The Deer

It may be that I’m just more focused on the details of the great hunting trip. When one looks for coincidences or hidden meaning, one can usually find it. I have known friends in the past that did something dishonest and for days afterward, they swore that karma was taking revenge on them. Personally, I think that is just what happens when one has a guilty conscience. I’m about to digress, but I’ll stop and get back to the point.

It may be that I’m just more focused on the details of the great hunting trip, but everything that happens seems to be easily linked to this, my Destiny. For one, we have planned out our tent / camping dry run for March. Quite unwittingly, we scheduled our dry run on the same weekend as the biggest primitive muzzleloader show in the Midwest. And then, there was today…

I recently returned to my Suburban Farm from a trip back home to Michigan. One thing that that triggers is the terrible chore of cleaning out the fridge. That was disgusting. But then I had to replenish my food supply. After an hour in the local Whole Foods, I returned home and realized that I forgot one little item: tortillas. No biggie, I thought to myself, as I’ll just run down to the corner market and pick up a pack.

Out on the main road through town, I saw flashing lights, stopped cars, and a police officer holding one of those animal control polls fall on his keister. I was driving my truck and was in front of a pizza joint. I spun the wheel surgically onto Dickerson Road and pulled into the lot. Running to help, I realized that the cop was not wrestling with a dog, as I suspected, but was attempting to wrangle a deer. She was hit by a car, but the assailant had sped off. After some struggle, a cook from the pizza shop, me and the officer carried the deer back into the woods so she could be put down. It was obvious that she was suffering and it was the humane thing to do. It was the first time I ever touched a live, wild deer. I had her front legs pulled tight to her neck with my left arm and she bled all over my new shorts.

Once she was down, a guy walked up, asked the officer if he could pull his truck up and take the meat. Waste not, want not. I had had that same thought, but I did not have any of the necessary tools to strip out the organs right away, as I was sure that many organs were spilling out in the body cavity. The guy that took the deer had his bow and hunting accoutrements in his truck.

So everything is pointing toward the great hunting trip. My next planned purchase will be a hunting knife.

Happy New Year, all.

Goodwill toward men

The American System is under attack yet again. For many years now, as a beacon of hope and freedom in the Western World, we’ve had a policy of allowing criminals to pay their debt to society. Guilt or innocence is determined by an unbiased court and jury. But that system - as fair and equitable as it is - is not enough, it seems, to serve “justice” in this great land.

A popular “news anchor” on a cable network has said that a man, who served the prescribed time in prison for his crime of animal abuse, should have been executed for his crime. And then, when our Nation’s leader thanked that ex-con’s employer for giving him a second chance, our Nation’s leader was attacked by the “news anchor” as, in short, being amoral or some such thing.

Animal abuse is a terrible thing. What’s worse? Domestic assault. Still worse? Not any of those acts themselves, but the bad education they give to children. Yes, it isn’t that children are exposed to terrible acts, but they are taught by them. Teaching a child that it is fair to hit your wife during an argument is about the most despicable thing that I can imagine. So, would that “news anchor” believe that such a man that struck a woman in front of children should be executed? Doubtful.

We should consider, quickly, what would happen if the beliefs of this “news anchor” were put into effect. Well, it’s hard to tell, exactly, since the “argument” he makes is generally hyperbole only and has no real structure. But I’ll guess that it would be impossible to pay a debt for past crimes. We’d have to assume that people couldn’t change. Once a sinner, always a sinner… After spending some time in jail, people would be released to be shunned by society, unable to get a job, and would subsist through welfare. Or starve.

I think this is a teachable moment. What I’ve learned is that we should require television personalities to write a short essay of five paragraphs to explain their position every time they choose to speak in hyperbole to strike an emotional chord instead of facilitating real discussion. And this essay should be able to get at least a B in a ninth grade English class.

　

Impetus and the Follow-through

Many years ago, I was close to a path that could lead to the practice of medicine and my friend was on a path to working day-to-day in industry. Those paths were launched when we were young adults. No longer are we young adults. We aren't elderly, either. That means that we're just plain adults. What a bore.
At some point while we were traveling down those paths, we switched. I am an Industrialist, so to speak, working five days a week on first shift, and my friend works countless hours at ungodly times in a hospital, keeping people breathing as long as possible.
As we traveled down our paths toward adulthood, my friend did a much more effective job at raising a family than I. He has a beautiful child and an incredibly patient and forgiving wife. That last part is important to this story.
Something that comes with being an adult is that partying, as we used to call it, is no longer a thrill. My friend and I have never really been all that into things like skiing, skydiving, or any other sort of traditional weekend-warrior nonsense either. Speaking only for myself, I have become a bore entirely. Weekends are housework or gardening, as all of my faithful readers are aware. And then…
During one unholy pre-dawn hour in the hospital, following, I'm sure, a long day of caring for a baby, my friend wrote me an email. That email laid out the groundwork for the next year of our lives. It said something to the effect of:
"Want to do a primitive flintlock hunt in the mountains of Pennsylvania during the coldest period of 2012?" Not owning a flintlock and having never hunted, I naturally answered, "yes."
The difference between a good idea and a revolution is commitment. Within two weeks of that email, we had, in hand, a new camp stove and a 10' x 12' wall tent on order. With that $700 spent and no legal or ethical way to retrieve it, we have started the clock on the one-year countdown to the most money we've ever spent on an activity that is doomed to failure. Am I being pessimistic or are we truly this misguided?
Today, we fired off a flintlock for the first time in our lives. We're jumpy, often confused, and laughed for three hours with wide-eyed, childlike glee that usually is reserved for the opening scenes of horror movies. If we are to have designs on walking – or at least limping – out of the frozen forest alive, our only hope is practice. The clock is running…

A Peaceful Day

Regardless of your beliefs, history, or memories, I hope that we all can find the strength today to take a step toward a lasting, global peace.

Merry Christmas.

How do you solve a problem?

Somewhat famously, Pres. Obama stated that the healthcare issue in the United States was a test to see if Americans could still solve big problems. The problem he was referring to is that healthcare costs a relatively high percentage of our GDP. This is money that could otherwise go to reinvigorating infrastructure, educating children, our buying a new stand mixer for every kitchen in the country.

If that was the problem, what have we, as a Nation, solved? According to what I hear on the news, nothing. What we did do, according to the news, is try a socialist takeover of the country, skewed the marketplace, gave a windfall to drug companies (if the reporting is on Network A), screwed the drug companies and innovation (if the reporting is on Network B), or a whole bunch of other stuff. None of what is reported on answers the question “how do we stop spending money on healthcare so we can spend it on other items?” If we’re not answering that question, why report it?

And here is my hang-up for today: there isn’t enough news to fill a 24 hour news cycle. There is more than enough stuff that happens to talk incessantly for 24 hours, babbling like the idiot in the back seat that insists on reading every billboard and road sign to you as you drive down Interstate 94 toward Chicago… but that isn’t news, is it?

Our country’s legislature just came back from a break. Over that break, on every newscast on any network talked at length about the Republican desire to overturn the healthcare bill. That was a month. One whole month of talking about what a group of people wanted to do. They were contemplating, planning and scheming on how to do it. But they couldn’t. Why? Congress was not in session, that’s why! We talked for a full month for a brief period every hour in the 24 hour news cycle about something that people wanted to do.

In that time, we kept fighting a war in the Middle East.

Celebration of the Land

This week, dear Readers, I realized that Thanksgiving is fast upon us. More so than any religious holiday, which celebrate ideas, or the 4th of July, which celebrates our Nation, Thanksgiving is my most favorite holiday. All Americans celebrate together the very ground that sustains us, the fresh water that is available to us, and the big sky that inspires us.

As we turn to this holiday, I ask of all of us to understand what we are celebrating and think about what we’re doing to help sustain it.

I’m off to hike Hawk Mountain. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Nice Things About Society

A few nights ago, I walked home from the bar. It was dark. I passed a single girl walking down the street. So, I don’t know if everyone here knows what ye ol’ Suburban Farmer looks like, but I have long hair and a beard, which isn’t exactly the norm for my neighborhood. We both felt safe enough, I suppose.

Every day, I go to bed in my house, which doesn’t have bars on the windows. Also, though I do think we all have the right to own a gun, I don’t believe I should own a whole bunch as they are the only justice I can count on.

See, we live in a Society (capital S). I really like having a government that pays for public utilities and services. Tonight, I fear that a majority of Americans may have forgotten that Society isn’t something that we always have, but something for which we have to pay.

I wonder who we’ll blame in 2014.

More Unacceptable Terms

Two more to cut out:

1) Competitive District

2) Polls indicate…

Here we are on the eve of the election. There have been two terms that have been shouted over and over again - to the detriment of the American people. Let’s do away with these…

“Competitive District” sounds simple enough. There are a lot of competitive districts this year. Many are generally right-leaning that may go left, others are the opposite. But in all cases I‘ve seen, it is the candidates that are competing, not any stance or belief. Those competitive districts are those that have the most to lose - or have already lost a lot - and are full of tense and terrified voters. So to get the vote, every dig at the opposition is taken and every opportunity to describe personal beliefs is shunned. In this way, the People have a popularity contest, masked by the notion that a serious public discourse is taking place. The voters are not all sitting in public meeting houses, convincing their neighbors that, indeed, the bailouts prevented worse job loses or some other important topic. Each voter is betting on which candidate will take the least from him or her, period.

And it is these people that make up the polls. The most useful poll is a sort of quiz, asking voters “what is the name of your governor?” That kind of data really shows something. You could also ask “is evolution real?” Both of these questions have a right answer. All governors have names and evolution (in one form or another) is absolutely real. Now, if 50% of a state missed the first question, the schools would start to focus on facts like that a bit more, I think. If 50% of a group missed the second one, a candidate would say “and this shows that American’s don’t want to accept this heresy!” Having a poll show that popular opinion says X doesn’t make X a fact. That subtlety has been lost along the way, often, and is embarrassing to me.

Thus, I soldier forth into tomorrow very worried. This damage will keep getting worse for awhile still. I’m guessing another 25 years.

Officially, it has passed

If I busied myself with only one feature of today, and if that feature was that it is 62F outside, then I would most likely tell all of you that today is just like a spring day.

But there are more qualities that make “today” than simply the temperature. The air is very dry and the wind is accompanied by a gentle rustle, supplied by the browning leaves still clinging to the trees. The long shadows cover not the last bits of snow, as they do in spring, but the remnants of the summer – the tomato cages I have yet to bury deep in the shed. And today, I pulled the rest of the pepper plants from the ground. The 2010 garden is, my friends, no more.

As we all grow older, we know that we too pass. What is it that we will leave behind that will, in some ways, keep our ideas and our qualities alive? For a garden, that’s an easy question. I have pasta sauce, pizza sauce, salsa, a murderous jar of straight jalapeno juice and a few gallons of tomato juice canned and stored away in the cupboard.

I need to do something so the rest of my life can leave such a delicious legacy…

They are the future.

I first volunteered for Philly Cares a number of years ago. There is a day once a year where a large number of volunteers from all around Philadelphia goes into the public schools and helps paint, organize, and do various cleaning jobs that need doing. One thing this gives me is a yearly benchmark on some facet of public education. It’s a feeling more than any quantitative measure, for sure. Whatever this benchmark is, I can say that I do not see progress and I’m very scared for our Nation. When I’m scared for our Nation, I am invariably worried about the free and democratic “Western” world, as the United States is a cornerstone of this way of life. Enough of the dramatics…

The group I was with, which was organized through my place of work, spent the day in a North Philly school named after Philadelphia administrator from the 19th century.

It’s mid-October. Almost 30 school days have passed in this school year. Why is it that only now the Reading Room is organized? The supply closet, which is where kids get their pencils, was fully impassable prior to the volunteer day. A new library was just built for this school, which is wonderful, but the teacher does not have a computer. And, as I said before, a month of school days have passed for the kids and that time will never be regained.

What else? A warning is painted in the restrooms warning children “Do Not Drink from Sinks.” This, in a school that has kindergarteners.

This is the crux of my concern with volunteering and charity: one should always help his or her neighbor. Being kind is the key to a peaceful, prosperous and democratic society. However, too much of our social infrastructure has moved back into the realm of charity. If budgets are tight, which they (always) are, we cannot cut from our long-term security. More than the military, well-educated citizens is what makes our Nation secure.

Reunion - penned a few weeks back

Today, in the waning days of September 2010, I received a postcard from myself. Sending yourself a postcard is a fun thing to do when you travel. I send one back to my home in North Wales, PA, on the day I leave the town I’m visiting and race it home. Come Wednesday, I get a nice reminder that I just had a break. This break was in Kansas City, Missouri.

I grew up in Paw Paw, just a few miles down I-94 from the exit for Decatur, where my father grew up. He has lived almost all of his live within that stretch of Eisenhower’s interstate, save just a couple of years. Those were spent training for and fighting in the Vietnam War.

Let me state something very clearly: all public-schooled American children are taught, rightfully, that the Constitution of the United States give the power to declare war to the Legislative Branch of our Government. Though that never happened during the Vietnam Conflict, it was most certainly a War. We can call it Just or Unjust as we see fit, but I was in Kansas City last weekend with a lot of folks that fought it, just the same.

I remember the Fourth of July parades is Decatur, on the corner of Phelps Street, when (I was very young, mind you) veterans of the Great War rode down the parade route in convertibles - waving. They weren’t able to march anymore. Now, almost 30 years later, the World War II vets are becoming as rare as those of the Great War were in my childhood. Someday, the same will be true for the Veterans of Vietnam. But that time is not here yet! Over the weekend, those spunky Vietnam Vets marched all over KC having one hell of a time.

Reunions are not new. As I’m not versed in the terminology of the military, I wouldn’t have thought that this reunion (actually, a series of reunions) was anything special. But this reunion was special. The U.S. Army is divided and subdivided into groups where men and women from all over the country end up shoulder to shoulder with each other all over the world. In the late 1960’s, that place was Vietnam. The reunion I just attended was for the United States Army, Americal Division, 198^th Light Infantry Brigade, 1^st of the 52^nd Battalion (written as 1/52), Delta Company. If the U.S. army was this newspaper page, a Company would be just a couple of letters. At the most - on the day when the most Americans were fighting in Vietnam - there was a half a million Americans there. Maybe one hundred were in the Delta Company on that day.

I’m not attempting to say that Delta Company was in any way special. What I am going to say is this: more than forty years later, this Company has closed ranks and meet year after year as if, from my experience, no time has passed at all.

There’s a man from Missouri that raises around 100 head of beef cattle a year as a living. Another is a Louisiana native that is one heck of a good time, but is almost impossible for this Northerner to understand come midnight. Then there is my father, from Decatur. A man that lost both of his legs in Vietnam walks on prosthetic legs and is the last one to complain about walking someplace new. One man lives today in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn in which he grew up (he owns a restaurant there now). Some folks from Pittsburgh, Savannah, all over the Midwest also attended. And me. I was able to witness this happen now for the second time.

Mornings of these reunions start with breakfast, of course, and then some sightseeing. All this time past, but when the commanding officer starts walking for the next destination, everyone falls in line and follows. I’d be at the front of the pack, whenever possible, as these COs command a respect that is infectious; one wants to follow a real leader. Same with the Lieutenants and the Sergeants within the ranks. Though I’m sure they earned the right of their ranks, the reality is that they simply were those ranks. Somehow in that war and in that time, water found it’s level.

Whether the rest of the day is visiting local museums, memorials, or the cityscapes themselves, the old soldiers fill the entire day talking. Today, these families have forty more years of a story to tell. Kids are in their 30s. The majority of their lives (for the most part) were spent raising those families, working jobs outside of the military and through it all, the friendships forged on the other side of the world over many long months are as strong as ever. And they’re getting stronger. Every year, more Delta Company veterans are found and more come to the reunion. I, for one, cannot wait until next year.

One Step at a Time…

Following another week of primary coverage, editorials passing for news, and no visible efforts to save this great land from the destruction of its vision, I just can't take it anymore. Also, there is probably nothing I can do about it. But in this time of talking heads, may as well fight fire with fire. I now start talking about politics until November.

Here is a short list of words and terms that must go out of use immediately:
1) Liberal / The Left
2) Conservative / The Right
3) Liberal / Conservative Agenda
4) Values Voter
5) Pro-Life

All of these terms have a shared quality that puts them on this "don't use" list. That quality is this: they are meaningless.

Liberal and Conservative (and their counterpart words, left and right) are given equal time on the news and are aligned with the two parties we reliably have on the ticket. These two words are supposed to represent things that are opposite. Or, at least, we all feel that they should be opposite. Or something. Are they really supposed to be opposite? Each word encompasses social issues, fiscal issues, foreign affairs, domestic affairs, military, and everything else in the entire world. Not just those things that could or should be within the bounds of the government, either, but truly EVERYTHING. I talked to a guy in the bar a few weeks back and he linked his conservative beliefs with a love of sports. Using vague terms like this just does us and our Nation a disservice. Vague terms lead to arguments – precise terms foster constructive debate.

Since we can't use liberal or conservative anymore, we can't use "liberal agenda" or "conservative agenda" anymore either. That goes without saying, right?

It's different for the term "Values Voter." This term is used by a subset of Republican voters that put social issues at the top of their voting agenda. That said, my values guide the way I vote. That's true for everyone else too. Either your values inform your voting or you just randomly pull levers. Everyone is a values voter. Don't use a term just because you think it makes you sound special.

Also, everyone is Pro-Life. The opposite of that is Pro-Death. Nobody (er, hardly anybody) is Pro-Death. All reproductive issues are hard. Using divisive terms only hurt the people that need help (all too often, very young, very scared).

Sitting here, I don't feel clever. I don't feel the catharsis I often feel from writing. I feel frustrated. I feel an irrational wave of words all around me and I fear that they are confusing good people to act on emotion and not on information. I'm going to get a cup of tea.

End of August

Canned 15 jars of various stuff today. May be that my garden is done for the year, which means that I will not have any true fall canning. First time that ever happened. Times, are they a' changin?

Speechless

I apologize for being away for so long. There is a saying that seems to hold rather true: it takes 20 percent of the effort to get 80 percent of the results and it takes the other 80 percent of the effort to get the last 20 percent of the results. Or something more eloquent and catchy than that. In any event, I’ve been in that last 80% of the effort. Wainscoting, baseboard, quarter round, other trim, gluing, caulking, etc. I also have a full-time job! And the garden! I just finished my second set of 10 pints of sauce this year. Bumper crop indeed.

And then… and then… and gentlemen and THEN!

Today, the glass tiles from American Olean came. Finally. Two weeks of waiting. For sure, they are beautiful. I was looking over the box to look for tips to put them up on the wall - starting tomorrow - when I came across a small phrase written just under and just to the left of the “AO” logo. It read like this:

Made In China.

So they’re getting returned. If I’m left with tiles manufactured for low wages in a country that does not reciprocate patent laws, has almost no enforced environmental dumping laws, and controls all media, then I’m getting material that costs under ten bucks a square foot. Not this $22 dollar a foot stuff. I’m glad that American Olean still makes basic tile in the U.S. (the white tiles I have were made here by them), but I’m not going to feed into the profit margins gained by shipping overseas the jobs that used to make these lovely tiles here.

The search continues. Luckily, I’m a patient man…

Still Surviving on the 18th day…

I am still very confused as a consumer. I don't know exactly how I determine the "real impact" of the food I buy. Is something grown without fertilizers 100 miles away better overall than something grown with fertilizers 1 mile away? What if the difference was 300 miles? Which one uses more non-renewable resources?
Or freezing… If I used conventional power sources and if the company that makes the organic food uses conventional power sources, does that negate everything that organic gains?

And that is where I am. Does Local mean anything if the local environment is still dependant on use of oil and coal? So what am I doing about it???

Nothing. I'm still working on my bathroom. Home Depot has a paint brand called Freshaire Choice (http://freshairechoice.com). I like the colors and it seems to be good, but again, I don't know how this is made. One of the biproducts could be dioxins. Or a specific filtration process may require the freshly-harvested skin from the face of an albino Tiger cub. Who knows???

The Trueblood Company (http://www.truebloodco.com/cabinets.html) is across the street from my house, so I'm going to solicit there for cabinetry for the renovation. Can't get any more local than that…

My garden is going like gang-busters right now. I've harvested well over one hundred tomatoes and am canning away at night to keep up.

Tomorrow is Thursday. My tub should be here soon…

Day 14 – A Bathroom at Rocket Speed

Food-wise, friends, I've been doing well. There are many questions left to answer, though I am ashamed to admit today that I don't know how to ask those questions. I will figure it out, in due time. I do my best thinking in the bathtub…

…ah yes. The bathtub. It's still on order.

The bathroom 1.0 had an exhaust fan that drew humidity up out of the room and deposited it in the insulation, between the ceiling and the roof decking. That no good. The fan is gone, as is seven or eight square feet of ceiling. Since Thursday, that hole has been patched, all wallboard holes have been patched, a first coat of oil-based primer has been applied to all dark areas of the bathroom, joints in the wallboard have been filled with joint compound, and more than half of the tiling has been completed.

The company I found to be the best fit for tile is American Olean (http://americanolean.com). All of their material (or at least, all that I saw) is made in the U.S. and their variety is almost endless. For those of us on the cheap, they have subway tile at a quarter a tile, which is pretty damn good. I needed square tile and that was only a little more for the "bright white" variety. It scores and splits easily.

Insofar as flooring goes, there is a "sheet vinyl" flooring made by Armstrong (http://www.armstrong.com) that stays flat without glue. That will be my solution for the bathroom. But why would staying flat without glue be a plus???

Because I was close to burning my goddamn house down instead of ripping out my fingernails and catching shards of splintered wood with my eyes when I tried to remove the old glued-down flooring… that's why! Simple is key to everything. If you need glue to keep something flat, then the good lord does not mean for that thing to be flat in the first place, so let it go on its merry way.

I will – boldly – estimate something for you now, Dear Reader. As today is Sunday, I will be done with the bathroom by the end of next Sunday, save the vanity and the medicine cabinet, which I have yet to source.

It has been very hot here these last few days. That leads to many outcomes. For one, showering outside in the heat is just fine indeed. For another, the chickens have slowed their egg production. I'm getting only two eggs a day at best and have none to spare at this time. The uncertainty of egg production has made this challenge that much harder.

Honestly, I'm impressed people made it this far as a species without giving out to something…

All the best.

Day 11 - The Way and the Truth

The Way is a method and the Truth is a goal. The Way and the Truth, in the same place at the same time, is the essence of humanity. Friends, I don’t know what I’m about to say, but I feel that the Way and the Truth are near.

I have met like minded people recently. I urge you to meet them too. You can find them at

http://www.dinegreen.com

. It seems that there is an association out there that has provided a Way. Through a series of test questions, a restaurant can earn a “green rating” which appears to align with what we’re trying to do here: be sensible. I’m honored to live in a little town outside of Philadelphia that has one of a dozen Pennsylvania restaurants that makes the cut to be certified.

But that’s a Way. What about the Truth? Well, dear Readers, you already feel the Truth a bit, don’t you? Like spider legs up the stem of your brain little thoughts crawled up wondering “but why does such a big state have only a dozen green restaurants?… there must be some out in the rural areas that are default green… it’s a .com, so it’s for profit… this is a self-selecting group that is green-washing…”. And we all lose hope again.

You know, the Chevrolet automobile company is about to release an electric car. That’s about the best Way I can think of to take a strong step forward as a Civilization toward recognizing that Humans are part of the corporeal reality we call the Universe and we better damn well respect it. But I naturally feel that this new technology is a strong step while, at the same time, I know that Chevy does it because they have to in order to survive. Two minds are easy here: Markets and Progress - a new technology makes a change easy.

The Way that relates to eating locally isn’t Progress. It’s a Regress. We’ve been there before. We evolved from there. We evolved culturally away from there.

I realize that I’m not on the verge of stating the Way and the Truth. I’m here today to say what prevents us from getting there.

Deep inside every Western Culture Human, eating locally feels like admitting defeat. It feels like a failure. It isn’t Progress. It is admitting that our grandparents knew something we didn’t, and like the snot-nosed pricks we are, we pout instead of doing the right thing.

So we see the self-selecting group trying to move us back to Green Dining and we see a gimmick, and we see an attempt to be wholly self-sufficient as a heroic effort in the spirit of John Wayne or any other red-blooded American that pulled himself up by his bootstraps… And we don’t let ourselves see the wisdom that grew out of generations of living with the land.

What did I learn on day 10? The Truth is, or at least the truth must be, that profit is a dirty word. Profits come as long as we do the right thing. Thinking "well it's a business so of course..." leads us to failure. Business, government, green and the-old-way is all driven by people. And the Truth is from people. If people won't do it, whatever it is, then there is no Truth for us.

We live by our Man-made economy. We win by making that economy reflect what we want. When I choose to eat dinner out, I will eat at the Tex Mex Connection. When I eat at home, I won’t expect fresh apples in December or steaks in April. I can eat in season for where I live just fine.

So what do I do with the garden? I should grow a Paw Paw tree…

Day 9: Very Simple Changes

The Lancaster CSA is a farm share coop here in the Philadelphia region. Everything through that CSA is from within one hundred or so miles from here and most of it is organic. If I was to add to my diet, this is the way. Further, Merrymead Dairy is only about a mile from the Suburban Farm and, for four bucks, I can buy a gallon of delicious, local, whole milk.

I refuse to believe that humanity toiled for a hundred thousand years to move from the desert savannah to wondrous places like Butte, Montana or Jerusalem only to eat in the very same way we did back then. Nay, I say, and at the risk of sounding like I’m writing a treatise on the destiny of Man as a Capitalist, we differentiated our work in a society so some of us can focus on building flying cars while others grow the food.

So Jerusalem is mired in war and we don’t have flying cars yet. I’m sure someone is trying…

What do I spend my time on instead of putting all of my efforts towards subsisting? Well, I’m still showering outside.

If there is anyone out there that isn’t broke yet and feels like spending money, I’ve been impressed on how many U.S. made building materials there are out there. Same with hand tools. Have down-economy guilt? Build a three season room!

Day 7: The Saga of the Commode, Day 3

So now that we all know exactly where and when we are…

I have to start with my most favorite part of the day: the shower. No, I am not a wizard-carpenter that somehow got a new, fully functioning shower in my bathroom today. What I did do was set up the old tub – including the surround on the back and one side – facing into my deck from the ground. From there, I lashed it to the deck with twine and straps and hung a camping shower bag from the deck. The whole get-up was next to my clothesline, from which I hung a shower curtain. It is absolutely private and will serve well for the next two weeks.

But why two weeks? Well, because the American-made tub I chose takes two weeks for delivery. That’s not getting me down, though, because I have an awesome outdoor shower!

When we last left our hero, his indoor bathroom was nothing but bare studs. Throughout the day, the remaining joists were installed, all of the subfloor layers were put down, and most of the walls were put back up. I also moved the heating register to a more logical location of the bathroom, so I can put in a bigger vanity with more under-sink storage. This required only two trips to the hardware store…

The new general design for the bathroom is this: a claw foot bathtub in a corner of the room that is tiled from the floor to a height of eight feet. The rest of the walls will get wainscoting and a fresh paint job. A new vanity and low-flow toilet are in store, too.

But for food. What happened today? Shockingly, I had some frozen pizza that was already in the house. I had this at ten a.m. I haven’t been hungry since. So with all of the challenges of the weekend, there was little failure on my food journey. There is one more slight compromise to come, however. See, with a sense of accomplishment like that I have today, a tall glass of wine is pretty much required. To do this, I went over to the Cardinal Hollow Winery. There, a local guy named Chris makes wine in his basement from locally grown fruits.

I’ve had a lot of time to think over the weekend about the next steps of this trial. Starting tomorrow, I’m cutting the grain ration in half and adding in fruits and veggies from the local farmers markets.

This Damn House – Just Fixing the Leaking Toilet

The “addition” to the house, which houses the kitchen and main bathroom, is still older than most houses, being built in the 19-teens. The floor joists have two foot centers, on average, but range from 22 inches to 28 and a hair. The decking clocked in somewhere around two healthy inches of old planks, plywood, luon, and whatever else they stuck in between to “level” it. Save a small edge left along the non-load-bearing walls, it’s all out. It’s eleven at night on Saturday.

With that, a partition wall that housed the plumbing for the tub is now on my front porch. The tub is in the backyard. The vanity…on the deck. The toilet went missing hours ago and is assumed to be armed and dangerous.

To fill in the literal gaps in the framing, I’ve hung a dozen or so 2 x 6 cross beams off of American made hangers I found at Home Depot. The strap I bought to hold up the pipes was also U.S. made. Same with the Milwaukee hole-cutting bits. I purchased well today. I still have three more beams to install, but I needed to stop with the outdoor cutting to give the neighbors a break. Rest easy, neighbors, until seven tomorrow morning, when I fire up the saw again!

Once those beams are in, I can lay the three sheets of decking I bought today to start creating a semi-safe work surface. Then back to the store for Hardy Backer to fix the wall I demolished today and pave the way for tiling. Also, need to get the rest of the flooring and find the replacement tub. That’s the plan for tomorrow: be able to shower inside…

…unlike tonight. As I said, the old tub is in the backyard. Hang the hose over the side and it’s just like life at a hunting camp! Now off to my tree stand to hunt the deadly groundhog, who devoured my entire bean crop over the past three days.

Amazing what happens when you try to stop a leak in the toilet.

1:00 p.m. on Day 6: The House Throws a Curve I Won’t Handle

Note I didn’t say “can’t”, but I’m done with this for today. See, first thing I did today was pour a footer to hold a joist to support the toilet. Why? It was previously unsupported, that’s why. Then, as I pried deeper into the mess, I notice that the tub surround is obviously not waterproof, which is evident from the disintegrating board around it’s enclosure.

This “fix the toilet” job has turned into a full rebuild of the bathroom.

No biggie. I can handle…wait…what’s that? There is only one shut off for the water in the house? So now I don’t have access to water? My one staple that has seen me through thus far?!? Ok. Screw it. This weekend has become a hiatus from the food project. Back on the menu is anything I have in the freezer or fridge (that’s still good) that can get me back to a place where I have running water. No ordering out or going to the bar, no more from the grocery store. Just get the food I need to not drive the circular saw into my thigh.

I wanted to tell you all as soon as fact was known.

Day 5 – This Damn House

What happens with two threads on the same blog combine? Well let’s see…

On the fifth day, it is clear to me that my body has almost completely adjusted to the diet. I don’t like it, but it did. Once I have time to think about amending my methodology, I’ll have to do so, but now, I have a problem.

The toilet in my main bathroom was leaking. This much was clear. I had changed the wax ring in the past, so I had an inkling that there was a soft spot down there somewhere.

I’m going to spare you, dear Reader, all of the details. Toilets are taboo. Things go down there that we don’t talk about. Just let it be known that I determined that the flooring had to come up. Once the flooring came up, then the piece of luon had to come up. Under that, there was the half-inch plywood had to come up as that was rotting and soft as well. Under that… well, little else had to come up.

See, I should have expected to find exactly what I found. After the work in the basement and with the wiring upstairs (not to mention that stucco wall upstairs… oh and the rage rises inside me again!!!), why would the bathroom be “clean” under all the layers of paint and sheet vinyl flooring? I found old pipes, open on both end, various wires, broken cinder blocks, all under the remnants of the original hard wood floor, which was rubbery soft – where it existed – and missing in most places. “Ah ha!,” I thought, “there’s my problem right there.”

Tomorrow, over most of the floor of the bathroom, I’ll try to build up the two inches and more of floor to get back to the level that meets up with the living room. I’m not ambitious on this job…

…I am used to the amount of food, yes, but I’m still very hungry. And right at this moment, late in the evening, after a day of demolition, a cheap beer and take-out sounds really nice.

The 4th Day: You Only Cheat Yourself

I felt different this morning. Not hungry, but tight and edgy. Two poached eggs, a piece of toast from the local sourdough, and a cucumber fashioned yet another satisfying breakfast. I packed up six crepes (one batch, so one cup of flour, one egg, and one cup of milk) to eat at lunch.

Before I could get to lunch, though, I had to make it through the round of coffee and donuts provided for our all-day meeting at our contractor. It would have been harder – maybe impossible – but they bought Duncan Donuts, which taste like paint and road grime. Still, they are donuts and, thus, delicious.

Lunch was cheesesteak wraps. They looked delicious. But the whole wheat and spelt additions to the white Daisy flour really make the crepes tasty. After the first bite, I didn't long for a sandwich at all. I could have used a Coke, though, instead of the cucumber I had for dessert.

But I was unable to graze today. I had to have everything at once in the standard 3-square-a-day method to fit in socially with my coworkers. It would have been very easy to explain if I was a body builder, like some I know, that eat their weight in egg whites each day. I would not be confused with a body builder. We of the Suburban Farming community are lanky and beer-fed. So it wasn't easy to explain, at ten a.m., why I was famished.

Lunch came around at noon and we spent the time talking of my odds of simply surviving. My odds of what I would call success are, of course, nil.

After work, there was a happy hour for a long-time coworker who is moving to a new job in a new location. It was at a local yuppie bar – very clean and family appropriate. It's one of those places that got very popular once Applebee's survived its birth… the bastard child of Big Boy and Musso and Franks. Or Friendly's and the Carnegie Deli, for your East-coasters. I had spent the last hour driving back in heavy traffic from the contractor's office, seeing a dozen places each for pizza, hoagies, and beer. Probably more like twenty places for beer. I was feeling very weak and left to put the challenge behind me. I didn't say goodbye, but the ladies know I love them all.

Zipping home to try and keep this feeling of satisfaction going, I hurriedly changed into my U.S.-made Roundhouse Overalls and went to the corn. An ear was ready…

…or ready enough for me. It could have matured another few days, but just because it was something different, it was perfect to me. I backed that up with a portion of spaghetti and sopped up the rest of the sauce with my last allowed piece of bread for the day.

Biting into that corn, I took a deep breath and remembered every store front that I so wanted to stop in on the way home. Just a slice or just one (huge) cheesesteak. I kept thinking, "this is easy… millions have less than this every day and are fine… if you cheat, you're only cheating yourself." It's hard to ignore those things that I know I am missing. These small entries are littered with them.

My mind turns to what I'm actually trying to accomplish here now, if anything. I realized quickly that the garden itself wouldn't cut it. Am I trying something local now? Or organic? Hmmm. Anybody out there have any idea what I should be doing now?

Day 3: Hallucinations and Nonsense

Has your heart ever been broken by the one you love leaving you? It has happened to the Suburban Farmer many times. Dear Reader, think back to the very first time it happened to you. What was it? High School? College? There was this one point that I'm sure you remember: you can see her right in front of you but you'll never be together again. And remember that night, lying in bed alone, when you know that just yesterday she was lying there with you? In your relative infancy, you start to think of time as a road where, if you just turn around, you can walk back to that same spot again and maybe do better next time. Somewhere out there in the world that night, she still existed, but you could not have her. Know that feeling?

That is how I feel about pizza right now. Last Sunday, I could have gone out to the store and picked up my favorite guilty pleasure: a Tombstone Supreme Pizza (I'd pick the olives off). There are still pizzas out there to be had. But I cannot have one…

Good thing that I've hardened myself against heartbreak or else I'd be wandering the grocery store right now… the creepy ex-boyfriend of the pizza in the freezer case. Anyway, what does this tell me? Those recent clichés about Love and Food (look at any recipe book shelf in the local bookseller and you'll know what I mean) are, like all clichés, based on something. In this case, like in many cases, we've kinda forgotten what they're based on. We are food. I think we are all in love with food, but are taking that fair beauty for granted.
Come to think of it, old clichés are losing their luster as well. "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" doesn't mean a hell of a lot with a McDonald's in every town. And as food chains have gone more high class, there is truly good food close to everyone these days. Except for Wyoming, anyway.

I'm digressing from the meaning of this little story and will get myself back on track. I slept well and got up, again, very hungry. I had half of yesterday's batch of thin pancakes left over and that was my most delicious breakfast. Come 10:15 a.m., I was again very hungry. I moved into the "grazing" method of eating very smoothly. I had a portion of my lunch (the eggplant with some tomato sauce) then and once 1:00 hit, I had the rest (a mixture of collards, rainbow chard, jalapeño, and shallot boiled together) and a hard boiled egg.

That was the first time I had one of the green eggs hard boiled. It peeled really easily. I was surprised. Generally, I hate hard boiled eggs for the sole reason that they make me feel like an ape trying to knit a blanket.

The softball game I was to play in was postponed again due to rain, so I came right home at 5:30 and got into another half batch of thin pancakes (this Daisy flour is absolutely delicious). I've felt awake and alert all day and this grazing has helped a lot… along with getting the calories up to an adult level.

But as I sit here – satisfied – I realize that I could not have a bigger challenge than tomorrow. I will not be at my normal place of work, but working from a contractor's office 25 miles from my Suburban Farm. Normally in these situations, it's a cheesesteak with pepperoni lunch. Thinking about that now, I am enticed, and again thinking about pizza.

No. I shall juice the quarts of grape tomatoes I have in preparation for late year canning, read another few essays out of Wampeters, Foma & Granfaloons, and sleep until the next morning, dreaming the whole time, I'm sure, of my lost love.

Breakfast: ½ cup flour, half an egg, ½ cup milk, a tablespoon of blueberry butter
First Lunch: A slice of bread (as crumbs), half an eggplant, two tablespoons of sauce
Second Lunch: ½ cup of collards, same of chard, half a jalapeño, a small slice of shallot, and an egg
Dinner: ½ cup flour, half an egg, ½ cup milk, a tablespoon of blueberry butter
All day: a ton of water

A Necessary Recalculation on Day 2

The morning started poorly. While lying in bed, just as the alarm was to go off, I was wide awake, thinking “I’m really hungry and tired.” That’s when the guilt set in. Millions, if not a billion people on this earth survive day in and day out on less than 700 calories a day. I go for one day (along with the day-long mental torture of knowing that I won’t be really adding to that caloric intake) and I’m complaining.

But I got up and had two scram led eggs and half a cucumber for breakfast. Also, while searching around the cupboard of canned sauce, I found one remaining jar of salsa from last fall made entirely out of garden produce. Score. A little of that on the eggs and, again, not a bad breakfast. I felt okay after that, took a shower and went to work.

That’s where the trouble started. I was in at my desk at seven a.m. as usual and realized that I had meetings from 8:30 straight through to 1:00. “Ok”, I thought, “a lunch meeting.” Throughout the morning I was hardening myself against the idea of sandwiches and brownies. But it didn’t matter anyway as the food never arrived at noon. Everyone was hungry and that was fine.

The next challenge was at two o’clock. I had just finished my lunch of a hard-boiled egg, cucumber and zucchini, when I went to the work baby shower of a dear friend of mine. There was cake and Cherry Coke.

Around this time I was starting to get a little worried. Tomorrow is the make-up date for our last softball game getting rained out. I had been feeling a little drained all day and was thinking a lot about bed. Very unlike this upbeat Suburban Farmer. I thought that, besides the little pasta and bread, I might need to add another small supplement to push me up to at least 1200 calories a day. The cake, I thought, would be a good start.

But no, I would have to stick to the rules. The rules, as they were, were under assault. The next hour contained a meeting with another small celebration, which included ice cream.

I don’t work in Candyland. It was just a really good day.

With the help of some friends, I quickly located the most proximal purveyor of Daisy Flour, which is milled very close to here of local grain. There is also a local dairy here (part of a conglomerate) that isn’t local, but has local cow milk (at least when I worked there they did). I combined one cup each of those two ingredients with one of my eggs and made a batch of crepes, or as my Granma called them, “thin pancakes.” Adding this to my day, which was almost exactly like the previous day, will get me up to around 1000 calories.

It was kinda neat how the idea for crepes popped into my head. My Granma was an old farm girl from Michigan and raised three kids on the farm. She never had much money, but she worked like hell and did alright. She’s the one that I think of when I’m canning. Today, as I was thinking of what would be the minimum to add to my diet to get to a survival level, I thought of the easy recipe that she taught me years ago for thin pancakes.

So the experiment continues. A quick recalculation from the pilot day of the “clinical trial” and I’m back on track. Now, if I go out and get a bunch of fruit from the local farmer’s market, maybe I can make a fruit topping for the crepes…

Missteps and being Woefully Unprepared on Day 1

It set in around 7:15, after I had started up my computer at work, opened my email, looked at my calendar. Behind me, on my desktop, was my French Press and coffee cup, the latter standing out from its surroundings as it is bright yellow with brown "WMU" logos all over it. My friends, I cannot drink coffee.

See, it started then because having a three egg (and nothing else) breakfast is still pretty nice. Especially when your eggs are as delectable as those raised on the Suburban Farm. I did have a foreshadowing pang, however, when I went for the strawberry jam and realized that I couldn’t have it.

Then, to start things off as well as possible, I left my lunch at home. So, on the very first day where I was to eat only from my garden, I had to run out at eleven to get my lunch. But since I was home anyway, I used my small pasta serving then to have spaghetti. I thought this was a good idea as I was to play my first playoff softball game later that evening.

And what a game it was! Without any sort of physical exercise or practice, I found that all you have to do to play like a Spartan is to eat like a Spartan. The fire in my belly had me turn out two hits in the first two innings. Then the lighting came and the game was delayed until later in the week.

But, playing sports, even at this lofted corporate beer-league level, does take something out of a person. Especially if that person is used to eating like a normal, middle-class American. Water doesn’t quench a thirst the same way Gatorade does (props to U of Miami on figuring that one out).

The other thing I can say I learned today is that modern life is based around and intertwined with our culture of convenience. When I forgot my lunch, I could have just gone to the cafeteria, but that’s breaking my rules. If I lived further from work, I’d have been in real trouble. As it was, it took me 45 minutes to go from desk, to home, eat, and back to my desk… and I live less than two miles from the gate!

Day 1 is going to close out with eggplant, collard greens cooked with a jalapeño, and a nice, big glass of water. Tomorrow, I buy a cow. And plant a coffee tree.

A synopsis of today's menu:

Nature’s Promise Whole Wheat Linguine: 210 calories / 1.5g fat / 7g protein

My homemade tomato sauce: guessing…

1 medium tomato: 28 C / no fat / 1.5g protein / 250mg Potassium

1 tbsp green pepper: 3 C / no fat / no protein

1 slice-equivalent of an onion: 4 C / nothing else in there, either.

Collard Greens: 49 C / 0.7g fat / 4g protein / 220mg Potassium / 30mg Sodium

3 eggs: 222 C / 15g fat / 19g protein / a lot of cholesterol. But mine are free range…

Eggplant: 35 C / no fat / 0.8g protein / 121mg Potassium

Bread (crumbs for the eggplant): 120 C / 0.5g fat / 4g protein / 150mg Sodium

Probably 20 glasses of water.

…reasonable

[numbers courtesy of the internet]

Terrible Fears of my Most Awful Mistake

So, as I've been analyzing the situation more closely over the past week, I believe that I will most certainly die if I try to live only from my garden. Why? Well, because nothing is ripe yet. Also, I won't be able to harvest reliably for a full month no matter when I start this challenge.

In order to try to keep aligned with my intent, I am going to make the following adjustments:
1) Tomato sauce that I have canned is now within scope. I know that I didn't grow vinegar, so to speak, but everything else in there is from the yard.
2) A very small amount of grains will be added: two pieces of locally-sourced bread and a little pasta each day max.
3) I can shamelessly rob from my neighbor's garden so long as he doesn't notice.

By doing this, I will be able to start now with those very few things that have ripened (zucchini and grape tomatoes) and will still be in the experiment when the rest ripens.

You may begin calling me a cheater now, if you like.

Independence Day

Sad as it is, it is the state of affairs today: economy is king. So in the spirit of that, how did we spend our Nation’s Birthday?

All clothing I wore today was made in America, the hotdogs served at the parade were made one town over, I read a Hemmingway novel, worked in my Liberty Garden (retronym), and I didn’t impulsively buy foreign-made crap at Kitchen Kapers. Instead, I’ll wait 2-4 weeks for delivery for responsibly-made goods.

Also, good readers, I’m gearing up for my own ill-advised foray into Independence. Beginning a week from tomorrow, I will attempt to live off of the food produced in my backyard only. I will try for one month to see if it is possible.

Water is an exception as I am not earnestly attempting to murder myself. Beer, coffee, tea, Kool-Aid, and the rest are off-limits. I solicit from you other reasonable exceptions. Though the goal is to eat only that which I (and my chickens) produce, I also want to succeed in going a full month without doing permanent damage to myself or limiting myself so much from those things that I love that I tempt myself to failure. It is for this reason that an exception was made for the feed my chickens will eat, as if I try to free-range them only over this time, I will most likely not have enough eggs to get through the days.

This Damn House – Maintenance

Americans have always been good at projects. We can go to the moon. We can take down a foreign dictator. We cannot maintain anything. The space program and our ongoing snake pit in the Middle East are testament to that. And this is where I find myself. I am in the fourth summer of ownership of The Farm and the initial clean-up work I performed is in a maintenance stage.

I must digress. I lived for four years at the address 820 Academy St. in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Upstairs of that glorious college apartment lived three people: a man and a woman (both crazy) and that woman’s brother (legally mentally unstable). Insofar as the brother goes, you’d be off your rocker too if you drank a case of Natural Light beer every day and listed to Gloria Estefan at top volume. Anyway, I’m talking about the couple.

Every spring – and sometimes multiple other times throughout the year – they painted everything in their house, their porch, the doors, and whatever else may or may not have been nailed down. See, cleaning the house is maintenance, but painting is a project. They weren’t foolish… they were good red-blooded Americans. I see those traits deep within me, for painting covers up all the old sins.

(I’m clutching at straws here to defend the fact that in four years, I will be writing about how painting everything every year is such a gas! I can see it isn’t working. I shouldn’t have lead with the story about the nut-job college neighbors. Live and learn.)

So the backyard needed maintenance. Years ago, before PVC, vent stacks for toilets were cast iron. I have one of those in the back of the house, shooting up off of the first story bump-out and going above the roof line. That, now, is a nice clean white. It matches the stucco wall in the back, which also got painted white this spring. This left the deck.

The first project I had in this new house was to scrub the deck with bleach and stain it. That has all worn away. And what luck that I had a pristine day to do the cleaning and staining: 95F and full sun.

I have never liked sun glasses. I wasn’t wearing them this day.

I was on my hands and knees staining the deck itself after two hours of carefully staining each spindle on the railing. I didn’t feel thirsty. I wasn’t sweating either. From what I saw, I was doing a bang-up job. After I went inside, my eyes didn’t adjust for around five minutes. I thought nothing of it and promptly blacked out on the couch for a few hours from dehydration.

When I regained consciousness, my eyes were in incredible pain from being completely burned from the sun reflecting off of the bright white deck (I probably should have stained it last year…). I peered outside in the failing sunlight to see that, apparently, a rabid marsupial had stained my deck and all the work I thought I did was a dream. Then my neighbor reminded me that it indeed was I that did such a terrible job at covering wood with stain. The second coat (the next evening) went on much better.

Lessons: 1) a fresh coat of paint works well if it is done right and 2) never stain a deck in the sun. It’s also a good idea to drink a lot of water in the summertime.

Now I need to get back to the rest of the foundation work. Nothing bad could possibly happen there…

Expert, Connoisseur, Aficionado, and Artist

I hear a lot of terms used to describe a person that is supposed to know something. All those words are purported to mean different things sometimes. Other times, different. I’ve heard a carpenter called an artist – akin to a god in the way it was used – when he devised a clever way to frame out a sloping staircase that would have taken non-linear geometry to explain mathematically. And he eyeballed it. To that, I agree that the word was used right. I’ve heard friends call their tax accountant that same thing. I disagree with that usage wildly.

So, I hereby offer the new Farmer Standard on these four terms: Expert, connoisseurs, Aficionado, and Artist.

Expert: There are no true experts. Expert means technical proficiency in reality and we will from henceforth use it that way. But technical proficiency is based on the facts that science has given us, which are always expanding, so the instant that someone knows everything there is to know – technically – about a subject, something new is discovered and that expert us usurped. Or, maybe more likely, something old is refuted, and the same holds true.

Connoisseur: This term is experiential only and should only be used in regard to a pleasure. Better, for a vice. A connoisseur doesn’t produce anything qua connoisseur. Perhaps, a connoisseur is also an expert, but an expert does not mean you can blindly walk into your local X, and say that this place has the best X that Man has ever known. The expert likes the connoisseur to validate their technical execution of their trade, but the expert can still keep making cigars, wine, or love and get on just fine without anyone widely versed in those trades ever tasting their wares.

Aficionado: Experts can do, aficionados have done and still can. And better than you. Because they know why they do it. Impulse – or compulsive, so to speak – is gone. The "must" drive has given way to the "should" drive. Here is where the technical expertise meets the want to savor the fruit. The aficionado is the old man you know at the blue collar bar down the street that is missing most of his teeth, smells of cheap gin, hates you, but has every woman in the place in the palm of his hand because he developed a love in his life long before you were born that still shines through his toothless grin that can melt any woman. It’s the French winemaker you see on PBS that can somehow be drunk all day long but make wine that tastes good on a whiskey hangover. They do and they teach. There are few. Allow them to be.

Artist: This is where we all are. So much of what we have is from an armature swag at doing something better and it just grows from there. Artists don’t discount what an expert knows, but an artist doesn’t get bogged down in the weeds. Artists don’t begrudge the experience of the connoisseur, but sometime experience comes from only doing the wrong thing a thousand times. An artist gives it the old college try, swings for the fences, punches above his weight class, asks the pretty girl out on a date, and usually fails. But an artist doesn’t give up.

So, friends, those are the definitions from now on. Next time a good friend at work gets a complement of being an aficionado when he really should have just got an atta’boy, call him a shaft and go get coffee.

Note: there are a lot of accepted ways of spelling connoisseur, and I’ll never know which is right, so I picked one that makes me laugh.

Chartreuse

Light green is fading all around this week. The Suburban Farm neighborhood had been under a canopy of clouds. The ground is saturated. Then, yesterday, everything cleared up. Temperatures climbed by ten degrees. All of the plants put on their deep green summer chlorophyll make-up and started growing fast.

This means we're in the critical period, Fellow Farmers: weeding is vital for the next month and make sure nothing gets to your plants to harm them. They're extra delicious to bunnies and other godless vermin right now. Any little scar or competition with weeds diverts energy from driving roots still deeper and sending shoots still higher.

Until next time.

Official

Last night, I had my first Oberon of the year. Thank you, Bell's Brewery, for bringing summer back.

The Paranoia and Terrible Mind of a Chicken

This tale comes to me second hand, but as it damn near choked me to death on laughter, I thought I'd try to recreate it. I'm going to tell it from the vantage point of my neighbor, who saw the circus.

It was lovely Monday. The chickens were free-ranging, as is their right when the neighbor will be back home before dark (to lock them in before the raccoons come out). Midday, they're pecking away and one of the sex-linked walked under the deck into my view. As she neared the fence, I saw that she had a plastic bag wrapped around her leg. It was the really light weight type that you get produce in. Turns out, they're so light weight that a chicken can't even tell that she's dragging one. Until she spots it, that is.

All of a sudden, she puffed up and screamed - literally a chicken-scream - and started running like hell out from under the deck straight out to the pole barn. Half way out, she looked back again. Of course, she was stunned to see the damn thing was following her! And it had her leg and would let go! So she did the only reasonable thing and ran straight into the side of the shed.

The sudden stop of hitting the shed loosened her beak, probably, but not the bag. She started jumping up and down, shaking her leg for a few minutes until it finally fell off.

During the ordeal, the remaining chickens were going apeshit. They didn't try to help or anything, of course, unless they believe that cackling as loud as possible helps. Incidentally, this is the same way my mother-in-law tries to help with chores. Regardless, the neighbor's chickens stopped clucking as soon as the bag was thrown loose.

It was the best thing I've seen for weeks.

Drinking Local Wine

Spring comes with a fury matched only by the fever inside of the Suburban Farmer. As is expected, a dozen or so competing responsibilities popped up to try and keep this fellow out of his natural habitat. Alas, that which fell by the wayside were the stories of success and total failure. Here goes…

I dug furrows with the canal wrench, piling deep loamy soil for later planting. This is a departure from previous years where I didn’t believe furrows were needed. After last year’s rains and the ensuing root rot, I was born again: furrows are indispensible. After that weekend, the rains came.

During this period, I started my seeds in the re-commissioned greenhouse. The chickens are happily back in the A-frame. Everything started spectacularly. During one particularly sunny weekend in late March, I finished the high shelf in the greenhouse that was not hung last fall due to quickly changing weather. It served wonderfully. I, however, did not. For probably a period of three consecutive days, I forgot to water the plants up top and lost a great many of my seedlings. So I had to buy eggplant.

Not daunted, I have now most everything in, save the money crops (tomatoes and peppers).

My friend’s urban farm (the one we hand dug with pick-axes, shovels, dynamite, and many, many tears for the fallen) needed softening. She located a huge pile of free leaf compost at one of the local arboretums. All we had to do was go get it.

The truck was beyond my servicing. Perhaps I’ve gone soft, but the idea of messing with the fuel tank in my driveway – situated between houses with no room to spare – gave me pause. Two large later to a very happy mechanic, she was running again. And she was put to the test. We filled the bed twice with rich, black compost that smelled just like an open cesspool. Ahh, sweet relaxation.

One and a half trucks were delivered to her abode, with the remainder going into my garden to keep the weeds down between the rows. So far, so good.

Another few weeks and everything else will be in and sustaining itself just like nature intended. This will leave me to other ungodly tasks in the house. Oh how I loathe the idea…

Until next time.

A fireman killed a chicken with a bow and arrow...

Just think about that for a minute before reading the rest of this.

Ok, sorry it has been so long since I last wrote. There will be retroactive stories soon. But for now...

Source: PETA Media CenterDate: April 14, 2010Byline: For Immediate Release
Abuse Apparently Violates State's Cruelty Statute, Says Group
Contact: Michael Lyubinsky 757-622-7382
Norristown, Pa. — This morning, PETA sent a letter to Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman urging her to immediately investigate and file all warranted charges in relation to an incident that took place on or around March 29 in which a police officer and a firefighter were reportedly involved in killing a resident's pet chicken in Lower Merion Township.
According to news reports, the chicken, Connie, escaped from the yard of her guardian, Lauren Steltzer. Steltzer then posted fliers in the neighborhood and on her Facebook page about the missing animal. A neighbor who spotted Connie and became concerned for the bird's safety telephoned the Lower Merion police. The officer who took the call--who has not been publicly identified--reportedly contacted a local firefighter (also not identified) whom the officer knew to be a hunter. The firefighter then allegedly shot Connie with an arrow and killed her.
"Connie was a gentle and loving companion whose life ended in pain because of a cruel--and apparently illegal--act of violence," says PETA Foundation litigation counsel Kay Duffy. "Cruelty to animals is always troubling and never justified. When the alleged perpetrators are the very people who are charged with upholding the law and serving the community, they must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
PETA is asking Ferman to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute the firefighter under Pennsylvania's cruelty-to-animals statute and bring charges against the police officer for aiding and abetting the commission of a crime. The Pennsylvania cruelty-to-animals statute states that "(1) A person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he willfully and maliciously: (i) Kills, maims or disfigures any domestic fowl of another person." The firefighter also may have violated two of the state's hunting laws: 34 Pa.C.S.A. 2505(a), which prohibits the firing of an arrow within 50 yards of any occupied dwelling, and 34 Pa.C.S.A. 2507, which prohibits shooting at any "mark" or "target" other than the animals on whom it is open hunting season.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.

Sprung

The beauty of today pulled me out from work at a reasonable hour (out by five…). That, coupled with the genius invention of Ben Franklin that is Daylight Savings gave me many hours out in the garden. I turned everything over using the old canal wrench (shovel) the entire length of the 2010 Garden. The chickens were the happiest by far. The population of Evil Worms has been decimated, along with all of the not-so-evil worms and those that were in line for the Nobel Prize. The shifty worms found their way out of harm’s way, as expected.

Tom Petty is the Greatest Rock Star Ever

I have nothing else to say.

The Springtime Cometh

If one lives as a pessimist, you could look at the fine weather outside this weekend and say, "yes, but this may be the last spring that the earth welcomes us and does not shake us off like so many fleas because we've hurt her with global warming and pollution." That may be true, but on this first beautiful weekend of the year, anyone that thinks like that should keep their damn mouth shut and let the rest of us enjoy life for a few days.

I am four days past the anniversary of moving into this suburban farm. And just yesterday, I passed the one year anniversary of building the chicken coop. This was not the anniversary by date. This is more like one of those Incan passing-of-time anniversaries where the third moon after the solstice sort of anniversaries. I built the chicken coop on the day of the 2009 Philly Craft Beer Fest. The 2010 version of this wonderful community outing took place yesterday and it is by the passing of that yearly landmark that I say the coop is one year old. It was celebrated by moving the ladies out of the greenhouse (which is mine again) and into the great outdoors. It was also celebrated by attending the Craft Beer Fest.

Long story short regarding the Beer Fest, I bought an AmeriKilt. I am wearing it right now. I highly recommend that every man buys one.
Also, the first tomato seeds are started in the greenhouse. They were a very thoughtful gift from a friend that recently traveled to Ithaca, NY. I couldn't stop at simply starting some seeds, so the garden has been tilled for the first time this year. All of the straw, compost, and chicken poo has been rolled in a bit. Maybe four more rounds of this and we'll be ready to plant!

Until next time.

And we say it again

The fact that it is snowing like coke at an Aerosmith concert doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t real. Indeed, huge extremes in weather patterns – both hot and cold – are indicative of global destabilization of air masses. It isn’t even funny to say things like “looks like Al Gore was wrong.” Well, it would be funny if Bill Clinton said it. Or Bill Murray. Everything he says is funny. But outside of that, not funny.

Or any old Italian-American man. It would be funny just because of the accent. “Looks-a like…”. Classic.

But to the point: this is serious.

What is Broken?

This is question we should have addressed a long time ago. Broken is a very important thing to understand. And very tricky. Broken is more than a physical state of something. See, before Man, nothing was broken. Everything was as it should be. It might have been busted, or different than before, or all messed up, but it wasn’t broken until Man was there to deem it so.

Let me apologize for using the chauvinistic “Man” here. Nevermind. I’m not apologizing at all. I’m just recognizing that I’m doing it. It’s a useful enough term. Human, person… very cumbersome. And I don’t think that Man is chauvinistic anyway. But I’ve been wrong before. Give me a better word and I’ll use it.

Anyway, broken is a philosophical state. Things can still be busted, of course. I can bust my bicycle. That means, though, that I just throw it away and buy a new one. Then again, I can render my bicycle broken, then, I can try to fix it. And that is the difference.

Anything that can be broken can be fixed. Fixing it, though, never restores the exact same thing to a state where we could be convinced that it was never broken in the first place. It has changed. It had more effort put into it. It fills the same functional role, probably, but it does so in a little different way.

Let’s get right to the heart of it. The Republicans are right when they say that healthcare is broken. And it can be fixed. The same is true for everything. Everything, depending on how you look at it, is broken. It all needs fixing. Fixing is how we improve things. And everything can be better. So why not?