Showing posts with label adapting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adapting. Show all posts

Thursday, 30 January 2025

The Porcupine Saga, Part 12, The Tour: Part 1

Will Harper, late afternoon, Saturday July 21, 2040

"Well, I guess we should start this tour at the clinic," said Allan, gesturing toward the building Will thought of as the "farm house".

"Clinic...?" said Will, doubt creeping into his voice.

"Yeah. What used to be the farmhouse. It would have taken another hour or two to tell the whole story," said Allan. "So I decided it might be quicker and easier to just show you."

"Okay," replied Will. "Lead on."

They got up from the bench where they'd been sitting on the east side of the hall and headed across the yard, picking their way among the vehicles parked there. The sun was a good deal lower in the sky than when they had first come outside and its heat was a noticeably less oppressive.

"Seems like it isn't all that much hotter here than in Inverpen," said Will.

"It usually is a little hotter here in the summer, but with less humidity than you get along the lake," said Allan. "Leaving the wet bulb temperature about the same. We're lucky in the Great Lakes basin—in the heat of the summer we get some 'siesta weather', when you're wise to take it easy around midday. But we can live without air conditioning, easier actually because after a while people do get used to the heat. Not like lots of places closer to the equator where it really does get hot enough to kill. And has killed many."

"Scary to think about that," said Will.

"Hell yeah," Allan said. "Though for those of us engaged in subsistence farming, droughts are even worse than heat waves. Floods aren't great either. And we've had one or two of both."

"Same thing in and around Inverpen, of course," said Will. "Though we do have the lake to draw on for irrigation."

As they neared the farm house Will noticed a small shed on its west side. He assumed it contained the generator Allan had been talking about earlier. "That your generator shack?" Willa asked, nodding toward it.

"It is," replied Allan. "Not gasoline powered anymore, though. Late in 2030 our 'prime mover' crew put in wood gas producers to fuel all of our generators. Then a few years later, after they'd got steam power down to a science, they put in two generators to power the clinic, each driven by a small steam engine. Along with automatic feed of wood chips to the boilers. Would you like to take a quick peek inside?"

"Yes, definitely," said Will.

They walk over to the shack and Allan opened the door.

Will stepped up to the threshold and took a look at the machinery inside. "Those are slick little engines. Run pretty quiet, too. And it looks like you built the generators here?"

"We bought a bunch of generators in 2030 and we are still using them for the most part. But we've built a few like these ones," said Allan. "Mainly to prove to ourselves that we'll be able to do it when the need arises. They put out up to 12 kW, single phase 120/240 volt."

"Looks pretty impressive to me," said Will. Noting that only one of the gnerators was running, he took a little closer look at the wiring. "They're just backup for each other? You never actually run them in parallel?"

"Yeah, just backup," said Allan. "So we can work on one while the other one supplies the load."

"Right," said Will. "There was a time when you'd have needed someone with a stationary engineer's ticket to run this setup legally. I guess that isn't such a big deal anymore."

"No," replied Allan. "We've never actually had a visit from a TSSA inspector. Though I am sure for the last few years there has been no such thing. We actually do have a couple of guys who are qualified as stationary engineers, and they been big help in making sure our steam power setups are safe."

"Yeah," said Will. "You can get away from regulations, but you still want to run things as safely as possible. So, that hopper to the left of the shack is full of wood chips?"

"Yeah," said Allan. "We don't usually like to make our electrical supplies so easy to use. A little inconvenience reminds folks that electrical power is a luxury that comes with many costs. In the case of the clinic, though, a round-the-clock, on-demand supply is pretty much a necessity."

"I see," said Will, still a little puzzled. "So, I though the plan was to divide the whole of the farmhouse into bedrooms and bathrooms?"

Leading them around to the front porch, Allan said, "Yep, just the living room and the addition at first, but by fall of 2030, the dining room and kitchen too. With the addition of Jack's land, we figured we could support 60 people sustainably, and we were aiming to build accommodation for them all, here and in the second pole barn. 'Course things have changed a little in the meantime..."

They went up the front steps and through the front door. Will took in, with some surprise, what looked like a doctor's waiting room with a receptionist's desk and a row of chairs against one wall.

"I can tell from the look on your face," said Allan, "that this isn't what you expected. To make a long story short, in 2031 we were joined by a couple of nurses, and in 2032 a doctor and a dentist arrived. Shortly after that, the second bird flu hit with a vengeance, and we turned this place into a medical clinic, lab space, hospital and quarantine space for new people, and living quarters for our growing medical staff."

"That makes sense," said Will, "and given that you're talking about a quarantine, I'll bet you made it through that flu better than a lot of communities."

"We did," replied Allan. "We were close to self sufficiency by then and we just locked the place down, quit going anywhere beyond our own borders. The few refugees who made it here on their own went into quarantine upstairs here for a couple of weeks before joining the rest of us. You'll remember the first wave of that flu went on for about 7 months, and then there was a second and third wave. I understand it was pretty deadly and a lot of people didn't make it through elsewhere, but we did pretty well—no fatalities and only a few people who got sick—mostly refugees who were exposed before they arrived. We didn't even lose any of our poultry, though we did move them to a barn on one of the other farms, just to keep them completely isolated."

"Sounds like a much more intelligent response than most places," said Will.

"I think it proved to be just that," said Allan. "Of course we didn't have to worry about the detrimental effects of lockdown on businesses."

"No, I guess not," said Will. "That concern led to all kinds of bad policy, and a lot more grief than was really necessary."

"Which we, fortunately, were spared," said Allan. "Anyway, by the time we'd set up this little medical clinic, provincial support for the health care had disappeared and most of the system along with it, so we've ended up welcoming in unemployed medical staff and providing basic health care to most of this township. Not that that amounts to a whole lot of people."

"There's nothing left in Inverpen but a few alternative practitioners," said Will. "'Wackadoodle' folks, as Sue calls them."

"Yeah, the trouble is that 99% of those alternatives just don't work, " said Allan. "There are a few other communes in Ontario working on pharmaceuticals, low tech medical equipment, and training medical staff to cope with today's conditions. They are just getting started, but I think they have a lot of potential. We may never get back to level of medical services we used to have, but we can still do a hell of a lot better than nothing. And with proper science based medicine at that."

"Right," said Will. "I remember Tom being pretty keen on that, but he also worried that we expect way too much of our medical people. Have you been able to do anything about that?"

Allan sat down on the edge of the desk. "Yeah, Dad felt that there were a lot of unrealistic expectations of health care professionals, both by the professionals themselves and by their patients. He was keen on setting up a health care system that didn't require doctors and nurses to be super human. And that wouldn't constantly be failing because of their failure to live up to those expectations."

Will took a seat on one of the chairs. "And have you managed to do that?"

"To some extent, yes," said Allan. "As has so often been the case, by eliminating capitalism, we've been able to easily overcome problems that were largely a consequence of it.

"Okay, but how does that apply to health care?" asked Will.

"Under capitalism, the profit motive was always getting in the way of health care," said Allan."

"Even when the health care system was socialized like here in Ontario?" Said Will.

"You wouldn't think so, would you?" said Allan. "But right wing governments always wanted to cut budgets and taxes, and so things like health care and education were underfunded, especially under Ford's Conservatives. They wanted to privatize as much health care as possible, so their supporters could turn it into profit centers. Leaving public hospitals understaffed and under resourced. Health care professionals already had a long history of overdoing ableism and the system encouraged a total disrespect for the value of rest."

"At Hydro One there were limits to the hours you could work in a day and a week, for safety reasons," said Will. "But there was no such thing in the healthcare system?"

"Not that was seriously enforced, anyway," said Allan. "We encourage a healthy respect for rest among everyone here. We also take a science based approach to just about everything and with that comes more realistic expectations of our medical people. Plus, they all escaped a system that wasn't working for them or their patients, and they have a strong commitment to stop that from happening again here. So things are working much better."

"Right," said Will. "Meanwhile Dougie Ford is alive and well, presiding over the Golden Horseshoe like a clown at a three ring circus. At least the rest of the province is free to try different and hopefully better ways."

"It doesn't take much to improve on the Conservative's approach, that's for sure," said Allan. "I'm not really the guy to show you around the clinic, so maybe we should move on."

"Sure. I'm curious what the bedrooms you created look like," said Will. Is it possible to have a look here, or have they all been turned into something else?"

"Nope, most of our medical personnel live right here, in the addition," said Allan. "As do Erika and I, since she has spent a lot of time using her biotech and lab skills working on medical issues. Let's have a look."

Allan led the way, opening the door to the addition and closing it behind him after they went through. "Separate ventilation system in here, with positive pressure that keeps us from getting exposed to sick people coming to the clinic."

Allan went to the first door on the right and opened it. "Home sweet home, such as it is" he said and gestured for Will to go in.

Will did so, and took in a room about nine feet wide and twelve feet deep, with a window in the outside wall and a closet in the wall on the left. It's furnishings included a bed, a chest of drawers, a bookshelf, a small desk, a couple of chairs, and in the corner to the right of the door, a composting toilet and a small table with a large pitcher and a basin, both in what appeared to be locally made pottery. Folded towels and face cloths on that table looked to be made locally made as well, not terrycloth but nicely thick and absorbent.

"I see you went ahead with the composting toilets," said Will.

"Oh yeah. It didn't take long for Erika to talk people around," said Allan. "Looking back, I wonder what the big deal was."

"Just a change from what people were used to, I'd guess," said Will. "Most people in Inverpen have a composting toilet now, what with the municipality giving up on infrastructure maintenance a few years ago. And with needing good rich compost for our gardens, without which most of us wouldn't eat nearly as well."

"Do you find it's enough private space for the two of you?" said Will.

"It's not much, but it's enough," said Allan. "Our lives are centered on the common spaces. All we do here is sleep and have occasional private discussions."

"Right," said Will. "and, ahem, bed sports."

Allan raised an eyebrow at this and blushed a little. "I don't think I've ever heard it called that. But yes."

Sensing the need for a change of subject, Will pointed to a violin case sitting on top of one of the dressers. "I see you still have your fiddle."

Looking relieved, Allan said, "Sure do. I am part of a pretty good bluegrass group and second violin in several different chamber music groups. Unfortunately, the best chamber music is pretty hard and we're just sort of hacking our way through it as yet."

"I take it recorded music isn't readily available?" said Will.

"No it isn't. We do have a few computers still operating, but we reserve them for only the most critical tasks," said Allan. "Some of us have collections of vinyl and CD's, but equipment to play them is getting pretty thin on the ground. So we've come to prefer live entertainment. It helps to fill in the slow times, especially in the winter."

"I hope we'll get to hear some of that blue grass tonight," said Will.

"You know, I think you just might," said Allan.

Looking again at the wash stand in the corner, another question occurred to Will. "Uh... I see you don't have running water in your room?"

Allan sat down on the edge of the bed and gestured for Will to take one of the chairs. "One thing that really surprised me about this place is that the whole 'needs and wants' thing has turned out to be a false distinction."

"You'll have to explain what you mean by that," said Will. "And how it relates to running water."

Allan chuckled. "Okay. What we have here is a co-production system—the consumers and the producers are the same people and they also get to decide what is or isn't produced. This means that if there is a consensus about producing something then we can just do that. Whether something is a want or a need really doesn't come into it. Instead it is a matter of having the desire to make it happen, and seeing if we have the tools, materials, skills and labour time left over from all the other things we are already doing, or if we'd like to stop making something else in order to make this.

"We have a well defined process for getting on top of all this information, so people don't have to guess as to what the facts of the matter are. People do guard their spare time jealously, though, so that's often the critical factor. That and getting enough people behind an idea. Which is the shape that politics takes here at Porcupine."

"So you decided that making the pipe and plumbing fittings and fixtures just wasn't worth the effort?" said Will.

"Not in the quantities that would be needed to put them in every room. Especially since there is a sink and hot and cold running water only a few steps down the hall," said Allan. "And making that work took a lot less effort. There are a lot of mass produced materials that we used to take for granted—plywood, pipe, wire and various sorts of hardware—that would require a level of industrialization that we simply aren't up for. Our industrial setup is the next item but one on this tour, so..."

"So we should get moving," said Will. "Your dad always used to say that accepting a minor loss of convenience and comfort could drastically reduce the burden we place on the planet."

"Yep," said Allan. "He had that right for sure. What few of us understood was how easy it was to give up such things, especially in return for the pluses of living here, which are pretty major."

They both stood and walked out of the room and down the hallway.

"This addition is more than twice the size it was ten years ago. We added the new section in 2034, making more room for our medical staff and their families. By then the local building inspector had joined us, and left the municipality to shut down its building department, so we were free to build as we liked. Though we take building safety pretty seriously ourselves, especially with the former inspector here giving us advice. But that's a story for another time. You'll probably meet Pete at supper though, and he'll want to talk your ear off."

They went out back door of the addition and paused on the porch at the top of the steps. "That field ahead and on the right is our visiting horse paddock," said Allan, "and that shed is where the visiting horses can get out of the weather."

"Everybody out here has switched over to horses then?" asked Will.

"Hmmp, what most people have switched to is shank's mare," said Allan.

"My mother—your grandmother—used to use that term," said Will. "Fancy way of saying 'walking'."

"Yep," said Allan, "and walking is what we do for the most part. Breeding up a population of horses is a slow process, and we've concentrated mainly on draft horses. They are in one of the fields behind the barn—we'll have a look on our way by. The riding horses you see here are from elsewhere. There are a few people in the area who have made breeding them up a higher priority. I guess they want to get around more than we do. Or maybe they just like riding."

"You Porcupiners are more self contained?" asked Will.

"That's part of it," said Allan, "but mainly we've chosen to focus on other areas. The riding horse nuts for the most part don't have electricity, for instance."

"A matter of different priorities then?" said Will,

"Exactly," replied Allan, leading the way along the fence toward the shed. "And many of those folks already had horses before things fell apart, so they had a head start."

"Sure," said Will, stopping to lean against the fence."By the way, these are nice board fences."

"Not by choice—nobody is making page wire anymore," said Allan. "This is the best we can do with local materials. As I was saying, it turns out that large quantities of galvanized steel wire would be pretty challenging to produce—same kind of thing as copper pipe. White paint is a challenge too, and it is traditional on board fences like this. We just give them a coat linseed oil every so often to protect them from the weather. That's something we have lots of—the oil, I mean."

"I prefer the look of natural wood, anyway," said Will.

All this made Will think of his father. Charlie had truly loved horses, farming with them for a couple of decades before he got his first tractor in the early 1950s. He still kept draft horses for ten years after that, claiming they were better for many jobs around the farm. Will had missed all that, not being born until 1965. But Charlie had found he just missed horses too much and got a couple of riding horses when Will was about 5. Will had learned to ride and take care of horses and though he had little to do with them after leaving the farm, he still had a keen appreciation for the animals. Here he noticed mainly bay quarter horses and a couple of pintos with some Appaloosa blood in them. All fine looking animals that were obviously well cared for.

"Nice bunch of horses, not suffering a bit," he said.

"I guess so, though I'm no expert" said Allan. "The water trough's full. They've got shade from the maples along the fence by the road and lots of nice green grass. And they seem to be getting along, even though I'm sure some of them are strangers to each other. I wasn't in favour of setting up this pasture. But there are quite a few more horses here today than usual, and this field gets to collect some horseshit it wouldn't otherwise. Maybe not such a bad idea after all."

"This is part of that politics you were talking about?" asked Will.

"You're asking because the commune went ahead and did something I disagreed with?" said Allan.

"Well, yeah," said Will. "I thought everything was supposed to be done by consensus...."

"Oh, I could have blocked the idea," said Allan. Takes three of us to block, and I wasn't alone in having doubts. Or 10 percent of those present abstaining has the same result, and in this case that was a closer thing. But people get tired of having their ideas stomped on, and if you're the one always doing the stomping, then when you're trying to get something approved, it doesn't go as smoothly as it might otherwise. So... you have to ask yourself how important it really is, and if it's not very, you don't make a big deal of it. I've had lots of support over the years, so I don't make much of a fuss unless I think something is a really bad idea.

"All in all I find this system works pretty well. Better than the alternatives, for sure. Many brains together work better than one. When an idea doesn't get approved, it's rarely because it's been blocked or a lot of people have abstained. More likely it gets sent back to be reworked by the crew or individual who brought it up. Sent back with a bunch of good, helpful ideas for how it could be improved. People also ask around and get others' opinions before bringing up an idea to the group as a whole. So the really lame brained stuff gets filtered out."

"But surely you get the odd person who just doesn't want to get along," said Will. "Seems to me, if they didn't care about consequences, they could make things pretty miserable for everyone here."

"Yep, could happen," said Allan. "Has happened occasionally. But we follow the principle of voluntary association—no one has to join our group, or stay a part of it, if they don't want to. And if, as you say, they don't want to get along, pretty soon they won't want to hang around either. Living this close together, conflict is pretty miserable, even if you start out thinking that a little conflict might be fun. Once a week we take a vehicle into Inverpen, and there's always a seat for anyone who wants to leave.

"Plus, we have a long tradition, started by Dad during our first Tuesday night meeting, of people taking a long walk to decompress. Many have found that it helps. And once or twice a long walk has turned into never coming back."

"But after ten years, you are still a going concern," said Will, "so you can't have too many problems."

"Seems not," said Allan. "We make every effort to mediate and resolve interpersonal conflicts, of course. We've all had training on participatory democracy, mediation and things like developing emotional intelligence. It all helps. And it does work, except when it doesn't, people being what they are."

"No doubt," said Will. "What's next on this tour?"

Allan stepped back from the fence they'd been leaning on and turn around, pointing north. "Well, that row of buildings is our industrial heartland, so to speak."

"Really?" said Will in a doubtful tone.

"I'm not entirely serious," said Allan with a grin. "We don't have anything on the scale of chemical valley in Sarnia, or the steel mills in Hamilton. But what little we have of that sort is concentrated here. Given your background, I think you'll find this quite interesting."

"Great," said Will. "Let's have a look."

Coming soon, Porcupine Saga Part 13, The Tour: Part 2


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 29 October 2019

Responding to Collapse, Part 14: adapting to life without the grid

Late October Sunset over Lake Huron

This is the last of 4 posts on coping with the decline and demise of the power grid that I promised in Part 11) of this Responding to Collapse series. Last time, with the help of Joe Clarkson, we looked at a typical off grid solar electric system. I would encourage anyone with sufficient financial resources to set up such a system. But even using the most durable equipment produced by BAU (business as usual), and with lots of spare parts in stock, such a system will eventually come to the point where no more use can be eked out of it using locally available "village" level technology and materials.

Before things come to that point, though, such a system can serve two very import uses:

1) allow us to use electrical power for things like lighting, refrigeration, pumping water, communication and entertainment, which will help reduce the initial shock of adapting to post grid life.

2) allow us to use what modern tools and power equipment we have on hand to facilitate the construction of low tech power systems that don't need things semiconductors or fossil fuels, which will be in short supply.

That second use is what I'll be talking about today.

The Context of Collapse

But first I'd like to review the context in which I believe all this will be happening—it has been a while since I've talked about that.

The majority of people in the "collapse sphere" here on the internet are expecting a hard, fast collapse sometime in the next few years. Many of them have been expecting it to happen next year for 15 or 20 years now and others have begun to chuckle at the long string of failed predictions. But my observation is that collapse started back in the 1970s when conventional oil production peaked in the continental United States. It has progressed since then and I expect it will continue, gradually and bumpily—unevenly (geographically), unsteadily (chronologically) and unequally (socially), until BAU can no longer provide us with the necessities of life.

One popular expectation among kollapsniks is that some trigger event will cause a financial crash and that will lead to a breakdown of supply chains that will leave almost everyone cold, hungry and in the dark. This sort of fast collapse makes for great stories with lots of conflict and drama, but in reality a planet is a big place. I can't imagine the degree of co-ordination it would take to make this happen fast and hard, all at once across the whole world. Especially when many of us will be working together to stop it from happening.

So yes, there will a financial crash or, most likely, several crashes over a period of years, but the damage will not be uniform across the whole system. And yes, in some areas, it will be serious enough that the supply chains supporting human life will start to fail. But not completely and not everywhere at once.

Initially governments will still have the wherewithal to mount relief efforts for the worst hit areas. Probably using the military to move fuel, water, food and medical supplies to affected areas, and to set up refugee camps for those who are forced to leave their homes. But as the economy crumbles it will have a weakening effect on governments and their resources will be stretched thin. Already we are seeing a tendency to blame people for whatever plight they find themselves in and to abandon them to their own devices, cutting back on expensive relief efforts. This will no doubt get worse, especially in right wing countries where the social contract is weak and the upper classes rule solely for their own benefit. That would include the USA, in my opinion.

Things will get pretty grim, especially in those camps. Indeed, I suspect that in areas where no help is forthcoming, the majority of people (maybe as many as 80 to 90 percent) aren't going to make it through. This is certainly nothing to cheer about, but I am afraid it is one of the harsh realities of collapse. Another unpleasant reality is that under such circumstances, there will be large numbers of desperate, hungry refugees walking out of the large population centres where food is no longer to be found.

Because collapse is happening unevenly, when you find yourself in difficult circumstances, you can usually find someplace else where things aren't so bad. I have been talking, throughout this series of posts, about doing just that—setting yourself up in a small remote town with local food and energy resources, far enough from large towns and cities so that the majority of refugees travelling on foot are unlikely to make it to your small town. That way, you'll be able to welcome those who do make it, rather than being swamped by them.

And I've been urging people to make their move while there is still time to build a network of acquaintances and friends who can help you cope with the gradual decline of BAU and adapt to its eventual demise. I am not suggesting that such places will be exempt from collapse, but rather that they have the local resources to adapt in ways that large population centres simply can't. A big part of that preparation will include being ready to switch over to subsistence farming when those supply chains finally let you down. And having sufficient food stored to see you through to your first harvest. All within walking distance of where you live.

That is really a subject for another day, but it does have a connection to the eventual demise of the power grid and our response to that demise. Bumpy collapse is hard on continent spanning structures like the grid and will be one of the causes of its demise, along with the faults built into capitalism. But a gradual bumpy collapse does give people a chance to wake up to what is going on.

Long before there is a massive die-off due to supply chain failure, there will be a period (perhaps it has already started) when things are going badly wrong in enough places that anyone who is paying attention will start to get pretty concerned. We saw this happen during and for the years before and after the Global Financial Crisis (approximately 2006 to 2012)—the idea of collapse gained quite a bit of credibility. But then things settled down and interest in collapse waned. I am now seeing interest starting to grow again and I expect this will continue. So finding people to work with on preparations may well become much easier than it is now.

During that period the resources of BAU will still be more or less available and those wise enough to do so will be able to set up some local structures which can step in to replace BAU when the need arises—community gardens and farms, food storage co-ops, energy co-ops and so forth.

I encourage you to pick a town with farmland, ground water and standing timber in good supply. It would also be useful if there are one or more good hydro power resources nearby. There is falling water in abundance here in southern Ontario. Many small towns were once mill towns and still have the remains of a dam and an abandoned mill or generating station which could be refurbished with much less effort than starting from scratch.

I am convinced that there is no need for collapse to take us all the way back to the stone age or even the middle ages. But I am also sure that material consumption and energy use must fall to a sustainable level that can be supported with local, renewable resources.

To stop a fall all the way back to the stone age, we will need to take advantage of some of the legacies of BAU.

BAU's Legacies

One hears a great deal about the negative legacies that BAU is leaving for future generations—climate change, resource depletion, environmental and social disruption—the list goes on. I don't disagree with any of that, but I'd like to point out that there will also be some positive legacies that many people who are thinking about collapse aren't taking into account.

  • The first of these, in my estimation, is the knowledge that mankind has accumulated up to this point, including the scientific method and the change in attitudes that came with the Enlightenment. Immersed as we are in that knowledge, it is hard to appreciate how difficult it was for people in the past to make the discoveries and developments they did, without knowing in advance what was even possible or how to accomplish it. We have an immense advantage over them, in that we know a great deal about the world around us and how things work.
  • Second, there are alive today many skilled and ingenious people, tradesmen and hobbyists, even engineers, who, after industrial civilization grinds to a halt, will be able to do a great deal with its remnants.
  • Thirdly there will be all those remnants, including:
    • durable equipment and tools that will continue working for years or decades after the factories of BAU have gone dark
    • large scale infrastructure such as roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, communications, power, water and sewage systems, factories, housing and other buildings
    • true, many of these will be left in pretty rough shape, but what can't be used as is will still have a great deal of value for the materials that can be salvaged from it
    • initially there will even be some fossil fuels left in local storage, plus materials and spare parts sitting on shelves ready for us to use

It is to be hoped that some of those skilled people will have set up off-grid power systems and things like tool libraries and workshops (maker spaces as they are called these days). We should encourage and support such efforts in every way we can, since they will be of great importance in facilitating the transition to long term, sustainable systems that can be operated, maintained and replaced when necessary with "village technology", local materials and local sources of energy.

Local energy sources

I think it's worth taking a look at what kinds of energy may be available locally and how can they be harnessed.

Fossil fuels

Fossil fuels will no longer be readily available except in the few areas where there are functional oil/gas wells or coal mines. Sure, thinking of climate change, it would be better to keep that carbon in the ground rather that returning more of it to the atmosphere. Still, I wouldn't discourage anyone from making use of such an energy source if it is close at hand, and you can get it out of the ground and convert it into usable forms. The amount of CO2 involved would be tiny compared to what's going into the atmosphere today.

Nuclear Energy

I live only a few miles from a nuclear plant, and I used to work in the switchyards there. The importance of a reliable tie to the grid was firmly impressed on me—without it, nuclear stations cannot operate safely. So nuclear plants will have to be shut down as the grid becomes unreliable. The employees of those plants, who live nearby, have a large incentive to see them shut down and mothballed safely. They will take this into their own hands, regardless of what company executives might want. And I am sure the employees will have the backing of the local community.

It is important to get that shutdown underway as quickly as possible while we still have the resources to do it. I expect spent fuel will be stored locally in dry flasks, which is considerably safer than leaving it in spent fuel ponds.

This leaves us with renewable energy sources—solar, wind, hydro, tidal, and biomas.

Solar Power

Converting solar energy into electricity takes some pretty high tech equipment. Photovoltaics (solar cells) will almost certainly be beyond our ability to produce locally. It is possible to use solar energy to create steam and drive turbines which power electrical generators. But this is really only slightly lower tech than semiconductor solar panels. And because solar energy is intermittent, we'd need some way of storing it, probably batteries. In the quantity needed, batteries are likely beyond village technology.

That leaves us to use heat from the sun directly for water or space heating, cooking, drying crops, or for process heat in cottage industry situations. And to find a way of doing this where the intermittency is not a problem. Glass is needed to make efficient solar collectors, and all but the simplest passive solar installations need electric motors and fans or pumps to move collected solar energy (hot air or water) to where you need it.

Wind Power

Wind power is also intermittent, and largely unpredictable as well, so either you need some way of storing the power or you need to use it in ways that can manage with an intermittent power source. Pumping water into storage containers at a higher level is one traditional example. Wind power has been used for grinding grain as well.

The towers, blades and gearing required as likely to be within the reach of village technology.

Hydro Power

Hydro power is slightly intermittent, but only on a seasonal basis and it is reasonably predictable. It can even be stored in head ponds to smooth out variations in load. It is doable with nineteenth century technology, and even simpler equipment if you use the mechanical power directly rather than generating electricity.

Tidal Power

There are a few location in the world where high tides can, with clever arrangements of dams, be used to drive water wheels or turbines. Tides are also intermittent, but quite predictable.

Biomass

Where I live, this would consist mainly of firewood, which can also be converted into wood gas or charcoal. It is useful for space heating, water heating, process heat, and can be both produced and used with very simple equipment. Of all these energy sources, biomass is the easiest to harness at the individual and family level, without setting up more complex community projects.

Wood gas can fuel internal combustion engines and firewood can fuel steam engines, both of which can power electrical generators. But this is only practical if there is wood left after vital uses like cooking and heating have been taken care of.

It is also vital to keep in mind that biomass is only a renewable resource if we use it at a rate slower than the rate at which it grows. Fortunately, forestry is a well established science and it can guide us in which trees to cut, how many of them, and how many and what type of new trees to plant.

Biogas

This is methane produced during anaerobic composting of manure and other organic materials. It can be useful in many ways, just like natural gas. But a lot of manure is needed to make useful quantities of biogas.

Muscle Power

For most of our history (and prehistory) energy mainly came from human or animal muscles. This has largely gone out of fashion in the industrial world, but I suspect that as collapse progresses, it will once again become the default where mechanical power is needed and nothing else is available.

Harnessing Local Energy Sources

There is a lot that can be done at the individual/family level to conserve energy, to make use of what's available locally, and to get by without electricity. But once you've decided to harness most of the energy sources above, a community effort will be required, especially if they are going to be used to generate electricity.

When talking about harnessing such energy resources, we must always consider whether the energy gathered will justify the energy and manhours used to build the equipment needed to gather it. Without the legacies I described above, I suspect the answer would more often than not be no, but with them, I think there is much that can be done. Remember that during the initial crisis of adapting to grid and supply chain break down in your area there will likely be some off-grid power systems to draw on.

At any rate, there is always the option of using these energy sources directly as heat or mechanical energy when we don't have electrical generating systems set up yet, or when they have failed beyond our capacity to repair. This also saves the inefficiencies involved in converting energy from one form to another, and the trouble of setting up distribution systems. Flour mills and saw mills are excellent examples.

Yes, at the start, the overpowering need will be for food, water and firewood, and a well organized community would divert available manpower to supplying those needs. But electrical equipment can actually make those tasks easier, replacing manhours with kilowatt hours, and doing some things, like lighting and refrigeration that no amount of manpower can do.

When the initial crisis has been overcome, there will be some spare manhours than can be spent on setting up a sustainable power system. I am terribly tempted to go into some specifics of what might be done, but it would have to get pretty technical and would make this post much longer than it should be.

Using Energy Wisely

In parts 11 and 12 of this series I included a list of important uses for electricity and alternatives to use during outages. But this time we're considering the permanent loss of the grid, and instead of coping temporarily with grid outages, we're talking about adapting to that permanent loss, either by generating our own power, by replacing it with other energy alternatives or practicing conservation—using less energy. We should be aware in advance that this will require some changes in the way we live.

Lights

Conservation is pretty simple here—we can do without lights at night, and set up workshops with windows to let in sunlight. But at higher latitudes, winter nights are long and much could be accomplished during them if we had artificial light.

Without electricity, you burn something to make light. Candle wax, kerosene, naphtha and propane are all based on fossil fuels and will not be available for long. Vegetable oil, animal fat, and alcohol will be locally available, but the source in each case is something that could also be used as food. If food is in short supply, lighting will have to suffer. This is one area where biogas could be quite useful.

My beloved mantle lamps will be hard to produce, as those mantles use salts of various elements that are not likely to be available locally to produce that bright white light.

If electricity is available, converting it to light is a bit of a challenge. We are in a sense spoiled by today's LED lights, which are highly efficient and long lasting. I've been reading recently that when they fail it is usually not the actual diode that fails, so I suspect ways will be found to refurbish them and keep them going for a long time. But the day will come when we have to go back to various sorts of arc lights and carbon filament incandescent bulbs.

Water

Here is Southern Ontario there is no shortage of good ground water, so I suspect wells with hand or wind driven pumps will be the thing. Friends in Australia and Hawaii tell me about their large outdoor water storage tanks. This looked odd to me and at first I wondered why we don't use such things here, but then I realized that they would freeze solid in the winter. In cold countries indoor cisterns are more practical and can be filled using rainwater, or well water pumped when the wind is blowing.

Electrically driven pumps will no doubt be used where power is available—they save a lot of hand pumping and are easy to control.

Sewage

There are many low tech ways of safely handling sewage. But we'll need to recover and use the plant nutrients and organic matter it contains, so I would think composting toilets will be very popular. I can recommend two books on the subject of composting human waste: The Humanure Handbook, by Joe Jenkins, and The Scoop on Poop, by Dan Chiras.

Food

Food is going to stop arriving regularly at the local supermarkets. To me, it seems that the necessary response would be to switch over to using locally grown food and growing much of it yourself, and to have enough food stored to last you through to the next harvest. There is a lot to say about this subject, but since it's not directly connected to electricity, I leave it for another post.

Cooking

Cooking is largely a matter of heating food, so we'll do it by burning biomass. Preferably in a nice indoor wood burning cookstove. I suspect the demand for those will go through the roof when it becomes more clear how things are going. Fortunately there are alternative that can be made by hand from local materials—mud/brick ovens, rocket stoves, etc. Google will lead you to all kinds of information on these.

Refrigeration

Where winter is sufficiently cold, the obvious solution is to use ice, harvested from frozen bodies of water, and to set up a well insulated icehouse to store that ice through the summer.

Ammonia based refrigeration uses heat as its power input, and should be within the reach of village level technology.

The kind of refrigeration we are all used to uses some variation of freon as its working fluid and electric motors to pump that fluid. I expect that once existing refrigeration equipment has worn out, freon will be too big a challenge to make locally and we will abandon the technology.

Heating

For space heating woodstoves are the obvious solution. As with cookstoves, I think at some point there will be a huge demand for heating stoves. Getting set up to heat with wood before you are forced to do so would be a good idea. If electricity is available, fans can be used to move air around the house and heat it more evenly.

Heating your house with wood takes a lot more wood than cooking. It you don't own a wood lot, you should find someone reliable who specializes in cutting, splitting and delivering firewood.

If you do own a woodlot, you'll likely be doing that for yourself. At some point gasoline won't be available to power chainsaws and you'll have to fall back on more traditional methods. Here is a series of posts on this subject by Category 5, another Canadian kollapsnik and blogger.

C5 Gets Wood:

Cooling

I covered this in some detail in part 12 of this series, here.

Communications

A small community which is generating its own electricity should be able to get its landline telephone system working again. Setting up a local broadcast radio station also sounds like a good project to foster community solidarity. And ham radio may be one of the few ways of finding out what is going on in the world. When modern solid state equipment wears out, vacuum tubes should be doable with village technology.

Transportation

Fossil fuel powered vehicles will no doubt be used until supplies of those fuels run out. It would be good to ration those fuels and see that they get used for the most critical purposes for as long as possible. It may be possible to convert some internal combustion engines to using wood gas to extend their usefulness.

Bikes are actually pretty high tech, and will eventually wear out beyond local repair, especially those rubber tires.

Horses and other draught animals will become extremely valuable, and we should do what we can in advance to encourage and support horse breeders.

Water transportation, using lakes, rivers, canals and powered by sail or muscles will grow in importance.

But walking will probably be the default mode of transporation, especially within the local area. And most of us will try to avoid having to make long trips.

Cottage Industry

I'm adding a new category here, because without the factories that now make all the goods we use, we will have to return to making them for ourselves. With modern knowledge, tools, equipment and electrical power, there is a great deal than can be done using local and salvaged materials. Acquiring the skills needed is something all of us should be working at. Pick an area that interests you and learn everything you can about it.

I bake bread and know a fair bit about growing grain and milling it. I make cheese and I know how to milk a cow. I weave wicker baskets and harvest willow that grows locally. As well as being an electrician, I am fairly good at carpentry, plumbing and drywall. These skills and a great many others will be needed and can be learned with some effort, if necessary from books and the internet while it lasts, but ideal from people who already know them.

Many years ago I started working on a degree in electrical engineering, but soon dropped out and apprenticed as an electrician instead. So the electrical parts of what I've been talking about here seem fairly straight forward to me. But I've been thinking recently that a degree in chemical engineering would be damn handy, or at least the equivalent knowledge, with a focus on low tech, small scale applications.

In Conclusion

Back in Part 10 of this series I said, "It seems to me that supplies of electrical power, diesel fuel and money will be at the heart of many of the troubles that lie ahead, so I'll concentrate on those areas." I think we've finally reached the end of the discussion on electrical power. Next time I'll talk about diesel fuel and the supply chains that rely on it.


Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

Posted by at 26 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, 28 January 2019

Responding to Collapse, Part 6: finding a small town, continued

The end of January and finally it is looking like winter on Lake Huron

In this series we've been talking about how to adapt to collapse and I've put forward the idea that small, remote towns may be much better places to do that adapting that the cities where most people currently live. In my last post I said, "pick a town where you can live while BAU (business as usual) is still working and that will also be livable after BAU is no longer capable of supporting us."

In that post I proceeded to talk about how you might do the first part of that. But that is the simple part, since you can see how a town is doing currently, especially if you live there for a year or two. It's harder to predict how it will get along as BAU continues to break down. But there are a few important things that we can check on fairly easily, and I'll talk about that today.

First though, there is a detail that I should have covered last time—I did mention "Deliberate Descent", living more frugally as if the economy had already collapsed, as an important strategy for getting by if your move from the city leaves you with less income. But I didn't direct you to a series of posts about Deliberate Descent that I wrote a few years ago. I hope the information there will be of assistance.

And now on to picking a town that will be a good place to live as collapse progresses.

There is a strong tendency, even for me, to think about before and after collapse in very black and white terms. No doubt this comes from years of extensive reading in the "collapse sphere", which is saturated with the idea of apocalypse—a hard, fast collapse. But of course that's not what I'm expecting. I don't even think it is useful to identify stages or steps along the way from full BAU to full collapse. Rather, I like to think in terms of movement along a spectrum, admittedly sometimes in fits and starts, and at different rates in different areas.

Over the years to come, even towns that are now economically strong and have recently updated infrastructure, will suffer from economic contraction and the gradual wearing out of that infrastructure. Infrastructure that won't get repaired or replaced due to lack of money. Because small remote towns are more expensive to service and have fewer voters, governments will be forced to abandon them first. In some cases this is already happening, with the cost of various programs being downloaded onto municipalities to make provincial/state budgets look healthier.

You might wonder why you'd want to move to a small town if that is the case. Or if you're already in a small town under such conditions, you might be tempted to give up and move to a city. But the cities are on the same curve, just some years behind. And as I've been saying, they won't be able to do as good job of coping with the situation. Cities rely on essentially everything they need being brought in from outside. Many small towns could, with a little adaptation, get by on locally available resources.

Once you are firmly set up in a remote small town, reduced outside support may not be such a bad thing. It will allow you to work on the beginnings of a post BAU economy without having to compete so much with BAU. Currently, where BAU is doing well, it is very difficult to even discuss, much less establish, any sort of alternative.

When you move to this hypothetical town we're talking about, you'll likely start out relying almost entirely on BAU for the necessities of life and experience infrastructure breakdowns so rarely and briefly that you can largely ignore them. But as time passes, breakdowns of infrastructure and supply chains will become more frequent and more lengthy, necessitating that you be prepared for outages of the power grid, the municipal water supply, or shipments by truck from out of town. Traditionally, government recommendations were to keep enough emergency supplies to get by for 3 days without outside help. Many areas are increasing this to two weeks. As time passes the interval will no doubt get longer.

Eventually, the outage situation will become normal and availability of services and supplies the exception. At that point communities that have become largely self sufficient will be the successful ones, and many others will already have been abandoned.

A few years ago I read Short Circuit, a book by Richard Douthwaite, which is about "Strengthening Local Economics for Security in an Unstable World". The title comes from his idea of short circuiting BAU economics and setting up to provide the most urgent necessities locally. This is in a European Union setting (Ireland) and very much against globalism, which suits me just fine. Douthwaite says the first things to worry about are money, energy and food. (I have to comment at this point that most of Europe is too densely populated to have much hope of becoming locally self sufficient, but nonetheless the book is full of good ideas.)

Money in this case refers to the financial services needed to facilitate a functioning community, and I'll be discussing that at length in a future post. To energy and food I would add water.

In a future post I'll talk about the actually concrete steps you'll need to take to make you, your family and your community more self-sufficient, but certain local resources are needed to make that possible and that's what you'll be looking for initially.

Water

When I started thinking seriously about water, I soon realized there are more aspects to the subject than initially meets the eye.

Ideally you'll want to move to a town with modern, recently updated, water supply and waste treatment systems. But such systems rely on the power grid, and consumable supplies and repair parts that are not sourced locally. Fortunately, there are low tech alternatives that can be set up using local resources, providing the actual supplies of water are safe and secure. So that is the main thing you'll be looking for—a water supply that can be relied on in the long term.

Existing waste (sewage) disposal systems are also something to look at in the short run, but in the long run you'll be switching to a composting toilet to cut down on water usage and supply fertilizer and organic matter for your garden. The degree of resource waste in our current "waste" treatment/disposal systems is appalling.

On farms and in very small villages, you'll usually find each house has its own well, and a septic tank and weeping bed for waste disposal. In the short run this means you'll be responsible for more in the way of maintenance, but in the long run having your own well already set up will prove handy. Most likely the pump won't be collapse proof, but that can be remedied, providing the well is less than about 300 feet deep.

It would also be a good idea to check into the health of the local ground water—does it get depleted during long dry summers, for instance. Especially since you would need more water for your garden under such circumstances. And of course, if things are so dry that local agriculture has to rely on irrigation for field crops, you won't even be interested in the area in the first place.

Contamination of your well is a major concern, especially in an area where a lot of livestock are being raised. Make sure that well isn't downhill from nearby barnyards and feedlots, and check into what's being done in the way of "nutrient management", i.e. where the manure from livestock ends up. This is a serious concern for confined animal feeding operations which generate large amounts of manure and don't have sufficient land associated with them to absorb the waste. Small farms don't have as much of a problem this way, although in our area farmers are being encouraged to fence off river bottoms to reduce contamination of streams and the lakes they flow into. There is also a volunteer group working at planting trees in those river bottoms, which I think is a brilliant idea.

In larger villages there may be one or more wells maintained by the municipality. Convenient in the short run and provided you are within easy walking distance, maybe workable in the long run.

The town where I live draws its water from Lake Huron and has a new water treatment plant. This is nice, but I also live within easy walking distance of the lake and I have a home built water filter ready for when it becomes necessary to use lake water directly.

The municipality here has run pipelines to some of the outlying villages to supply potable water, rather than try to ensure the safety of previously existing, and occasionally contaminated, wells. The next town to the east of us is Walkerton , which had major problems with its water supply a few year ago. This has left people in this part of Ontario pretty concerned about water quality. Fortunately, government money has been made available for upgrading municipal water systems. In many areas (think Flint, Michigan) this hasn't been the case and water infrastructure has not been brought up to modern standards, or properly maintained if it was.

As well as water from wells, surface water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs that don't run dry in the dry season, and are not seriously contaminated, is used by many towns and cities. Often long pipelines are needed to get that water from the source to where it will be used. It's not hard to see that as collapse progresses these systems will be faced with many serious difficulties.

In addition to biological contamination from livestock operations, you'll want to look into lead contamination from outdated water systems, heavy metal contamination (lead, arsenic, etc.) which is a natural characteristic of the ground water in some areas, and industrial contamination. This sort of information may be available on the internet or from the local municipality, but I wouldn't actually buy a property without taking a water sample and having it tested for both bacterial and heavy metal contamination.

Looking back on what I've just written, I can see that there are some things I don't really know about our local water supply and I'm going to be looking deeper into that. I'll fill you in on what I find out in a post at some point down the road.

Another use for water is transportation. A town located on a canal, navigable river or lake has some major advantages, especially when shipping by truck and rail becomes unfeasible.

Too much water can be as much of a problem as too little, especially if you are situated on a flood plain. Keep in mind that locations that seem bone dry in the summer may be flooded with snow melt in the spring. There are several small towns in this area whose main street occasionally floods in the spring. I grew up in a house that needed two sump pumps to keep the basement dry for a week or two almost every spring. I wouldn't buy real estate that I hadn't seen during flood season.

Food

The next thing to look at is food and the prospects for producing it locally. For this you'll need arable land and adequate rainfall. You'll want to drive through the area surrounding the town you are looking at and see what sort of farming is being done.

In the area where I live, quite a variety of crops are grown: corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, oats, rye, sorghum, flax, canola and, most recently, marijuana. There are also a few orchards (mainly apples, but also cherry, peach and pear) and berry farms (mainly raspberries and strawberries). And many livestock operations: dairy, beef, pork, lamb, chicken and turkey. There are only a very few market gardens, but there could be more if there was a greater local demand. Currently it is hard to compete with the supermarkets.

Some areas will specialize more, but I think a wide range of agricultural products is a sign of a healthy farm economy. That variety will also be a big plus when the day comes that you have to rely primarily on local foodstuffs.

But it occurs to me that most of you, who did not grow up on a farm like I did, would have a tough time identifying most of these plants and animals standing in a field as you are driving by. So, talking to farmers in the area is going to be a necessity. Definitely stop by the local farmers market, and get to know the farmers selling there. Some of them will be able to point you to the local community garden if there is one. If you are renting for the first while, a plot at the community garden will allow you to get started on learning how to garden.

The odds are that most of the agriculture in any area will be conventional***, as opposed to organic. I am not as negative about conventional agriculture as many kollapsniks, especially when it comes to the safety of the food it produces. Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that I'm paid by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its pricey products instead of their less expensive conventional competitors. Millions of dollars are being spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are about equally safe. Sadly, neither method of agriculture is even remotely sustainable, mainly due to their reliance on fossil fuels, and a once through approach to many of their inputs.

But there are a few questions you should be asking:

One, can the GMO corn and soybeans being grown on local farms be eaten safely in the event of a supply chain breakdown? The scientific consensus is yes, and I agree.

Two, can those conventional farms be converted to a more sustainable form of agriculture when the time comes to do so? Again, the answer is yes. In particular, modern herbicides are much less persistent than the older ones they have replaced and do not "poison" the soil for long periods of time after application. At worst, crops that aren't "Round Up Ready" can usually be grown with no trouble in soil that was treated with Round Up (glyphosate) the previous year. Of greater concern is soil health—conventional farming methods do often lead to both organic matter depletion and erosion. But sustainable farming methods can address those issues.

And from a more reality based viewpoint:

Three, is the land being farmed at the moment, regardless of the method? You certainly don't want to have to turn currently forested land into farmland.

And, four, is it being farmed without irrigation for field crops such as grains and hay? This will indicate the local rainfall is sufficient to support agriculture.

You'll want to look at a map and see if the area of farmland surrounding the town you're looking at is large enough to support the local population. In the short run, just to provide food, think an acre per person. In the long run more like 5 acres per person would be required to allow room for crop rotation and provide fiber, lumber and firewood. Sure, this will vary somewhat from one area to another, but those are good rules of thumb to start with.

Of course, you should be thinking about the long run. For a town of 10 thousand people that would mean 50 thousand acres or 78.125 sq. mi. of farmland, a circle approximately 5 miles in radius with the town at the center. For the same town situated on a lake, it would require a semicircle approximately 7.07 miles radius. And don't forget to take into account the area taken up by lakes, river bottoms, swamps, forests, roads and settlements.

One last item to look for in the area is a butcher shop. In a lot of areas they have almost been regulated out of existence. A thriving butcher shop, or shops, is an indicator of a strong local food industry.

Thinking about all this, I see that I have some work to do myself—some further questions to ask of the farmers I do know and maybe even getting to know a few more farmers.

Energy

Climate change considerations will mean that most of the areas worth looking at have a season when heating is necessary. Eventually supplies of fuel oil, natural gas, propane and electric power used for heating will become over priced, unreliable or non-existent. Provided there is sufficient standing timber in the area, a wood stove is a viable alternative. Possibly a cost saving measure right now and later, a life saving one.

You'll be looking for the presence of wood lots on most farms and some larger forested areas as well. Also look for local businesses which sell firewood and others that sell and install woodstoves. All this would indicate that the area already has a thriving wood heat industry.

Wind, water and solar are other forms of renewable energy that I think will eventually have a role to play in a sustainable society. But all the big wind turbines and solar panels that have sprung up in this area over the last few years won't work unless they are connected to the grid, and don't, as far as I can see, have much of a future.

One thing to keep an eye out for, if the town you're looking at is on a river, is the remains of a water powered mill. The dam may still be more or less intact and perhaps even the mill itself, though it is very unlikely to still be in use. The day will come when such installations can be refurbished and put back into use, very much to the benefit of the local community.

Muscle power is also going to become a more important form of energy as BAU declines, not just human muscles, but also those of draft animals. Look for people keeping horses, especially work horses. Even if this a only a hobby now, the existence of breeding stock will be a big help in the future.

Beyond looking for these basics (water, food, energy) you'll want to select a community that is well endowed with other useful resources, is resilient enough to withstand the shocks that lie ahead and has already made a start on local self sufficiency. Exactly how to tell if that is the case is beyond me, but it's something to think about.

Well, that pretty much wraps things up for this post. Next time I'll start looking at what you'll need to work on once you're actually living in a small town.

***I don't think that 7 billion people can be fed sustainable on this planet, regardless of the agricultural techniques used. But a lot of the criticisms leveled at conventional agriculture simply aren't based in fact, and are pretty insulting to the farmers. Only 18% of the food produced in the U.S. comes from corporate farms. The rest comes from family owned farms, some of them admittedly quite large. But those folks take pride in the food they produce. For a look at the subject from their viewpoint, check out Michelle Miller, The Farm Babe. Like me, she isn't being paid by Monsanto, or any of the other big agritech companies.


Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

Posted by at 23 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)