PeakEngineer's blog

Much has changed since we moved into our new place (and in the immense gap between posts), both locally and globally. We welcomed our new baby daughter in October, a great joy. In January I started my PhD in Systems Engineering in earnest and am almost halfway through a year of full-time study. If approved, my research will focus on complexity theory and energy availability and perhaps even have important conclusions applicable to Peak Oil.

Around the farm, much has changed. We’re entering our second growing season here and are much better prepared than last year. I’m focusing on no-till methods and more than doubled the number of beds from last year. We are trying to focus on rare varieties and unusual crops for a local market niche.

Many more perennials are in the ground now. Including the few things here when we moved in, we now have on the order of 60 berry bushes (cranberry, blueberry, raspberry, tayberry, loganberry, boysenberry), 6 apple trees, 2 peach trees, 1 apricot, 1 nectarine, 3 pear, 2 sweet cherry, 2 hardy kiwi, 2 paw-paw, 2 filberts, 1 elderberry, 3 grapes, 60 strawberry plants, 20 asparagus crowns, and many wild raspberries and blackberries. After gaining inspiration from attending a class at a friend’s farm taught by permaculture designer Mark Stephenson, I plan on adding quite a few more food forest elements, including nut trees, currants, grapes, and filberts.

Our few chickens have lived in a prototype mobile coop for a year, and in the next few weeks we’ll be adding 15-20 turkeys (Narraganset and Narraganset/Bourbon mix) and 20 more chickens (10 Dominiques and 10 Speckled Sussex) which will means I’ll need two more mobile coops. Goats and sheep are still down the line, but our plans for them are developing.

I’m starting to experiment with grains, with the primary goal being for animal feed since it is such a pain to get things like wheat cook-ready (although we’ll still do some of that for ourselves). We have a 20 x 20 patch of winter wheat going right now, a smaller (and less prepared) patch of spring wheat, and buckwheat will go in soon.

Infrastructure-wise, we now have a hay loft, a hand pump for the well, a movable poultry processing stand, and a wood shed. Inside, we have added insulation, installed a wood stove, and we are updating other parts. I have permanently parked the (craptastic) mower, and switched to the scythe full-time. (Note, however, I still will have a farmer friend bale the back couple acres). I’m also building a respectable collection of old saws, and will try to put them to the test this year.

While I believe very strongly that these adaptations could make the difference between surviving and thriving – or merely surviving—the decline ahead, much of the motivation for these efforts is to show that folks with no prior experience, a full-time job, and a full-time family can make these changes. Changes that reduce consumption precipitously, reduce carbon footprint, improve health, reduce bills all around, and produce happy kiddos – without unplugging from society.

Change is coming. The trick is to change yourself before things are changed for you.

In terms of post-apocalyptic prosperity, our evolving community is richer than we could have dreamed. An additional farmer friend recently bought a small farm just down the road from us, a friend who “gets it”, who grows sustainably, and is extremely gifted at it. This is in addition to our close friends doing the same thing nearby. In fact, within a mile of our place we now have 6 sustainably-minded friends across 4 acreages besides ourselves. Add to this the couple next door to us, one of whom is chef and owner of a high-class organic restaurant, with whom we’ve established an (only half-jokingly) “eggs for wine” exchange; the nearby skilled carpenter and his family (we have yet to meet); and now a much larger-scale operation by a PO-minded person discussed in this article:

From Krehbiel’s perspective, the world is not a stable place. The carbon emissions at the root of global warming are causing increasingly chaotic weather patterns that are likely to jeopardize centralized farming practices and food supply chains across the country, she said. At the same time, the oil dependent economy can no longer rely on the availability of cheap fuel for food and water transport due to the depletion of accessible oil supplies around the world, which is at peak oil. While for some, these facts may be a vague future concern, Krehbiel doesn’t want to wait around for hardship to settle in. For her, right now is the time to act, and putting some fervor into it wouldn’t hurt, either.

Sometimes I feel you can’t swing a cat around here without hitting 5 folks aware of the energy collapse –- or without getting tackled for feline harassment. They love cats here.

Of course, we’re still surrounded by neighbors who meticulously mow their 6 acre lots at least once per week (and call the sheriff on us for not doing the same –- we’re zoned agricultural, people!), others who think letting their dogs terrorize the countryside (and our chickens) is a good time, and a multitude of chemical-laden monoculture fields.

But all that will fade away with time – leaving our strengthening sustainable sub-community filled with some wonderful folks.

To paraphrase an old saying: An egg here, a zucchini there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Culture is based on language. Our language serves as the deep structure for our cognition, our sense of self, and our community. Sustainability, the conservation and enhancement of vital resources, is not built into the fabric of our common language, thwarting attempts to integrate it into our culture as a core value. Far more common is the language of grow-at-all-costs individualism.

We must work to change our language.

We must adjust our lexicon to capture concepts that cause the speaker or listener to pause, to consider the deeper meaning with each mention. In the same way that “constitution” or “freedom” may instill a (however brief) feeling of reverence, it is the emotion that is of the most value.

We must speak of environmental horrors in such a way that we feel the horror at its mention. Once we come to feel the impact in our everyday language, we will come to abhor the bespoken actions.

We can’t do this just by reorganizing or reemphasizing existing words in our common languages, nor can we invent nonsense words from the ether. For effective new language it must be derived from existing words that are perhaps unfamiliar or from other cultures, but drive the converser to consider the deep meaning behind the etymology.

Let me offer an example. The people of the Andes speak of Pachamama, or “Mother Earth”, with reverence. She is the giver of life, the mother deity in the originating culture. Consider the emotional impact of ruthlessly attacking such a cherished goddess. Here I define a new word, “Contrapacha”, defined as a grave crime against mother earth.

Now that we have a new word, what do we do with it? It must be embraced and infused throughout our culture: in the blogosphere, in the media, in common conversation, when speaking with our children, in professional journals. But always in context, always with the meaning: a crime against nature, one that affects all of humanity and the biosphere more deeply than most usually consider.

When mere mention of Contrapacha flutters the heart as does “treason”, “serial killer”, or “war crimes”, our common culture will have achieved some of the bare essentials to creating a sustainable future. It is for society to decide punishment for Contrapacha, but when our language, actions, and justice become one, we will have established a culture than can effectively meet the multifaceted challenges of climate collapse, resource exhaustion, and economic depression.

...Figuratively, that is. We’ve developed a great network of friends in the time we’ve lived in Yellow Springs, including several current or aspiring chicken owners. Given that we plan on roosting some birds of our own in the spring, we jumped at the chance to take care of our friends’ 6 chickens and 2 guineas over Labor Day.

Seriously, can chickens really be this easy? I know it’s supposed to be a breeze, but I spent more time taking care of the three cats of theirs than the birds. Yes, I don’t need to muck out the coop or reroute fencing over the short 5-day period, but it still adds up to less time than a litter box or walking a dog (thankfully, ours self-walks anyway...).

I stop by in the morning to let the chickens out and check food and water levels. Then a first check for eggs in the early evening (our friends’ rule – those who care for the chickens may keep all the eggs), and a return at dusk to close the coop door, check for eggs and feed levels once again, throw some feed on the coops floor for scratch, and that’s it. I envisioned chasing birds back in the coop every evening, but they are well-trained to return at dusk.

It’s certainly given both me and Crunchy confidence that we will be able to manage well come Spring when we start to build our own flock. With my frequent travels for work, we were concerned about the burden on her when I’m gone, but it doesn’t seem as though chickens will be a significant source of stress.

Now, as we start to consider pasture rotation and chicken tractoring, things get more complicated. But I’m coming to realize that some things -- like chickens! -- really do take care of themselves.

To any remaining dedicated readers out there:

I'm still kicking and remain committed to the site. We recently purchased our farmstead with 5 acres just outside Yellow Springs, OH, which of course involves quite a bit of work. In addition, work life is currently very rewarding but I've gained quite a bit of responsibility, which leaves me less time to ponder post topics during the day. And I'm trying to focus on some local initiatives. All of this leaves me less time to focus on the blog, but I'll work out a better balance in time.

FYI, I'm also currently working on a long-overdue and painful site upgrade -- so if you find things not working here, that's the likely explanation.

Be back soon! Thanks for the patience.

I've been working heavily on local community and regional planning & organization -- I'll give updates here as I consolidate some info. For now, remember to look past the glitz and glare of the financial crisis and keep an eye to the wider threats:

A key factor in how well we deal with a warmer world is how much time we have to adapt. When, and if, we get this hot depends not only on how much greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere and how quickly, but how sensitive the world's climate is to these gases. It also depends whether "tipping points" are reached, in which climate feedback mechanisms rapidly speed warming. According to models, we could cook the planet by 4 °C by 2100. Some scientists fear that we may get there as soon as 2050.

If this happens, the ramifications for life on Earth are so terrifying that many scientists contacted for this article preferred not to contemplate them, saying only that we should concentrate on reducing emissions to a level where such a rise is known only in nightmares.

"Climatologists tend to fall into two camps: there are the cautious ones who say we need to cut emissions and won't even think about high global temperatures; and there are the ones who tell us to run for the hills because we're all doomed," says Peter Cox, who studies the dynamics of climate systems at the University of Exeter, UK. "I prefer a middle ground. We have to accept that changes are inevitable and start to adapt now."

Bearing in mind that a generation alive today might experience the scary side of these climate predictions, let us head bravely into this hotter world and consider whether and how we could survive it with most of our population intact. What might this future hold?

The last time the world experienced temperature rises of this magnitude was 55 million years ago, after the so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event. Then, the culprits were clathrates - large areas of frozen, chemically caged methane - which were released from the deep ocean in explosive belches that filled the atmosphere with around 5 gigatonnes of carbon. The already warm planet rocketed by 5 or 6 °C, tropical forests sprang up in ice-free polar regions, and the oceans turned so acidic from dissolved carbon dioxide that there was a vast die-off of sea life. Sea levels rose to 100 metres higher than today's and desert stretched from southern Africa into Europe.

While the exact changes would depend on how quickly the temperature rose and how much polar ice melted, we can expect similar scenarios to unfold this time around. The first problem would be that many of the places where people live and grow food would no longer be suitable for either. Rising sea levels - from thermal expansion of the oceans, melting glaciers and storm surges - would drown today's coastal regions in up to 2 metres of water initially, and possibly much more if the Greenland ice sheet and parts of Antarctica were to melt. "It's hard to see west Antarctica's ice sheets surviving the century, meaning a sea-level rise of at least 1 or 2 metres," says climatologist James Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "CO2 concentrations of 550 parts per million [compared with about 385 ppm now] would be disastrous," he adds, "certainly leading to an ice-free planet, with sea level about 80 metres higher... and the trip getting there would be horrendous."

Half of the world's surface lies in the tropics, between 30° and -30° latitude, and these areas are particularly vulnerable to climate change. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, will feel the force of a shorter but fiercer Asian monsoon, which will probably cause even more devastating floods than the area suffers now. Yet because the land will be hotter, this water will evaporate faster, leaving drought across Asia. Bangladesh stands to lose a third of its land area - including its main bread basket.

The African monsoon, although less well understood, is expected to become more intense, possibly leading to a greening of the semi-arid Sahel region, which stretches across the continent south of the Sahara desert. Other models, however, predict a worsening of drought all over Africa. A lack of fresh water will be felt elsewhere in the world, too, with warmer temperatures reducing soil moisture across China, the south-west US, Central America, most of South America and Australia. All of the world's major deserts are predicted to expand, with the Sahara reaching right into central Europe.

Glacial retreat will dry Europe's rivers from the Danube to the Rhine, with similar effects in mountainous regions including the Peruvian Andes, and the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, which as result will no longer supply water to Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Bhutan, India and Vietnam.

Along with the exhaustion of aquifers, all this will lead to two latitudinal dry belts where human habitation will be impossible, say Syukuro Manabe of Tokyo University, Japan, and his colleagues. One will stretch across Central America, southern Europe and north Africa, south Asia and Japan; while the other will cover Madagascar, southern Africa, the Pacific Islands, and most of Australia and Chile (Climatic Change, vol 64, p 59).

Last night I went to a talk by Michael Shuman, author of SmallMart and a number of other books on building local economies. He had some fantastic arguments and ideas on why focusing on local economies is far better than focusing on globalization. Key pieces of his argument were items of which most people reading this site are already aware: Peak Oil, global warming, and collapse of the global economy. But he has a very fresh and nuanced view with some incredibly solid arguments that crush the hopes and assertions of even the most die-hard globalist. I intend to get his latest book in the near future so I can speak more intelligently on local economic issues.

This weekend Shuman is also hosting, in conjunction with the Yellow Springs Smart Growth committee (which contains a few Peak Oilers), a workshop focused on analyzing the "leakage" from the Yellow Springs local economy, brainstorming ways to refocus on the local economy, and building an executable plan for the community. I'm not able to attend but several friends of mine are. It's a very exciting prospect.

Shuman discussed last night that one key reason that locally-owned businesses are held at a disadvantage is that people can't invest their pensions locally due to obsolete securities laws. Apparently, he had conversations with the Obama transition team on Wednesday and they were very receptive to rewriting these laws. This could truly be a key piece of building post-Peak Oil economies and is very encouraging with regards to the Obama team's economic mindset. I'll be staying tuned.

We dug up a fairly reasonable 10 lbs. of potatoes, still intact after several hard freezes. While not a spectacular harvest, it was decent enough considering our clay soil, high moisture levels, and planting just a handful of potatoes (~3 lbs. worth?), it’s still heartening to know that potatoes truly can survive unharvested through a bit of winter. We cooked some up last weekend and even fed them to my office, but no ill effects or flavors reported (phew! ).

The next round of potatoes (and indeed the whole garden) will be grown in planters, as we’re expecting to move to our permanent homestead sometime during the growing season. One more new adventure in gardening...

In light of the recent reports on arctic land ice, I thought it prudent to spend some time focused on one of the other critical crises contributing to the Great Decline: Global Warming.

My mom forwarded me a fantastic presentation on some of the latest Global Warming research as presented by a professor at Iowa State University. It contains quite a bit of observed local effects and predictions for Iowa and the Midwest-at-large. The presentation can be downloaded here (Warning: Large ppt file).

I think it’s important to remember that as dire as these predictions are, rarely do they publicize what happens when the negative temperature forcing effect of aerosols (see Global Dimming) disappears as industrial production winds down. True, economic degradation may easily help us meet our arbitrary CO2 reduction goals, but we will have no salvation from rapidly rising global temperatures. On the plus side, increased solar irradiance will increase the output from solar devices and possibly help crop yields, but then again that will overall be countered by accelerated temperature rise.

Just more to consider when planning your farmstead…

In Identifying the Risks, I provided an analysis of the most likely threats a given post-Peak Oil community will face. While my conclusion was that the single greatest security threat can be characterized as crime, I would like to reiterate that there is finite -- if significantly smaller -- risk that a community might face the other scenarios outlined. These possibilities will be discussed briefly in this post and in more detail in the future.

Now that we have identified the primary security threats to our community, where do we begin defending against them? The answer, as most any military professional will tell you, is to define clear goals in an overarching security strategy.

When talking of security, we must first understand that security does not necessarily equate to military solutions. Community (or National) security includes many different aspects, the most significant of which are economics, diplomacy, information, and military power. I am reminded of the story of the blind men trying to describe an elephant: The first blind man feels the trunk and declares it a snake, the second feels the leg and declares it a tree, and the third feels the tail and declares it a rope. For our purposes, the story would go something like this: The first blind man, an economist, senses a nation’s poverty and declares it a financial problem. The blind statesman senses a dispassionate world and calls the problem a failure of international diplomacy. The blind scholar senses a nation’s misleading or absent exchange of knowledge and decries a problem of education and communication. The blind soldier senses the anarchy of militias and demands soldiers stamp out the problem of lawlessness. All are right about the example troubled nation’s security, yet all are wrong if they don’t understand the whole elephant: stability.