This post (and video, see below) is my contribution to the Occupy Our Food Supply #F27 Blogger Day of Action. It’s part of the overall Global Day of Action designed to call attention to corporate exploitation of our food systems and indeed, our planet.

It’s time to take back your power.

How often we’ve heard the news reports: yet another recall of a million pounds of contaminated ground meat, tomatoes, peanut butter, eggs or spinach. It happens so often these days it’s almost become routine. Government oversight of industrial “farms” is feeble at best, yet it’s the government that’s supposed to protect us – the consumer – from harm by making sure our food supply is safe.

We all recognize the names of the major players: Archer Daniels Midland. Tyson Foods. Walmart. Cargill. Smithfield. JBS. The scary fact is that a mere handful of corporations pretty much control our food supply: seventy percent of US beef (Tyson, Cargill, JBS); 57% of US pork (Smithfield, Tyson, JBS); 40% of US chicken (Tyson, JBS).

And you thought Tyson just did chicken.

But it doesn’t stop with meat. Four companies whose names you will instantly recognize (PespsiCo, Nestle, Kraft Foods, and Tyson) have combined sales larger than the GDP of 148 countries. Many of these mega-corporations buy their palm oil – present in about half the products in your grocery store – from Cargill. And Cargill in turn devastates rainforests, employs child and slave labor and displaces indigenous communities as it rakes in some $119 billion annually.

Then, of course, we have that behemoth of industrial ag and reportedly, the most hated corporation in the world. Monsanto. Monsanto (or as some call it, “Monsatan”) gave us GMOs; they sue organic farmers after conventionally farmed GMO pollen drifts on the wind and contaminates organic crops; they’re working on terminator seed technology that would eliminate the possibility of saving seed thus forcing farmers to buy seed from Monsanto – forever. In short, this too-big-to-exist corporate entity wants to control the entire global seed supply.

If that doesn’t scare you, maybe this will. Of late, Monsanto is also partnering with Dow to reintroduce the herbicide 2,4-D which you may remember is a major component of the infamous Vietnam war-era Agent Orange defoliant. Yes folks, they’ve apparently developed a 2,4-D tolerant corn so industrial farmers can douse their fields in the stuff to kill the new superweeds – superweeds that developed in response to Monsanto’s other herbicide, Roundup – while leaving the corn unaffected.

Agent Orange in your cornflakes? Sounds yummy!

Let’s face it: as with nearly every other aspect of our lives, our food system is being systematically monopolized by a handful of corporate interests, aided and abetted by the people we supposedly elect to represent us and our interests. (In 2010 Cargill alone spent $1.4 million lobbying Washington.) It’s a nasty chain of incestuous relationships that puts profits far ahead of human rights or environmental integrity.

So what do you do? What if you no longer wish to support the existing corrupt system and resulting toxic food supply? Where do you turn for clean, safe, healthy nourishment for you and your family?

That’s easy – actually much easier than you might think. You turn to your local food producers.

They’re out there, people. Every state has farms and farmers. And I guarantee you that many are small farmers doing their level best to hang on to the farm and produce safe, healthy food for the people in their area. Chances are good that you live near some of them. You just have to make up your mind to do a little legwork, find out who these farmers are and where their products can be purchased. Here are some ideas.

• You can check out great websites like localharvest.org and eatwild.com and find the local farms in your area that produce grass-fed beef and dairy, pastured poultry and pork, organic fruits and veggies.
• You can also use these sites to track down the farmers markets in your area, or sign up for a Community Supported Agriculture share.
• You can garden almost anywhere.

If you doubt that it can be done – that there’s an abundance of quality food produced near you, enough variety so that shopping in a supermarket for food can pretty much become a thing of the past – well, watch my little video. I’ve been “eating local” for two years now. These days when I walk into a grocery store, I have an entirely different view of it. It’s just a wasteland, all dressed up in pretty boxes, cans, and bags. My freezer, on the other hand, is full of good stuff – all of it homegrown or locally produced in this area by dedicated small farmers who need (and want) our help in taking back the food supply from the corporate exploiters.

The time has come. No more excuses. We can all do better.

Occupy our food supply!

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave (in which case you have no need for any of this frugal/simple living/sustainability stuff), you’re well aware of the financial crash of 2008 and how it wiped out trillions of dollars of assets worldwide. As a result, people everywhere with 401Ks or similar (battered) retirement plans have resigned themselves to working longer or to possibly never being able to retire. They assume that’s just their lot in life; the system is gamed by the banksters (which it surely is), they got screwed, the politicians are wholly owned by the banksters and corporations, no one will go to jail, so that’s that.

Qwitcherbitchin’, suck it up and carry on. Right?

Maybe not.

There’s an alternative staring us all in the face, if only we care to see it. If only we care to look past the slick advertising, the pressures of societal “norms” and our own egos. It’s something we’ve all forgotten or more likely, never realized in the first place.

We can reinvent our own economy and invest in ourselves.

No, I’m not talking about education, though a good basic education does have its place, obviously. But sadly, education has become yet another route into a life of indebted servitude, as so many recent college graduates have learned. The banksters have gamed that system as well. But I digress.

No, the kind of self-investment I’m talking about is that of personal re-skilling, of learning to do for yourself that which you previously assumed you could only pay other people to do.

It’s the sort of stuff this blog and a host of others discuss all the time. To wit:

Let’s return for a minute to an ongoing project I’ve been working on: the perfecting of homemade yogurt. Why? Because it’s an investment with fabulous returns!

• Looking at the recipe from Week 3 of my yogurt experiment, you’ll recall that a one week supply would cost, on average, $2.22.
• A one-week supply of store-bought plain Chobani (my favorite brand) yogurt would cost me no less than $6.93.

Now, while there’s a lot of “waiting” time involved in making yogurt (during which you can go do something else), the actual hands-on time works out to about an hour.

• So, I invest one hour of my time plus $2.22 and save $4.71.

If I put in $2.22 and get a financial “return” of $4.71, that’s a 112% “interest” rate on my time investment.  And then – according to knowledgeable people – if I invest and compound that weekly $4.71 savings, in ten years I’ll have $3542 squirreled away that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

Not even the most moral and ethically challenged bankster can finagle a return like that!

And now let’s say you work a job where you’re paid, officially, $20 an hour. But what’s your real hourly rate? You need to sit down and calculate how much it’s costing you to work both in time (hours at the job, hours commuting, getting ready to go, unwinding when you come home) as well as the money: cost of gas, perhaps an extra car and taxes if you’re 1/2 of a couple, required clothing, meals out ’cause you’re too tired to cook, child care, meds or other chemical means to manage your stress, and more. You might find that in reality, you only earn maybe $8 an hour that is actually available for your life outside of work.

So if you’re buying yogurt instead of making it, at 8 bucks an hour you’re spending 52 minutes at your job just to cover your yogurt costs every week. That’s 45 hours a year . . . at a job which you may not even love all that much.

On the other hand, if you’re making your own yogurt that’s only 17 minutes a week on the job to pay for the ingredients – or 14 hours each year.

Another angle: by making your own yogurt you’re “earning” about $5.00 per hour. Now that doesn’t seem like such a great hourly rate, does it? But there are a couple ways to look at it. First, if I save that much every week, it adds up to $245 per year or a bit over $20 per month (or $3542 compounded over ten years, remember). If your household uses even more yogurt, obviously your savings are greater. Ask yourself, what bill do you pay every month that’s about $20? For me, it’s my cable TV bill.

“But,” you say. “I don’t have time to make yogurt! I have a full-time job.”

Right. Do you see where this is going?

When you do things for yourself, your time becomes valuable to you. You’re investing in yourself instead of some nameless, faceless corporation. Your home becomes a center of production instead of consumption. The less you consume (as in consumer goods and products), the less money you need. The less money you need, the fewer hours you have to work. And if you apply these principles to every part of your life – not just one product like yogurt – pretty soon you find your investment paying off pretty handsomely. You may find you’ll get to retire after all, despite the criminal malfeasance of the banksters.

Will it be one of those jet-set glamorous retirements that you see in the investment ads? Uh, probably not. But is that what you really want? Or is that yet another “want” they’re trying to foist upon you as a “need”? Only you can decide that. And even if you really want that glamorous future, if you’re a person of modest means, investing in yourself and your skills now is the only possible way to get there.

If you want it bad enough, you will find the time to invest in you. We can always make time for our priorities.

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Roughly translated, the title of this post means “Free-Range Chicken Gardens”, which also happens to be the title of a wonderful new book by sustainable landscape designer and chicken-keeper Jessi Bloom (no I’m not making that up).

I love this book. It has the two things I look for in any garden book: tons of solidly researched, well-written, detailed information and lots of big inspirational color photos. The front cover alone sold me. I want a garden like that!

I do not have chickens but I’m fully aware they are just about the ideal livestock for gardens of all kinds and sizes – especially permaculture systems. I really, really, really want to have chickens but I don’t (yet) because I don’t live in a rural livestock-y area; I do not know a single soul who would be willing or able to competently look after my birds when I’m away. While dogs and cats can be boarded in a pinch, I know of no chicken kennels. In short, chickens – like any animal – are a responsibility I would not take lightly. So for now, no chickens.

But that doesn’t stop me from wanting them – and planning for them. You won’t have to research permaculture for very long before you come across a discussion of chickens as an essential part of garden ecology. Permaculture is about designing in a way that mimics nature’s systems, thereby eliminating waste while saving time, effort and money. Permaculture chickens (I would only have hens) would help me out by eating pests, cleaning up plant waste, tilling the soil, producing fertilizer and of course giving me fresh eggs. In other words, just by being chickens they eliminate a good deal of work for the gardener and create fertilizer and lovely eggs as a by-product. What’s not to love?

And besides, chickens are kinda cute in a beady-eyed sort of way.

Although I come from farming stock, I’m not a farmer nor do I pretend to be one. I am a gardener and I’m particularly fascinated with permaculture design as probably the only practical sustainable way forward in the troubling times ahead. So, even if I don’t see myself having chickens right away, I certainly can plan to integrate them into my systems. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m slowly designing a comprehensive plan for my entire property, that I will implement over a period of years. I would rather plan for chickens (and possibly bees)  in advance than try to fit them in later.

And that’s where this book comes in. Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard is all about integrating chickens into your garden. It isn’t specifically about permaculture though anyone familiar with it will recognize permaculture principles throughout. It’s a book for chicken-keeping newbies as well as garden designers in general and permies in particular.

If you’re at all familiar with chickens – even if all you’ve done is read about them – you know these birds’ foraging and scratching behaviors can be very destructive to gardens. So after a proper introduction to basic chicken-keeping principles, the author gets to the heart of the matter: designing a garden that’s welcoming to chickens, resistant to their predations and neighborhood friendly. Fencing, plant selections, coop and yard layout, free-range options, paddock rotations, predator protection and much more are all thoroughly covered in a way that really inspires confidence – even in a chicken noob like myself. Each chapter starts with a little photo tour of a free-range chicken garden showing the different solutions that folks have chosen to keep their chickens safe and happy. By the time the author’s done, there’s little left to wonder about.

What I love most about this book are the pictures. There are dozens of big, full page photo layouts of chickens doing their thing in gardens that appear to be veritable chicken Shangri-las. These inspirational gardens are lush and overflowing with food for humans, wildlife and chickens alike. On top of that, these environments are absolutely gorgeous. They are most definitely not our grandpas’ barnyards.

My only complaint about the book has to do with its design: the orange pages with white text are a little difficult to read, especially the tiny captions. A darker orange or a bolder typeface would help. That’s a minor nitpick however; everything else about this book is terrific.

In short, if you’re a suburban or urban gardener, Free-Range Chicken Gardens will show you how to have healthy, happy chickens in a gorgeous, sustainable landscape that no neighbor could possibly complain about. If you can find it at your local library you might want to check it out first, but I think most folks who are serious about creating a beautiful, sustainable, self-reliant lifestyle for themselves will want it as a permanent part of their reference library.

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Six cups of thick Greek-style yogurt plus two cups of whey for the dog.

Well folks, the great yogurt experiment continues. I gave you the basic method of yogurt making here and while that batch turned out fine, it wasn’t exactly what I’m after: Greek-style yogurt. I don’t know if the Greeks really make yogurt that’s like what the Great American Marketing Machine is selling us, but it sure is good. Problem is, it’s also expensive. And if you’re looking to be as efficient as possible with your money and stash as much in savings as possible, well then . . . there has to be a better (read: cheaper) way.

Turns out there is.

The second week, I adjusted my recipe as follows:

INGREDIENTS: (with prices)
1/2 gal. whole milk ($1.79)
1/2 c. of non-fat dry milk ($0.94)
2-3 Tbsp. of plain live-culture grocery store yogurt ($0.45)

This made 8 cups yogurt which I then strained (see below) for 3 hours, yielding almost 2 cups whey and 6 cups of much thicker yogurt than the first batch. The total cost came to $3.18: 53 cents a cup or equivalent to 40 cents for a 6 oz. container. Savings: 60 cents/container.

Last weekend, the third week, I tried another variation:

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 gal. whole milk ($2.15)
No non-fat dry milk
2-3 Tbsp. of the last batch as starter.

(Note the difference in the price of milk from the second week to the third. Same brand, same store. Milk prices apparently fluctuate more than gasoline!)

Again the result was 8 cups of yogurt which I strained for 3 hours, giving me almost 2-1/2 cups whey and 5-1/2 cups thick yogurt. The actual cost for this batch was much less, but since every five batches needs new store-bought starter that works out in practice to about 7 cents per batch. So let’s say the cost on this one was $2.22. That’s 40 cents per 8 oz. cup or 30 cents per equivalent 6 oz. container. Savings: 70 cents/container.

This yogurt was also thicker than the first batch but it didn’t have quite the same texture as batch #2 that had the additional solids from the powdered milk.

Some thoughts on non-fat dry milk powder

I have a bit of a dilemma here. My experiments have shown me that I prefer yogurt made with the powder (as in batch #2), but that obviously drives up the cost as well as the carb content (powdered milk is about 52% carbs by weight). And while I’m not using organic milk for my yogurt, I’m at least trying to avoid rBst (Monsanto Co.’s recombinant bovine somatotropin) and am buying a regional milk that’s stated to be rBst-free. Who in their right mind would want to knowingly support Monsanto at this point; never mind what it does to the poor cows? Problem is, I’d also have to buy very expensive organic powdered milk to ensure that I’m not. A half-cup of the organic product runs about $2 at health-food store prices, which puts a real dent in the frugal aspect.

What about all that whey?

Whey is actually pretty nutritious stuff, high in protein, vitamins, minerals and more. It also contains lactose. So straining out the whey isn’t a bad idea for lactose or carb intolerant individuals. But it seems a shame to waste it, right? Well, I’ve been told it can be used in baking, though I’ve never tried that and I don’t bake much any more for obvious reasons. Animals also love it; I’m using it to moisten my old dog’s food and I’ve seen no sign of digestive upset. A couple cups of liquid whey last her the week.

Whole-milk Greek-style yogurt may be pretty low-carb indeed given that much of the lactose is converted to lactic acid, and at least some of the remaining lactose is strained out with the whey.

How to strain yogurt

I usually do this the day after I’ve made the yogurt, after it’s spent the night in the fridge. Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Place mesh strainer/colander in a large bowl, making sure there is space under the colander. Line with paper towel. Spoon yogurt from jars into strainer.

Set a plate on top and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. The longer you strain it the thicker the yogurt will become, even to the point of making yogurt "cheese". You can see the whey in the bowl.

Gently spoon the yogurt back into the jars. As you get to the bottom where the yogurt is thickest, you'll find that you can use the paper towel to "gather" the yogurt for easier spooning. Surprisingly, very little yogurt sticks to the towel. Cheesecloth could also be used for the straining process.

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It's been said that the problems facing us require a WWII-style mobilization. This vintage J. Howard Miller 'We Can Do It!' poster was commissioned by Westinghouse and shown briefly in February 1942.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

I’ve always loved that quote, and as luck would have it, last week I ran across an article in – of all places – The Chronicle [of Higher Education] Review titled, The Future of American Colleges May Lie, Literally, in Students’ Hands dealing with that very philosophy. It’s a fascinating piece about those few US “work colleges” that teach actual hands-on skills in addition to liberal arts subjects designed to get students to think. It proposes that, in the face of economic uncertainty, climate change, resource depletion and environmental degradation, widespread teaching of these sorts of life skills at the college level may be an idea whose time has come.

The author, Scott Carlson, had me hooked with the first couple of paragraphs:

A friend of mine who works at Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict, in Minnesota, recently told me a story: Her book group read Anna Lappé’s Diet for a Hot Planet, one of many recent books to focus on the vulnerabilities of the industrial food system and the threats posed by climate change. The book’s treatment of the topic held few surprises, and the solutions offered were equally well-worn and deceptively simple: Buy fruits, vegetables, and meats locally, and cook them at home.

My friend’s big surprise came when the students in the group started talking about the solutions—and found themselves stuck: “Almost all the students said they didn’t know how to cook,” she told me, “and even the young, single adult employees in the group admitted they lacked both the know-how and motivation.”

What struck me first was that, not only do these students not know how to cook, but apparently their parents don’t either. I’m likely older than they are – a Boomer – but my parents taught me a lot of hands-on, do-it-yourself skills simply because that’s what a parent did back then in preparing their kids for real life. Somewhere along the line, that fell by the wayside as we allowed ourselves to be persuaded that cooking, gardening, sewing, putting food by, and repairing things were all menial tasks to be done by someone else. In recent decades the implication has been that such labors were somehow beneath us and the whole point of going to college was to avoid having to do that kind of (ewwww) . . . work.

That’s absurd of course, and in the process we’ve come dangerously close to losing that knowledge. My parents grew up during the Great Depression and fared pretty well compared to a lot of people, in good part because home was a center of production, not consumption. It’s a little sad (and frightening) to think there are now at least two generations of Boomer kids and grandkids out there, many whom are at a complete loss even now as the compost is just starting to hit the fan. We continually hear that the middle class is “suffering”. Could this be part of the problem?

Carlson further illustrates the point with this (emphasis mine):

Derek Larson, an associate professor of environmental studies and history at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, gets his students to imagine the future by reading techno-utopian and postapocalyptic fiction. James Howard Kunstler’s World Made by Hand, which describes America after an influenza pandemic and an oil shortage, left them shaken.

“I asked each of them, ‘What skills would you have that would be applicable in that world?’” Larson says. “And they all said, ‘Nothing.’ They were actually kind of despairing at this. They said, ‘I’d die. What would I be able to do? I would have no valuable skills.’”

This lack of craftsmanship and life skills has worrisome implications for the US economy as a whole, despite grand speechifying by the President. (You know what I mean: all that “We can be No. 1 again” stuff). Carlson’s interviewees have a thing or two to say on that as well, given that we as a nation no longer value hands-on training. (The entire article is well worth the read, do check it out when you can.)

And so, as I was contemplating the topic for today’s post it occurred to me that there may be a greater need than I imagined for this blog’s subject matter. Sustainable occupation of a finite planet definitely means we’re gonna have to roll up our sleeves and even get our hands dirty once in awhile. I know how to do some stuff and I’m not afraid to try others. I at least have the motivation!

How about you? Have you taken on some home production project lately, something you weren’t sure you could do? How’d it turn out?

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If your winter has been as strange as ours here in central NY, you may be having the same odd seasonal disorientation I am. When I’m outside it feels like late March, yet all the ads are for Valentine’s Day stuff. We are three feet below normal on snowfall (though precipitation has been near normal mostly in the form of rain), and November, December and January have each been 5 to 6 degrees warmer than average. I know that any given weather pattern is not to be confused with climate, but it’s kinda creepin’ me out nonetheless. It’s nice not to be plowing, shoveling and wearing big clodhopper boots all the time, but still – it just feels weird.

But spring – real spring – will be here eventually. And of course that means getting ready with a seed order which, if you’ve been gardening for any length of time, can actually be a little daunting. That’s because if you’re anything like me, you have a hefty collection of seeds from previous years. But do I have enough? Did I like those varieties? Wait…where the heck are they? Can I use seeds from two or three years ago? And the biggie: how the heck do I know what to order when I’ve got so many already?

From http://msucares.com/lawn/garden/vegetables/storing/index.html

So before I could even think about what to grow for 2012, I really had to take stock of what I already had. If they’re not exposed to heat, most vegetable seeds are good for several seasons, the notable exceptions that come to mind being any kind of onion (including chives, scallions, etc.) seeds as well as parsnips. That means you don’t have to throw everything out and start over each spring. If your garden is as big as mine, reordering the same seeds every year could get pretty expensive. It really does pay to keep seeds from year to year.

Until now, I’d been storing my seeds in one of those big metal gourmet popcorn cans (you know, the kind with a cute Christmas photo of puppies on the outside). It worked – sorta. At least everything was all in one place. But every time I went to plant something, I had to go through a hundred or more packets to find what I was looking for. Some were opened, some not. Seed would spill. Sometimes I’d open a new packet and then later find that same variety from a year or more ago that I should have used first. It was all very haphazard and more than a little frustrating.

I poked around the internet for ideas and found that organized gardeners mostly seem to keep their seeds filed in boxes, either plastic or cardboard. Some folks got really fancy and decorated their boxes like this or this. Others kept it simple with just a plain box and labeled cardboard dividers. The consensus seems to be that extra seeds should be stored in the refrigerator, which I had not been doing.

I want to be one of those organized gardeners!

Thusly inspired by my internet searches, I decided I would store my seeds in plastic and probably in the refrigerator.  Cardboard wouldn’t do because it holds dampness and in the case of any liquid spills, the seeds would be doomed. So the first thing was to measure some seed packets so I would know the right sized box when I saw it. MalWart had several candidates but in the end, the best choice also turned out to be the cheapest. I bought four plastic shoe boxes for 96 cents each. They look a little small for shoes (especially big ol’ size 10’s like mine) but are perfect for seeds.

As extra protection, I would pack each kind of veggie in a baggie and tuck it in behind a heavy cardboard divider labeled with that seed group. I could have made a divider for each particular veggie but that seemed like overkill. Instead I grouped them either by family (‘Tomatoes, Peppers’, ‘Asian Greens’) or by specific plantings (‘Coldframe Greens’). And in a fit of neatness I used my label maker instead of hand scrawling on each divider. (I’m not the most organized person in the world, but perfectly printed labels make me feel like I am.)

So, after going through the popcorn can and throwing out the very oldest seeds (2008) plus any varieties that had been disappointing or not that tasty, I sorted the rest. Each particular veggie went into its own baggie – all the lettuces are bagged together, all the beets, all the carrots, etc. and then tucked behind the proper divider.

Once the seeds were organized, it was then a simple matter to go through them one by one, decide if I had enough for this year and if not, note ‘Buy’ (in a yellow cell) on my seed ordering spreadsheet. Lots of gardeners use spreadsheets for this because it makes it easy to sort by any of several criteria. My list was alphabetical as I worked through it, but when I was done I sorted on the ‘Buy’ column to group these at the top so I wouldn’t miss anything.

I’ve already done a partial order (I’m doing my part to support D. Landreth Seeds in Pennsylvania – America’s oldest seed company – 1784!); those are the green boxes with ‘Buy’ removed. Once that order was done, I re-sorted on cell color and am left with the yellow cells at the top, so it’s easy to carry on with my order from another company.

Why order seeds at all? Basically it comes down to two things: price and choice. Seeds are much less expensive than plant starts from the local Big Box Mega Corp’s garden center.  And at any garden center you’ll find much less to choose from. For example, most seed catalogs have pages and pages of tomato choices; whereas your garden center might have four or five (the usual hybrids ‘Early Girl’, ‘Big Boy’, ‘Beefsteak’ and a cherry variety are most common around here). You’ll never find the pretty little heirloom Japanese Black Trefeles or Purple Cherokees at a garden center. Tomatoes grown from heirloom seed taste like real tomatoes. Starting from seed is worth the effort.

I’d just like to encourage everyone who reads this to make 2012 your year to occupy a garden. If you’ve never gardened before, there’s no better time to start. Give it a try.

Have a great weekend!

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So in Part I, I wrote a little bit about the fix we’re in – how our endless consumption on a planet of finite resources  is simply not sustainable in the long term (or even the short term if it turns out that a lot of very smart people are right). As Edward Abbey put it, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Of course, as with all predictions of the future, we can’t know for certain exactly how long resources will last or the climate will remain stable enough to support life as we’ve known it but I firmly believe in planning for the worst and hoping for the best. I think the scientists know what they’re talking about; the details may vary in how it all plays out but none of it is a hoax.

What’s interesting about moving toward a “post-growth” or post-consumer lifestyle is that it accomplishes a number of useful things all at once. And while I’d like to think we’re all on board for “saving the planet”, I know full well that for many people that notion alone isn’t enough to motivate them to start making changes. It’s too big and too abstract and besides, what can one person do? And so, the many people who would benefit the most from learning to live post-growth don’t do so because they think they don’t have time or can’t afford it – they’re simply trying to “survive” in these tough economic times.

And that’s a very expensive way to live indeed. Because survival these days seems to depend on the foolish notion that it’s all about money. That everything you need (and want) can only be had by purchasing it. Survival supposedly depends on the constant flow of cash through their lives and the only way they know to get it – short of robbing a bank – is to have a “good”, high-paying job so that mindless consumption can carry on unimpeded. This is why you hear people who make $100,000 (or more) a year  complain that they’re barely keeping their heads above water. Mix in a whole lotta ego – that life is a contest, you gotta get ahead (of whom???), your kids have to get into a top university, he who dies with the most toys wins – and you have the perfect recipe for debt slavery and unhappiness even in the best of times.

Of course debt slavery and unhappiness suits the 1% just fine. Because as long as they can keep us believing that the only “cure” for our misery is the endless acquisition of stuff, they’ll continue to bleed us dry – with our permission. So it’s up to us to wake up, see this system for the illusion it is and say, “No more!”

But how, exactly, do we do that?

We start to think for ourselves. And we get mad and get smart and realize that we do in fact have much more power than we’ve been taught to believe. Crony-capitalism is what the 1% practices, but we can still practice real capitalism. We can reward and punish, simply by how we (don’t) spend our money.

Inspired by the lists of “Ideas for living ‘post growth’ in a growth-oriented world” of the Post Growth Institute here’s my own list of changes I’ve been working on for the last several years. It’s not exhaustive and there are certainly more things I could do better. But we all have to start somewhere, don’t we? As we know better, we do better. And, miracle of miracles – life gets less expensive. A lot less expensive.

FINANCIAL

• Read Your Money or Your Life and implemented many of the suggestions
• Got out of debt: paid off all credit cards (2007) and then accelerated my mortgage payments, paying the house off about 4-1/2 years early (2009).
• I moved my money from an evil commercial bank to a credit union.
• Once the debt was gone, I kicked my savings into high gear. Instead of using the now “extra” money to buy more useless crap, it’s being stashed away toward early retirement.

CONSUMPTION

• Buy local whenever possible.
• Buy used whenever possible (we live in the most wasteful country on earth; you would be amazed at the perfectly good stuff people dispose of).
• “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” as much as possible
• Buy as an “investment” instead of short-term disposability; ie., the new 3 qt. double-boiler insert I just bought will enable cheaper, more efficient yogurt-making and will last for decades.
• Love the treasure-hunt of garage sales.
• Adopt a DIY attitude; things like making your own yogurt or a laptop lap board are good examples.
• Growing the majority of vegetables I eat. All produce is either fresh or frozen from the garden except for January – mid-March when I do buy organic salad greens.
• Buying cheap local fruit in summer and freezing it for use in the winter.
• Sourcing grass-fed meats and other locally grown foods.
• Re-learned to cook (and no, opening a box and popping a plastic tray of industrial food into a microwave is not “cooking”).
• Cut cable TV to the bare minimum.
• Installed a programmable thermostat.
• Replaced all light bulbs with CFLs; keeping an eye on the price of LEDs.
• So far have refused an automatic replacement of my cell phone from Verizon; while this doesn’t save me money it’s the principle of the thing. Why replace something that’s not broken? That’s the very definition of mindless consumption.
• Don’t own a “smart phone”. Haven’t figured out why I should have one. “Cool” isn’t a good enough reason.
• Don’t own any (overpriced) iThingies.
• Try to buy EnergyStar items when possible.
• Buy almost no packaged convenience food (the exceptions being condiments).
• I religiously carry a stainless steel insulated water bottle instead of buying bottled water.
• Don’t drink coffee or eat cereal. Your mileage may vary on this one. I despise cereal – for reasons that are probably worthy of a blog post – and I’ve never acquired a taste for coffee. Not buying both saves me a fortune. Hmmm…maybe there is a blog post there.

TRAVEL

• Got rid of old car that was becoming unreliable (and had a reputation for transmission problems) and replaced it with a new (yes, new) car that gets at least 25% better mileage
• New car is one of the top-rated small SUV’s for reliability and people routinely put 250,000 miles on them before they give up the ghost; at the rate I drive I should get 20 – 30 years out of it.
• New car is also versatile; it can tow my utility trailer (used for hauling compost and other bulky items that won’t fit in the car), carry two large dog crates, large paintings flat in the back. In other words, mileage was not my only consideration.
• Try to be very conscious of combining trips and otherwise driving efficiently.

PSYCHOLOGICAL

• Adopted an attitude of abundance defined not by my ability to buy crap but by all that I have already.
• Understanding that in not spending money, I end up with more rather than less. Counter-intuitive I know, but that’s how it seems to work.
• Coming to understand that none of this is about deprivation; it’s about creative resourcefulness and satisfaction.
• Knowing that even if sustainability weren’t a concern, all this these things would be worth doing anyway because of the psychological benefits they provide.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

• It bugs me that I still use quite a lot of paper towel. Need to find ways to cut back.
• My $19/month cable TV bill is still annoying. I need to research alternatives and develop new “entertainment” sources. A little of what’s on TV is worth watching; most of it is not and besides, I dislike Time-Warner’s corporate behavior.
• I spend over $1000 per year on landline, cell phone and Internet. That bugs me too. But in an emergency, will a cell phone do? How to charge it if the power’s out for some time? Research all this. If I dumped the landline, would I be sorry?
• I spend $30 per month on trash disposal. Would like to eliminate this completely. Composting, vermiculture, and recycling are all free. What little true trash I now generate probably could be disposed of once a month at my county solid-waste disposal facility for, I think, $5. Just need to design a system that will cover all the bases.
• This house has 80′s-era fiberglass batt insulation in the walls and attic and six 1950′s single-pane windows that need replacing. Need to get estimates and move forward on this even if I have to do it in stages. It will definitely result in heating/cooling energy savings.
• Develop a comprehensive permaculture plan for the entire property – food production, wildlife habitat, water harvesting, etc. This will further enhance my self-reliance, finances, and environmentally responsible life. And besides, it’ll be fun to completely eliminate my lawn.
• Create a water harvesting system for the garden. I already own ten 55 gallon food-safe barrels, now I have to get it all set up. This will save not only water from the aquifer but electricity because my well pump won’t have to run so much.
• Try to rein in my book-buying a little more. I usually buy used on Amazon (at least whenever possible) but really, I need to get into the habit of using the library for checking out books before I buy.
• Still buy Diet Pepsi too often. (Danged stuff.)
• Get better at buying used. When I decide to buy something, my mindset is still “new”.
• Focus more on maintenance to make things last.

So, how about you? Where can you start? What changes have you already made? What are your goals for the future?

This free documentary (watch here or on Hulu)  tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Monsanto and GMOs.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And be sure to occupy your garden this year with heirloom seeds.

The Future Of Food offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.

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Carnegie party inspecting one of the moai (Easter Island's giant statues), 1916. Note the barren, completely deforested hillside

If you look up top there, you’ll see that the tag line for this blog is “Practical inspiration for simple, sustainable occupation of a finite planet”. I worked really hard on that, trying to come up with something that would encompass the huge variety of things I wanted to write about. And so there are a fair number of posts on here now, each one relating in some way – more or less – to this idea of sustainable living on a finite planet.

Earth as a finite planet: we don’t often hear much about that. Certainly, the mainstream corporate-controlled media rarely, if ever, mentions it. But realistically, common sense tells us the earth does have limits to what she can provide to endlessly satisfy our egos; and let’s face it – the vast majority of consumption these days is ego driven – at least in first-world societies. As the global population continues to grow (we surpassed the 7 billion mark last fall), the demands we’re making on our only home increases as well. More food, more water, more cars, more houses, more gadgets, more paper, more plastic, more, more, more. Where does it stop?

Let’s not forget, either, that as Americans we comprise only 5% of the world population but we suck up between 25 and 30% of its resources.

But no matter how much we wish it weren’t so, endless growth can’t happen on a finite planet. The mere notion that it can is just magical thinking. Because every bit of raw material needed to support endless growth comes from the earth. Sit and look around you right now. Every single thing you see – all the books and walls, furniture, computer, carpeting, TV, curtains, desk, what-have-you – started out as some natural substance or material that had to be harvested or mined, processed, shipped, formed, molded, woven, stitched or otherwise manufactured into the tangible stuff around us. That can’t carry on forever and according to a growing number of voices, we are reaching ‘peak everything‘ pretty rapidly.

Where does it stop? Well, if we’re stupid enough to let it happen, it will only stop when it’s all gone. It’s hard to step back and see the big picture, but the human population of the planet, particularly those of us in the “industrialized” nations, are behaving exactly as the Easter Islanders of old did. We are destroying the global environment and natural resources on which we depend for our very survival. The parallels are unmistakeable.

But, most of us don’t give it any thought. Or if we do, then like Scarlett O’Hara, we just figure – oh fiddledy-dee – we’ll worry about that tomorrow. In the meantime, we continue on, hell-bent for destruction – with the political-industrial-agricultural complex of the 1% now firmly entrenched and designed to literally use it all up, every bit of it; a scorched earth policy in the name of endless growth and profits. We, by our gullibility and endless consumption are every bit as guilty as the corporatocracy that dangle their bright and shiny things in front of us every day.

Enter the idea of a “post-growth” or “steady-state” economy, one in which we can all live a satisfying life based much more on real (non-monetary) wealth and a lot less on the endless acquisition of material things. This, of course, won’t be nearly as much fun for the 1%, but really, do we care? I don’t. I don’t care about them any more than they care about me. We need to move on ourselves, instead of waiting and hoping in vain that the 1% will suddenly wake up and do the right thing.

‘Cause that ain’t ever gonna happen, people.

If we’re smarter than I think we are, each of us will start moving in a post-growth direction ourselves. One by one, bit by bit, we’ll disengage from the growth economy as much as possible. Sure, there will always be some basic things we need; no one is suggesting that we go back to living in caves. But the vast majority of things we do and buy are simply mindless responses to advertising and the keep-up-with-the-Joneses mentality it sells. It’s not stuff we need; it’s stuff we’re goaded into buying (often going into debt to do so) on the promise that owning all this crap will somehow make us happier, more fulfilled, or give meaning to our lives. And no matter how much we accumulate, it’s never enough.

It’s a recipe for disaster on a personal as well as planetary level.

I’ll admit, that used to be my recipe too. Then ever so slowly, I became aware that it was all an illusion. The piles of crap had  nothing to do with happiness, fulfillment or life meaning. It was just stuff. It made me broke. It didn’t live up to its promises in any of the ways the ads implied it would. Gradually, I stopped falling for the con.

So, what am I doing differently? How have I changed? How might you follow suit?

In Part II of “Living Post Growth”, we’ll take a look. I’ve compiled a (hopefully inspirational) list of where I’m at, where I’ve got room for improvement, and my post-growth plans for the future. Stay tuned!

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Just got through watching a cheery (not!) episode of Bill Moyers’ new show on PBS and was reminded once again of how precarious our collective economic situation continues to be. Both his guests – Pres. Reagan’s former budget guru David Stockman and journalist Gretchen Morgenson – stated that because no meaningful regulation has been put in place to prevent it, a repeat of the 2008 economic crash is virtually inevitable, probably within the next ten years.

Sigh.

How do you get ready? How do we ensure that we don’t get caught with our drawers down again? Well, aside from becoming a cranky activist and demanding better of the government, you can add yogurt-making to your skills.

Yeah, that’s right. Yogurt.

That may seem a stretch, but making yogurt, whipping up your own simple cleaning supplies, growing at least some of your own food, making homemade vanilla – heck, just generally learning to do lots of things for yourself instead of buying more stuff or paying other people to do them for you – helps you become more resilient. It makes you a lot less vulnerable to the fallout from the criminal activity of the banksters and their ilk should that day arrive, because the more you can do for yourself, the less money you need to live. (Even if there were no criminal banksters, these sorts of skills will stand you in good stead anytime life blindsides you a bit.) There’s a lot more to resiliency than that of course, but it’s a mindset of can-do that can be a great confidence builder.

So let’s build some confidence and learn to make some very good yogurt.

Here’s what you need:

Yogurt making supplies

INGREDIENTS: (with prices)
1 quart of milk ($1.25)
1/2 c. of non-fat dry milk ($0.94)
2 Tbsp. of your favorite brand of plain live-culture yogurt ($0.33)

EQUIPMENT:
Towels
Heating pad
Quart jar with a plastic lid
Candy thermometer
Large soup pot or a big dough bowl

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Place 2 Tbsp. of your favorite yogurt in a small bowl and set aside to let it warm up to room temperature. This is your “starter”.

2. Pour the milk in a 2 quart pan and heat to 180 degrees (use the candy thermometer for this) over a medium-low burner. Stir frequently to prevent sticking or burning. If the milk starts to burn, you have to throw it out and start over as the yogurt will have a burned flavor. Heating the milk in a double-boiler might be easier and faster; I’m going to try that next time.

Cover the bowl of warm milk with foil or a plate

3. When the milk has reached 180 degrees, pour it in a bowl and stir in the non-fat dry milk. This step is actually optional; if you like thin runny yogurt you can leave it out. I prefer a thicker Greek-type yogurt and the non-fat dry milk powder helps with this. If the powder wants to be lumpy in the milk, you can use the hand mixer for a minute or so to disperse it evenly. This will help to cool the milk as well.

Add a couple more towels

4. Let the warm milk sit for awhile until the temperature has dropped to 115 degrees.

5. Put a small amount of the warm milk in the dish with the starter yogurt and stir until well mixed. Pour into the large bowl of milk and stir.

6. Cover the bowl with a plate or aluminum foil and place on the heating pad covered with a towel. Place a couple more towels over the bowl, and invert the big soup pot or dough bowl over the whole thing.

Cover everything with a big dough bowl or soup pot, set the heating pad on low, and leave the yogurt to incubate for 8 hours.

7. Set the heating pad on ‘Low’ and let the yogurt incubate for 8 hours. If you have a gas oven with a pilot light, you might try that as an alternative to the heating pad.

8. When the yogurt has set, pour in the quart jar, cover, and store in the refrigerator.

Generally, you don’t want to make more yogurt than you can use in about 5 days as it starts to get tart (unless you like that). You can use a couple tablespoons of each batch as starter for the next one but after every four or five batches you should start over with fresh store-bought yogurt. I’ve read that you can freeze your left-over starter yogurt and it will work just as well as unfrozen but I’ve never tried this.

So, how much do we save? A bundle.

Assuming you like thick yogurt, the ingredients listed above total $2.52 for a quart – that’s 32 oz. That works out to 8 cents an oz. or the equivalent of 48 cents for the standard 6-oz. container of store bought yogurt. Around here, 6 oz. of commerical yogurt goes for at least 99 cents (even store brands) so you’re saving more than half: 51 cents.

Now, if you’ve been eating one container of yogurt per day, homemade will save you $186.15 a year. If you live in a yogurt lovin’ household and go through, say, 4 containers a day you’ll save over $700 in one year if you switch to making your own.

Now, my favorite brand of yogurt is Chobani and it’s actually made here in NY State so I would love to continue supporting them, but it varies from $1.00 to $1.19 per 6 oz. in area stores. Compare that to a quart of milk for $1.25. If I were the 1%, I probably wouldn’t bat an eye at the idea of spending almost as much for one itty-bitty cup of yogurt as on a quart of milk . But, like most of us, I need to watch what I spend. And I hate to go all doomer-y on you but the more I can save now, the better position I’ll be in when (if?) that second crash comes.

There are other advantages to making your own yogurt as well. Once again, doing it yourself puts you in control. For starters, you get to use the milk of your choice. You could use 1% or 2% milk to make your yogurt. I find it annoying that almost all commercial yogurt is non-fat but also full of sugar – in fact it’s almost too sweet for me. If carbs* are your problem (as they are for me) you will want to make a whole milk yogurt that has a lower carb content. And you can use stevia or any of the alternative sweeteners if you desire.

Heck, if you can find a farm in your area that sells raw organic milk you can use that. And check your health food store for organic non-fat dry milk powder. It will probably cost quite a bit more, but my guess is that it would still be less than commercial yogurt.

My favorite way to flavor homemade yogurt is to mix in sweetener to taste and add a tiny bit of vanilla. I then mix in whole blueberries or strawberries that I bought locally and froze for winter use (20 quarts of blueberries and 16 quarts of strawberries if memory serves).

Making yogurt does take some time. It’s best done while you’re already puttering in the kitchen so you can keep an eye on the heating milk and give it a stir every so often. Then you need to keep track of the cooling. But after that, it just sits there yogurtizing for 8 hours. It’s up to you whether you want to leave the house with a heating pad plugged in – I always do it on a day that I have no plans to go anywhere.

I also like the fact that when you get into the habit of making your own yogurt, you’re generating far less plastic waste. It takes almost as much energy to make new plastic from old plastic as it takes to make new plastic from scratch so recycling it doesn’t help as much as we think it does. And even if you repurpose the little cups, there’s a limit to how many of them you can reasonably find a use for. Each batch of yogurt you make yourself generates, at most, a paper milk carton and envelope (from the powdered milk) plus one plastic yogurt cup every four or five batches.

Homemade yogurt really isn’t that hard or complicated to make. Give it a try – you just might find yourself adding yet another handy frugal skill to your repertoire.

*Side note on the carbohydrates in yogurt: at least half the lactose (milk sugar) in the milk gets transformed onto lactic acid in the yogurt-making process, cutting the carb count dramatically. This is not reflected on the label of commerical plain yogurts because the nutrient content is calculated from the tally of the ingredients, not analyzed from the finished product.

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