good links from ran prieur . well, maybe just check him out first

http://www.wildfermentation.com/resources.php?page=economics
http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/industrialpolicycarson0109.pdf

well, bad news friends (and enemies - anomimous internet readers and all). My large luscious nursery bed of around a thousand 2 year old figs, kiwis and quince. mostly figs. four different kinds. has been completely destroyed by voles. they dug it up, stripped all the bark of the seedlings, girdled them, just totally destroyed them. some of them might stump sprout in the spring. but my plans to go to seedy saturday are probably shot. and apparently voles like to eat roots too. i'm going to dig all the seedlings up and pile them into the greenhouse this morning. apparantly voles are all about habitat: they like long grass to tunnel through (under snow is even better). so, i could trap them, or poison them, both solutions are questionable: the first is too much work and the second also acts on dogs, birds and humans. so, you know what that means? that means i need to buy a weedwacker or a lawn mower. oh its a sad day. a bad day. i'll need to buy a weedwacker or a lawnmower or a bunch of small rodents could completely undo all or my work here.

i'm just going to take a minute here. the counter top i'm glueing together is setting: 12 clamps in action over four perfect pieces of red cedar.glue squishes marring otherwise smooth clear grain.
ok: my point: is that i'm having this re-occurring experience that i'm finding increasingly frustrating. its happens while i'm listening to the news. there will be two stories in a row. the first will be about some natural catastrophe or environmental disaster or species extinction or industrial pollution -take your pick of the examples. the tone will be one of loss/grief/horror/etc. the second story will be about the shutting down of a mining operation/ the closure of an automobile plant or the delay of a new subdivision. the tone will be one of loss/grief/horror. there will be no connection made between the stories. ie that housing developments on mountains cause mud slides. or that mining causes pollution. and i ask myself: when will the news fucking figure it out? and then i chide my naivety and realize that they won't. the news, as part of the power structure, profits simultaneously from both disaster and industrial progress. making the connection would be too earthshiting of a thing to do. it would undermine the entire global economy. but its happening. the rest of us are increasingly realizing that not only do we not profit from either occurance - disaster or industry- we're realizing that industry is actually the primary cause for disaster -and that the two are acting together in an accelerating vicious cycle. many of us have known this for a long time. its really nothing new. what is notable is the absurd and comic oversight going on right now in the media. "oh no the economy is slowing down!" tied to" oh no what are we going to do about global warming!" i have a hard time not finishing this little rant with some well focused obscenities.

i heard a brief clip from these freaks on cbc. it was totally hilarious. check out their website. howtoprofitfromthecomingrapture. p

december 16th. sleeping late. being domestic. stopped by the deep cold.

december 17th. 2008.
well. where to start? i was just out to get some water and took a tape measure to the snow on the smoker, the snow on the trellis. over 16", up to 18" in some places. that's enough to get in my rubber boots. and my rubber boots are big.
life has routinized into some sort of weird limbo. firewood. water that's not frozen. sleeping and living in the same long-underwear day after day. endless small inside projects and occasional forays into the world of fourwheel drive only. i can't say i mind it. i've sorted my tools. i've delt with several bags of constuction detritus that we must find a word for: you know that mixture of screws and nails and finishing nails and staples and sawdust that accumulate through time in your tool belt and the bottom of your tool bins? theres gotta be a word for that stuff. i put - i finally put- a doorknob on the greenhouse. right now i'm finishing tanning a third sheepskin. very nice. the process is such a transformation, from dead animal skin to gorgeous textile. have been reading some excellent wendell berry in between all this. tonight: "Higher Education and Home Defense". Find it in the compilation Home Economics. One of the best essays i've read coming from a writer who will never waste your time. ya, so drop me a line if you're similarly "derailed". p.

i'd say its officially winter: there's been a good dump of snow, the water pipes are frozen, the forecast calls for extended cold, the bank account's gone significantly into the negative and there's no way to work out there. yee ha. december 14 2008. so send a cheque to GM or Ford and help those fuckers get rich bulding big stupid cheap-ass cars. December 14 2008.

november 23rd. 2008. 6:24. listening to my radio show from home. well, vali's. did the dishes. cleaned the counters, but this building is never clean. i feel so overwhelmed by the dirtiess of life. the chaotic complexity. no, the entropy. of mold in the walls. couch grass in the fruit tree mulch. tools rusting. its not that nothing i do matters. its that ever effort i make is only a temporary holding back of the inevitable rotting and rusting of everything around me. all the things i work towards.

maybe i'm on the wrong team? all this "creative" stuff is just going against the nature of things.

november 24th.
a good redneck day: killed trees for cash (falling and bucking for a local couple), butchered trees for cash (milling a few small maple logs for a friend). Went out looking for a buck at dusk but didn't find one.
one additional redneck thing to say: when i eat bacon in the morning (homemade bacon, from a pig that we processed completely by hand) when i eat bacon in the morning my day is much much better than a day when i don't eat bacon.

well. my last entry was pretty douer. well , sometimes i am. its sunday night. mid-november. the season of fires and meat. i've been burning the last slash in the fenced south orchard, making room for new winter plantings: mostly apples and hazels. burning slash and making meat: the smokers been going for a fews days, full of dry meat, sausages, bacon, oysters. we made some nice sausages. the next iteration will be proper salami. cured salami. we've also been juicing. lots of really nice apple juice. those are the most recent doings, beyond the day to day comings and goings of life's mainenances.

Footnote to October 4th entry

but you all better not fucking show up here when the global fiancial web collapses completely, your jobs disappear and you can't buy food at the store anymore. or is that too negative a thing to say? what was the relationship between the ant and the grasshopper?

torrential downpours. getting dark at six. alone in the trailer with steve albini's blues and a fresh roll your own. its kind of a nice scene: simultaneously sad and nostalgic. warm and cozy. real. there is so much water falling out the sky that -looking across the meadow- the air looks smoky white.
sometimes, on nights like this, i wonder where everybody is? what the hell you're all doing with your lives? lives that once overlapped and now do no longer. i think i seem confident and committed enough that people who've been through the farm sort of take my autonomy and stability here, as a landed person, for granted.or maybe you'all think i'm totally insane and to be avoided. not really sure, to be honest. well anyways, drop me a line. i think its going to be a long winter. visits are welcome. new music for the country bumpkin is welcome.

well i think its time for a summary update. the farm had a very busy summer. lots of very postive and productive peoples around, doing interesting things. i was away on trips for most of august, which was also really nice, for me. the winter is a bit of the unknown for this place. but, L and J and pounding their way towards dry warmth and i might start doing the same in hopes of housing future additional resourceful humans. my little building is 99 per cent done and i don't feel too motivated to start in on something selfishly bigger. B and P are also around and doing various small important things, helping think about the future, living. the gardens are green and the trees are growing well under drip. just finished a little portable chicken coop that looks a lot like a worldwar II landing craft. very funny and very mobile. the meat smoker is also nearing completion and i'm heading out to do that now. p.

just a quick note: we need some experienced builders around here this summer and fall to help put up some sleeping cabins for new farmers, farmerettes and radical wildfolks who think domesticated agriculture sucks.

july 3 2008
i'd better take this momment of relative cool and quiet - equating to sanity and clarity- to reflect for myself . its been hot and crazy and muddled around here. lots of people. lots of sun. too much business, but interesting even still. apparently we're into july and i wish i could refer to this time as the moon of something more tangible: ripe currants and raspberries. mosquitos. couch grass seed heads. those big shiny beetles that like to crashland against human bodies. the rye stalks are browning and the seeds are setting hard. the barley and oats also formed and hardening.the plants in the greenhouse have only really just gotten goingwith this new heat. and...what else? lots of young vegetables that need a lot of water. in the orchard i've got the drip loops set up and running occasionally off of the well while i finish setting up the solar piston pump. poured the slab for it yesterday and will install it this evening. the "linear current booster" has made all the difference in the pumping. it basically didn't work without it and i thought i was going to have to send the whole setup back the manufacturer. so, water is the new thing. i think i might even plant some more trees in the orchard (in july now!) because i can. because i've got a drip system. imagine that. the miracles of modern plastics. otherwise still cutting cedar for that big order. which i'm hoping to finish up in the next couple of weeks so i can move onto building house. we've been cooking in the corner of the greenhouse and the next step is to detach the porch from the trailer and rig it up for moving out of the way. similarly, i've got almost all the wool i need here. i'll end up with about a hundred and fifty fleeces i'm thinking. the biggest difference this summer is the appearance of like-minded peoples to work with here, which is quite positive and inspiring: lots of potentials and a few challenges after spending almost two years mostly alone.

i've been meaning to write something lately -about the impossibilty of buying food security as is proposed by various commercial groups. but, i suppose i've been too busy. it has to do - this has to do- with the nature of genuine security, as i've been coming to understand it. as relational embeddedness. as being stuck in a net, a multi-stranded complex situation that both traps and bears ones weight. here there is a price for security. it doesn't come freely or autonomously. or quickly, or lightly. but instead as the result of years of efforts. of investments. some dark and questionable. which in turn have their own demands, reciprocally, such that the human actor becomes some measure of security for a certain plant, the plant becomes the actor and the human subject. tables turned. both being investment. locked like antlers in living..

anyways, i'm going to be away for some of the summer and need someone(s) to look after things for awhile. potential payments are many-fold.

the potential analytical comparisons between paragraph one and paragraph two are also many-fold.

turns out more people read this than i've realized. call me naive in this digital-autonomous-anomynous age. the invisible one-way information flow of blogs is strange to me. that being said, here's some information. the current essential information of my life on the farm. in the development of treeEater. the weather and atmosphere have been funny. alot of cloudy muggy. not much real rain. some periods of hot hot sun, but not much. so, the daily watering rountines are starting to come online. so i'm very thankful that pris has been here to help with this and to get the garden going. sometimes i'm not sure what i've been doing? taking weekends off for one thing, which has been nice.
what i have been doing is little detail jobs: putting a little house-cap over the cistern, the same over the well head-complete with new manifold, built a new outhouse over by the janes cabin. have been milling one day a week. the lumber yard is getting huge.having the Fourth blade on the ol' mobile dimension can really run off lumber. this, combined with a line on one hundred and ten near free sheep fleeces, and i'm getting re-excited about building again this summer. fast and dirty building: 2x6 studs loose filled with raw wool on a poured slab. none of this intensely labor intensive post and beam with earth infill. althought both of the latter are still necessary and essential for asethics and performance. so, thats potentially upcoming and i need help with it, for all those aspiring natural builders out there. other upcomings: hopefully the arrival of the direct solar powered piston pump, so i can set up irrigation on the new orchard blocks. dealing wih the current inadequate chicken habitat. they need a new more movable system and house. but, i'd rather build one for myself instead, to be honest. i could eat the chickens to fuel myself. in the process. ah, crass carnivory. in other news, the potatoes at the potatoe co-op are showing above ground. we're working out the water-situation over there later today. and in the meantime supposedly we've been featured in Macleans magazine. canada's premier weekly glossy trash rag. god knows they didn't talk to any of us about it.
i gotta get out there at this point and sell a cord. like i always say: feedback and interaction is always appreciated. and remember: there's lot of opportunity up here: challenging challenging opportunity to manifest reality. and be totally overwhelmed in the process. sound fun?

i'm a bit weepy. sobby. in a cold tailer. have just finished reading cormac mcCarthy's The Road. the farmlog's fist book review, of a profoundly disturbing work. for those of us with aspirations of a different kind of better future, i highly recommend aquainting yourself with this vision of a different terrible future. i for one have a new wholehearted appreciation for our present situation after being faced with this possible outcome. which is not only opposite to the world that i personally am trying to create, it is directly consuming and destructive to it. the road. check it out.
otherwise, life is good. working away up here on the farm. planting, building, nuturing plant life. running expensive machines that get things done fast. increasingly shocked by how expensive things are getting: fuel, machine parts, groceries, feed. things are getting really expensive. more expensive than the rate that i'm making more money. the game's rigged. (the econoimc game). so that most of us will lose it. i just don't know whose rigging it at this point? but in the meantime the farm is developing towards health and life and responsible self-sufficiency. which only matters in the absence of a nuclear winter, the death of All plant life, roving bands of cannibals and ash storms continually blocking out the sun.
and a handful of ignorant men could actually do this, could actually accomplish this outcome for this world despite the caring and useless actions of the rest of us. thats the scary part.

quickly:-- logs waiting to be taken apart by saw and maul. truck waiting to carry the burden.--
a quick note: i'm going to be primarily occupied with building this warm season. so, i'm putting this out there: i'm going to need help -skilled or labor- paid accordingly. and because of this choice in focus, i'm personally not going to have much time to garden. which means there's also opportunity in open dirt for interested peoples. keep in touch. p.

there are chickens, who, for whatever reason, strike out on their own. in my experience with the animals, an occasional hen will forego safe housing, ready access to food and the company of her kind for a life of solitary uncertainty and danger: living alone under some building, eating whatever scraps end up in the yard, the garden. i can imagine -the extention of observation- her acting on a distaste for her own kind. i could go on and use this as a metaphor for human behavior, but the sad part is that these girls rarely last more than a few weeks.

can't seem to get moving today. its past nine am and i'm still drinking coffee. one of those thick heavy skies.

i'm going to give a technical update. is late into the night (by country standards). I've got songs ohia playing and a hot cup of tea (white, very nice.) i've been very busy here and very happy in this business. Mostly working on my house and the new orchard block. With the former, i've whitewashed with lime over the decking and installed about half of the finished cedar board and batton and trim. its looking beautiful. very "neat". In (the to be) orchard, i'm working on bracing the corner posts in advance of stretching the fence. i'm doing them cowboy-jack-wire-style, which is fun. [twisting wires in opposition to create counterbalanced tensions]. otherwise, firewood sales continue to finance life here. have been running the mill sporadically when i need boards. its all very smooth except for my truck, which just ate over a thousand dollars and shit out a brand new front brake assembly. i had to wait around in courtenay an entire day while it did this. amazing! biology is. otherwise, dave and i are in the midst of a workshop series on plants, which has opened up many other teaching possibilities in my mind. we also have more plants arriving at the end of this month and we both ought to be able to near put them straight into the ground. plants are the future. metal machines are ..the past? let me rephrase that: plants are my future. metal machines are my current reality. just like lockin' people up to make 'em free, eh george? or shooten' 'em to make peace. p.

got home from dinner. two blue eyes in the dark.
headlight, dark. small rifle and new knife. two deer inside the fence perimeter, now down in the animal pens. one smashing smashing into the fence. my sights not working in low light and its just a small deer. we ran around for awhile, pen to pen. after..some time. i pushed it towards a possible exit (ie a block with a lowe fence). it smashed into some loose gates and trapped itself . i stood down my gun, ended up getting two ankles in each hand and hauled it out of the pens and outside of the perimeter. i told it while i was carrying it, all bleeding in the face and huffing and fibralting "to grow up and have five points on each antler, have sex with hundreds of does, eat all the good food, but never come back in here again." i realized afterwards that my knife was missing and while retracing the convuloted path of our game i couldn't find it. the deer took it. my anger -of late -returned, only briefly postponed and i arghed and fired my rifle in the sky. it made nice orange sparks. i just bought that knife. was the nigh'ts experience worth $12.75 plus tax? it was a nice knife from yellowknife.maybe i'll find it tomorrow. i don't know where the second deer went, i assume it jumped the fence.