Whoa there! The new pumpkin patch, three months after planting.
Stop Press, late August. We got 302 pumpkins out of the patch, sold about half, gave many away and ate pumpkins till we were tired of them. What came as a huge and unexpected bonus, was that the butternuts, planted first, cross-pollinated with the Japs, to give a large orange pumpkin, size of a Jap, texture and flavour of a butternut. We call them jumpkins, and maybe the cross will be stable. If so, it is one of the best pumpkins. If you email, we will post you a few seeds.
Grow your own and avoid the riots ?
We all hope this financial and economic meltdown goes away, but meanwhile, what are ordinary folk everywhere to do? About 900
million of us are hungry, jobs are in short supply and are evaporating fast, etc. The market food system is feeding most of us, but is
over-stressed. Hundreds of millions of us are watching "important" people go to important meetings. Millions of us think maybe that
Irishman O'bama is some sort of new saviour and will fix it all. Many are praying to sky deities for rations, or hoping Oxfam will do
the cargo-cult thing they do so well once again.
Put not thy trust in princes, I suggest.
So: Plant food now.
Everyone, everywhere possible and in as wide a variety of food types as possible. On vacant land, as Havana has done. On roofs, on
balconies, on footpaths. Tell the friends and neighbours. Join the Ten Percent Club, and aim to grow 10 percent of your own food.
Self-sufficiency is for most a dream, but 10 percent is doable, and will have a huge impact. That will help take the pressure off wheat
and rice stocks, as every alternate mouthful will help free up food for those of us who cannot supply ourselves and will help bring food
prices down globally. If where you are you cannot grow food, that is maybe not a healthy camp site, so shift if you can Plant sprouts
for the quickest returns, veggies next, then food trees. Tend to existing neglected food trees, they are often one of the quickest ways to
get extra food.
Then we need to collectively see that the farmers and the fishermen, and the entire food chain, get paid and supported enough that they
can continue to feed the six out of seven of us they now feed either adequately, well, or too well. We also need to distinguish between
lot-fed meat that is using up vast amounts of scarce grain, and range-fed meat, that is producing extra food from ground that would
otherwise produce either less or nothing at all. We should gradually legislate lot-feeding out of existence.
We seem, as a species, to be overrunning our resources on several fonts. Both recession and depression are terms that imply
recoveries, let's hope. But this may not be merely a rerun of bad times we have seen before. We are a species in plague proportions,
proven by our very steep population growth rate in the last hundred years. So, ecology may shortly have some harsh things to say to
us; for the track record of species with very steep demographic growth rates, see the fossil record. Survival is not compulsory.
I suggest it is not cash that is king on this planet, it’s food. You cannot eat greenbacks, no matter how much oil you fry them in. The
farm-and-market system is not providing quite enough food, so folk in China and India, just to eat, work very long hours and have
made most factories elsewhere redundant. At some Chinese factories, the whistle blows, the people emerge from their cardboard
boxes just outside the fence and go to work. Midday they may get fed, the whistle goes 12 hours later, back to the boxes, maybe s
even days a week. You want to keep your factory job and compete, but intend to drive to work in a car of some sort? And then
home, to a house? That, roughly, is why most factories in the rich world are now redundant.
We may be able to trade or spend our way out of this, by stimulating more of the same, but I am sceptical. I suggest, take off the tie
or the high heels, get out the hoe, and plant food now. Everyone, everywhere possible, and in a great a variety of food types as possible.
Join the Ten Percent Club; if you can produce that much of what you eat, it will back off the pressure on wheat and rice. Can't eat
greenbacks, no matter how deep you fry them in oil. Might be an idea to stop swanning round in the sky in large aluminium aerosol
cans, en route of Monte Carlo, or off other folks' coastlines in aircraft carriers.
I may well be wrong, hope I am, but the long party may be over for the million monkey mobs, those of us still in those big refugee
camps called cities. Head for vacant land? And stay or become peaceful. Scrapping or jumping off buildings won't help much, and
there's lots to do, out here beyond the smogbanks. Good luck all.
Peter Ravenscroft
Subsistence farmer,
Closeburn, Queensland, Oz
Get back if so minded. Email is: [email protected]
Post all donations to a needy polar bear. Send no bank promises or Kerensky money. Just sunglasses and suitably GM-ed mango
pips.
PS: I'm getting by on a hundredth of past peak income, pre-1988, eating well, no debts. I am not slinging you a line. The setup here is
not perfect, nor is it independent of the rest of the system, but its fun and workable so far.
Stop Press. 2 February, 2009. This site has been unattended as I have been out re-planting the long abandoned veggie patch. It is
now mostly a sea of green Jap pumpkins, about a hundred plants, not flowering yet but looking OK. Am eating the first cucumbers.
We dug up an ancient boat. In an small dip, found flat rocks, then some brown cloth, then a blue plastic boat. Planted in ancient
Permaculture times, as a sacred pond or something. Who says there is no culture in a pumpkin patch? Plenty of red cherry guavas,
enough Brazilian cherries, some maccas (macadamis) , a plte of Maderia ine (fried as chips) and a small but very tasty crop of bunya
nuts, also fried (in olive oil, which was scored by a mate) . The trees still a bit young at 25. The nuts announce their readiness by the
cones crashing on the shed roof and bending the sheet iron. About 120 years back, near here, one got an aboriginal gentleman, who
was asleep under a tree and has not been wakened yet.
Live dangerously, is the local motto. Curiously, this ancient belief is also dear to the pensioners of Iceland.
Pulled the life savings out of the bank, buried them under a rock, there to convert themselves to Kerensky money or compost,
whichever comes first. Must try to remember which rock. Pensioners of the world, I sympathise. Now totter out into the garden,
try not the freeze in the blizzard (or fry, depending on which version of global warming you subscribe to) and plant something edible
other than yourself.
But .... Here beginneth the global economic recovery. Nev at the village fruit shop may be able to sell the pumpkins and/or the
lemongrass, if the donkeys don't slip past the border patrol .
For pocket money, we are planning to break up old Boeings, stockpile the ally rivets and sell the seats and the life jackets to game
freaks. Watch this space. Or, get outside and plant something edible, other than ....
Pull the other leg, it has a goat tied to it.
