Still worth it?

A quart of hard work ruined.

Even if you don't do much homesteading, gardening or farming, there are times in your life when you have to ask yourself if whatever you're doing around your home is still worth the work or not. If you have raised kids and eventually move on to that Empty Nest stage of your life, you usually have to re-examine everything you are doing -- how you're cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and even vacationing -- because while you weren't watching, your life moved onto its next phase somehow, and it all needs re-evaluation.

This is where I've been with canning the last few years. This morning, a quart jar of relish broke inside the canner, which happens sometimes (the newer quart Mason jars are usually only good for about five years before this happens), but which was very frustrating, as it represented several hours of hard work, come to naught.

Is it still worth it?

Too bad it took a quart of ruined relish for me to start pondering whether or not I actually still need that much relish stored up in the pantry. Like most people, I tend to just keep doing the same things I've always done until it becomes impractical for some reason, and then I start re-thinking whether it's needed or not. 

So after cleaning up the canner and thinking about things, I've decided that, for the time being, I'm still saying yes to canning. BUT, it's a modified yes. If it's something I can put up in pint jars, like strawberry jam, apple pie filling, blackberry syrup, etc. it's definitely worth it. Pickle relish is also still worth it -- in smaller jars. But quarts of things? Not really what is practical or needed anymore for our household of two, broken jars or not. 

So in thinking of ideas I can use to supplement our pantry in other homegrown ways, one thought I had was starting to make my own mayonnaise. I've got the eggs, and if I'm not tethered to a water bath canner filled with quarts of tomatoes all summer long, I also have the time. One other thing I've already started doing is switching our dog over to completely homemade dog food and treats, which I've wanted to do for a long time. But I'm pretty sure I can find other things that will make us more eco-friendly and healthy plus save us money if I re-order my thinking just a bit.

I'll still keep those quart jars around, though, as they're such brilliant multi-purpose containers, holding everything from flowers to leftovers to frozen broth. So the quart jars I have left will get a break from the literal pressure of canning, and I catch a break, too, in terms of workload. Less pressure on all of us. 

That's a win for everyone, I'd say.

Mason jars -- still the Swiss Army knife of household living, even without the canning.

No expectations

One of the best things about starting over in a new place is the freedom from having a lot of preconceived notions about things. Right now, for instance, daytime temperatures have been hovering in the mid to upper 30s in the central Willamette Valley. And every night when I watch the news from Portland there is much grousing and commiseration among the anchors and commentators that it is supposed to be about 54 degrees at this time of year, and why in the hell is it not warming up, already? The poor weather guy really has to take a lot of flak about it. People are quite offended the weather is so "abnormal" right now.

But for us, with this being our first year here, we have no expectations. Which I'm glad about, considering I made something of a cottage industry of complaining about summers in California when we lived there. So if we wake up and it's 27 degrees that seems just fine, thank you very much. It's still February, and we knew February means chilly temps anyplace north of the 40th parallel. So we're open to whatever form winter is going to take, including ice and snow. We're never disappointed because we have no expectations...or years past to compare anything to. What freedom there is in that!

54 degrees?

No expectations.

Expectations are really a curse in long-term commitments, when you think about it. We expect friends, the weather, spouses, towns and restaurants to all be a certain way, and it really fries us if they start to change and we don't like the direction things are moving. And the longer we've been enjoying something, the more we take offense when the ground beneath our feet starts to shift. That's why, occasionally, our elders can seem like such massive pains in our behinds. Often you'll find that, for them, the way things were has hardened in stone and is now the way things should always be. With pretty sharply defined edges. There is sometimes anger in nostalgia; paradise lost and all that. What a way to curse a perfectly good present.

I'm not afraid to say that I'm not exactly sure how it's all going to work as we move to our new place, and in fact am kind of excited by that fact. Homesteading is, by its nature, fairly monotonous, and so re-learning it all in a new place is certainly one way to keep it fresh, if one can just resist the temptation to try and bring the past routines along and cram them into new spaces. That probably would not work anyway, and I've seen people broken by the act of trying to make that happen. 

It's hard to keep those expectations at bay, but trying to stay in the zen of the present is a good exercise for staying open to any new ideas up ahead. 

It's official

We are homeowners again! Escrow has closed and we now legally own our own sweet little farm-ette. We won't be moving right away as the family/former owners asked for a few weeks to rent back to us, but we'll begin doing some repairs right after they vacate and will begin moving a couple of weeks after that.

I am already looking to purchase a couple of livestock animals to help us keep the grasses down, so stay tuned for that! And my hens will once again have their own chicken house, which will make life a lot easier for me, as it will need a little less cleaning and they'll have more room to roam around inside when it rains. 

So with this move will come a return to a simple, less carbon-intensive lifestyle, which I can't wait for. The old adage of "you don't know what you got 'till it's gone," is true when it comes to homesteading. There is not only common sense and environmental responsibility, but also pleasure and comfort to be found in things like re-using instead of buying new, composting, growing your own food and hanging your wash. (Since I've brought it up about ten times, can you tell how much I really miss drying my wash outdoors? Every day here it doesn't rain I think to myself, "If I had a clothesline I could do a load of wash and hang it out right now." 

So the order of moving will be from least important to most important items, with professional movers coming on the final day to take all the furniture we can't lift ourselves. I miss the college/LA days of having rattan Pier One furniture, masonry brick-and-wood stacked shelving, and art posters in plastic frames, all of which I could move by myself if necessary! 

Those were the days. Milk crates and DIY shelves.

And in a great Murphy's Law Conundrum, two of my three kids will be here visiting the week we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. Which probably means lots of take-out food, driving around showing them things, and of course having them move some stuff for us. Just so they feel useful and needed, of course. Ya, that's it. 

So maybe the simple, eco-friendly life will have to wait another week or so after we move. But it'll come. I know that now. And just in time for spring! There will be flowers and veggies to plant, animals to bring home, and the art of turning a house into a home. I cannot wait to show you around the new place and get to work making it our own.

Packing up (again) is hard to do. Not.

Hello, new farm!

Farewell, Mouse Turd Manor.

If I wasn't so happy to have found a home, I might be bummed that we have to pack up and move again so soon -- for the second time in one year, for those keeping track. But I'm quite grateful to be doing so. In many ways it will be great to get out of this rental -- a run-down, manufactured home I aptly named "Mouse Turd Manor," when we moved in (although we've since eliminated the rodent issue, at least inside the house). But the property is way too close to a dairy and the accompanying stinky dairy lagoon, and too far away from other neighbors to have made any connections there.  It's not exactly close to town, either. Great views though. I'll miss those.

The views from the front door of Mouse Turd Manor are mystical and magical. The dairy smell, not so much.

And since this time it's 1) a cross-town move, and 2) a move that will be done over about a month's time, it will be a lot less painful than moving to a new state, like last time. In the 20+ moves I've made as an adult, a local move, done over two or three weeks, is the least painful and most easily-organized way to move, by far. Take a carload or two a day over to the new place, UNPACK IT, empty the boxes, return and refill the boxes for the next run. Have the furniture movers show up on the last day and move everything you can't lift and load yourself.

Not having a ton of boxes to unpack reduces the number of items you'll have to go box-diving for in your first few weeks at your new place significantly. In other words, you'll know where your spatulas are when you need them. I always try and put unpacked items in the same places they are now, at least for the first few months I'm there. This means, if your picnic basket and carpet cleaner reside in the closet of the bedroom where the blue quilt is on the bed, they should go into that exact place in your new home, if possible. You'll feel a lot less cognitive dissonance that way and you can always move them later on to different places, once you're more settled in.

But the things I'm looking forward to the most are the things that were just too inconvenient or impossible to do here. Stuff like growing significant amounts of food, canning, preserving, hanging wash out to dry, using the solar oven, having a dedicated space for my chickens, and having garbage and recycling pick-up. Those are all things I'm looking forward to having available again. Move to a new place and you'll find out quickly the things your soul needs, and mine needs that stuff. I've felt like a boat without an anchor without being tied to the seasons and the land in those very meaningful ways. And I really miss homegrown food. 

I'm even looking forward to having some farm neighbors again.  Boy, I never thought I'd feel this way, especially after we lived next to that one guy next door who blasted "Radar Love" by Golden Earring on his patio every single Saturday morning when he was out working on his property. While I love the quiet, neighbors (patio speakers notwithstanding) can really help you feel part of a community. Even if you don't like their music, at least you know they are over there. 

And so March will be Moving Month. We'll also be putting in a new well pump, doing some minor septic repairs, painting, cleaning, and refinishing some hardwood floors. It will be great to post pics and write about what's going on, because it's going to be a lot!

The Recycling Conundrum

So I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the country, but here in Oregon there has been a monumental ground shift in how recycling is done, and it's changing the way we do things around the house here.

For a couple of months when we were just getting adjusted to living here, we did absolutely no recycling here, and felt awful about it. Milk jugs, peanut butter jars, cardboard boxes...all went into the dumpster on the "farm" end of the property. As the area we live in is not considered a residential area, there simply was no recycling pick-up, just industrial trash, which we were allowed to put our trash bags in.

But about that time, Oregon trash pick-up companies also started notifying their customers that recycling rules were changing, due to the fact that China was no longer accepting mixed recycling. This was a shock for many, including ourselves, as we had no idea all that recycling waste we all created was being put on massive container ships and sent overseas. Talk about having a huge carbon footprint! And for garbage, to boot. 

So the new rules here are that you can ONLY recycle plastic containers marked #1 or #2 (milk or large water bottles), and only if they are 12 or more ounces, and only if they are washed thoroughly and dried before being put into the bin. Clean paper and cardboard is OK. Shredded paper, egg cartons, styrofoam, dirty pizza boxes, and clam shell packaging are not recyclable at all. Cans and bottles are. 

The biggest thing for us is that all those "other" plastic containers, either with other numbers or that are small, will no longer be acceptable. Everything from the orange extract bottle you have in your cupboard to your yogurt carton, your "cardboard" milk carton, to the big plastic container of pretzels you got at Costco last month. Into the dumpster they go, for all eternity or however many thousands of years it takes them to break down.

Were we foolish to imagine there was someone at the recycling center sorting our #1 gallon water jugs from our #5 single serve yogurt cartons? I guess it's financially unrealistic to think of someone either here or in China doing so. 

Anyway, on a brighter note, we've managed to find a waste transfer station close by that accepts recycling, and we've started up again with what we can recycle, separating everything, washing it, and then running it down to the center to be put into separate bins. But while I feel better about the things we are once again recycling, I feel pretty disappointed about all the things we can't recycle, especially since most have the circle with the number at the bottom, meaning it is, in fact, possible to recycle it in some theoretical universe.

So how are things in the blue can in your town? Have the rules changed, or is it business as usual? One of the basic tenants of homesteading is to reduce one's carbon footprint, but I feel with these new rules our footprint just got a lot bigger, and I'm not sure what we can do about it. 

Mañana

I will can them...mañana.

Don't know if I've mentioned it, but when my family had our DNA analyzed, it revealed my mother's side of the family comes from Northern Europe and my father's side from the Mediterranean/Middle East. 

While it's kind of a cool combination, I also think it means I have a constant war going on inside me, between my Scots work ethic and my Mediterranean "mañana mentality." The latter phrase, while it has a Spanish-sounding name, is actually an attitude which occurs not just in sunny Spain, but throughout Southern Europe and the Middle East. (You can tell this because if you visit someplace in the region, like the Acropolis in Greece and they have scaffolds up and are working on restoring it, when your friends visit the same spot 30 years later, the same scaffolding is still up and the place looks exactly the same. True story. I'm sure they're getting to it soon. Really.)  

Who knows, maybe it took the Israelites 40 years to get to the Promised Land because they figured they could always "just go tomorrow." Makes sense to me.

To that slack-y end, I've decided my summers spent slaving over a hot water bath canner are over. This year I'm experimenting with freezing my tomatoes first, then canning them once autumn and cooler temperatures set in and it doesn't feel like my entire being is on fire if I stand in front of the canner.

I'm not sure why I didn't try this years ago. Probably because my Scots ancestors were nagging inside my head to be productive and task-oriented and hard-working. What do they know? The other half of my DNA decided this was, in fact, torture, and that while canning is all well and good, it should not be done if you have any hope of trying to keep the house cool. Which the inner Scots, not surprisingly,  agreed with, since it involved saving money and being thrifty with electricity and all that.

And so into the freezer goes the tomato bounty of summer. And onto the sofa goes me and my 46 chromosomes, with a cold beer and an authorized permission slip of sorts from both sides of my ancestry to put tomato canning off for now. 

It's nice when we can all agree on something.

Three months

Mound of rosemary

I've long thought that it takes about three months for behaviors, moods, and patterns to change. We're in about the third month of temperate weather now, and I can tell by my general mood that I've been out of the heat long enough to recover from the five months or so of torture it inflicts on me.

Of course it's been in the high 70's this week, but somehow spring warmth seems different than fall warmth. 78 degree autumn days seem like a horrible post-script to summer, yet they are delightful in March. That's because by now we've had three months of not baking in the heat, so once again the warmth is welcome.

Speaking of welcome, we've welcomed two new chicks into our home, Daisy and Delilah. Daisy is a Welsummer, Delilah a Cuckoo Maran. Both will lay dark brown eggs once they are mature. And they have their own personalities, even at this early age.  Daisy is a mellow, calm chick and Delilah is full of drama and quite noisy. The day I brought them home Delilah regaled me with shrill peeping that let me know she was NOT happy about riding in the car, and even now, if she can't locate Daisy or feels a little chilled, she sings out. 

Delilah (L) and Daisy (R)

It makes me wonder what her personality is going to be like as a full-grown chicken...we've already had one psycho hen who attacked people, a psycho rooster who attacked other hens, and so we're just hoping Delilah ends up relatively well-adjusted and calm.

In this household there is not much chance of that, but hope springs eternal.

I also got hit with the dreaded spring creeping crud, which laid me out flat in bed for two days and severely sapped my energy for about another five. They say you don't miss your health until it's gone and that's certainly true. Same goes for energy. So of course now it looks as if someone has set off a dust bomb in the house, since when I am sick the house keeper (me) is also. The advantage to that is that I will never be woken from my sickbed by the vacuum. The drawback is that the dust is right there waiting for me, doubled in thickness, once I recover.

Glorious mulch. And a shout out to the trees that lost their lives to provide it. It's nature's cycle.

Another tidbit is that the trees which were uprooted in the storm last month were chipped by our neighbors and so everyone got as much mulch as they wanted. What a bounty! We covered our raised bed area with it and really like how it looks now. Plus it will keep the weeds down. That was my first task upon feeling better and it really felt great to be out in the sunshine with the wheelbarrow. Plus it gave one more legal excuse to procrastinate cleaning house.

In the garden there are blossoms, potatoes sprouting, lettuce and a brand new irrigation system. In the house there is soon-to-be-restored order and cleanliness. 

All things pass away eventually...sickness gives way to health, winter gives way to spring, and dust gives way to clean surfaces.

The counterbalance is, of course that health does eventually give way to sickness once again, spring ushers in hot summer, and dust always returns (sometimes within just a few hours, it seems).

So enjoy it all while you can, because tomorrow will be different. As I said, if you get three months of something, it's enough to change your attitude or life, so I hope all your changes are good ones from now from now 'till summer, and beyond.

Rearranging Deck Chairs and Chopping Wood

Sometimes it feels absolutely surreal to go from the morning news to outside, around our property. With so much turmoil, how can there be such peace within nature?  Do you ever feel that way?

The spring grass is getting tall, the birds are starting to seek out nesting materials, and they're perfectly content in their lives -- quite unlike what I see when I turn on the news. Most days that feels we're all just stacking up the deck chairs at the non-sinking end of the Titanic. The band still hasn't played "Nearer My God To Thee" yet, so we still have a long ways to go, however. I just hope Jack and Rose are okay.

Living on the west coast that's actually how it feels sometimes...like the rest of the country is tilting and we're sitting on a little island of dryness and safety...for now, anyway. 

Of course the tilting country analogy is not really the case; there are plenty of other places in the country that feel like we do here, but after years of planning my exit from California, for once it feels good to be knee-deep amidst all the "silly" environmental regulations, generous state health care, and at times ridiculous seeming touchy-feeliness. It doesn't feel so ridiculous anymore. It's actually quite comforting to know I live in a state that embraces the voiceless, the downtrodden, and the dreamers. And the environment. Even if sometimes it's at a semi-ridiculous opposite end of the spectrum, I'd rather be here than more "red" parts of the country, let's just say that.

I don't have to worry about my representatives voicing my opinions in Congress, because as one of the most liberal areas in one of the most liberal states, I know that's going to happen. So we have that going for us. 

So what's a resistance fighter to do? Chop wood, carry water, as the Buddhist saying goes. In other words, the usual routine -- so comforting when things seem crazy elsewhere. So in light of that, I realized that I was overdue for two improvements in my home garden. One was an automatic irrigation system in the raised vegetable beds, and the other was floating row covers, so in the last week or so, Big Ag and I have been busy installing both.

Why did it take me so long to put both these things in? I guess sometimes life is like that...you get into a rut ( also known as "a routine") you don't even realize you're in until you're out of it. Most of our industrially-focused civilization we live in is like this, all the time...we don't know how much we need something until we have it. The cell phone. The laptop. The food processor. That can cut both ways; it's always important to know how to do most things by hand, but there's nothing wrong with shortcuts if you're proficient and just need to save either time or energy.

That's certainly the case for our country as well. Those of us who have assumed the environment would always be protected, that the highest levels of government would be run in an orderly fashion, and that if our leaders did not always welcome the inquiries of the press that they would still honor them, have had a wake-up call about just how quickly all that can change. 

And so vigilance all around appears to be the call of the day. The nice thing is, at least we still have the birds, the wildlife, and nature to enjoy while we're going about our business. But no small effort of vigilance is important there, too, if we value what we currently enjoy.

So pick your metaphor. Chop wood and carry water. Move those deck chairs. Either way, stay vigilant, but also stay in touch with those things you're most invested in protecting. Those are the things that will keep you sane through times like this.

The Millennials -- 9/11's children

Out of the ashes...

So today is the anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, fifteen years on. Can't quite believe that. 

Big Ag and I were watching a special last night about that horrible day (although we're both old enough to remember it well) but looking at the interviews taken on the street in New York and across the nation, I realized that enough time has gone by that things look different now. 

Footage from 9/11 now really does look like something from out of the past rather than yesterday or last week. Fashions, hairstyles, cars, etc. all are now far enough behind the times that they can be identified as something that would look out of place in the here and now. 

One thing in particular I noticed was that there were no lumberjack/hipster beards, no man-buns and no organic, flannel or flow-y modes of dress among the younger, 20-somethings. People looked upscale and ambitious, rather than homespun, folksy and like they'd just emerged from Whole Foods with some kale and a bottle of kombucha.

rose a new generation!

I thought about that and here is my theory: The attacks of 9/11 and the wars that followed were so awful, so hard to look at and process that it kick-started into high gear the local, homegrown movement, at least among those up and coming kids who came of age after they saw the world change forever and for the worse. 

It's not a bad thing. There's been a resurgence in folk music, growing your own food, canning, natural clothing, letting your hair grow out and thinking, acting and being local. The cool kids are more likely to want to play the banjo or fiddle than dress up in glitter and play electric guitar. The young people I know don't watch the horror show that the national news has become. They shop at the farmer's market, and they go out to see favorite bluegrass bands at the local micro-brewery and trade produce from their gardens with each other.

If they travel, they travel small too. You're more likely to hear a 20-something plan on renting a room in Split, Croatia or backpacking through Vietnam than going to Milan or Monte Carlo.

And they're not moving to New York City and Los Angeles for careers, either. They're moving to Bend, Oregon and Austin, Texas because they like the vibe. Or growing produce in the vacant lots and crumbling shadows of vacated former empires like Detroit . They're embracing small-town life with the same gusto the generation before them embraced the bright lights and big cities, even if they happen to still live in a city.

Thinking local.

People complain that Millennials value personal time much more than money, insist on good self-care and don't want to conform to a corporate work ethic -- and they are therefore labeled as unambitious and lazy by their elders. But I think I understand where they are coming from. When confronted with the horrors that the world is capable of producing, they turned back towards a simpler life -- farming, sleeping under the stars rather than among the skyscrapers, and running a start-up business rather than living in the city and dreaming of "making it big." They understand that happiness is made in the here and now, and that this is all any of us are guaranteed -- a present tense to live in and make the best it can be.

The Millennials are the first true, post-9/11 generation. They are the little children's faces that saw the disillusionment, despair and disappointment of that God-awful Tuesday morning and as they grew up, deliberately turned their adult ones towards a smaller, more tangible and more predictable future. In the face of terrorism, war, the collapse of the housing market and climate change, they are living for today and living consciously. That's not lazy. That's smart.

So God bless them for that, and may they make things work on their own terms -- perhaps better than my generation did. 

Homestead Rescue and Hollywood Reality

So I came home early from work the other day and while I was sitting and having a late lunch, I flipped on the TV to see what was on. I stumbled upon the reality television show, "Homestead Rescue." 

Now at the outset I have to say that growing up in Los Angeles, surrounded by friends' parents who were in various behind-the-scenes aspects of showbiz, I already knew that most of what I was seeing was crafted by off-camera script supervisors. Nothing that comes out of Hollywood is real, including so-called "reality television." Real-looking breasts on TV and in the movies are probably not real. 80 year-old women don't look 80; they look like some nebulous age between 45 and 90, depending on the skill of their cosmetic surgeon.

Martha Stewart does not really tend her own garden and can her own vegetables, no matter what she appears to do on her show. Perhaps she did at one time, but she's an empire manager at this point.

Anyway, while I'm sure a lot of "Homestead Rescue" was scripted in advance, as most reality shows are, what did impress me and resonate within me was how hard Mother Nature appeared to be working to foil the plans of the aspiring off-gridders in the show, in weather situations no reality show series could script. Ice is real. Storms are real. Mother Nature cannot be commanded, coached or scripted. She just shows up and does her thing.

And I found I could relate to the show, not because we are off-gridders, but because we've already learned some of what the Raney family (the hosts) teaches each guest family on the show. The other half of the time, I related out of sympathy, such as when one family's greenhouse vegetables got completely destroyed by mice, or when putting up a new fence on the property resulted in two smashed fingers and muscles so sore that chopping more firewood seemed like too much to ask, but it was 4 pm and freezing, so chop they did. 

There are days when this place discourages me -- so much so that I want to pack it up and move into town. If it's not the wind, it's the wildlife eating our food. Or the insects. Or the broiling heat that decomposes irrigation hoses, destroys electrical wire, and blanches and rots wood. We are currently in line for replacing all the irrigation hosing in our pasture (which springs a leak in a new place that must be fixed every single time I run it. Every. Single.Time.). We're also getting a new irrigation timer with new wiring, and looking into how to create a wind break so that our fruit trees stay erect and don't grow sideways. That's this month. Next month it'll be something else, I promise you.

And as I watched the homesteaders in the series attempt to surmount even more daunting challenges, I sympathized, while simultaneously realizing that we don't have it nearly as bad as we could. But the first time anyone gets country property, no matter how many YouTube videos you've watched or books you've read, the land is still gonna hand you your ass on a regular basis -- even if you're just keeping a few chickens and growing some food. (Usually there is a honeymoon period of a few months to a year, just to make sure your guard is down when fate finally comes calling.)

And it's gonna hurt, because you love those chickens and those vegetables and those fruit trees. 

I think that's why most homesteading blogs disappear or morph into something else after a few years...because people finally realize it's just easier to order a pizza and sit inside listening to Pandora.  There is a reason roughly 80 percent of all 1800s homesteads ended in failure, and it's the same reason the newer ones will as well: Mother Nature has no mercy and will challenge you at every turn, continually. There's a learning curve, but as soon as you master one challenge another presents itself.

But for the sake of knowing the reality of homestead life, "Homestead Rescue" is a show I can recommend. Because for all Hollywood's fakery and slight-of-hand script treatments, I know that some of what you see on that show is real, and for that reason alone, it's a pretty decent entertainment/life lesson show. 

As for us and this place, we're putting Mother Nature on notice that we're not going away. Because while sitting inside listing to Pandora or wandering around some suburban lot in town might sometimes look attractive, what challenge is that? Strive on, I say, whether you're on 1 acre or 2000. Just prepare -- not only for starry nights and birdsong mornings -- which is nature's way -- but also for smashed fingers, sore muscles and expensive equipment getting broken, damaged or just disintegrating over time. Because that is also nature's way.

Crash landed in the tall grass

Today is the 30th anniversary of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, a sad date of remembrance but a lifetime ago for most of us. For me, it was a date that, more than any other, changed the course of my life and sent it into a completely different direction than it had been going in.

At the time of the Challenger disaster, I was an astrophysics student, going to classes and working at a local observatory and plugging my way through electromagnetism, physics, astronomy, and chemistry coursework.  My hope was to someday enter the space program, ideally as as astronaut candidate, less ideally (but still acceptably) in some behind-the-scenes research or technical capacity.

73 seconds into what was thought to be a very routine launch that morning, there was an explosion which brought those dreams crashing to the ground, just as surely as The Challenger itself crashed back to earth.

In the days and months that followed the explosion of Challenger, there was a lot of talk in the aerospace community (which I was on the edges of) about the future of space travel. There was no question it would be at least a couple of years before another launch happened -- maybe. It was also speculated the entire program might be scrapped. 

Friends I knew, who were already working on various science payloads scheduled to go up on future shuttle flights, had been laid off indefinitely. There was even talk that NASA would phase out manned spaceflight altogether as it was just too dangerous (both from a physical as well as a public relations perspective). And that they'd never again launch a non-military, civilian type astronaut into space, as it was just too risky if something went wrong. (This, on the idea that sworn military servicemen and women vow to give their lives, if required, in service to their country. Teachers, scientists, and journalists take no such vow.)

It's ironic that in the end none of those dire scenarios happened, but you know, talk is talk and these future predictions seemed rooted in reality at the time.

And so, anyway, in light of all those things, I did what any self-respecting third year astrophysics student would do, which was leave school, take a year off and backpack around Europe in order to give myself time to reassess my priorities and decide what to do next. It was actually less expensive than staying in school and graduating with no hope of employment would have been.

When I got back eight months later, I knew what I needed to do. I changed my major to journalism in the hopes of becoming a science writer. And 30 years later, I've been done science writing,  and in addition, been a science and writing school teacher. Ultimately it was my love for science that led me towards discovering a more healthful way of eating and living, which led me to be interested in our ecosystem and how we can live lightly within it, and led me to investigate new ways of doing that. Or, long story short, homesteading.

And it occurs to me that every glory and tragedy has the power to affect not just the principal players involved, but also has a ripple effect that changes outcomes for those on the edges of the event as well. Were the Challenger accident never to have happened, I can honestly tell you I don't think my life would be where it is now. And so today I not only remember the seven lives lost on that cold January morning, but also remember everyone, either in the space industry at the time or who were slated to go into it, who ended up in places they never would have thought possible then.

I landed in the tall grass in the years after Challenger -- literally -- and I hope for the same, in some way, for everyone who experiences a moment when everything changes and the compass suddenly swings in a whole different direction. 

This is a poem I wrote soon after the accident, which was published in "Under The Stars" magazine, a division of Jason Scientific, as I began my new career in writing:

Challenger

Once we had a bird, white

edged in black around her wings

and nose

who cut the breeze

gracefully, and without fanfare

Our bird

flew between the stars 

known as one of them

My friends and I thought the bird was ours

and would wait for her to fly over at night

in the company of those close,

comforting stars

and we would watch when, with a booming double-cry

she would gleefully return to us at dawn

the newspapermen took pictures

others waved flags

but we know, really, that she had returned for us alone.

Now,

a twisted treasury of morning flame

she rests, emptied of dreams

in waters heavy with

history and gravity

The newspapermen took pictures

others talked about it

but we knew we'd never see her fly

again, with nose pointed true towards

whatever most reachable and infinite

Tonight the breeze, undisturbed

flutters leaves aloft

stars rise rank and file behind them

alone, as we are

now separated from them by parsecs

which seem much greater tonight

unable to comfort

even the closest of them.

Balsamic Government

I could drink it!

Just typed, "how to make your own white balsamic vinegar" into that magic, invisible university known as Google and discovered there are some things that cannot be easily DIY'd...white balsamic vinegar being one of them. Unless, of course you have access to grapes from the Modena region of Italy, along with master-level winemaking skills.

While I do have the winemaking equipment and posses a novice-level skill at making it, I don't have the grapes or the time. And one out of three ain't good enough in this case.

Daunting to think, however (referencing my previous post) that in the wake of the Collapse of Everything we may have to do without our beloved white balsamic vinegar. How will we eat our post-apocalyptic homegrown watermelons and salads? That alone seems a good enough reason to keep our democracy and basic infrastructure going. So back off, Doomers.

Who would best support continued importing of white balsamic vinegar?

I do make my own laundry detergent, soap, cleaning products and a fair amount of "basics" kind of food, such as tomato paste. But other things are just not worth the time, equipment cost and skill level they take to produce on an individual basis, for one household.

So I probably can't make white balsamic...But I can start using my copious supply of eggs to make my own mayonnaise (very easy) and making ketchup from a jar or two from the store of canned tomatoes (also easy) I have put aside, so those will be projects in the weeks to come.

I'm always looking for ways to make things from scratch using basic ingredients, but the key to success is sometimes to know what do make yourself and what to buy.

And of course support the infrastructure that supports the products you can't live without. I'm willing to put up with a lot of political and governmental crap in order to keep my First World need for chocolate, white balsamic vinegar, bananas and the occasional bar of Halvah coming into the nation.

My vote goes to whomever supports that. And universal healthcare, of course.

A small helping of TEOTWAWKI*, anyone?

New lettuce and spinach are in the ground today here at the homestead, and with the warm El Ninó weather blowing in, it feels a little more like spring than winter around here. 

I spent the morning planting and pruning our roses, and after finishing that, was reading a blog I enjoy. It referenced another blog (one I wasn't familiar with) whose authors have stopped writing due to their belief that a cataclysmic meltdown of society is imminent. The author of the original blog I was reading stated she was also very nervous about things right now, which I took to mean an impending collapse of society, the enforcing of martial law, city types fleeing for rural areas, post-collapse danger, etc.

What some people wish for.

This was a person who, up until today, I considered reasonable -- a fun read on basic homesteading activities. Sometimes you have to wonder where people get these ideas, and what kind of world they live in that leads them to these sorts of conclusions. What could it be? 

I know in some cases it's religious fundamentalism and the belief that we are living in the End Times. The problem with that is, even in Jesus' time, people thought they were living in the End Times. So did folks in the 1800's. So did people during WWII (which I kind of get). 

Honestly,  I think it's a huge warning sign of living a too-small life. I wish I could snatch those doomsday people up for an afternoon and take them to a café on the palazzo in Verona, Italy for some pasta, wine and gelato. People in Europe have an advantage over us in that they can look around them and see 1,800 or more years' worth of evidence of human life in architecture, roads, and art. And  there, subliminally, is the message: life, does in fact go on. Even what seems like the end of the world tends not to be, when it's all said and done.

I also think people sometimes enjoy believing they are living in critical times because it makes them feel more important than being just a blip on the radar screen at the beginning of a very slow and somewhat inevitable decline most civilizations eventually go through. "Not with a bang but with a whimper" and all that, or so the saying goes. It gives their lives  a larger and more immediate purpose to believe they are present at the first shot of a great conflict that quickly destroys everything we are familiar with.

What I wish for.

And so I say, live a rural life, live a quiet life, but also live a balanced life. If you feel like America is headed for some kind of crash, then get outside America and see that despite terrorism, crime and religious extremism, most of the world is still going about their lives as usual, and short of a killer asteroid and combined nuclear strike, the world and indeed our nation will go on as usual, tomorrow, next year, and the day after you die.

TEOTWAWKI? More like COLAWKI (Continuance of Life As We Know It). Have some gelato and rest assured that the sun will probably still come up tomorrow, beginning a day that will probably not be all that different from yesterday or last week, especially if you're on a homestead.

* TEOTWAWKI stands for "the end of the world as we know it."

Life on Earth

I love to learn and read, but this means that sometimes I get presented, in a short period of time, with an odd assortment grab-bag of facts which come together into a synthesis of perspective I might not otherwise have had. I recently watched the National Geographic Channel's series on the continent of North America, and along with a few other factoids I came across, it got me thinking about things.

Facts:

1. Dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 million years. That's 165 million years of generations upon generations of creatures, being born, eating, growing, living, giving birth to the next generation, and dying. They did this over a timespan long enough for entire landforms and continents to change. Enough time for the species themselves to evolve, along with the habitats they spent their lives in.

2. Humanoid creatures have roamed the earth for approximately two and a half (2.5) million years, or just a little over one percent of the time the dinosaurs were the main characters in the saga of Mother Earth. (And, of course, not at the same time.)

3. A climate accord was signed in Paris last week, which may or may not have any teeth to it, and may or may not do any good in reducing greenhouse gasses.

4. The "back to the land" and urban homesteading movement appears to have peaked in popularity in this country, along with all the associated activities related to it. People will still find and learn how to do those activities, but the "trend" has hit its peak and is on the downslope, losing traction as the mainstream economy has gained it back from the Crash of '08.

5. Human beings are still killing each other. Some of the killing is (in the killers' minds) purposeful, and some is completely random -- innocent people chosen to bear the brunt of someone's rage and anger.

Here's my takeaway idea from all these snippets of information:  We are, for all the damage we've done and all the magnificence we've built, still very much the new kids on the block as far as Life on Earth has developed. Great hierarchies of ecosystems, plants and animals existed before us for a hundred times longer than we have survived, thus far. 

Earth and some of its many and varied inhabitants will survive whatever we do to the planet. Oh, sure, we will certainly change the players though our actions, but we will not, no matter how terrible we are, extinguish all life on earth. 

The homo sapiens and polar bear and butterfly may all go the way of the pterodactyl and brontosaurus, but long after the tectonic plate which the coastline of Los Angeles sits on has shifted north to being next to San Francisco, something will still be roaming around or at least growing on this planet. Evolution will still continue over time. And the earth itself will still move under the feet of whatever's living here.

But might we be one of the lucky species to survive? Might my genes live on in my descendants for another 160 million years?  Perhaps -- but I would guess not. As a species, we can't seem to recognize the importance of solving long-term problems (at least not enough to override short-term convenience). Plus, too many of our ilk have murderous impulses they are unable to control and if that doesn't kill us entirely, it will certainly knock down our numbers at some point. 

But if any interstellar travelers from the Oort Cloud are watching us, it's no surprise they haven't made contact...we're newborn babies, in terms of geologic time. We've barely shown up on the radar screen of legitimate life, and seem hell-bent on destroying each other to a point where our odds of survival may be so low no one's taking any notice of us. Why should they?

If you are part of the homesteading movement, or attempt in any way to live lightly on the earth we all share, your actions are important on a moral level but will ultimately have very little actual impact on whatever it is that's going on on this earth. So the decline of the homesteading movement really won't change anything. Nor will your actions. If you choose to live a certain way, it should be done with the knowledge that you're primarily doing it to live according to a moral cause you find noble and the right thing to do, or for some other reason. But you're not going to change much.

And that is OK, because no one who is here -- not the cockroach, not the meercat, and not the whale, will probably still be around for the same amount of time it took the dinosaurs to die off. And that thought is either comforting or depressing. It's the former to me. The continents shift and the species change, but to Mother Earth, for better or worse, we are temporary dwellers on her surface. 

So do what you feel morally compelled to do, yes, but don't spend a lot of time worrying about the planet or what happened in Paris last week, or whether or not the next generation knows how to grow food. On the grand and geologic time clock which this planet marks her hours on, we've only been here a second or two. 

And she will survive and move on, into the future, from whatever our angry little bi-pedaled, opposable-thumbed species does to it. That is a certainty.