A warm fall Friday

I'm trying my best to stick to my goals outlined in the calendar.





















But I've realized that I set out too much for the first year, for the trees in particular.


I shouldn't trim branches and tap for syrup in the same year, it's too traumatic. And pruning means they loose some of their sugar production anyway.
So this is a process, I know my goals and the calendar will have to be adjusted as I become more educated.
Another reason the calendar will have to be adjusted: unexpectedly beautiful weather and the availability of transplant crops. I found asparagus crowns this week (volunteers in a soil scientist's garden 20 minutes away) and planted them before they go completely dormant. So here's my first vegetable bed. It's 8" deep and I'll be adding 8 more inches of mulch as soon as the ferns turn brown.
















Speaking of mulch, we're trying the old Ruth Stout method of mulching the tarnation out of all your plants. To this end, we've saved every last one of our leaves that fell instead of sending them off with the city refuse collection. I like thinking of these leaves as wealth while I'm raking them into piles; they'll make the soil richer, and that means less cash invested into other fertilizers.














A fall Friday well spent, I think.

Setbacks

I know I said I wouldn't talk about politics much, and I won't generally, but we just had an election and I've got feelings about it. In Michigan, both houses of the legislature and the governor's office are in Republican hands. For some reason I'm not too concerned about this. Gov.-elect Rick Snyder has been declared a "Champion of the Arts" and wants to reinstate all lost arts funding. He also wants to support Michigan's cities to develop new approaches to land use, including limiting development in virginal forested tracts and transforming existing lots to farms. These are definitely ideas I am on track with, obviously. But I didn't vote for him.
I voted for Virg Bernero because he has done an amazing job in Lansing. This is the liveliest I've ever seen this town in the 11 years I've lived here. But there is something crooked about him, I agree. He reminds me of Rod Blagojevich. And yet I voted for him. I had to throw my voice into the ring of losers, I guess, that we don't all accept Republican policies and vision.
In fact, I'm dumbfounded why so many people voted Republican nationally. I do not understand how people could not see that the last administration's hands-off approach to regulation has driven us to this mess. And isn't this mess their ultimate intention? Help the rich stay rich and leave the poor with no pathway out? And I just love it when they claim that letting the tax cuts expire on the wealthiest 2% is "class warfare." They are masters of framing the debate. They're miles ahead of us lefties.

On the homefront, my three main pursuits for the week have fallen through. Someone else claimed the free cold frame I was after. The gentleman interested in felling our dead tree as a trade for the wood informed me that he's not insured. It reached freezing and started snowing before I could put my yard "to bed" and clean out my compost bin.
I figure this is how most of the project will go. 3 (or more) setbacks for every 1 success. I'm in great competition with other community members for these free/recycled/cheap resources, and most of the time I will lose. But I'm also taking care of my baby. And it's hard for me to do yardwork with her when it's so frizzing freezing outside. Maybe this could be a metaphor for fixing our political mess.
Because we can't stop trying. There is no other choice but to keep fighting. The next season will come, and we need to have our beds made.

Pumpkin seeds & storm windows

Fall means weatherizing. With the help of Sin Christian at Michigan Energy Options , we found some more plastic storm windows on ItsEasyBeingGreen for our 5 little windows that have gone uncovered for the last several years. They're all still in their packaging, which is not very useful or energy-efficient. Maybe if this baby girl of mine takes a good nap today, I can check this off my list.
Save Loads of Energy With Caulking and Weatherstripping - Green Homes - MOTHER EARTH NEWS
Also on my list: grocery shopping, borrowing a truck to get to Ovid between 11-2 to pick up a FREE cold frame, and practicing drums before rehearsal tomorrow. And I must not forget Halloween face paint.
But snack attacks had the best of me when I woke up this morning at 4:30. The smell of the pumpkin seeds I roasted last night filled the house and carried me by the nose to the kitchen for a few handfuls.

Do-It-Yourself Evaporator

Good Golly, this looks like fun.

Do-It-Yourself Evaporator

A Year Off

Looking back now, I can see my anger and frustration could largely be attributed to my having been pregnant! I've calmed down, and want to put my nose to the grindstone on this home re-creation project, now that Iris has been born. I will try to keep my posts less political and more personal, except for when it impacts us directly (e.g. my husband not qualifying for unemployment anymore because congress has refused to extend the benefits another time...but they still think paying for perpetual war is acceptable).
We don't know if we'll be in this house next year. But I can't allow that uncertainty to diminish my desire to make my home-life my gift to my children (and my husband). There are quite a few plans I have for this place, and I hope to post the progress of the projects soon. First on the list: weatherize, then make mid-winter appointment to tap these Maple trees!

If all Democrats are like Garrison Keillor, then Sarah Palin has a point

I consider myself a liberal democrat. I'm educated, I value the idea of "public" institutions, I believe in that democracy is a process of engagement, not just an an opportunity to elect a stand-in.
But I hear the attacks coming from folks like Sarah Palin. I understand that they're trying to manipulate the Urban/Rural cultural divide to paint us as elitists. Hard-working "authentic" Americans are the Rural, individualist Republicans. I take issue with that.
Then I hear Garrison Keillor pretending to be from a small town, and knowing he is a liberal democrat really bothers me. His pretense is not the only thing that puts our position in danger. It's his pride, his sexism, his unwillingness to "deal" with the "little people" that run his operation. He's a snooty tyrant. I don't want to be mixed up with him. And if the perception of all of our left-leaning politicians is like this, then we're doing something wrong.
We are being hypocrites.
Do we know what's best for this country? The more I learn about the founding of this nation, the more I realize both sides are so similar - we're casting an illusion of our differences. And that illusion comes from some people believing and behaving as if they're more valuable than other human beings.

Elite v. Real America

Cultures all over the world face the crisis of "authentic identity" when it comes to looking at Rural versus Urban existence. These different modes of existence, connection to land and resources, are what have been blatantly and obscenely manipulated in our own media for the sake of some fabricated "Culture War".
The modes of existence are in themselves the beauty of Capitalist social structure: the division of labor. We live in a system that doesn't require us each to be bankers and subsistence farmers at once. We get to choose how to spend our time, how to contribute. The problem comes when one "side" sees the value of the others' work as "worthless". Over the past fifty years, we have abruptly disregarded and disrespected the work of rural farmers, and today these New York "Investment Banker types" are being appropriately questioned for their valuable contribution to our existence.
This constant devaluing of Rural life in particular is mostly demonstrated by the "Brain Drain" from farming communities to colleges and cities (this happens all over the world, destabilizing traditional social structures and economies). Rural to Urban is seen as "forward moving", and as a natural evolutionary step in our intelligence and sophistication.
How then has communalism (or even socialism), the left wing, become associated with these Urban individualists? And how has individualism (or even libertarianism), the right wing, become associated with these Rural collections of family farm networks? Has the Urban mythologized the Rural? Because to me, it seems that the Rural lives out communal values while the Urban lives out individualist values. So how do the politics match up? Because the divide is an illusion. When we reflect on the political divide only during election time, the anger builds but these clear distinctions seem to make less and less sense. I say it is pure and masterful marketing on the part of politicians.
Rural folk are portrayed as lacking education and somehow "lower" to be content with the mundane farm life. This makes them seemingly unable to open the doors to social mobility, "the good life" where they might develop a sense for the "real wealth" available in the larger, more paved settlements of our landscape. Because really, if those "Urban Elites" don't admit that they cannot survive without farmers, they will be completely disconnected from the process of life that sustains us all.
Urban folk are portrayed as head-in-the-clouds control freaks who are somehow "out to get" the little guy. I've met quite a few city dwellers who lift their noses at the idea of "nature" or "country", but I've known quite a few of my hillbilly homeboys who are making it big in the city now and still know where they come from. While urbanites still have something vital to learn from the wisdom of our Rural American neighbors, there's got to be opportunity for reciprocity. The mastery of complex social networks, starting with the city and now with technology, has connected us to all of humanity. If those "Real Country Folk" don't admit that they too can gain from the other side of the coin, then they disconnect themselves from not only the home market, but the global one.
We are all the same, and we need each other.

Food Packaging

In the past few years of trying to eliminate plastics from my household, I have become increasingly aware (and disgusted) by the ubiquitous and unrelenting use of plastics in the produce section of the grocery store. Bananas in a plastic container. Apples sliced and sealed in pull-open baggy -- to transform your apple into an easy to eat "snack". So the amount of petroleum used to transport these goods to us may now have been surpassed my the amount of petroleum used to make them shiny and palatable.
Why does plastic make it palatable? Why are we, as consumers, not able to look at an apple and recognize its Holy packaging, made ready and available for us to eat in its own simple existence? Is it because they should be washed? And we're unsure of the amount of chemicals sprayed on the orchard? Why does the layer of plastic between the creation and our mouths make it safer? God forbid we actually have to process or wash our food, God forbid we are forced to know that it is a process, a growth of life. Maybe we can't face it because we would have to face the fact that we are also a process, a growth of life, an individual sprout on the stalk of many brussels sprouts...