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The Age of Missing Information
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John's Still Driving
By Wayne Cooke
You see, I really thought John had better hold on to his old bicycle after I'd finished reading Thom Hartmann’s book, “The End of Ancient Sunlight”. That book described how petroleum had changed and improved our lives and why it would soon start getting scarce, changing our lives again, requiring us again to grow our food or starve; and to ride the wonderfully efficient bicycle or walk.
Upon finishing Hartmann's book in 2004, the first person I happened to tell was a high school sophomore, John, (not his real name). "You might not be driving much after you graduate", I told him. "Gas will be hard to get". He just looked at me suspiciously.
He graduated and is still driving. And that's my problem. Even today, years later, I'm driving, too, and I see no hint that anything will change. The gas station has plenty of gas at a reasonable price. We still eat cheap food and drive cars and plan for a similar future. Everyone obviously expects the recession to end and business to return to normal
If I suggest otherwise, people look at me indulgently and change the subject. Hartmann was wrong? My wife, Barb, and even our son, Joel, have no interest in hearing negative ideas and think I'm too pessimistic. Barb encourages me to get more fun out of life and quit reading so much negative stuff. Friends look at my white hair and approaching 80th birthday and smile politely.
"Don't worry", they seem to say; like that sign: "When I see all the animals lining up two by two for the next space shuttle, then I'll start worrying."
THE SELF RELIANT COMMUNITY
When you find me, with my bicycle parked in the shed; trying to take care of three gardens at home while doing anything I can to encourage growing food with others, you'll know that I'm doing what a growing body of evidence suggests should be done. I don't really like gardening… aching backs and dirty hands. But when (and if?) store food runs dry, I want a backup for Barb and me. I need to be as self reliant as I can. Some predict inflation and food shortages this year. I hope they're wrong. I'm not yet ready, and if most people aren't ready, life will clearly become less fun. Dr. Rowe (U.W.) said: "We need to feel that sense of urgency now that everyone else will feel when it is too late."
Our Self Reliant Community, started as just a class in 2006, is doing this. We’re feeling uncertain about the future now, and -- I think wisely -- are turning to the soil that sustained our ancestors.
The Self Reliant Community grew out of a free monthly “class” I offered. The purpose of which is to explain the coming decline in petroleum supply, and how "relocalizing" could help us cope with the changes. Graham Library was kind enough to allow me the use of a tiny cubicle. Since no students arrived, it was quite adequate. Then the Hangar Inn allowed me to use their meeting room when no one else wanted it. I bought a salad and ate it alone.
I was so glad when Jerry showed up, and later Toby and Irene, and then Jim and Paul and Ron and William and Anuttama and others followed. Opinions and acceptance of the idea of petroleum decline varied, but all agreed that it was a good idea to become less dependent on the "grid" and more self reliant. They talked about solar energy, active and passive, and growing food and preserving it. They talked about "making do", and relearning some of the centuries-old skills. Someone suggested "Self Reliant Community" as a name. We arranged to start a small community garden and adopted (2008) the Seven Tasks as a guide. At last, "class" was in session. I'd forgotten my original class objective in the thrill of hearing knowledge and great ideas from others.
Our main interest became successfully growing the food we need. We want to be able to rely on ourselves for basic needs, and we agreed on seven "tasks" to guide our preparation. The Seven Tasks gave us structure and goals: Grow food, Make a Greenhouse, Know neighbors, Preserve food, plan a "Warm room", have a Bicycle, install Rain Barrel.
Living sustainably is not as easy as it sounds for people so used to the three wonderful modern servants that we have come to depend on…too much, (processed food, electricity, and gasoline). "Relocalizing", reconstructing the close-knit neighborhoods of yesteryear in our local area, is a way of coping with a time when those three modern servants (all dependent largely on petroleum) become unreliable. Our Self Reliant group's Seven Tasks" give us a guide.
THE SEVEN TASKS
Your Number ONE task is GROWING FOOD both for our family and in our community. It is amazing to realize that most of the cost of "store food" is the cost of petroleum for every step of its production. Scientists estimate that store food requires five or six calories of energy for each one calorie of energy we get from it! Does that make sense? It's easy to predict higher food costs as the petroleum supply becomes tighter. Local farms will benefit. And we can look around our own neighborhoods to see where we can grow our own food. Your #1 task is to pick up the shovel and plant.
It doesn't matter if you don't know how. Seeds love to grow. Learn as you go. While you're at it, put away your shyness and knock on neighbor's doors to see if they are growing food, and to ask for advice. "Make sure your neighbors are well-fed, too", says one writer. Don't forget to hunt for small, local farms near you, and for larger CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms (see www.localharvest.org). On ideal Muck Creek soil in Graham, the Buds and Shrubs CSA farm, run by John and Marilyn Pethick, jpethick@aol.com, is starting to build up its customer base. Also just starting up near N.W. Trek, is the Organic by Nature CSA farm (www.organicbynaturefarm.com. Support for farmland preservation and small farms is growing. It's been hard to make a
living that way in the past, but Dan Barber, in the New York Times of May 11, 2008, says that, "In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1400 per acre; a 1,364 acre farm nets $39 per acre. As the future cost of petroleum rises, locally grown food should become, once again, the most important source of our nutrition, as it has been throughout history. Can we, today, still survive without driving to the store , money in hand, to sustain our lives?
Good dirt (called "tilth") is more valuable than gold, for it provides us life.
And what do you do with the food you've pulled out of your garden? Rinse it. Boil it. Don't let recipes scare you. Wash and cut it and put it in a pot to boil until soft enough to eat. Put a little salt in. We are not talking delicious here. We are just talking making food plants edible. Measuring is for people who "know how to cook". They may put other stuff in to improve the taste. For us kitchen-challenged folk, it's fun to experiment and eat our mistakes.
Making mistakes is necessary if, like so many today, you are so used to processed and ready to eat food that recipe books are foreign. Instead of preparing meals, the mantra of modern culture is: "When hungry, stop at ----- and eat."
I tilled and planted a 30 x 30 foot garden in the backyard for the first time. Beans, corn, potatoes, and squashes all grew well enough to give me pride and amazement. A meal only from the garden, though, will seem incomplete. Even with potatoes and carrots and turnips, we may want breads and meat. Others in the group were canning up their own homegrown vegetables and trying creative ways to dry food as well.
Self Reliant people are realizing that the self sufficient farms, communities, and missions of long ago could not feed their animals or themselves without also growing grains (or buying sacks of flour).
Number TWO is building a GREENHOUSE. Our Northwest has a shorter growing season. Here, you will want a way to start plants in a warmer greenhouse environment as early as March. You can build a simple, cheap greenhouse, using thrown-out old windows or old patio doors. Find your "glass" first, then get wood and build the frame to fit the glass. You only need glass for the sides that will receive sunlight. The shadow side can be solid. In fact, if you line the inside of that back wall with bricks or water containers, it will retain the heat from the sun, (even on a cloudy day), and release it at night, warming your shivering plants.
If you get a building permit, a nice permanent greenhouse can be built onto the side of your house, cutting your heating bill significantly as a bonus.
An option is a "hoophouse", made of ½" or ¾" plastic pipes bent to form a hoop, ends attached firmly to the ground and covered with plastic sheet. Westside Gardener has detailed plans for a large one, easy to build. Go to www.westsidegardener.com . Click on the archives and then on the "How to" section, where you will find the PVC hoophouse directions, plus lots more.
Number THREE is preserving food. Winter is hard. Long ago Native-Americans in the Northwest spent all summer preparing and drying meat, camas root, and berries to last them through the cold winter. Even a century ago canning food was a necessary ritual for most people every fall, and still is for many. Why not go to the hardware store and purchase Mason jars, and ask for information. Try it out, without expecting success at first, just to get the feel. It's not a completely lost art, since you will, if you ask, easily find neighbors who would love to show you how. And they will also admit that canning over a hot stove on a hot fall day is a bummer. Such is life.
Today, building yourself a solar oven is becoming popular. With similarities to the greenhouse, it is easy to do, and never needs to be plugged in. Self Reliant members have even dried food on racks inside an unused, closed car! Or just put racks over your stove or fireplace. Preserving food can be a creative adventure, dreaming of ways to be eating in January the food you've grown in July!
Bulk grain and legume purchases are another way to prudently plan ahead for an uncertain future. Winco has 25 lb. bags of oatmeal for 13 dollars. Milled in Oregon, a bag lasts for months. Flours and legumes are also for sale in bulk. "Wholesale" stores are a good way to stock the back of a closet with canned goods. Don't forget to put a manual can opener in with them.
For the longer term, you can learn ways to store flours and other foods so they will last for years. But first, you just have to "wrap your head around" the idea of food being scarce someday. That isn't easy, in itself, because the large food corporations have, frankly, done a marvelous job of feeding us and pampering our tastes and making our very lives dependent on their hard work and the smooth running of a huge network of systems. But are our lives in their hands? It's a nice feeling to have "Plan B" in place.
Number FOUR is to know your neighbors. It means to deliberately get to know your close neighbors, maybe 5 or 6 families, as friends. And that means, first, being a friend to your neighbors. Sharing and supporting each other in difficult times is a long term goal. But to get there, the plan is to do enjoyable things together, such as neighborhood potlucks, community garage sales, or birthday invitations. One family used the giant bubble machine to attract every kid in the neighborhood. Fun works!
Be sure to include the neighbor nobody likes! They may be important to you sometime. As far as possible, include them in every way as friends. "Love thy neighbor" didn't mean just the ones you like! Every person has some skill useful to all.
Another reason to develop a small, but close-knit group is for defense. As police services are cut to balance budgets, we are encouraged by Judy Holley, of the Block Watch program in Pierce County, to be proactive. You should have the phone numbers of a phone tree for each of 5 or 6 neighbors taped by the phone. If one neighbor sees something suspicious, he phones each of the others…even in the middle of the night. Once a car prowler or other bad guy sees the lights in half a dozen homes suddenly turn on, he's apt to leave hurriedly.
There is nothing new about that technique. In the Middle Ages, the "Hue and Cry" was a law. Upon a thief being discovered, you were required to yell as loudly as possible, or, upon hearing such a yell in the distance, to immediately copy it. Nobody could run faster than the yells could travel. It was hard to get away. The neighborhood dogs have that technique down pat. If one dog sees a stranger in the neighborhood, his barking is quickly picked up by the others.
Number FIVE is to prepare a "Warm Room". Think about when a winter storm knocks out the power for days or weeks and it is near freezing outside. An electric furnace, of course, is out, but so is the oil furnace or heat pump. A basic 2000 watt generator, at under $1000, will keep some lights, refrigerator, perhaps one space heater, and the fan/ignition of an oil or gas furnace going. Heat pumps draw too much wattage, so need a larger generator. All this assumes that you can buy and store enough gallons of gasoline for the generator and have oil or gas available, too, for the furnace.
Many people, though, can't afford this luxury. And it is unsustainable in the long run anyway…meaning maybe years into the future. A fireplace is great, but so much heat goes up the chimney that you will want to look for a fireplace insert or a little wood stove connected to the fireplace. It will save a lot of money if you can find a good one used. Keep kindling and a little wood beside it, and keep a good supply of wood stored under dry cover outside. Since you probably don't want the precious heat to go throughout the house, plan ahead of time how to hang blankets or close doors to keep most of heat contained in the "warm room" with the fireplace. If you don't have a fireplace or other options, plan for a "warm room" without luxuries.
The warm room in this case is any small room in your house that can be closed off. Tell the kids they'll be camping. Be able to pitch a tent, if available. Have all the warm outdoor clothes ready, and games and food to pass the time. You can also have some warmth by using a chafing dish fuel can under inverted ceramic planter pots connected with a large bolt. Directions for this are available. Body heat alone will raise the temperature of a small room.
Number SIX is putting in a Rain Barrel. Along with ensuring your food supply, your neighbor network, and warmth, your water supply is critical to your well-being. Of course you will have bought some sealed drinking water containers for emergencies, but your water source, whether it is a water company or a well, depends on electricity (unless you live by a fresh stream). And the steady supply of electrical power is interrupted too easily by storm, natural disaster, or civil unrest.
One doesn't usually think of Thomas Crapper's Great Invention until, when the power is out, the last person to flush the toilet is suddenly reminded that the tank isn't filling. That's when you turn to the rain barrel spigot, fill a bucket and you're back in business for all those non-potable uses. The nice bonus, especially if you have to pay a water bill, is that rainwater can be used to water outside gardens, etc. and save you money.
Plastic rain barrels, 55 gallon, can be easily obtained locally for 10 or 15 dollars. The spigots (with hose connection) and sealant are few dollars more. Drill a hole that the spigot will screw into tightly, with sealant, from the outside at the bottom. Then cut a hole into the top for your downspout and screen it. Make sure the barrel is turned so the spigot is convenient. It should be mounted on sturdy blocks a couple feet high that will support its filled weight. Many people put three or four barrels connected in a row so they have a plentiful supply.
Number SEVEN is to have a bicycle. No, not a fancy expensive one, but a decent, reliable bike that will give you efficient personal transportation. Buy it cheap at a garage sale! If the car breaks down, you can get places much faster than walking. And if the gas station closes up….?
Remember what I told John: "You probably won't be driving much after you
graduate!" Even today, he would laugh and say that there is plenty of gasoline.
EPILOGUE
John got a job and is still driving to work and buying gasoline, unaware that the world passed the "peak" of oil production in mid-2008. My neighbor is readying his gas-guzzling motor home for his yearly summer trip. I'm scratching my head and wondering how or maybe if, all that printed and borrowed money for the car and the motor home and the oil will be repaid.
So some capable people see changes coming. But others, like John, are still driving and buying cars. How could they even guess that a historic change is occurring? It's hard to understand that a century ago we began to enjoy ever-increasing use of a powerful energy source that now is ever-decreasing.
John, like all humans, holds tightly to comforting group beliefs. It may take a shock to make John reshape his living to the reality of living with little petroleum.
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