Thinking Little With Wendell Berry

Last year, I picked up my first volume of Wendell Berry's essays. I'd read some of his poetry, but until recently, not the prose.

I found a kindred tractorpunk, even if Berry and his son work their land with animals. I'll point you to one essay in particular, "Think Little," that can be found free of charge at the Web site for the Wendell Berry Center. In particular I want to note a couple of his premises, ones that could be adapted to a Distributist lifestyle even in a big city:

• "The Confucian Great Digest says that the 'chief way for the production of wealth' (and he is talking about real goods, not money) is 'that the producers be many and that the mere consumers be few…. ' ”  To me this means that in a Distributist economy, rather than a Corporatist or Socialist one, we all are makers. We trade, barter, and yes, pay in currency when we must. Above all, we avoid credit.
• "Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato." Stunningly true, even if I struggle to grow white potatoes still. Barbara Dalmrosch said something similar in her wonderful book The Garden Primer: we can make change happen by growing just one thing we like to eat. That could be the potted basil on your apartment balcony. Start little, think little, but imagine big as you influence others.
• "[T]he remedies are not always obvious, though they certainly will always be difficult. They require a new kind of life-harder, more laborious, poorer in luxuries and gadgets, but also, I am certain, richer in meaning and more abundant in real pleasure. To have a healthy environment we will all have to give up things we like; we may even have to give up things we have come to think of as necessities." It's a small task to learn to repair or hold on to common items; I just refurbished my old phone rather than give into Verizon's seductive texts (now blocked) to upgrade it (at more than $250 per month).  A $20 case, some hours removing photos and apps so I could update the OS, and now I have a phone that will last me a few more years without incurring more e-waste or personal bills.
• "Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world." Not odd at all, and certainly less odd than when Berry wrote the essay. Most folks I know keep some kind of garden now, often with local varieties of plants and some food crops. 

I've gotten too critical of urban and suburban life at times. I still could never imagine living in suburbia, though I know some suburbanites who are minimalists and avoid the rat-races of conspicuous consumption and look-just-like-the-Joneses conformity. Moreover, the 'burbs of the 2020s are not those of the 1950s or 70s. You'll find local markets and businesses aplenty, from a halal grocer I frequent next to my locally-owned Yoga studio, to a locally-run bakery or three. I have found cobblers who still fix shoes, tailors who mend clothing, a great local bar, and places that repair small electronics or engines. 

 I'll end with Berry's prescription for change:

"We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibility that we have parceled out to the bureaus and the corporations and the specialists, and we are going to have to put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and households and neighborhoods. We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities. We need persons and households that do not have to wait upon organizations, but can make necessary changes in themselves, on their own."

Can we do this? We have to. The philosophy should appeal to Libertarians of the earth-loving rather than broligarch sort, too. 

You may, like me, have already started. I'll be at a Board of Supervisors meeting next week to mention the economic madness of building soon-to-fail giant data centers in our county. We are involved in a law suit against this plan, a concept voted down by supervisors in the counties north and east of us. If we don't try, we lose by default. Yet if we lose, we keep trying. Onward.

 

The Last X You Will Ever Buy

Sobering, isn't it? At age 65, I confront a strangely comforting dilemma: Many of the thing I buy or do will outlive me. That Deodar Cedar in between us and the road? It will be big when I'm in my 80s, but if climate-change and future residents allow, it will still be growing bigger in the 22nd Century.

If my tree-planting is for the next generation, as well as an "up yours" to the greedy idiocy of denying human-driven climate change, then buying things that last a long time constitutes a statement about economics and frugality. 

Every time we acquire a vehicle, and I'm addicted to clean used vehicles, I say "this one will be here when I ain't." And now when a tool wears out, I start shopping for something that will be in my estate sale. I've written here about the wisdom of getting only vehicles that are friendly for DIY work. That philosophy applies to many things, big and small.

Last week, the first circular saw I'd every owned, a basic Skil purchased in the early 1990s for under $50, gave up the ghost. I could have ordered a new trigger (the motor works still) but stands far from my late father-in-law's Porter-Cable belt sander, a Gibraltar-like device that commands reverence and weighs about 40 pounds. I got a new trigger for that one. It should last another 40 years. The Skil is a cheap tool that lasted a long time because I am careful with my tools, cleaning them and never, ever loaning a tool or vehicle to anyone unless I use it for the borrower.

The saw's replacement is a DeWalt saw. Instead of an $80 Skil, I spent another $100 and got a saw that rips paneling like a hot knife though butter. The handle fits my big hands well, and the trigger design is sure and solid. These features matter after you work with a saw for a few hours.

I really like the DeWalt's corded tools, but I've sworn off the cordless ones because the company changes battery designs regularly and I had to find third-party batteries from China (when I can in these crazy times) to keep a set of 2008 tools running. 

Planned obsolescence violates every fiber of my being.There was a time when a good tool meant a lifetime investment; that's the case for the sander I noted, as well as some of the shop tools we own. My Bosch Miter-box and Delta table saws should survive me (I bought the latter from an estate, in fact). I attended a farm show where a craftsman used a spoke-shave from the middle of the 18th Century; George III was boss here when that tool was made. He told me it would go to a child with an interest in woodworking, as it has been passed down for over 250 years.

I just wonder: if we thought of purchasing as much as possible items that would outlast us, how much healing would that do for the environment? Moreover, how much would it rebuke the purveyors of cheaply made, disposable goods? We would have to save up for a quality item. Wendell Berry made that this sort of durability and longevity tests for a sustainable economy.

When the current stupid era ends with an inevitable economic crash, I wonder if we might return to the Distributist principles of localism, frugality, and durability.

I'll be cutting boards and waiting to see. 

 

Old School Tools: Percolator Perfection!

Unlike me, my late father-in-law was not picky about coffee. Yet when I perked some for him using a stovetop peculator, he ordered one himself from The Vermont Country Store. I'd ruined him on weak and tepid Mr. Coffee, forever.

I inherited his pot, and I have my original too. It's time I got those old pots out more often. I tend to use them when we have company. And when I smell that coffee, good things happen to my mood. My mom used an electric peculator, and I liked that coffee a lot too, partly from the smell of brewing and also from memories.  Mom's coffee maker had no off switch; you leave an electric or stovetop on too long, and you can smell the ruination. You only do that once.

On some dreadful days, my parents and I would brew coffee and enjoy it in dainty stoneware cups and saucers around the kitchen table. It was a rare moment when my dad's guard was down and we could talk about serious things. When mom was in the hospital once, I showed dad how to make coffee (he got very good at it, too). I also recall that after dad passed, mom and I would fire up the peculator and share a few cups. This ritual eased, for a little while, her grief.

But it also united us around a favorite beverage. Mom hated coffee machines for producing weak brew. So do I. So did my sadly departed friend Steve Gott. For him, old-school percolation was the only way to make coffee.

Today we have wasteful coffee-pod coffee going to our landfills, whereas I have been composting my Melita filters and coffee, from a plastic cone I've had since the early 1980s. But the peculator! It's even less wasteful; it has a metal basket where I dump my grounds into the compost bin.

 Now, with only one coffee drinker in our house, I think smaller. This means that I have a Goldilocks dilemma.

My favorite pot is made for a LOT of coffee. My other peculator is a cafetera from Madrid; it reverses the process by pushing the boiling water up, under pressure, from the bottom of the pot. It makes a superb brew. I bought it in 2002, to replace one I'd lost in the late 80s. Sadly, it makes one tiny cup. I need two cups every morning.

Now I need a coffee maker that is JUST right. As for the design? Those stovetop and electric percolators, like safety razors or car controls from before about 2005, perfected a technology that has only gone downhill with each "innovation" since. I'd claim that everything afterwards just tries to empty our wallets. 

I'm not talking about a cappuccino machine; that's another form of perfection. I lack counter space for that, alas.

Pressure Washers: Why WOULD Anyone Not Want Electric?

In keeping with my recent post about our electric lawnmower, I'll post an update about another useful tool: a pressure washer.

I simply despise gas-powered ones. They have proven finicky and fragile in my experience, and they are noisy. They emit pollution I don't wish to breathe.

A year ago, I pressure-washed the stupid vinyl siding (I hate the stuff!) that we have not yet removed from our house. We still have it on the back of the home. Being old-school by nature, I would rather paint weatherboard or at least Hardie-Plank siding. They both hold paint well and...do not look like plastic.

In any case, a neighbor loaned me his 2000 PSI plug-in washer. I used a transfer pump from the bottom spigot of a rain barrel to get water. The results were astounding. It looked like I was respraying the vinyl white as it stripped off dirt. I used a cleaner that does not harm plants near a house, which you should research before letting a washer go wild near your hostas.

This year, I purchased my own 3000 PSI electric washer for under $200, ahead of the ludicrous and self-destructive US tariffs against Chinese goods. I've since purchased a 24' telescoping wand to clean second-floor areas without venturing onto a wet ladder. It includes a scrub-brush attachment.

Folks PAY money to have their homes washed. I suppose it lets them watch more TV shows or play golf.

I'd rather do it myself. I get to use up surplus stored water in the fall, as the garden winds down. The house looks great for the holidays. I still don't love vinyl siding, but it looks nice when clean. 

If it's above freezing, get outside and put on waterproof clothes. Let the water fly! As with any tool, practice. Using the wrong nozzle (read the instructions!) can peel paint. With the right nozzle and technique, my washer can blast farm equipment clean or remove gunk from the underbodies of vehicles. 

Bob Vila offers some reviews. We opted for a generic unit something like the Earthwise shown in the reviews. I now see no advantage now to gas-powered units except their use away from an electrical outlet. For ease of starting, sound, emissions, and power, electric washers work just fine.

Creative Commons image by Debbie Wolfe from Bob Vila’s site. 

 

 

A Simple Ceiling-Fan Hack

Admitting something obvious, something you did not know before, should be counted as wisdom. Let's hope. I just learned a means of using our ceiling fans to best circulate warm air through our home, in wood-stove season.

In Winter, set the fan to rotate clockwise, which pushes hot air trapped near the ceiling down and draws air near the floor upward. In summer, set the fan counterclockwise, to push air down and give you that lovely fanning effect. Run your fans low, and yes, even if you have central heat and air, running them will reduce your bills.

Of course, mine were set backward, by me.  How to change the direction? Find a small button on the fan housing; you'll need a ladder. Some newer fans with remotes likely have that feature, but I'm averse to anything that I must use a remote control to master.

Hack that fan and stay warm. It's my favorite time of year. 

Silly question: same trick south of the equator? Sure. 

image credit: pexels.com 

Six Months With An Electric Lawnmower

A full month slipped by without a post, but we got busy with several projects as soon as the heat broke.

One thing that did not break? Our new push mower. I am utterly delighted with my first cordless electric grass-cutter, a Stihl RMA 510V.

We needed a unit that would handle about 5,000 square feet of patios and edges where the tractors cannot mow; I know those figures would have boggled my mind 20 years ago, too. On rural land, one thinks about acres of open space if one has pastures. I'd love more in woods right up to the house, but then the copperheads might come indoors. No, thank you.

A political aside: How did getting a vaccination or an electric lawn mower become an act of civil disobedience? Well, I did both this year. For the grass, I spotted a Stihl landscaper-grade mower in the dealer where I buy parts for our gas-powered weed eaters (My saws are all Husqvarna now). One selling point, beyond being on sale and coming with an extra battery? That it would cut all our patios and more on a single charge. Stihl promises that the batteries would be supported long-term. That matters a great deal. I have a nice set of DeWalt tools for which batteries are no longer made. Luckily, I found re-manufactured ones from China (with the stupid tariffs now, I'm not sure I can get more). In consequence, no more cordless DeWalt for me.

With this lawn-mower, there's no more replacing carburetors, no more running out to get ethanol-free 93 octane (or at least as much of it). No oil changes, no smell of gasoline or breathing exhaust. Just sharpen the blade once a year, and clean the underside of the mower at season's end. It's so quiet I do not wear earplugs.

This model has a self-propelled feature with enough torque to scare me when I first engaged it. It's a landscaper model, after all. It will roll on a bit after I disengage the driving wheels, but we plan for that, as we do when mowing pasture with a Ford 8N: you learn to give the machine a little room to stop. After mastering that trick, we learned how to run the mower, quickly.

The driving wheels are shielded from long grass, unlike our old Craftsman, which would get wire grass tangled around the axle and grind to a halt. On flat ground or downhill, the self-propelled feature need not be activated, but I have several grades to mow where a tractor won't fit. This proved a godsend for my back and stamina in hot weather.

We found we can cut everything without running down the battery past 50%, even though our patios exceed the square footage Stihl estimates. We did run out of juice once, because we'd not recharged the mower. In any case, the chassis has space to carry a second battery.

You'd do well to consider an electric. If you like having all your tools using the same battery, this unit's batteries work for Stihl's lawn tools and latest chainsaws.

If electric chainsaws had enough run time to cut up a big tree, I'd switch tomorrow.  

The Boy on the Burning Deck

 

No, I don't mean the Victorian-Era poem by Felicia Hemans. I doubt many of you have ever heard of "Casabiana," but it was once very popular. It's maudlin stuff today, dreadfully melodramatic to modern ears, or perhaps we are simply too jaded and declined as a culture to appreciate the poet's sentiments. Maybe I'm a barbarian, but I begin to see where Mark Twain got his "Ode to Stepehen Dowling Botts, Dec'd." I stand with Sam Clemens when it comes to hating Victorian verse of the popular sort.

In any case, for Hemans' tale of the doomed lad, I had never been forced to memorize it in school, as had earlier generations. We instead learned the much more durable "Ozymandias" and a few of Poe's poems by heart. For that kid on the flaming ship, I simply knew the line I've used as my title because these past few weeks, I've lived it. The heat broke, for which I'm thankful, but so did a wooden deck in several places.

The past several days have been consumed with removing rotten boards from our rental property's deck. Buried nails, likely from the 1990s, prove hard to exhume, and then I must plane some of the replacement boards down to fit into the empty spots. Of course installation proves a snap, as I use a screw-gun and star-headed screws I can back out later with ease, when--not if--more repairs need doing. I like these new coated screws; while they are not cheap, they hold up. I've backed out and reused several that still look new and do not round off like Philips-head screws can do. I stain all sides of the board too. Rot creeps in from any angle.

At the end of each session, sore to the bone, I am reminded why I despise wooden decks. Why did they get so damned popular? I share a theory espoused by, among others, Western Doughty, that Americans retreated from their front porches after the 1960s. I was lucky enough to grow up in the last years when, on a blue-collar block in Richmond before AC was common, all the neighbors would sit on the porches on hot nights. When you strolled down the street, greetings got exchanged.

It was no utopia; the dark side was that everyone knew your business. Still, the nation could have done better than treated wood, when we retreated to our back yards. 

Wooden decks require the constant maintenance that a sailing-ship needs, lest someone fall through the deck and into oblivion. I've found that heavy, solid penetrating stain works well enough, as it has for a fence I rehabilitated at our rental property, but decks, by their nature, get a lot of traffic. The one at our rental house, for now at least, bakes in the sun. I plan to change that with a strategically planted Willow Oak this Fall.

 The issue with decks of treated wood (were I forced to build from scratch, I'd use the new composite decking) is dry rot. We know that term, but I began to think about what it means on a deck. Here's an explanation for boats, from the Wikipedia page on dry rot (yes, they have a page for everything):

An explanation of the term "dry rot" circles around boatyards periodically. In the age of wooden ships, boats were sometimes hauled for the winter and placed in sheds or dry dock for repair. The boats already had some amount of rot occurring in the wood members, but the wood cellular structure was full of water making it still function structurally. As the wood dried out, the cell walls would crumble. In other words, the wood was already rotten and as the boat dried, the wood collapsed and crumbled, causing the workers in the yard to determine it was "dry rot", when in fact, the wood had been rotten all along.  

Even with good penetrating stain, dry rot happens to decking in time, because water will find a way into a crevice and sit. Cycles of drying and wetting just give dry rot more chances to begin; fungus follows, invisibly, into the hearts of each board. Think of how cavities form on your own teeth. For decks, what may look great may leave your leg broken when you fall through a big, new hole in a seemingly intact board.

I do like one aspect of repairing decks: Whenever I do a rehab, I clog around in my "Jed Clampett" Redwing boots to see which boards are bad. Breaking a board or two is great fun. Replacing them? Not so much. 

Save yourself. Use composite boards or build a damned patio! 

As with horses, sailboats, swimming pools, or lots of vices I cannot name here, it's better if a friend has a wooden deck.  No, that is NOT my deck up top. It's from the Wikipedia page.