Food & Water

Good organic garbage

by

While this misguided attempt to make money off of high gas prices is going on, America for the most part throws its organic garbage into plastic bags that are sent to landfills, where it decays and pollutes ground waters. But what if municipalities across the country passed ordinances requiring homeowners to keep their organic garbage—paper, leaves, yard waste, kitchen scraps, and so on—separate? What if all this garbage was not discarded, but was taken to centers where it was treated with simple enzymes that turn starches into sugars, and those sugars were fermented into ethanol?

Everything you need to know, in order

by

Like my title? Never let it be said I’m not ambitious.

A student in my class asked me for a list of skills we need to get ready for peak oil, prioritized. I admit, it took me about a day after she asked to stop thinking “Holy Crap, how do I figure that all out!” But it is an interesting question. And while it isn’t all just about food preservation, I thought I’d take a shot at it. I will, of course, be relying on my fearless readership to point out gaps in my thinking.

Building hotbeds for your garden

by

A hundred years ago, hotbeds were used profitably near large cities to grow two crops of lettuce through winter, and then a crop of bedding plants for setting on in the garden in spring. As long as horse manure was available, and of course it was in great quantities, these hotbeds produced lettuce at the rate of forty to fifty heads per 3 by 6-foot bed at far less cost than it takes today to ship lettuce from warm-winter states or raise it in greenhouses. Farmers near such cities as Boston and New York operated as many as a thousand beds, providing jobs for many people and making a good profit, with the expenditure of very little fossil fuel.

Water – July 21

by

Is growth over? – California’s continuing water crisis may mean the end of the state as we have known it
Mideast facing choice between crops and water
Spain’s water fair tackles conservation with innovation

Neighbors to help neighbors through winter of high prices

by

“The best security you have is a prepared neighbor,” said Paloma O’Riley a decade ago, when she was rallying people to prepare for an emergency of unknown proportions.

The comment still rings true, as we prepare for a hard winter in the short term and, in the medium term, what James Howard Kunstler calls the “long emergency” of declining fossil fuels and other challenges that lie ahead. Fortunately, people at all levels in Vermont are scrambling to prepare for this winter, and many of them are conscious that high food and fuel prices are more a harbinger of things to come than a one-time increase.

An ode to horse manure and other by-products called waste

by

Either we must adopt a new attitude toward waste, or, as ecologists and city planners are warning, we will bury ourselves in it. Wastes must be seen as a natural part of the life cycle and food chain; decay is a necessary prelude to life. And if man has, in his infinite wisdom, invented brilliant materials like plastic that will not decay in a suitable length of time, then he must reuse them or go buy an empty planet someplace for a dumping ground.