Mowed grass, raked leaves and grass clippings, put all that in the garden and dug it in.
Dug 5 gallons of coffee grounds into ex-butternut bed.
Dug 3 gallons of kitchen scraps into ex-amaranth bed.
Cleared more brush from between the road and the fence, where the hazelnuts are planted. Also watered the hazelnuts since it’s been drier the last couple of weeks. The farmer with the corn across the street from us was out cutting it today.
I’ve learned to expect a certain amount of leisure every day of my life. That has been the experience of my life, that I always have time to read a book for pleasure, to watch TV, or even to do nothing. And that has been what I’ve learned in my life, that the industrial revolution gave rise to leisure time.
But that’s likely one of the things that will be changing. Everything will be harder and will take longer, and we won’t be able to do nothing very much. Spring and Fall will be very busy, the other seasons less busy, but still with less leisure than we have now.
My neighbor, who is a grain farmer and small livestock keeper on his 160 acres and works 40 hours per week at an off-the-farm job, does not have the leisure time that I do. Perhaps the Change, at least from the aspect of leisure, will be less drastic for him than it will be for me and those like me.
No matter what you envision for the future — fast crash, slow decline, or BAU — you have to take care of yourself by eating right, working out, and minimizing drug/alcohol use.
Even the best-case scenarios include a steep reduction in benefits for retirees and medicare recipients. It only makes sense for the middle-aged to live their lives as if they were going to live a long time with very little assistance. I’m a state employee, but the state pension plan had a terrible year last year and is likely to have more terrible years. Frankly, I doubt I’ll get any kind of retirement at all. Although I always say I’m going to retire when I hit 62 (and I desperately hope I can), it seems pretty damn unlikely. My best guess right now is that I won’t retire ever because the benefits won’t be there and that I’ll work until I die to try to provide for me and mine.
We have to prepare for a future of unsupported, social-safety-net-free independence. I believe that in the future we’re heading into, you won’t want to get sick. Parts of our country will revert to local, amateur health care, and many of us will lose access to the miracles of medicine most Americans take for granted today. No, you won’t want to get sick, and so you’d damn well better start taking care of yourself today.
And if we’re heading into a future that means hard, physical work into old age, I want to make sure I’m as physically and mentally healthy and strong as I can be so I can work (hod carrying, ditch digging, agricultural serf, digging in the filth, whatever jobs are available in the coming Depression), and so I can try to enjoy whatever it is I have to do…which means taking care of myself now and for the rest of my life. And not just taking care of myself passively by not doing unhealthy things, but taking care of myself actively by taking vitamins and exercising aerobically and lifting weights and doing as much circuit-type training as possible.
And making sure my life is as low-cost as possible, by which I mean not bringing any costly habits into my old age. Yes, the single-malt Scotch has to go.
One of the scenarios I think is more likely is a slow decline punctuated by sudden drops and periods of unrest. And basically, that means I have to be ready to walk twelve miles to get myself home from work when transportation options disappear and sprint a hundred yards to evade danger and then be ready to take on whatever heavy-duty physical challenges come my way FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS, until my boys are big enough to take over.
I can’t do that, of course. I’m too old and was never very strong. But I have to try and do the best I can, and that has to be enough. They’re my children and I have to do whatever I can do give them the best possible chance, which means giving myself the best chance.
Dug another 30′ row of potatoes today. Will I get the last two rows dug before the ground freezes? My will to get it done is low, and it hardly seems worth it, considering the low overall yield and the fact that almost half of them are damaged by the little hole-digging worms. M has been working both Saturday and Sunday for a couple of months now, and it seems extra-hard to get anything done when she does that. She’s supposed be done with it now or soon.
Most of those worm-damaged potatoes have large parts of them that can be used immediately, but they’d never keep. I still haven’t come to the row where we planted the purchased seed potatoes, still digging up just the red ones.
The weather looks like it’s going to hold for another week at least, and it seems like it’s quite a bit warmer than last year. But it’s November now and pretty much anything can happen. It’s been quite wet since the last week of September.
Dug 20 gallons of coffee grounds into garden today, plus some leaves from the yard. Should have a lot of organic matter in the soil to set the stage for next year.
Ending and Beginning 