Heading into the Bush

I’m sorry that I’ve been away, but things are happening. It’s a new game now.

In just under a month my tenure as a 2013 Bush Fellow begins. (see http://www.bushfoundation.org/leadership/bush_fellowship). This will give me resources to learn what I need to be the leader who can pull off things like the Deep Winter Producers’ Association. I’ll be taking classes, travelling, studying, and discussing things with advisors and mentors.

Those advisors have warned me that in early July, about two weeks after the official Fellowship period begins, I will be inundated with requests from people who want me to work on projects with them. They will mean well, most of them, but they will drag me off in unfruitful directions. As one advisor said, “Don’t go off chasing rabbits. Remember your goals.”

I had a good example yesterday. A man that I met at a recent meeting called. He was gushingly enthusiastic about a project involving lots of farmers with big greenhouses and centralized storage facilities. I interrupted, and something like this ensued:

“I’m not interested in building a ‘shadow version’ of the Industrial Food System.”

“Why not? It’s going to be with us for a long time.”

“No, it’s going to collapse in fifteen to twenty years, maybe sooner. It’s based on too many contradictions and false assumptions.”

<Several seconds of silence>

“I hope that we’re not all stuck eating rice and beans.”

“We might be, but that would actually be a good-case scenario. My mission is to equip people for what’s coming.”

We concluded with the usual “good lucks” and “you’ll hear from mes.” I probably won’t hear from him.

I told Ken Meter (http://www.crcworks.org/ ) about this. He liked my “disarming tactic.”

Not only do I not have time to chase rabbits, none of us do. We can’t afford to waste our time and resources on the interminable gabfests that mostly just fill up reams of newsprint with notes and drawings, or posters with little colored dots. All of us concerned with local foods have experienced these. It can feel a bit like this scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YawagQ6lLrA

Methods for building our resilience exist. I invented some of them, and want to learn about others. Many people have rolled up their sleeves to do good work. We have plenty of reason for Hope- not hope of preserving The System, but of building something new to succeed it. We can do this. BUT, it’s time for action, not discussions that should have been had fifteen years ago. Wish me well, and come along for the ride- we’re actually going someplace.

The Presidents Day Blizzard (and other snow jobs)

OK. This is officially getting old. I've lost count of how many “record weather events” we've had in the last six months. I expect that even that number is itself a record.

I worked the morning shift at KDMA-AM on Sunday. When I got there the station parking lot was mostly bare, with no snow falling and no real wind. Still, there was that slight electrical tang in the air that Minnesotans know means a big storm is coming. I set up the studio news computer to continuously show weather radar and road condition maps.

As the morning progressed the “big blue blob” on radar crept nearer and the road conditions deteriorated. The phone rang constantly with church cancellations. I started to get nervous, since I live 20 miles from the station. I found someone from town to cover and left early- an hour later and I'd never have made it home. Carol and I hunkered down for the duration.

The next morning a four-foot drift lay in front of the door to our garage and greenhouse, and the south face was buried five feet deep. It took quite a bit of digging just to get inside.

Once inside, we found-

plenty of happy greens, part of our lunch reward for hard work.

The moral of the story is the triumph of the Garden Goddess Greenhouse. It's withstood the worst that the prairie can throw at it and kept on producing. We don't get Seasonal Affective Disorder. We don't get the blahs from eating stale long-distance vegetables.

We're all going to need many more such greenhouses, and soon. Besides the obvious health and economic benefits, crazy weather and unworkable fuel prices will soon seriously endanger our food system.

***

Speaking of endangering the System, like everyone else we're watching the situation in Wisconsin. It's clearly another sign of the Social Contract breaking down, as is the shrill tone of most political discourse today. You may be tempted to see the marches and sit-ins as like the protests of the 1960s, but they're radically different, pun intended. The folks marching in the streets today are a kind of reverse mirror image of the hippies and students fifty years ago.

Back then, the country as a whole had a positive attitude. The “rebels” operated from Love, simply wanting us to apply that attitude to living up to the promises of our founding values.

Today, people are afraid, made so by constant harping on their worries. Today's rebels have gotten themselves elected to many offices, crusading in Fear and Hate, believing that “only people like us must triumph.” They don't realize that their fears have made them cat's paws of plutocrats

The Local Foods Movement is rooted in those older values of acceptance, diversity, and community mutual aid. The antidote to political and societal madness is coming together to create the “Beloved Community” spoken of by Doctor King, to take care of each other's needs. We have to- the Big Guys won't. In a world going crazy in so many ways all we have is each other. We can do more than we think we can.

The Pessimistic Optimist

I'm starting this blog because I'm a “pessimistic optimist,” someone who believes that we'll eventually have a sane, just and Green civilization, but in the meantime things are going to get very rough. I want to say things that need to be said but haven't been said nearly enough. We can only deal with our predicament by facing squarely the things that are really happening. It's not the End Of The World, but it IS the end of a certain way of running our civilization.

Remember the old Stages of Grief list? When people are facing a tragedy they tend to first deny it or get angry, then try to bargain or blame, but most eventually accept what's happening and can work through it. That's where we are with Climate Change and Peak Petroleum. Plenty of voices are loudly and angrily denying that anything's wrong- Sorry guys, the evidence is in; It is. Others are bargaining that energy conservation or ethanol or wind power will see us through the transition to pretty much the same habits but in a new style- Folks, I hate to tell you; The physics and agronomy just don't work. The thing is, we CAN work through this situation once we accept it. I'm serious. We can build a new kind of world- a very different one, but a better one.

In a recent group conversation with an African American activist friend, someone said, “You know, these two gorillas in the room are going to devour everything we've accomplished in the last fifty years.” Maybe it won't be quite that bad, but the concept is valid. ANY planning for the future, from ANY philosophy, faith or political party, has got to include the fact that “business as usual” for the last couple of centuries is OVER. Done. Finis. Kaput. “Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.”

What has this got to do with Local Foods? Simple- people have to eat, and we have to start preparing somewhere. The average pound of industrial food eaten by a North American travels thousands of miles, and consumes upward of five gallons of petroleum and similar amounts of water. That just isn't going to work with the southern ag states getting blizzards and hard freezes, or with gas prices expected to top $5 per gallon by late 2011. In about 2005, when gas was over $4/gallon, the grocery store in our little town ran out of many items because the supply trucks couldn't afford to stop there. At the fuel prices they're talking about in the next few years, there'll be stores in mid-sized towns and core urban neighborhoods running dry. That's bad enough even if there is industrial food being grown through the crazy weather- and it might not be.

My wife and I grow and sell fresh vegetables through the Minnesota winter, on the prairie where it's seventeen below Fahrenheit today, not counting the wind chill. We do it using very little energy. You can too. Other people have more great ideas like ours. We can do this. We have to roll up our sleeves, put on our thinking caps, and work together as communities.

That's what this blog is about. I'll get picky about some things, tell some stories, whine and cry a bit, pass on some news and sound some alarms. Not every posting will be obviously about Local Foods, but will be about the ideas behind what we need to do. We can do more than we think we can. I know. I have.

---Garden Goddess News: 01/22/11---

The first printing of our book, The Northlands Winter Greenhouse Manual, is sold out. We're now offering emailed PDFs of the Manual for $10, or deluxe CDs of the Manual, my novel Phoenix, Minnesota, and an archive of construction photos for $15. If you're interested, contact us at info@gardengoddessenterprises.com

Calendar:
On Friday February 4^th, 2011 Chuck and Carol will be presenting at the Northern Plains Sustainable Ag conference in Fargo, ND (http://www.npsas.org/)
On Saturday, February 12, 2011 Chuck will be presenting at the Avon Hills Conference at St. John's University (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lothe013/mnats/2011/01/feb-12-2011-living-the-avon-hi.html).