copper-sulfate spray to thwart blight, and I will try it again next year, 

We also head to Fruit Hill Orchard in Palmyra VA a few times in September and October, as their harvest comes in. We end up with lots of apples.

I found this recipe, perfect for the novice canner, at The National Center for Home Food Preservation, my go-to for safe canning advice. You can can applesauce in either a boiling-water or pressure canner. It cans fast and, in my pressure canner, with only 5 lbs pressure. How fast? I wrote this post while the sauce sat in the canner.

Nothing from the store tastes as good.

Doesn’t that sound like more fun than looking at a screen? So print the recipe, go pick a bushel, and make some sauce. Now.

2021 Fare-Thee-Wells and Thanks

 I said a year ago that for me, 2021 began with hope. I end it the same way, with hope and gratitude.

This blog soldiers along at a slow pace these days, as I've many obligations--writerly and otherwise--to fill my hours. But it would be remiss if I did not pause in the final hours of a gone year to give thanks. It makes a lot of sense, instead of drinking too much and then sounding a noise-maker at the stroke of midnight.  

So what am I thankful for, in the Tractorpunk scheme of things?

First, that my wife and I have the health to continue our DIY lives. In spite of a fall for her and arthritis for me, we still remain flexible, strong, and active. Today I moved 600 pounds of chicken feed into storage, after we made a trip to the factory where it is made in the Shenandoah Valley. I'm thankful we found that factory, to cut our operating costs for non-GMO chicken feed. Yes, we must raise egg prices in 2022, but not by the margin we feared, once inflation reared its ugly head.

I'm also thankful that my DIY skills continue to ramp up. I replaced the wire harnesses on our old John Deere M tractor and rebuilt the carburetor for the second time in a decade. With electronic ignition and all that includes, the 70-year-old beast still can mow the grass as well as when it was new. The work left the machine down for months and that delay had its frustrations, but in the end, I learned a lot. That's the satisfaction of much mechanical work. 

Beyond that, I'm finishing the year by putting old-fashioned wood weatherboard siding to replace some of the vinyl on our house. I planed it myself, from wood my brother-in-law sawed, from logs of trees my late father-in-law felled. From tree to board, in one family. We are not Amish (lots of power tools got employed) but there are few manual joys to rival making your own building materials. Eventually all the vinyl siding will be gone: cement board will replace some in hard-to-paint places, but where I have wood available, that will go up instead.

Third, I'm thankful that my wife could retire. So many of my friends cannot contemplate retiring, but our rather frugal lives and my day job, plus the miracle of compounded interest, let Nancy leave full-time teaching July 1. It has been a rough semester for her colleagues with COVID and a return to school of children not accustomed to sitting in a classroom for a few semesters. Now Nan can focus on her tasks with our LLC and do some part-time work for the school system, as I drift toward retirement in a few years. I'm planning to get a first-year writing textbook published, which is no easy task in this publishing market, but at the same time, I've published pieces in Style Weekly, back from the grave thanks to a purchase by Virginia Public Media. I've also written for Hemmings Daily and Modeling Madness (plastic models, not insane fashionistas).

Finally, I'm thankful for the locally owned businesses that have weathered the pandemic. Good Foods Grocery expanded and diversified its selection of foods, and it offers a quieter alternative to Ellwood Thompson's, another favorite. Several restaurants we love hung in despite the virus and labor shortages, and most of our favorites have been recently crowded, including the Athens Tavern, where we held our rehearsal dinner in 1992. We have a new local hardware store, too, to compete with Pleasants. Then we discovered a fabric store just down the street for projects, too. At Virginia Beach, we found The Barclay Cottage B&B where we found gracious hosts for a short getaway. We met a second farm-sitter, too, to help with the animals when we are away.

Not everything we love endured, of course. Our favorite wine store, Sonnys, shut its doors a few months ago, but that was more due to a greedy out-of-state landlord than anything else.Drive through Richmond, and you'd find more than few old businesses shuttered.

So we should count the losses, but at the same time, I'd start by counting what endures. There's a lot to fix, but we start where we can: locally.

Maybe that process can begin in 2022.  

Sunset image from Wikipedia

Local is Not Always Good.

Readers, can you believe I wrote that? Recently I’ve had an experience with a store I praised here before, Pleasants hardware. In several cases they have stopped carrying items that I need for the farm and I’ve had to resort to Amazon, Home Depot, or Lowe’s.

What’s up? I would pay a buck or two more to support a local business, but when, in three cases, Amazon or a big box had what I needed that day and at a competitive price, I did not hesitate to buy there, especially when shipping is free via my Prime account.

Luckily, we have more than a few local options still in business.  A little hardware store called Lacy‘s in Goochland County had some security system batteries Pleasants no longer carries, and these cost half what Amazon charges. So I drove up there and got them today. We also bought a Speed Queen washer from Lacy’s during the pandemic, when all our other options were out of stock. 

Check before you buy, too. An amazing lumber yard called Siewers (pictured above) provided high quality beaded-board ceiling and paneling for a new project here, and every employee, from the counter guy to the loader, was knowledgeable and courteous. The product is superior to any millwork from a chain store. 

 I think if local places want to stay in business, they need to really provide the best customer service around, something that may not be easy to do during the pandemic. The woman who answered the phone at Pleasants today said “hello Kroger‘s.“ That greeting spoke volumes; Pleasants is now hiring anyone with a pulse.

What is to be done? Tell the local place. I told the manager at Pleasants, as politely as I could, “what you don’t carry now I ordered on my iPhone from Amazon,  while standing in aisle 7.”  

I got the item the next day. That manager is gone now. 

The One Garden Tool You'd Keep...

 

We all have them. For a while, it would have been my Japanese gardening knife, or hori-hori. Then I got another Japanese tool, a really nice small pick. They can open a hole fast and mix dirt, break up clods, turn in fertilizer, ash, or green sand.

As the pandemic wanes and I have free time after a busy academic year, I hope to write a bit more frequently here. And nothing charms me into scribbling like the right garden tool.

As much as the hori-hori beckons (we have at lest three) I adore a good trowel. At Herbs Galore 2021 (back in person, hurrah!) I found the booth for Down the Garden Path, a local shop I love to support. I've written here about snips I got from them. Used them today to cut some lettuce for dinner.

 You won't find the trowel on their site (yet) but contact them to ask about this tool. It can be found at the UK Web site for the brand as well. I've not checked shipping from there to here.

From the show I brought home a really nicely made trowel, a "Sophie Conran Burgon and Ball Long Thin Trowel" model. At first glance, it looks better made than my old favorite, an English-made Spear and Jackson that cost twice as much.

It's Chinese-made but to the highest standards, which surprises me as Chinese tools are often cheaply made. I expect to get years of hard use from it. So what makes for a good trowel?

• Heavy metal that is stainless or powder-coated. My Spear and Jackson trowel as the latter and this one has more metal and a Black Sabbath show. If a trowel bends, it's cheapass and toss it!
  
• Blade with tang deeply set in handle, with a snug collar. The collar (ferrule) has finally failed on my Spear and Jackson, after two decades of use. While I attempt a repair, we'll see how the new trowel holds up.
• Ergonomic handle and balance in the hand. Like a fine revolver I use for target shooting, a trowel should have woodwork that fits you and balances when held. It should not be too light or heavy. You'll know it by feel.

We shall see how this beauty holds up over the decades. I plant things FAST, getting a seedling in in 20 seconds or so.  You need a good tool for that, especially when the ground gets dry. Other than bringing my tools inside, I do not baby them.

A Good Set of Snips

Life is too short, and work too frustrating, using cheaply made tools. So today I have two recommendations for an everyday item for anybody with a garden.

One of my favorite local merchants is called Down the Garden Path, and they pop up at local garden shows. They carry lots of decor, but I go to them for hand tools, especially ones from Japan or with specialized, high-quality materials.

With an in-person purchase out of the question for Spring, I contacted them about ordering a larger set of Barebones snips that I'd gotten a few years back. I find them indispensable for harvesting greens, peas, and other produce. They snip twine I use for trellising peas and other spindly things.

I was greatly disappointed that Barebones is out of stock on that tool, but I got a different set and I'll compare how they work.

Barebones Small Shears

My small Barebones shears embody the company ethos: campers, DIYers, foragers, contrarians about consumer culture. People with tattoos who actually work in flannel shirts, not simply wear them at the brewpub or gallery opening.

These are my People: they'd rather split wood than push a button to have heat from a furnace. They'd tell stories instead of watching television. They'd drive a 1970...

Okay, I need to control myself. Maybe they do like TV, but they make some stunning axes, as well as gear for dining outdoors. We'd already gotten their hori-hori, based upon its heft and obvious quality.

I didn't know who they were when I bought the snips, but something about the design appealed to me. The metal looks sturdy, the wood grips on the handles remind me of quality grips on a old-time single-action cowboy revolver (another fetish of mine). The ergonomics are right; the big finger holes mean that you can get more than a single finger in when cutting, and that reduces strain on the hand when you are, say, going down 100 feet of row. There is no rattling about the pivot for the blades nor screw to work loose. The blades have a positive stop when fully open, so you don't overdo things.

Actually, scissors-geeks call that a pivot ride or balance face. Well, Barebones gots 'em!

It was only after using the tool that I found their site and realized I was in the company of other tractorpunks.

I shop my values, and I wanted snips that would outlive me. Barbones supplied them. We liked them so much we bought a second pair. At under $30, that's a good investment. They have never seen the sharpening stone.

Joshua Roth GardenCut #130

Back to my dread of trying another set of snips, after finding perfection, when the folks at Down the Garden Path suggested that I do so. They sent me these when the large Barebones were out of stock and they were gracious, as the Joshua Roths run 5-10 bucks more than the other shears. Again, that's yet another reason to buy locally. Amazon won't curate a purchase for you like that.

Happily, these "pruning shears," made in Taiwan, worked really well. They have the same dedication to quality I find in the Barebones tools. And unlike tools from the Mainland, ones from Taiwan have always impressed me, so I gave them a go.

Big plus that they are favored for Bonsai, a fiddly hobby I admire from a distance, having enough fiddling to do. Yet that speaks volumes about their sharpness and accuracy.

The reader will see that the blades are actually shorter than the Barebones, but the extra length of the handles and big finger holes mean they can do bigger jobs.

They also open WIDE, so I can snip something the size of a broccoli stalk. I've been using Felcos to cut rose canes, but I think these shears will soon perform that duty.  They do not have quite the tractorpunk gravitas of the Barebones, and, gasp, the finger holes are encased in plastic, I mean "polyflex soft vinyl," not Colt .45 walnut, partner. Despite that caveat, the vinyl has a pleasant give and I challenge you to get a blister using them. The metal is cutlery grade steel, so it should last a long time if treated well.

I'm happy to store both in the kitchen tool drawer. I cannot bring myself to toss them into the garden bucket, and in the kitchen I find many culinary uses for them.  Yes, I'll get more, starting with the larger Barebones. It's a sickness.

Now then, back to gardening!

Ad-Hoc Patches & Long-Term Consequences

All of us in education are scrambling, breaking old habits and a few rules to deliver remote education. I began to think about longer-term issues for Higher Education, really not the subject of his blog, but certainly fodder for my writing students' final project of the semester.

We'll figure it out. Right now there are bottlenecks, administratively, of the same sort that keep toilet paper and paper towels from getting to stores. The supply is there, but the system has temporarily bogged down.  Except for those items, our stores are well stocked.  Early runs on meat and other staples have abated. Produce is picked over, but for cooking oil, flour, vinegar, and other things low a week ago, stocks are up (just as the stock market is down).

All this thinking led me back to the local and rural; what will be the effects of our current crisis on localism, food networks, rural ways? Here are a few concerns, speculations, and hopes.

Loss of Elders

Though COVID-19 shows itself quite capable of wiping out young people, the mortality among the elders among us is likely to astound us all. I fear here a loss of rural memory, akin to what happens at my university when a key, long-term colleague retires or passes on. These folk have "institutional memory," a real link to the past and how things were done, including during crises past.

Soon we'll have no living memory, save for interviews and film, of how Americans coped the the Great Depression. We may have to rediscover the wisdom of our grandparents the hard way, but saving your twist-ties is not akin to learning how to tan leather, repair a carburetor (something I did today on a balky antique tractor), or fell a tree. YouTube is a pale substitute for first-hand, hands-on learning.

Farmers' Markets & Foodie Culture

These are closed, and some small farms dependent upon them and restaurant trade will go out of business.  One bright spot for a friend who farms at Dellicarpini Farms, Dominic Carpin, has been a Distributor / Online Farmers' Market, Fall Line Farms. Dominic had his biggest order yet this week. By combining services of many small farmers and taking a cut, Fall Line can get produce directly to consumers and allow farmers to, well, farm. From their Web site:

Each week our producers post the products they have available, setting their own prices, uploading their own descriptions and photos. You can read about their farming practices and contact them directly with questions.

Using our Buying Pages, you shop online with us any time between Friday at noon to Monday at midnight. You pay for your order online and then pick it up on the following Thursday afternoon at one of our Richmond area pickup locations.

Orders are delivered fresh, straight from the farms on Thursdays. Our producers share in the delivery process and we rely on volunteers to sort the orders at the pickup locations. This cooperative system allows us to keep delivery costs down to a minimum meaning more money goes back to the producers.

It's not as fun as strolling a farmer's market, but it keeps food local.  Foodies may have to settle for Spring Kale in place of their Tuscan Kale, but that is a real first-world problem. Thank goodness we have greens, period.

Home Gardens, Chickens, and More

A related issue is the increase of interest in home gardening. Where I live most folk keep a garden, but now they are doubling down on expanding for summer "just in case." I plowed and disc-harrowed my neighbor Lloyd's 1/4 acre plot last weekend. He had a garden there last year, but this year he's expanding. If seed sales are any indication, Lloyd is not alone.

Chick and pullet sales are up, too, as urbanites keep small flocks and rural folk expand. I expect there to be an egg glut soon. In Colonial times, as I learned in 2017 at King's Landing Historical Park in New Brunswick, eggs were not worth anything in barter. Everyone had yard-birds.

MOAR Data, Pleeeze?

Rural broadband is expensive, if it exists at all. We are on satellite via Viasat (clever name, that). We burned through our 50 GB of data last month without streaming one movie. We had remote teaching and lots of video conferences. But hope is on the way. Poking about in their Web site, I found an unlimited data plan for $50 more per month, less than I spent last month buying a few additional GB.  These plans may prioritize essential and less-essential sites....so caveat emptor. Still, it's a bargain and we can switch without penalty back to our old plan. They'll send us a new router, too.

I suspect many folks out here are doing the same, with a windfall coming for providers. Likewise this emergency will likely speed the rollout of 5G mobile networks.

So far, that's all I see, but the peak in cases locally may not come until June. Stand by for updates. Let's hope for better news, and stay safe, sane, and healthy!

Still Insanely Local

I try to avoid all big-box stores though I'm not immune: Home Depot stocks a store-brand Behr wood stain that I find superior to more expensive brands. Lowes is a good place to find Rustoleum paint and cheap, mediocre-quality lumber for projects (though I found that a local mill, Siewers, beat Lowes on prices for trim...they make it themselves and it is superior). I hit the big boxes for good prices on things like cement board that I use occasionally.

In the end, however, nothing beats a small local firm, Pleasants Hardware. Their midtown store closed, a tragedy for those with old homes seeking obscure hardware. I recall how it opened, on generator power, and endured thefts of saws and generators, during the craziness after Hurricane Isabel. I bought my first Stihl saw from them that day, using it while living in town; my mom had a huge elm come down in her yard and it needed clearing before the power came on; it pulled down the power company's main service line!

Some Pleasants' alums opened Anthony's Decorative Hardware, a place I can still get wrought-iron details like shutter dogs and hooks, since Nan and I make our own working shutters for our house.
 
Though that great old midtown store is gone, a cooperative (Do it Best) kept the branch stores and the Pleasants ethos alive: you'll find well staffed locations where the folks know tools, supplies, and other products. Unlike a big box, an employee will come up and help you find what you need. Look around and you'll find True-Value and Ace hardwares. Go in.

Lots of folks shop online; I do, too when I cannot find what I need locally. Shipping is often free. Yet recently on two occasions, Pleasants had something I could not verify online and would have cost me to pay shipping. Just yesterday, I discovered that I'd stupidly over-tightened the bolts holding the bar on my larger Sthil chainsaw. The studs are set in heavy-duty plastic, not steel, and the threads stripped out. Stihl, knowing about dunces like this writer, makes larger-sized studs, but they cannot be had anywhere online. Finally I found a Web site, but then I decided to call Pleasants: they will have the parts for me, for the same price in a week, perhaps two. The same thing happened recently when I needed new bars for both saws. Pleasants actually beat the price from several online dealers!

If brick-and-mortar retail wants to survive in the age of Amazon, merchants need to provide something the giants cannot: bespoke service, deep knowledge, and instant advice. They need to remember you with more than an algorithm based upon your past purchases and some cookies stored in your browser's cache.

Some locals don't get this: there's a NAPA nearby with a notoriously grumpy staff, unless you have lived here all your life. They get a bit nicer when you pay them in cash (I always do). But usually I order what I need online or at a big-chain auto store. Some of them are franchises of Car Quest or NAPA, and I fast learned which have the best staff. They get my money.

Homesteaders of America Conference, 2017

We had the great pleasure of attending the first-ever national conference of the Homesteaders of America.  I've been delinquent in my conference reviews this year, especially of the recent Heritage Harvest Festival.  I will cover that event soon, but I have to say that the Homesteader gathering was a Tractorpunk's paradise.

We attended two speakers' presentations and talked to a lot of vendors. The event sold out, so I'm glad we bought tickets in advance.

Warrenton VA hosted the gathering at their Fauquier County Fair Grounds. It provided a perfect rural setting. The area there is building up fast with DC commuters, but it's not all awful sprawl. The twee little downtown area, as well as a sentimental favorite of mine, Frost Diner, show that suburban and rural can coexist. I hope they can maintain that balance.

The balance between a hurry-scurry life of consumerism and debt vs. the potential freedom, monetary and spiritual, of the homesteading life was central to talks by Doug and Stacy, the stars of the YouTube Channel "Off the Grid with Doug and Stacy," as well as author, farmer, and rural philosopher Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms.

Now just a moment. Folks living with no internet connection or electric power but with a series of YouTube videos? Oh yeah, and using their own drone to film the event? At that moment, I knew I was in the right crowd: no Luddites here, just, to paraphrase Howard Rheingold's point about the Amish, very clever techno-selectives.  Think: farm truck to charge electronics + unlimited data for Verizon cellular users. Makes at least as much sense as me building my own shaving horse to do woodwork.

The couple talked about our culture as one that rewards staying in debt, becoming dependent on technology we do not understand, of severing our ties with the soil and the rest of nature. Salatin continued that with his talk later in the day. I grinned at both of their references to "The Man," which propelled me mentally to the early 70s again.

And yet, they are correct. As Doug put it, "barter is what The Man is scared of," and Salatin later chimed in that we are desperately in need of "relationship rather than consumerism." Fine and good, that, thought I, preaching to the choir.  As if anticipating my very snark, Salatin added that the choir did need some preaching-to, so we would be energized to share with others our foodways, our practices that build wealth in the soil and self-reliance in the home. Homesteaders are gentle missionaries of a way once taken but left behind after the Second World War. I was greatly moved by Salatin's remarks, for which he noted Michael Pollan's ideas, that "we know that eating like Great Grandma is healthier and safer."

Yes, I too worry about the slow accumulation of pesticides and herbicides in our bodies without any longitudinal studies of their impact. As Salatin noted, in his Christian-Libertarian way that I found suddenly reasonable, our government now sells us on the safety of GMOs when, just a generation ago, it found that margarine would be safer than real butter and all of the carbs at the bottom of the food pyramid--an innovation of 1979--were equal nutritionally: Twinkies and taters apparently sustain us equally.

It's easy, when on the mass-comsumption treadmill, to dismiss homesteaders as crackpots. One of my colleagues who toured Polyface with Salatin found him to be half visionary, half crackpot. And he charmed my colleague utterly. I agree. It may seem ludicrous to tell a culture seemingly content with morbid obesity, car-based lifestyles, and land-use plans intent of paving our best farmland that "you are insane." Jim Kunstler has been doing so for years. Salatin does it with a different method of delivery, and Stacy and Doug live that vision of a world (almost) made by hand.

So I came away inspired. There is much left to do, but each step adds something in a movement toward more self-reliance. Next year for us? Food dehydration and cooking with a solar oven. We found an inexpensive one available from a vendor. My own plans would cook but not dyhydrate, so having one professionally made tool will be the route I take in 2018. We will also be raising chicks from incubated eggs.

This year we've expanded our seed-saving to tomatoes, begun reloading ammo, and I'm about to hunt deer for the first time in 30 years. Others will pick different skills from our frontier history, but one or two steps at a time will get us closer to what worked for our ancestors. I've critiqued the myth of self-sufficiency here before, so it pleased me that the speakers discussed the need not to build bomb-proof silos but rather resilient communities where we develop some of the skills our grandparents had. In the end we might create collapse-proof communities, if the worst that they and Kunstler fear comes to pass.

I learned a whole lot and, true to the spirit of the event, did not spend a lot of money beyond buying a really nice gardening knife to replace my easily broken hori-hori (replaced once already under warranty).  I will use the new tool this weekend to weed as I harvest hot peppers for our one restaurant customer.

A few quibbles about the event are inevitable, and I think the organizers can iron them out. Next  year, I hope they offer more food. We plan to pack our own food--very rural-thrifty of us--but a hot cup of coffee on a foggy morning would have been ideal. The one vendor with that beverage was overwhelmed by a long line at his food truck. The same problem occurred at Monticello in September, for the Heritage Harvest Festival. I hope the organizers of each event can lure more food trucks--so often a source of farm-to-table fare--to their gatherings.

We who paid ahead for admissions and speakers got first dibs for seating. It was not a problem but being a "Green Wristband" and thus encouraged to get seating made me uncomfortable. I'd recommend just charging one price next year; luckily no fights erupted because we call got seats. I'm looking forward to my own tour soon of Polyface with my fellow crackpot, Joel Salatin. I just wish I could get that "visionary" part going for me. The crackpot part I have down just fine.

Putting the Farmer Back in The Market

I cannot grow everything I eat, and since I do a lot of canning, I have to buy extra tomatoes, green peppers, and, some years, cucumbers. We usually get our own produce at a farmer's market. It can be  great bargain; I've snagged 25 lb. boxes of locally grown canning tomatoes for as little as $10, as the markets wind down.

Though you'd not think it from the crowded Saturdays around here, there's been some discussion at major newspapers that these are in decline nationally, and that bothers me for many reasons.

First, eating well should be more than a "lifestyle choice," as the author of the piece to which I've linked noted, when talking about the younger customers visiting the DuPont Circle market in DC. I don't want the less affluent to have to settle for less than the pouty fusspots who insist on nary a single worm-hole in their arugula.

Second, the "lifestyle" may not have a lot to do with cooking food.

The DuPont Market is a bustling place, but according to some of the vendors, the younger visitors seem more interested in the scene than in supporting local agriculture. They tend to buy prepared foods more than farmer-grown produce. That would be fine if the farmers could make a living; many are saying it's getting tougher. Treehugger.com gives many reasons for the decline.

Granted, I do see Millennials eating out, a lot, and I don't know too many of my students who cook, though I'm sure they are out there. I only really began to learn to cook in my last year of college, and my Middle-Eastern sauces in the 1980s were nowhere near as good as what I cooked all day long today, using my own tomatoes plus some farmers' market peppers.

It's more critical than ever for all of us to support local food, and I'm not sure the best venue is that artisanal and hip restaurant that buys up all the locality's micro-greens.  If you want to really know about your food, find the growers and then prepare the results yourself.

At the farmer's market you should chat with producers. Make sure, too, that they grew what they sell; resellers are getting more and more common, and it's something I don't like one bit. It dilutes the entire premise of a grower's market.  I'd argue that if a farmer cannot fill the table with fresh produce, then add prepared foods, dried herbs, jams and jellies. But make it all yourself.

It's now a question I ask at the market.  If I want to patronize a reseller, there's a nice old guy who runs a fruit stand near my university. The food is well selected and quite fresh. I've been buying melons from him for years.

Finally, the best way to appreciate a farmers' market is to learn how to cook.

Cooking is one of those essential skills we all need at some point. I'm no professional chef, but I'm a good cook. I can look into the refrigerator and canning shelves and produce dinner from leftovers. I can follow a recipe as I learn, too. If you claim you cannot cook, go out to the piles of used books at the thrift stores and pull down a copy of something basic, like The Joy of Cooking. Start with something basic, like meatloaf. I'm not kidding; when well prepared and paired with potatoes and a green salad, it's a time-machine to a simpler era.

Learn to can and preserve, too. Our grocery stores stock only three days worth of food. It would not take an Apocalypse to  make a lot of folks very, very hungry fast.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a few weeks' worth of produce in the cupboard, socked away against that next big hurricane or snowstorm?

After reading these articles about farmers' markets, I'm more determined than ever to buy more this year at market. Please join me.

Heritage Harvest Festival 2015: What I Learned

This event at Monticello is one, like Maymont's Herbs Galore, that I look forward to for months. I only attended two classes this time, a free one on fermentation by Sandor Katz and a paid workshop with Lisa Kivirist (pictured above) and John D. Ivanko, authors of Homemade for Sale: How to Set Up And Market a Food Business From Your Home Kitchen. The Wisconsin couple has made a living by gradually building up a market for their processed foods. Along they way they became writers, relying upon their experience in marketing to effectively craft words and lobby politicians to change state laws that hurt small businesses.

They answered a question I had about amortizing equipment costs. I guess it surprised them that I'd spent so much already getting started, but my project does not involve merely canning a few cases of pickles in the kitchen or selling home-baked goods. To farm, I needed equipment to cultivate, protect, and water our first cash crop. The idea of selling some pickled peppers or honey have been there all along, and this is where the authors' advice is pure gold to a beginner.

States have gradually loosened laws for "Cottage Foods," though anyone trying to get raw milk will tell you how difficult regulations can be. Luckily, that's not in the works for us. At most, we'll sideline our honey, pickles, and a few other things to supplement our income when the field is not producing vegetables or herbs.

What craft brewing has done for the drinking landscape, Cottage Foods and the broader local-food movement could do to big agriculture, an industry that exacts a heavy toll on the soil, water, and diversity of food.  It may feed the world, but I've yet to be convinced that we could not feed ourselves in a more sustainable manner.

Sandor Katz has me happy that I've been fermenting food from my own soil; Kivirist and Ivanko make me proud that our little LLC has a business plan. As I felt last year, at Heritage Harvest 2015, I came away optimistic about a better world waiting to be born.

An actor portraying Thomas Jefferson strolled the grounds and talked to visitors. I didn't get a chance to ask Mr. Jefferson what he thought about today's local-food movement, but he was a fan of the American yeoman and our self-reliant streak. That philosophical stance, as much as his Deism or the founding of my alma mater, makes Jefferson one of my culture heroes, despite the contradictions and compromises of his personal and political life.

I think that he would approve of how entrepreneurs are taking on the established tyranny of factory food to bring commerce to our communities and variety to our pantries.

Wood Stoves Safe in Virginia

Sitting by my wood stove and typing this, I'm actually delighted with Conservatives I usually find rather insane. We know the sort, who tend to block any environmental laws, deny climate change, and take behind-the-back payola, I mean campaign contributions, from corporate polluters.

Usually, I want to pour that sort a toxic-waste Martini. But today, I will reluctantly raise a glass to them. I actually believe they led a worthwhile effort, by protecting citizens' right to heat their homes with wood. I have been using this source of heat since December 2012, and in the coldest weather it saves me $200-$300 per month.

That's not big money for me, and I do have to cut, transport, and season my wood. For poor citizens in my part of the state, however, wood is the only source they can afford. In a cold winter, my neighbors and I each need about four full cords: a stack 32 feet long by four high by four deep.

Wood stoves may well contribute to local air pollution, especially in areas subject to temperature inversions that trap smoke. We've a newer stove that is efficient and burns hot with good seasoned oak. I burn other stuff in a pinch or as kindling, of course.

If Virginia lawmakers had not acted, we might have EPA regulations that would affect new stove installations, not a ban but regulations about the types of stoves that could be used. In theory, I do not oppose that. The poor with older stoves would be grandfathered in, including my current stove that cost us about $3000 for the stove and installing a stainless steel chimney liner. It has paid for itself now, even with an annual chimney and stove cleaning that runs me $250.

My fear is, however, rather like those of some gun owners. Over time, initial regulations would tighten and threaten my right to burn wood.

Government has a role in protecting public health and insuring the natural world is not damaged. I'd like stronger and faster action on climate change, but burning coal is a far worse threat to our planet than tens of millions of wood stoves in colder parts of the nation. Coal ash spills into rivers when containment fails, and mountain-top removal is a great evil of our age. Unlike coal fields, commercial forests can be managed in a way that is sustainable for fuel and the environment; my stove consumes about two matures oaks per year.

We have made progress with new cars that are more fuel efficient, thanks to CAFE standards recently adopted, and that initiative too reduces pollutants. For wood stoves, EPA might work with industry and provide tax incentives for innovations that reduce emissions.  If the car makers manage to do it, so can Dutch West, who built my stove.

Just don't come for my stove, ever, let alone those of my less affluent neighbors. For now, my state officials have "got our backs" on this issue.

Small Farms And 2015

Having just set up Beepasture Farms LLC, I do want 2015 to be the year of small agriculture. I've now a personal stake in it, as we move toward retirement from academic work and toward a "sideline income" from producing food without inputs of pesticides, herbicides, or petrochemical-based fertilizers.

Today is a watershed moment, as California's Proposition 2 bans some of the worst practices involved in the intensive rearing of caged animals. Americans have long been distanced from their food, and animal-welfare issues are only the visible aspect for an industrialized method of producing what we eat. I am as concerned with the invisible and slow effects of GMO crops; we do not know the long-term effects of trace amounts of herbicides that build up in our bodies from eating mass-market food. I suspect that in my remaining years, we'll find out and the results will not be pretty.

Writer Bill McKibben has urged America to become a nation of small-scale food producers again. We began that way. With our LLC I'm the only member, and it shields a producer from liability against his personal property. Only the assets of the LLC could be seized in court. It gives a member the flexibility to write off expenses, as long as the firm shows a profit at least every third year. A hobby, on the other hand, can only cancel income with expenses. It cannot show a loss. But mine is no hobby; it's a future small business and part of a much larger future for how we produce and eat food.

An LLC also provides a method to license with the state; some Libertarian friends disliked my doing that (it's not any of their darned business how I conduct my affairs, which should be a Libertarian principle, but I try to be cordial on Facebook). My incentive is licensing with the State Corporation Commission is to establish the firm for the long term. If I pay a few taxes now, it makes it easier to scale up to a larger operation when I begin to lease or buy more land for production nearby.

For now our horizon is small: 400 pounds of hot peppers for one restaurant in 2015 and a small annual profit after the loss shown for starting up in 2014. We ordered seeds, bought a post-hole digger for the tractor, and had several other incidental expenses related to fencing. It's a very hopeful start to the new year.

A New Future, Visible in the Distance at Monticello

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson was already fretting about the localized changes to the state's climate, brought on by the clear-cutting of forested lands between his home and the coast.  Jefferson describes hazier, more humid weather from what he recalled from his youth.  At his mountain home, the man could see far and, whatever the foibles and contradictions of his personal life, Jefferson recognized far ahead of his time the changes humanity can bring to the land that should sustain us.

I suspect that the former President, buried just beyond the lawns at Monticello, is proud to see the annual Heritage Harvest Festival take place on his land. My wife and I have been going for several years, and 2014 proved one of the finest so far. The classes ran a bit short; I'd prefer 90 minutes so the presenters have enough time, but I got to attend one free and two paid events.

Here are a few highlights for this Tractorpunk.

• Michael Levatino of Ted's Last Stand Farm (shown above) talked in detail about "The Sustainable Farm Lifestyle" for hobby farmers such as me or "sideliners" who make extra income, which is what I plan to be during retirement. I was impressed by the Levatinos' ability to find the right niche at their farmers' market, to learn the hard way the best practices for water use, weed control, and cool-season crops. Michael also alerted me to the free woodchips from tree companies. They work well in paths and build soil under the paths (that can be raked up onto raised beds on either side).
• Given my larger-than-usual Fall food garden, I was an avid attendee of Pam Dawling's workshop on Cold-Hardy Winter Vegetables.  Pam's excellent book Sustainable Market Gardening has been on my shelf for over a year, and this season I am starting to apply its lessons to our small crop. Next year, we plan a business license and first sale to a restaurant, so Pam's will be indispensable advice. Her remarks on using row-covers and hoop houses at Twin Oaks Community for three-or-four season production came in VERY handy.
• Ken Bezilla of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange reinforced Pam's lessons and added more tips that I plan to use this year. He focused a free workshop on "Fall & Winter Vegetable Gardening," and, like Pam, discussed the cold-hardiness of various crops. I'm already thinking of ordering my big batch of spring seeds from these folks.

What I'm getting from these festivals is nothing less than the birth of a sustainability movement to bring local food and best practices to every corner of our state, a future beyond the Monsanto and Ortho hegemony of sterile seeds and pesticides. A future where local growers and consumers put as much back into the land as they take from it. In a time of accelerating climate change, such efforts may be too little, even doomed. Yet they come not a moment too soon.

Jefferson would be proud of another revolution, this time one fought with muskmelons not muskets, brassicas not bayonets, being dreamed up at Monticello.

Sustainable, Chemical-Free Christmas Trees?

Rural landowners face a big dilemma when deciding to earn money from the land. First, there is scale: one must have enough land in production to earn one more than a pittance. I hope, with some pasture nearby, to eventually raise Christmas trees without any herbicides or pesticides. My plan would be to employ Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices, as we do in our garden, mow for weeds, and hand shear trees each year properly until we harvest them.

As I read up on these concepts, and talk to a few local vendors who might buy my trees in a decade, I look no further than our farm garden for some advice on how to manage some of this.

We loaned much of our garden this summer out for an ongoing experiment by a tenant gardener, Dominic, who runs delli Carpini Farm. Other than feeding bugs to our chickens and applying diatomaceous earth to some plants, Dom has not been invasive in his practices. He uses organic fertilizers for top dressing, hand weeds, works the soil with manure, limestone, and fireplace ash, and hand digs most of his beds. Only one bed, never broken before, got the plow and harrow treatment by me. We both dislike that, but my own belief is "plow or till once" to get the weeds gone, then work small plots by hand after. In our sauna of a climate, it is tough to do otherwise.

Right now, the experiment has also showed him and me that being sensitive to the market and finding a niche crop helps.  For next year, if the weather holds, he is thinking of more cantaloupes and fewer tomatoes. After all, in Central VA, everyone grows tomatoes. Local melons, while not exactly rare, are harder to find and his first sales showed that these easily sell out. I will add hot peppers to the mix. Very few growers here have certain varieties I know will sell out at the farmer's markets.

I am considering something similar for trees, but I will have to identify varieties popular around here and that grow well in our climate. I love Scot's Pine but Jean English's article from Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners shows how relentlessly the market determines things. Scots Pines, also a favorite of the author, did not sell because the needles are too prickly for most consumers. Then the question becomes, what trees thrive here and will survive enough shaping to give the iconic (and artificial) conical shape that modern consumers expect?

Our great-grandparents were happy with a "natural" tree, open branches and all. Perhaps in the future, in a new era of energy scarcity, we will be again. Yet I cannot grow that tree for a profit. So the research begins as I talk to local merchants and read more from those in the business.

Because if we have to spray poisons, the deal is just off.

Old School Tools: Apinol

Since 1903, "America's Oldest Green Product" has soothed and cleansed those who work or play outdoors. Until I met my wife in 1989, I had never heard of this strange product from Alabama.

When Nancy began to talk about "Alpine Oil," which is how she and her family pronounce it, I thought it was something from a pine tree. Sure enough, Apinol is made from pine oil, and when you put it on a mosquito or tick bite, sore toe, or big scrape the sting is brief and the relief is long-lasting. You do, however, smell like pine-scented cleaning products.

We say around here that "it will help anything but a broken heart," and I'm not sure it would not  help in those cases, too. I have made a poultice from it, using cotton balls and medical tape, and let it sit on a blister or wound overnight. It relieves swelling and quickens healing.

Apinol can be hard to find. Locally, an Westbury Pharmacy carries it, and I have seen it listed on Amazon. I suspect this product, which has only changed from a glass to a plastic spray bottle in my many years using it, will be with us until 2103 and beyond.  Unlike many legacy brands, Apinol knows how to build a customer base and has a decent Web presence.

Tell your friends this summer, when the critters bite and scratch. I have not tried it as an insect repellant, but it's a soothing friend to have in a miserable time of year down South.

Suburban Visitors Meet A Man From Mars

"There might be ticks," she said, stepping out of the car.

He replied, "I told you not to wear flip flops."

For the record, I don't own flip-flops or any open-toed sandals. Out here, they are not practical outdoors.

She doused her legs with bug spray. So did he, and he was wearing jeans and real shoes, good boots even.  I figured it would not be useful to tell them that I eat lots of garlic to keep the mosquitoes off, and sometimes I dust my boots with sulfur to repel ticks: not a great remedy if one wears that urban ubiquity, the flip-flop.

I also did not mention the tick jar I keep my pulled ticks in, until my bite looks okay, or the gizmo I use to remove several ticks a week from me.

That would lead to some sort of discussion about chemicals, and I'd get angry.

She got about 20 feet down our farm road and turned back. "I'll stay in the car." He said again, "I told you not to wear flip flops!"

I said something about street rods and the shell of a '55 Chevy I'm going to save, just to change the subject.

"So why are you selling these other old cars?" He asked. I have a few junkers on our property, none of them worth much, so I just gave him the real reason. "The wrecks are in the way when I'm mowing, and I've got two old cars already I fiddle with. We're going to cultivate the area to plant cover crops to feed our bees."

"Your bees," he said, as we trudged into the woods, me alert for snakes.

"You know, honey bees."

He nodded and was polite, but I was clearly the Man from Mars.

I didn't tell him, as I looked for snakes, that I'd said "hello, get a mouse!" to a big one that morning, on the steps by my garage. The serpent--a Black Racer--looked at me, stuck out his tongue, and slipped into a crack in the cinder block. My visitor would then probably recommend clearing all the undergrowth by the road, getting rid of brush piles, and so on.

Satisfied with the two pickup trucks he'd be saving from a rusty apocalypse, he and his wife went back to town. I'm sure they showered and deloused themselves. Nice folks, however, they are not my sort.

Later, another visitor came by, a talented painter and car-restorer who is going to do some body work on a car of mine. He and I walked to the garage to chat about the project, and he pointed to a patch of weeds.

"You know what THAT is?" He asked.

I looked, and looked back at him. "Poison Ivy."

He tilted his head but before he could offer advice, I said "We keep bees. I just string trim it, and we use no chemicals on our land, except some Roundup I paint with a brush on 'Tree of Heaven' after I cut them down."

Again, the Man-from-Mars look greeted me. But he too was polite and, again, not my sort.

I have seen the yards from the places where such folk come. Monocultures of grass not suited for our climate, foundation plantings just as water-intensive as the grass. Non-native trees far from the house, if there are trees. A sign on the lawn every so often, from a company with an innocuous name that cloaks its evil--GreenWays! EverGrow! BugBlaster!--that sprays poisons to kill bugs, all the bugs, or that puts toxins down so the lawn will continue its junkie life of constant chemical fixes. Meanwhile the owners of these properties breathe in chemicals daily, so trace amounts stay in their fatty tissue, accruing a little at a time...

I'd rather be a Man from Mars.

Here's a good test of a person I'd want to spend time with: they think the tick-jar is cool and talking to a snake is not odd.

I just pulled a tick off me, after my second paragraph of this post. I'll spare the readers a picture of him in the jar, crawling around.

Getting Really Local

Despite T.S. Eliot's declaration to the contrary, I do not find April to be the cruelest month. I really enjoy it, in fact. In the air are promises of summer ease, given my delightful academic schedule. We always have commencement on Mother's Day, but even before that, we have a week free when the soon-to-graduate go to "beach week" for a final communal debauch.

That sort of thing was never for me, even when I was a callow undergraduate. I tended to enjoy some casual-reading time and a bit of geeky gaming with friends, once classes ended.  And unlike so many hyper-parented students these days, back then I had no money.

Still, let them have some fun. Many of them will soon be back at home, looking for work,\ or slaving as disposable units for a large firm that will one day discard them. My students often--with a few really canny exceptions--find my attraction to the land strange. So do older creatures of chain stores and suburban neighborhoods. They cannot see the fragility and temporary nature of these living arrangements. When someone like James Howard Kunstler challenges them (as he did in a Skype visit to a class of mine a few weeks back) the students are either profoundly shocked or they laugh off Jim's dire predictions about the end of easy capital and easy energy.  After all, their smart phones, to which they are addicted, beckon them into an eternal now of continual progress and easy connections.

I'm not so sure about some of Jim's ideas, but I also doubt that our current exploitative way of life can continue, unabated, for much longer. My own solution may not suit everyone, but it involves living a deeply local life. Jim advocates it, especially in how one uses localism to build community. What does that mean?

I began by taking an assessment of what we purchase. How much of it could be sourced from a locally owned firm? How much extra would it cost, if it did cost extra? Second, I began to try, as best I could, to establish a relationship with merchants, contractors who do quality work, and old-school mechanics, not dealerships. This is not as hard as one might think. Our local butcher shop provides premium, but reasonable, meats and seafood from local sources; the beef, pork, and chicken come from our very county.  While meat may again become a luxury item at some future point, for now sustainably raised livestock help local growers retain the land, make money, and pass on essential skills to another generation. Agribusiness does none of this.

Likewise, the mechanics' shop to the east down the road and the tractor-repair to our west employ local people and have owners who live nearby. These folks will work on older cars and farm equipment that the big shops won't touch. Two small-engine wizards get things to work I can't, and I am not bad at it though chain saws will be forever finicky, even with ethanol-free gas in the tank!

Thinking local made us look for plants the same way. We were recently at Herbs Galore, an annual sale by Maymont in Richmond. It's a ritual to go and pull around a wagon of organically raised plants from local growers. Given the use of pesticides and herbicides in the soil of plants from big-box stores, we stopped buying their plants. The chemicals may be killing our bees, as seems to be the case for Neonicotinoids already under a two-year moratorium in the EU.  I will need a lot more evidence before I put chemicals into our land again, beyond the same small bottle of Roundup that has been doing a great job of controlling "Tree of Heaven" on our property. I'm so careful I use a small paintbrush to apply the product!

Perhaps it is the hope that blooms every April, but I'm not ready to give into the resignation of Jim Kunstler or worse, the despair of climate activist Paul Kingsnorth. Humans have a way of muddling along, even though we muddle things up in the process. At Herbs Galore, I saw, however, more than seedlings. I saw a new culture, a new-old type of capitalism, waiting to be born. It's at every locally owned brewery, never new bakery, every little business that finds a niche that Target or Amazon cannot crush.

Get to know your local merchants and cultivate some local skills. Even if doomsayers are wrong, any future with strong communities of committed neighbors will be a resilient one.