The End Is Near

Root cellaring in New York? The end, indeed, must be near ...

November 6, 2008

Food Storage as Grandma Knew It

By MICHAEL TORTORELLO

IN a strictly technical sense, Cynthia Worley is not transforming her basement into a time machine. Yet what’s going on this harvest season beneath her Harlem brownstone on 122nd Street, at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, is surely something out of the past — or perhaps the future.

The space itself is nothing special: Whitewashed granite walls run the width and depth of the room, 16 feet by 60 feet. A forgotten owner tried to put in a cement floor, but the dirt, which takes a long-term view of things, is stubbornly coming back. “It’s basically a sod floor,” Ms. Worley said.

What’s important is that the shelves are sturdy, because Ms. Worley and her husband, Haja Worley, will soon load them with 20 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of onions, 30 pounds of butternut and acorn squash, 10 heads of cabbage, 60-odd pints of home-canned tomatoes and preserves, 9 gallons of berry and fruit wines, and another gallon or two of mulberry vinegar.

The goodies in the pint jars and the carboys come from the Joseph Daniel Wilson Memorial Garden, which the Worleys founded across the street. The fresh produce is a huge final delivery from a Community Supported Agriculture farm in Orange County, which they used all summer. Packed in sand and stored at 55 degrees, the potatoes should keep at least until the New Year. The squash could still be palatable on Groundhog Day, and the onions should survive till spring. Ms. Worley, who counsels and teaches adults for the New York City Department of Education, and Mr. Worley, a neighborhood organizer and radio engineer, will let their basement-deprived friends store vegetables, too.

The Worleys, like a number of other Americans, have made the seemingly anachronistic choice to turn their basement into a root cellar. While Ms. Worley’s brownstone basement stash won’t feed the couple through the winter, she said, “I think it’s a healthy way to go and an economical way.”

According to a September survey on consumer anxieties over higher fuel and food prices from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames, 34 percent of respondents said that they were likely to raise more of their own vegetables. Another 37 percent said they were likely to can or freeze more of their food. The cousin to canning and freezing is the root cellar.

Harvesting

Harvesting potatoes, tomatoes, beans and carrots. While trying to keep goats out of harvest.

Taking goats for long walks. Fence charger blew up during the last storm. Enough voltage to keep pigs inside the pen (thank God) but not so great for goats.

Dealing with crazed tourists wanting more green eggs. I offered to hook them up to a battery charger to amp up production. They wanted to know if that would actually work.

Columbus Day Weekend. It's the second -- or maybe third -- craziest-making holiday of the year.

No. 300

A busy, busy month.

Bought the new goat. She's an Alpine, giving us about two quarts of milk every day. Will loves the stuff. John hates it. I saved up enough milk to make a two-pound wheel of goat's milk cheddar over the weekend that's ready for aging. I'll provide a report when it's ready.

Garden worked out OK. The corn was flattened by what was left of Hurricane Ike, but we have more than 100 pints of tomato sauce canned and ready to go. We've got about 50 pints of salsa verde with tomatillos and onions from the CSA. We've got about 50 pints of carrots and about 50 pints of green beans. We've got onions, scallions, blackberries, blueberries, peaches, nectarines, celery, broccoli, bell pepper, herbs and pesto in the freezer. We'll soon have 50 broilers -- they're getting huge -- and three pigs.

I'd say we're ready for winter, but not quite.

The chainsaw blew a piston, and fixing it ran about $200. I took a few days of vacation from the Day Job to finish up this week. The blade was getting a bit dull -- that'll happen when you pinch it in a tall beech tree, like I did -- so I took it to the shop for a quick sharpening. Turns out the replaced piston now needs replacing. Ack. Anyway, at this rate, I'll have our winter wood done by April or so.

We're certainly not ready for the Greater Depression.

But it's not winter just yet, nor has the Greater Depression totally kicked off. And it is gorgeous. The leaves are peaking in southern Vermont this week:





A nice story from this week's WSJ that reminds me I need to get off my ass:

• OCTOBER 7, 2008, 9:52 A.M. ET

Crash Survivor Scores Rare Triathlon Invite

Wall Street Exec Trains for Legendary Ironman Race

• By JEN MURPHY

A.C. Morgan will line up among 1,800 other racers to test his body's physical and mental limits in Kona, Hawaii at the Ironman World Championships Saturday. The grueling race is the Super Bowl of triathlons, consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run in crosswinds that can reach 60 miles per hour and temperatures that can reach 95 degrees with 90% humidity.

A.C. Morgan

A.C. Morgan, seen during a triathlon in Rhode Island in July.

Ten years ago Mr. Morgan wasn't even sure if he'd ever walk again. A plane crash left him with two broken vertebrae in his neck and 30 percent of his body covered in burns. "I had a 50-50 shot at life," Mr. Morgan recalls. "I had to learn everything all over again -- how to brush my teeth, walk, go to the bathroom." Mr. Morgan's entire left arm was burned except for one spot. "I have a complete outline where my Timex Ironman watch was. It is the only spot on my arm where I have hair." The outline reminded Mr. Morgan of Timex's old ad, "It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'." He called the company to pitch himself as the subject of its next ad only to discover the campaign had been discontinued. But company representatives said if he ever wanted to do the Ironman he should call back. Mr. Morgan recalls thinking, "I can't even go to the bathroom by myself."

Before the accident Mr. Morgan had competed in sprint triathlons. After physical therapy he returned to the gym five or six days a week to lift weights and ride the Lifecycle bike for 30 minutes. In 2006, Mr. Morgan found himself listening to a client describing how he had competed in the Ironman and it made him remember the Timex offer. He wrote the company to retell his story of the plane crash and his watch "tattoo." In June 2007 he received a surprising call from Herbie Calves, Timex's vice president of sports marketing, asking whether he wanted an Ironman World Championship number for 2007 or 2008. He opted for 2008.

The 38-year-old Mr. Morgan, who co-manages U.S. equity sales trading at J.P. Morgan in New York, has since reprioritized his life to focus on training. He lives in Darien, Conn., and is married with two children. He stands 6-foot-1 and weights 180 pounds.

The Workout
Sponsorships allow many Ironman competitors to train full time. Mr. Morgan doesn't have that luxury. Before he began training for the race, he awoke at 4:30 a.m. to catch the 4:50 a.m. train to midtown Manhattan. Now, he wakes up at 3:20 a.m. three days a week to ride, run or swim for an hour before work. In January, Mr. Morgan hired a personal trainer who creates workouts he can download to his Blackberry. He can call her any time he has questions or needs motivation. "The other day I wasn't feeling the 22-mile run and she tells me, 'Think 22 miles plus 100% humidity on black lava.' I pay for that," he says. In addition to his morning workouts, he sometimes tacks on an additional run or bike ride after work, depending on what his trainer recommends.

On weekends, Mr. Morgan swims at his local YMCA and bikes 100 to 120 miles, followed by a 30- to 40-minute run. In bad weather, he puts his bike on a trainer so he can cycle inside while watching episodes of the HBO comedy "Entourage." According to the Ironman media guide, the average competitor trains between 18 and 30-plus hours per week: about seven miles per week swimming, 225 miles per week biking and 48 miles per week running. Mr. Morgan says his typical week sees him swim five miles, bike 150 to 170 miles and run 30 miles. To prepare himself for race day, he competed in two half-Ironmans, one in May and one in June.

Sample Workout

Mon. – Rest day

Tues.-Thurs. – 60-minute run, bike or swim

Sat. – Bike 120 miles followed immediately by a three-mile run.

Sun. – 20-mile run; swim.

Mr. Morgan hit a hurdle last October when he developed plantar fasciitis, a painful inflammation in the foot most often felt in the heel. "I can't get rid of it," he says. "You really have to walk away from [training] for it to heal, but I can't afford to." He goes to a doctor in the city once a week for laser treatment to break down the scar tissue and has also ordered custom orthotics for his sneakers. He stretches daily to ease the pain.

The Diet
Eating more and more often is Mr. Morgan's new dietetic challenge. "I could go home and eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's every night and still lose weight," he says. Mr. Morgan estimates that he has lost 15 pounds since he started training. To maintain his energy, he tries to eat every three hours. In the morning he has Raisin Bran topped with a banana and skim milk, followed by a cup of coffee and an energy bar. After his workout he has a recovery drink. He eats lunch at his desk, usually a turkey sandwich on whole wheat, which he orders in. "I probably eat chicken, vegetables and pasta seven nights a week, 365 days a year," he says.

Many athletes drastically change their diet during training. "I don't have free time to weigh everything and I'm not a bad eater," says Mr. Morgan, who instead paid Trismarter.com, a company that specializes in designing nutrition and exercise programs for triathletes, to create a diet plan specifically focused on the two days leading up to the race and the race day. He says it recommends hydrating every 10 minutes during the cycling portion. Mr. Morgan set his watch to beep every time he needs to rehydrate or refuel, ingesting calories from Gu, an energy gel, and Fig Newtons. During the run he ingests Gu every hour and drinks water or Gatorade at every mile marker.

The Cost
Tens of thousands of athletes try to get one of the coveted 1,800 spots through a lottery or by winning a spot at one of the qualifying events held around the world. "Spots are sold on eBay for up to $60,000," Mr. Morgan says. Timex covered the majority of Mr. Morgan's costs, including the $300 entry fee, and provided him with his jersey, hats, and a Timex team Trek bike.

Since January, Mr. Morgan has bought four pairs of running sneakers, costing between $80 and $110 per pair. After his wife pleaded with him, he also bought a new pair of cycling shoes, which he wears without socks. Triathlons are a gear geek's dream sport. "It's like a different version of golf," he says. "I could come home every day and go on one of 30 sites and buy a new water bottle holder or Gu or visor." Timex supplied Mr. Morgan with his bike, which could run from $3,000 to $20,000. He spends $250 a month on his personal trainer and paid $300 for his Trismarter.com nutrition evaluation. Membership at the YMCA is about $100 a month.

The Effort
Mr. Morgan says his biggest issue is time management. Making time for family and staying on top of his game at work have been a challenge. "I'm struggling to prioritize it all," he says. "My wife is so done with this." He works out at 4:30 a.m. on weekends to get in his training before his family wakes up. Mr. Morgan started at J.P. Morgan in June. "Any time you start in a new environment you have to prove yourself again," he says. "If I had been there six years it might be easier to take more luxury, but I pride myself on my work ethic and am one of the first people there in the morning."

The Benefit
Mr. Morgan's family and friends will join him in Hawaii to cheer him on. They are staying four days after the race to enjoy Hawaii. "I may not move the first two days," he jokes. Mr. Morgan says one of the professional triathletes gave him his best advice yet: "He told me the biggest waste is running down hard that last mile to the finish line. He wasn't telling me to walk but just to slow down and absorb it because I'm proving the impossible possible."

Write to Jen Murphy at workout@wsj.com

Almost the Season

A question from a colleague reminds me that I haven't blogged in a while -- all manner of things going on. I'll try to list them sequentially:

*** New boss at work. Always fun trying to figure out what they want.

*** Major eruption of vegetables. We have picked 64 pounds of blackberries so far this year. We've got more than five dozen jars of carrots and green beans; a couple dozen jars of potatoes (already!); strawberry and peach jam; about a dozen jars of home-made salsa; and a couple dozen jars of bread-and-butter pickles.

The tomatoes haven't been totally washed out, lots of dry beans are coming up, our sweet corn is doing well, the potatoes might wind up being all right, and the chard and kale have exploded. We might do some fall broccoli, although we've got plenty in the freezer -- next to the five dozen bags of frozen pesto, celery, onion, scallions and bell pepper.

*** Quest for firewood. I took a week off just to cut firewood, and only made it five days before the chainsaw crapped out. I used a generic brand of two-cycle oil with an ethanol mix, and it ended very badly. I got maybe -- maybe -- three cords of good wood before the Dolmar blew a piston and head gasket. Repair is going to be about $260. Sigh.

*** The 50 broiler chicks are outside in the small coop. Obnoxious as hell, too. I'll be doing the universe a favor when I fill my freezer (bought a used Montgomery Ward 16 cubic footer for only $60!) with them. The 15 feather-footed bantams are still in the bathroom brooder, so I haven't yet gotten rid of the peep-peep-peep sound in the house.

*** Planning to get out Wednesday and pick up two dairy goats, a La Mancha doe and wether. They're only four months old, so it'll be a while before we get any milk. We're hoping they'll do some more clearing that the Three Little Pigs have missed. We'll breed the doe later this fall and hope for milk by early spring.

*** The kids start school on Wednesday, which means I'll be back into a morning running groove. The best thing about morning running is that there aren't any excuses; you run, and you're done. Can't put it off. And it'll be gorgeous here soon, which means I need to get going on more bike time.

*** I finished a book draft. We'll see if it's worth publishing. More about that later, though. On to the next book project ...

It's Been A While

Caramba! It's been a busy summer.

New bosses at work. Lots of things to plant, weed, harvest and feed. Fifty broiler chicks and 15 feather-footed bantams coming in the mail this week. Near-catastrophe avoided this morning; I chopped down about 100 pin cherry trees in the back pasture without knowing that they're toxic to pigs. Moved them before the leaves could wilt and pigs could get poisoned.

Going for an occasional run, but not so much lately. Hoping to take a week or so off soon and get firewood for the winter. Hoping to make more cheese; my first big cheese came out kind of dry, so we used it in the 42 servings of pesto that are now in the freezer, along with basil from the CSA, local sunflower seeds and olive oil.

Boys are being teen-age boys, skulking about at odd hours. Collies are being collies, skulking about at odder hours.

More later. It's just been Too. Damn. Busy.

Cool Stuff

So I've not been posting for a while. Busy with work. Busy with children. Busy with garden and fruit trees and bushes and other life-like things. We regret the inconvenience, as they say, and to atone, here are some very cool things:

*** Dara Torres. The woman sounds like a complete emotional basket case, but good for her for making the Olympic team at 41 -- and good news for middle-aged sloggers (and we know who we are). As an aside, I'd like my abs back. It appears she stole them:


An excerpt from the story:

UPON HEARING THAT TORRES is likely to make the Olympic team at age 41, many people have the same question: How is this possible? Kinesiologists counter with a different query: Why are you so surprised? “Dara is extremely impressive, but she’s not as unique as people think,” says Michael Joyner, a competitive athlete and anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic who writes scholarly papers about aging and sports. “Ted Williams hit .388 when he was 39. Jack Foster did very well in the Olympic marathon when he was 40. Karl Malone earned a triple-double in an N.B.A. game at 40. Jeannie Longo won a French time-trial championship in cycling at age 47.” Torres’s events — short swims — are also well suited to competitors of advanced age. Compared to, say, running, swimming is more technique-intensive and produces fewer injuries. Sprints are also kinder to older athletes, in that strength falls off more gradually than aerobic power. In April, at 37, Mark Foster, a freestyle sprinter in England, came out of retirement and earned a spot, for the fifth time, on the British Olympic swim team. “For those of us who pay attention to this stuff,” Joyner said, “Dara’s performance is unusual but not totally unexpected.”

So why do we assume a middle-aged swimmer must be all washed up? Because for nonelite athletes, sporting achievements fall off precipitously with age. Body composition changes toward more fat and less muscle. Strength and aerobic capacity decrease as well. But a primary reason that athletic performance degrades in adulthood is changes in priorities. People tend to devote more time and energy to jobs and families than to sports. Even committed athletes downgrade their workout goals from achieving personal bests to staying in shape. Academics refer to this reduction in physical activity as hypokinesis. The phenomenon is not limited to humans. A 1985 study showed that rats with unlimited access to running wheels exercised less as they aged. “But look at people who maintain activity levels,” says Joel Stager, a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University. “It’s a different story! A lot of what we assume is aging is just progressive hypokinesis. How many people at Dara’s age have maintained their training consistently? I’m going to say there are very, very few.”

Even childbirth needn’t be a sports-career killer. In 1972, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, E. Zaharieva published a study of 13 women who were pregnant and then competed in the 1964 Olympic Games. Most resumed serious training between three and six months after giving birth. All said, Zaharieva wrote, “they became stronger, had greater stamina and were more balanced in every way after having a child.” Last September, Lindsay Davenport was back on the pro tennis tour and winning just three months after giving birth, while in November, Paula Radcliffe won the New York City Marathon less than 10 months after having a baby.

So how long can peak athletic performance last? Hirofumi Tanaka, the director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, found that both elite and nonelite runners and swimmers could maintain personal bests until age 35, after which performance declined in a gradual, linear fashion until about age 50 to 60 for runners and 70 for swimmers. Deterioration was rapid from there. Tanaka also found that swimmers experienced more modest declines than runners and that swim sprinters, like Torres, experienced the smallest declines of all. At Yale University, Ray Fair, a runner and an economist, crunched statistics on aging and peak athletic performance and created what he calls the Fair Model. The model provides a table of coefficients that enable an athlete to take a personal-best time and compute how long he or she should expect to take to complete that same event at a specific point later in life (assuming he or she has continued to train at the same level). According to the Fair Model, a woman who swam a personal best 24.63 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle at or before age 35 should expect to clock 25.37 seconds at age 41. “I am struck by how small the deterioration rates are,” Fair wrote in a paper titled “How Fast Do Old Men Slow Down?” “It may be that societies have been too pessimistic about losses from aging for individuals who stay healthy and fit.”

*** Next. Russell Means profile in the Washington Post. Eh, Russell -- have your tribal people get with my tribal people and see who got screwed over first (and longest). And general note to the part of your frontal lobe that deals with PR issues: Don't call the white reporter a racist. At least, not before the story runs. Your Dolce and Gabbana shades will be mentioned.

At our first interview, over breakfast, Means was surly from the get-go. Within five minutes of shaking my hand, he accosted me for my "[expletive] white racist arrogance. There's only one reason you people came to this continent," he said. "Greed! We Indians have our spirituality. We have our land, but Americans have no culture except greed."

I changed the subject, asking Means how many Lakota backed his independence claim. "That's not germane," he barked. "In all my years of international relations, not once has anybody ever questioned my sovereignty. Even if I am only speaking for myself and my brother, and I'm not, my sovereignty exists. It's spelled out in the treaties."

Eventually, I'd learn that Means has only six or eight active Lakota supporters scattered throughout North and South Dakota. Many other Lakota quietly share his contempt for the U.S. government; some even long for a return to the hallowed days of Lakota independence. And, while Means won 46 percent of the vote when he ran unsuccessfully for Pine Ridge tribal chair in 2004, he has not endeared himself with his desperado-style secession.

*** Interesting Ben Stein column in the NYTimes on wage deflation and the price of oil. Wish it were all that simple, but it's a good point, nevertheless:

But the trend is dismal. The average private worker now earns very roughly $600 a week, not counting fringe benefits. For this worker, gasoline might well account for close to one-tenth of his or her earnings. If the price of gas goes up 25 percent, the effect is serious. To put it mildly, people making $600 a week do not have a lot of leeway on spending.

As I see it, the problem is not the price of oil generally. (I think that the price will decline somewhat before long, but the long-term trend is very much up.) The problem is the stagnation of wages. Please bear in mind that the numbers I gave are averages. Skilled workers make much more. Lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, accountants, dentists — they all make more. ( I just paid two dentists a total of more than $10,000 — I am not kidding — to have one poor old tooth get a root canal and a crown, and I’m not finished with that miserable tooth yet. I paid for 90 percent of it out of my own pocket. I do earn more than the ordinary citizen, but nothing by Wall Street standards.)

But, obviously, a heck of a lot of workers make less. Imagine what it means to minimum-wage workers for gasoline to surge past $4 a gallon.

What is to be done? The federal government can do little to make the price of oil fall in the short run, except, perhaps, for one basic thing: balance the budget. The world price of oil is denominated in dollars. The dollar is weak for many reasons, but a big one is the immense budget deficits run by our government. If President Bush and Senators John McCain and Barack Obama were to stand together in front of a camera and solemnly swear that they would balance the budget in four years, even if it required tax increases on people earning millions, the dollar would rise against the euro, and oil would fall in dollars.

*** Final cool things. Went by the co-op to get some cheese, and they were giving away Silk, which (I think) is basically soy milk. They were giving away a lot of it because it was close to expiration. So we got 35 gallons of free Silk. Bad news is, it's no good for cheese or ice cream. Good news is, the pigs love it.

Went by a flea market last week and found an extraordinarily sharp crosscut saw for $20. Also, a first-edition copy of "Remember the Alamo" by Robert Penn Warren. Sweet.

Youngest son made it to Arizona and back for the national youth leadership conference. Seemed to have a good time. Is still skeptical of adults in power. This is generally a Good Thing.

I'm off for a few days to get some serious day job stuff done.

Busy. And Busy. And Very Busy.

No kidding. Haven't posted in forever.

Been to New York. Been to Boston. Bought rhubarb. Cleared out more garden for corn, beans and squash. Fixed chicken fence. Yelled at collies. Talked with boys. Planted blueberries. Got peach and pear trees. Found a free canner driving to the feed store. Built garden trellises. Worked on a book. Lots of day job stuff.

Since I don't have any pig pictures yet, here's a cool story until then:

A post-petroleum world On this Andover farm, little worry about fuel or food prices

By CHELSEA CONABOY Monitor staff

June 15, 2008

With gas at $4 per gallon, most people in New Hampshire can feel their wallets draining along with their car tanks. Not Nelson Lebo. He doesn't have a car. He's not worried about the cost of home heating oil either. And soaring food prices? Not much of a problem. Lebo, 40, lives in a 1782 farmhouse in the woods of Andover that he has dubbed Pedal Power Farm. He heats it with wood cut from the property. He gets around on a bicycle. He grows much of his own food and buys locally otherwise. He gets his electricity from solar panels. Lebo is no typical homesteader, content to stay tucked away in the woods, living off his land. He thinks he has ideas the rest of us could use. And he's ready to share them. "I've been living in a post-petroleum world for the last 18 years," he said. "Everyone else is going to start living in a post-petroleum world next year." Lebo has been a fixture in Andover since he was hired to run Proctor Academy's environmental program in 1991. He stopped working at the private school last year because of a herniated disk, but he still manages the organic gardens there. He was a part-time dorm parent this year. But his teaching days are far from over. Let Lebo talk, and he will engage you for hours - he verges on ranting - about energy policy, American consumerism and the design principles around which he has built his life. One thing you won't hear much of is a holier-than-thou attitude.

Labels. Annoying and Silly Labels.

So, if you're concerned about peak oil, you've got to be a "survivalist."

Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare

By SAMANTHA GROSS – 2 days ago

BUSKIRK, N.Y. (AP) — A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.

That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.

Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.

"I was panic-stricken," the 50-year-old recalled, her voice shaking. "Devastated. Depressed. Afraid. Vulnerable. Weak. Alone. Just terrible."

Convinced the planet's oil supply is dwindling and the world's economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn't prepare.

The exact number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining momentum in the last few years.

These energy survivalists are not leading some sort of green revolution meant to save the planet. Many of them believe it is too late for that, seeing signs in soaring fuel and food prices and a faltering U.S. economy, and are largely focused on saving themselves.

And if you want to grow more of your own food, you must be a "localvore."

Growing the zero-mile diet

With fears of GMOs and widespread carbon guilt, cultivating your own veggies is poised to be the new competitive sport

FIONA MORROW

May 23, 2008

VANCOUVER -- So you've bought into the 100-mile diet. Eco points to you. If you're looking for serious ethical kudos this season, however, you're going to have to dig even deeper - literally.

Serious locavores are working on a zero-mile diet, courtesy of the old-fashioned vegetable garden. As Canadians break ground in many parts of the country this month, concern over the carbon footprint of the global food trade is inspiring them to reach for their spades. And the hunger for a diet free of genetic modifications means the demand for organically grown and heirloom varieties has never been so great.

Dan Jason should know. The owner of Salt Spring Seeds has been promoting an intense local diet for 20 years from his home on British Columbia's Salt Spring Island. After he was interviewed by Vancouverites Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon for their groundbreaking book, The 100-Mile Diet, Mr. Jason was struck with an idea.

"I thought, 'What is this 100-mile diet? We should be aiming for a zero-mile diet.' "

I'm just saying: Whatever happened to people? Yeesh.

Memorial Day Weekend

... a nice, three-day weekend. Lots of sun. Not so much rest. Cleared about 750 square feet of garden by hand, with the amount of potato-sized rocks getting steadily larger. Really didn't even need flat rocks for paths -- just tossed the dug-up rocks into the middle of the garden for a path. Bitch of a job, but I plugged away and listened to Bill McKibben's Wandering Home on the iPod to keep from going insane.

So far, the garden seems to be happy. The chard is going great guns, and the onions are shooting up. Carrots seem to have survived, broccoli, peas and kale are pushing up. Not sure about potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers or melons, since they've just been planted. Next move is to put the Three Sisters -- beans, corn and squash -- into the just-cleared garden. If there's time to clear any more, it looks like we'll throw in some sunflowers and maybe more potatoes. You can never have enough potatoes.

The animals all seem happy. The collies are actually respecting the invisible fence. The tails on the pigs are getting curlier by the day, which I understand means that they're happy. Even the chickens are mellowing a bit.

Weekend was a real washout for a lot of the locals. The market where our eggs are sold was doing OK, not as good as last year, but OK. The rest of the area looked like a ghost town. I guess $4 gas will do that to a tourist economy.

All in all, it just felt like a nice calm day before a really wicked storm.

This is Obscene

You don't have to be Potter Stewart to call this one. Not. In. My. House. No freakin' way. It goes to the pigs, chickens or compost pile.

By ANDREW MARTIN

Published: May 18, 2008

Grocery bills are rising through the roof. Food banks are running short of donations. And food shortages are causing sporadic riots in poor countries through the world.

Skip to next paragraph

Multimedia

Graphic

Food, a Shrinking Burden

You’d never know it if you saw what was ending up in your landfill. As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes. Restaurants throw away what they don’t use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. An update is under way.

The study didn’t account for the explosion of ready-to-eat foods now available at supermarkets, from rotisserie chickens to sandwiches and soups. What do you think happens to that potato salad and meatloaf at the end of the day?

A more recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of food waste each year, which is about 12 percent of the total waste stream. All but about 2 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills; by comparison, 62 percent of yard waste is composted.

The numbers seem all the more staggering now, given the cost of groceries and the emerging food crisis abroad.

Cold, Wet and Rainy

Only been able to plant one of the apple trees. Still waiting to take Lisa's tomato and pepper plants out of flats and put them into the ground. Also need to dig up another 300 to 500 square feet of garden. Here's how it works:

1. Break sod into squares with pitchfork
2. Pull big rocks from ground
3. Get on hands and knees, pull up sod
4. Pull big rocks from ground
5. Turn soil over with pitchfork
6. Pull big rocks from ground

See the pattern? Pre-Columbian gardening, that's us.

The pigs are cracking me up. They sleep late. When I go to look at them in the morning, they've usually burrowed under the hay, and all you can see are little curly pig tails sticking out of the hay. The really good news? They're eating less grain that I'd expected. They've been around a bit more than a week, and haven't gone through an entire bag.

(I expect that'll change).

They eat a ton of leaves off bushes, and they're doing very well with old veggies and fruits from the market. We went to pick up the pig bucket tonight, and were warned that we'll need to start making daily trips very soon, when watermelon and fruit sales pick up.

I'll hope they do, and not just for the piglets' sakes -- I worry that this is going to be a slow summer for folks who depend on tourists. Four dollar gas ain't nothing to sneeze at, and I don't think it's getting better any time soon. Saw a story today where some analysts said oil might get as high as $140 this year. Given that it's at $132 today -- up from $129 yesterday -- um, yeah. I think it might hit $140 at some point this year. Like, before Memorial Day.

Back to the piglets -- I'm wondering if I should introduce them to the collies. I'm not utterly stupid; I know that nothing good can come from this. But I just know that Stink in particular would enjoy playing with pigs.

Maybe it'd be a name thing.

The Good Old Days

Personally, I think $12-$15 per gallon is a bit optimistic, near-term. I've been telling folks that $4 gas is cheap (hey, can you get a gallon of milk for $4? No? Rest my case), and I'd brace for $7 by late 2009.

Here's a transcript snippet of Robert Hirsch on CNBC:

HOST: You know, we've been talking all morning long about energy prices. Watching crude oil prices touch above $127 for the first time overnight leads a lot of people to start wondering about peak oil and the peak oil theory. You've been writing about peak oil for some time, so did you see this coming?

HIRSCH: Yes we did. Not quite the way it's turned out, but this is not a surprise.

HOST: You say, "not quite the way it's turned out". What's happened that's different from what you were predicting?

HIRSCH: Well, I wasn't particularly predicting. I'm a student of this and have focused on what we do about the problem after it really hits. Peak oil--the idea is that it would hit a sharp peak and then production in the world would hit a sharp peak then drop off. And what's happened is that we hit plateau in world oil production, and that plateau has been ongoing since about the middle of 2004.

HOST: Dr. Hirsch, there are a lot of people when we talk about peak oil who say there are going to be technologies that are always developed. There will be new ways to get oil, whether it's from coal, whether it's from the oil shales, and they say that means we will never actually hit peak oil. What do you say to those people?

HIRSCH: They're incorrect, and the reason that they're incorrect is that they don't understand the magnitude of the problem and how long it's going to take to bring substitute liquid fuels on and to introduce energy efficiency on a massive scale. That's something that we analyzed and it takes decades. And the reason, simply, is that the magnitude of the problem is enormous.

[McTeer says we should drill more.]

HOST: Dr. Hirsch, what do you say to that--the idea that we should be drilling in places like ANWR and drilling offshore. Would that solve this problem of a plateau in oil production?

HIRSCH: There's no single thing that's going to solve this problem because it's as massive as one can possibly imagine. And the prices that we're paying at the pump today I think are going to be the good old days because others who watch this very closely forecast that we are going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon. And then, after that, when world oil production goes into decline, we're going to talk about rationing. In other words, not only are we going to be paying high prices and have considerable economic problems, in addition to that, we're not going to be able to get the fuel when we want it.

Glad I planted one of my apple trees this morning. A little work on the garden, too, but not much. Too busy with the day job.

I Don't Get Out Nearly Enough.

Duty called. Had to drive to Boston early this morning for the Day Job. Put on my coat and tie, and went out before leaving to check on the pigs. Saw three curly little tails sticking out of the hay and remembered, I needed to get them some corn.

Stopped by the feed store en route to Boston and picked up two bales of hay, two bags of chicken feed, and a bag of corn. Nothing unusual about this, other than throwing hay into the Outback while wearing a coat and tie.

Made it to the city without too much incident. Met up with a coworker who was a bit taken aback by a colleague with hay in the car. He probably doesn't live in Vermont, I thought. Stopped to get some fast-food on the way out of town (hey, I was starving). The guy at the window peered into the back of my car. "You raise cows or something?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. Certainly he doesn't live in Vermont, I thought. Stopped for gas in southern New Hampshire. Came back from grabbing a Coke to find four people standing around my car, wondering if my bike and kayak racks were somehow related to the hay in the back of the car. They confessed; they were tourists from Missouri.

Drove back into Vermont. Stopped for groceries. No one stared. Ran by the market to pick up a pig bucket -- I'm giving the local grocer a break on green eggs in exchange for a bucket of old fruits and veggies every day or two. Again, nothing unusual about a guy in a coat and tie with hay and animal feed in the back of the car (although I'm sure the pig bucket added a certain je ne sans quoi to an establishment owned by a British gentleman). Anyway, nothing to see here, folks, move along.

I guess the moral of the story is, people who don't live in Vermont are strange. Or something like that.

Speaking of people who don't live in Vermont. The blog has been getting a lot of attention from Texas, almost certainly due to the latest triathlon tragedy. One reader was concerned that I was blaming the guy who died. Well ... no. But I'm not hugely crazy about huge events. And I think it's simple math. Bigger the event, bigger the chances for trouble.

Just philosophically, I don't think everyone should be able to enter a triathlon. Or a marathon. I'm not even sure I shouldn't be banned as a menace to others for my swimming/flailing in the water. Not to be elitist, but I think the sport would mean more if there's a minimum bar. Not a hugely high, Boston Marathon-like one, mind you -- but a minimum, so nitwits like myself don't try to enter one when they're woefully out of shape and hurt themselves or others.

This is NOT to say that the Conroe triathlete who died was out of shape, or a danger to anyone. I don't know -- maybe if there hadn't been 1,000 other people in the water, something could have been done. Or not. I don't know. But I do know a lot of these events are just too damn big. That's all. I'm just sayin'.

I'll step off my soapbox now. It's hard to stay on the soapbox anyway, when the Wall Street Journal has this to say about your neighboring town:

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- Policeman Robert Perkins received a complaint the other day. A man was standing near the tourist information kiosk in this quaint New England village, in the nude.

Officer Perkins spotted the perp and issued a warning: Keep your clothes on, or risk a $25 ticket. The man "was unaware" that being naked in town was illegal, Officer Perkins says.

1

Shefali Anand/WSJ

On a blackboard in downtown Brattleboro in November, some residents expressed their opinions against the ban on public nudity. NOTE: Some photos in this gallery include nudity.

In fact, until just a few months ago, public nudity was perfectly legal here -- as it still is in many Vermont towns. However, over the past two years, Brattleboro, pop. 12,000, has experienced sporadic outbreaks of naked bicycling, naked hula-hooping, and nakedness in general. That, in turn, triggered a period of civic navel-gazing, both literally and figuratively.

Last month's incident by the tourist kiosk was the first report of public nudity after months of wintry weather. But now that spring is in the air, Officer Perkins says, people are starting to wear less clothing. "We'll see if they take it all off," he says.

Brattleboro's troubles started in August 2006, when three young men went skinny-dipping in a swimming hole outside of town, then decided to see what would happen if they went into town and got naked there.

So the three headed to Harmony Parking Lot -- a popular hangout for kids just off Main Street -- and took off their clothes. "It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing," said Chris Corry, 20 years old and a member of the group.

... Love the Journal to death. Really. But "Brattleboro's troubles?" What the hell, it's Belfast or something? Summer=People take clothes off. Winter=People put them back on. No troubles here.

Chance of snow showers tonight, wind blowing like a damn Banshee out of the north. Damn, will it never end? At least I haven't yet planted the two apple trees or blueberry bushes I got over the weekend.

Sigh.

But a cool site here, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Here's hoping I never need them (and I probably won't, since I'm not selling or even producing raw milk). But knock on wood, anyway. And read Salatin's book, Everything I Want To Do is Illegal.

I'll shut up now.

Gilt Trip

So, we finally got the three little pigs. One girl, two boys. They're in a pen while we get the grounding rods straightened out -- not enough of a charge to keep them in the fence. We'll have it together tomorrow, Friday at latest. Funny little animals.

Been busy as hell this week. Trying very hard to get the garden put together, but we're interested in farming crops, not rocks. Sigh. There are a lot of them down there. Also been engaged in a ton of Will chaffeur-ing. I had to take him to Rutland for a meeting for his June youth leadership conference in Phoenix, and Lisa and I got him from Rutland again a few days later for another meeting. Fortunately, the weather has been more or less gorgeous.

More on the triathlon death in Houston (maybe a week or two ago). Awfully sad. Sometimes, these things just happen for no good reason. I'll still argue that the swimming leg is the most dangerous part of the sport, with or without heart problems.

The death of a Conroe man who was stricken while swimming in a triathlon last weekend resulted from drowning, but a heart problem also was a factor, according to an autopsy report.

Randolph Wray Parnell, 51, was competing in the 500-meter swim when he was found floating face-down in Lake Woodlands on Saturday.

An autopsy, conducted Monday by the Southeast Texas Forensic Center in Conroe, showed that Parnell drowned, but that dilated cardiomyopathy was a contributing factor, said Edie Connelly, Montgomery County Precinct 3 justice of the peace.

Parnell was one of about 900 competitors in the CB&I triathlon at Northshore Park in The Woodlands.

He had been training and competing in triathlons for 11 years, family members said, and this was his third year competing in the CB&I triathlon.

Survivors include his wife, Sharon, and son, Mason.

Pig Things

Got a call last night from a guy who can sell us three Yorkshire piglets, so I spent a couple of hours early this morning on the fenceline, trimming brush. I'll put the electric fence up this weekend and assemble a quick, pallet-shack for the beasts. Also have to get a trough and watering barrel. Lot of stuff to do.

On the goat front, the Southern Vermont Dairy Goat Association is right up the road from us. I've been doing some back-and-forth with them, and one of their members may be selling a couple of yearling goats. They wouldn't be ready for milking until fall, but ...

Need to rent a rototiller in the next week, too. We got flurries yesterday (!) and the last freeze shouldn't be for another couple of weeks, but we'll have to have everything in the ground by then. I've done just about enough hand tilling to last, oh, a lifetime.

Hoping to get back on the running track next week. Looks like physical terrorism is just about over.

A quick tip of the hat to Frances Bolles, Don's child (Don was the Arizona Republic reporter who was killed in 1976 by a car bomb planted by some major assholes, one of whom is 78 and asking for parole. And shouldn't get it). She's right about the cute little centerpiece in the Newseum:

She's married and has a son. She's a successful author and career development expert. Nearly 32 years have passed and still, at any moment, it's once again June 2, 1976. Like when she read that the recently opened Newseum in Washington, D.C., has her father's bombed out car on display.

“That is just grotesque,” Frances said. “I can't tell you what pain it is knowing that people are going to walk by and gawk. It reinforces the idea that my father is a footnote, and I rail against that. Over time, a victim is forgotten so that in something like a clemency hearing the focus goes to the person who is living rather than the person who was killed. My father was real. I don't want anyone to forget that.”

Back to the day job, aka making little rocks out of big rocks.

So. Not. Good.

At $200 bbl, US gasoline is about $7 per gallon. Not. So. Good. Here are some of the ugly details from the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4200dc9e-1521-11dd-996c-0000779fd2ac.html

The good news is that we extended the garden another 30-40 feet on Sunday. Took some of the pressure off the indoor flats, putting some broccoli and kale into the new bads. We're going to keep expanding until we run out of space, probably rototill the back yard and plant a mix of squash, beans and corn along the driveway.

The Saturday was a little more entertaining -- spent it learning to make cheese at Ricki Carroll's seminar in Ashfield, Mass. Went home and promptly started a big batch of cheddar, which is currently aging under cheesecloth and an asparagus steamer (keeps the cats and mice out) on a high shelf. I'll know how it comes out in, oh, two months or so.

Anyway. I'd recommend Ricki's class highly. The only downside is, there's not an opening until September. And they're crowded. Very crowded. Must've been 40 people at this one. It was an interesting group, though. Most of the people younger than me were in it for the sustainability issues -- they want to be able to make more of their own food when they have to make it. The folks older than me were more, eh, it's something fun to do in retirement.

Still scratching my head a bit about that one. But I did get a fair amount of supply -- some more cultures (thermophilic and mesophilic), propionic Shermanii for the Swiss, more salt and calcium chloride, and some butter muslin. All in all, I was restrained. Seriously.

Got a lot to do this week, barely time to take a break from the day job. But just saw the FT story and thought, yeeesh. I'm only commuting upstairs and downstairs, and thinking I'd better get more livestock. And one of these crosscut guys, since even a chainsaw is about to get mighty damn expensive:

http://www.lehmans.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=26&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=836&iSubCat=847&iProductID=26

Raining like hell, and supposed to get back down into the low 20s by midweek. Springtime in Vermont ...

The Doomers Are Out This Week

... and how.

Feeling better. Have the cheesemaking class on Saturday, and will hopefully rent a rototiller on Sunday. The crud is just about gone, and the shoulder feels a tad better. Been going hammer and tongs at the day job, at the expense of enjoying some truly gorgeous weather.

Here are the reads du jour, beginning with the quite inspirational and winding up with the utterly doomed (but yes, I did go to the co-op tonight and get a 25-pound bag of brown rice. And no, the Brattleboro Food Co-op was not limiting its customers).

First, the inspirational:

April 23, 2008
Starting His Retirement With a Splash
By PETE WILLIAMS

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Jeff Conine could have filled the first months of his post-baseball career with golf, fishing and travel — the usual pursuits that a 41-year-old with financial security might enjoy.

Instead, Conine, a 17-year veteran of six big-league teams, has spent long hours swimming, cycling and running in preparation for an ambitious triathlon schedule that will culminate in the Ironman world championship in Kona, Hawaii, in October. Several former teammates, accustomed to the less rigorous conditioning of baseball, have questioned his sanity.

“Guys in my position are supposed to sit back and relax, not do something ridiculous like this,” said Conine, who lives in South Florida and will make his triathlon debut here Sunday at the St. Anthony’s Triathlon.

The race attracts more than 4,000 competitors and is considered the kickoff to the sport’s national calendar. As an Olympic-distance event (0.93-mile swim, 24.8-mile bike ride, and 6.2-mile run), it is a small fraction of the grueling Ironman distance race, but longer than entry-level sprint triathlons.

Conine spent the final six weeks of last season with the Mets and is best known for his role as a first baseman and outfielder for the Florida Marlins teams that won the World Series in 1997 and 2003. A longtime follower of the Ironman world championship, he was inspired to take up the sport by David Samson, the Marlins’ president, who finished the event in 2006.

Conine, who stands 6 feet 1 inch, finished last season at 220 pounds, heavy by triathlon standards, and until recently had limited swimming experience. But he was regarded as one of baseball’s better athletes, having played professional racquetball as a minor leaguer.

He certainly looks the part, having been told for years that he resembles Lance Armstrong, a likeness that seems more pronounced as Conine loses weight while training.

Though baseball is an anaerobic sport with short bursts of activity, unlike the long aerobic nature of triathlon, Conine believes the experience of playing a mentally taxing sport over a 162-game season will ease his transition.

“It’s all about being mentally tough,” he said. “With long-distance triathlon, it’s all about knowing when to push your body and when to rest and persevering through these boring six-hour rides and three-hour runs.”

Next, the amusing:

Green Acres II: When Neighbors Become Farmers
Suburban Arugula Is Organic and Fresh, but About That Manure...
By KELLY K. SPORS
April 22, 2008; Page A1

BOULDER, Colo. -- When suburbanites look out their front doors, a lot of them want to see a lush green lawn. Kipp Nash wants to see vegetables, and not all of his neighbors are thrilled.

"I'd rather see green grass" than brown dirt patches, says 82-year-old Florence Tatum, who lives in Mr. Nash's Boulder neighborhood, across the street from a house with a freshly dug manure patch out front. "But those days are slipping away."

A growing number of suburban Americans are earning extra cash by growing food in their backyards.

Since 2006, Mr. Nash, 31, has uprooted his backyard and the front or back yards of eight of his Boulder neighbors, turning them into minifarms growing tomatoes, bok choy, garlic and beets.

Between May and September, he gives weekly bagfuls of fresh-picked vegetables and herbs to people here who have bought "shares" of his farming operation. Neighbors who lend their yards to the effort are paid in free produce and yard work.

A school-bus driver, Mr. Nash rises at 5 a.m. and, after returning from his morning route, spends his days planting, watering and tending his yard farms and the seedlings he stores in a greenhouse behind his house.

Farmers don't necessarily live in the country anymore. They might just be your next-door neighbor, hoping to turn a dollar satisfying the blooming demand for organic, locally grown foods.

Unlike traditional home gardeners who devote a corner of the yard to a few rows of vegetables, a new crop of minifarmers is tearing up the whole yard and planting foods such as arugula and kohlrabi that restaurants might want to buy. The locally grown food movement has also created a new market for front-yard farmers.

"Agriculture is becoming more and more suburban," says Roxanne Christensen, publisher of Spin-Farming LLC, a Philadelphia company started in 2005 that sells guides and holds seminars teaching a small-scale farming technique that involves selecting high-profit vegetables like kale, carrots and tomatoes to grow, and then quickly replacing crops to reap the most from plots smaller than an acre. "Land is very expensive in the country, so people are saying, 'why not just start growing in the backyard?' "

And on the "we're doomed" front:

Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs."

(Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash.

Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

Postscript

It's occasionally good to get some positive reinforcement. Good Pollan article in today's NY Times Magazine:

You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Le Crud

It's coming, I know it. Weird feeling at the back of the throat, check. Starting to feel a bit snotty, check. Run-down feeling in general, check. Occasional dizziness, check.

Sigh. I don't need this.

Didn't stop me from getting up and going to town on the chicken run. I had a bit more chicken nastiness than anticipated -- 32 wheelbarrow-fulls, to be precise. Dumped it all close to where the back garden is going. Lisa raked it out.

Given the way the shoulder is feeling (bad), I'm thinking we're going to wind up renting a rototiller for the bulk of the garden creation. Just a little too much manual labor right now.

After I finished the chicken run cleaning, I did a little bit more work on it, mostly measuring for the new door and reinstalling some perches. The plan is to finish up the door, put the netting over the top, and then proceed with a duck rodeo. Yee-haw.

Also put up a clothesline and trimmed about 50 more feet of brush along the fenceline. Nasty, sticky thorns that took forever to get done. At least I got to listen to the frogs and owls while doing it.

Here's to hoping the Emergen-C kicks in.

Smells Like Crap

Must be crap.

Wow. Gorgeous day today. Believe I got a sunburn (too bad I'm so damn fat). Anyway, we fixed the frame of the chicken run. Didn't take as long as I was afraid it'd take. Cleaning out the inside of the run, though, was another matter. Imagine a 12 foot by 12 foot space, about six inches deep in hay, chicken crap, and chicken piss.

Oh, and it's been sitting there all winter.

I piled up about a cubic yard of the stuff before punting for the day. Went to town on the back fence, clearing brush along the soon-to-be fenceline with a pair of loppers. Shoulder was just absolutely killing me by the time it got dark.

Made dinner for the kids, did all the dishes, started everyone's laundry, and did some general sweeping, dusting and other cleaning around the house. Lisa baked bread, worked on the garden and did some cleaning. Watched the Jazz beat up on the Rox until midnight -- I think they're already done this year -- and went to bed.

More chickenshit tomorrow.