Horseshit for my Birthday
Last Tuesday, M and I became the proud owners of our first pile of horse shit, which was delivered to our Virginia site by the neighbors who rent out their vacation house down the road from us; they also own a horse farm. Later that day, we went back to Silver Spring so that we could spend the next day, my birthday, with my mom.
I spent the day on Wednesday juggling multiple tasks, including mowing
the yard which was really overgrown; the grass had seed heads in quite a
few places. We had fantabulous Ethiopian food at a place that my son
and a friend have been raving about (Nile Kitchen and Market).
Wednesday and Thursday, I did some reading in Little House on a Small Planet by Shay Salomon and Nigel Valdez. Friday, we drove back to Virginia.
Saturday, I transplanted the tomatoes from their tiny cells into larger pots I had sitting around in my shed. They're kind of scrawny, but now that they're in bigger pots, I'm hoping they explode with greenness and growth. We'll see.
I spent most of the day Saturday reading and re-reading The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith, and Linda Smiley, and finding images of cob house designs through google image. I'm finding this book to be incredibly valuable so far--there's a lot of useful information about siting and design. I'm looking specifically now for the interior designs of cob houses for some inspiration and information about the different possibilities for laying out our cob house. I posted a bunch of images I found on my Pinterest page, in case you're curious.
Today, Sunday, M and I spent the day on the site, moving the cut grass to the newly designated composting area, laying out the garden perimeter, and beginning to bust sod. Oh my freaking god is busting sod hard! M probably spent about two hours and me one with shovels, digging one square foot of sod out at a time. We haven't yet made it around the perimeter of the garden. Now, I'm sunburned and both M and I have aching muscles, including the arches of our feet from stomping on the shovels to get through the layer of sod. I stopped for the day and was feeling pretty glum about starting back up busting sod in the morning: seriously, I couldn't imagine that we would actually be able to do it. My body just isn't up to the task. So--even though I couldn't imagine how you could possibly remove sod more easily (I mean, you have to cut it on four sides and lift it forcefully enough to separate it from the soil underneath, you can't get around that basic process), I decided to do a quick search on the internets for some strategies. Turns out, there's such a thing as a gasoline powered sod cutter machine! And these things can be rented! So tomorrow, we'll be calling up the equipment rental company to get one of them things.
We did briefly contemplate how much easier our lives might be if we had nanobots who could just cut and till the soil for us, and I thought about a 3-D printer that might just print us out a garden from a big pile of dirt that we could have hauled in. I wonder if homesteaders will ever use those kinds of technology to ease the process.
Seriously, how do you (and how should you) decide how to do each thing when you homestead? Do you use only your bare hands and other body parts? Do you use simple mechanical tools, tools powered only by your own body, such as hammers and hand saws? Do you use gasoline or electric powered machines such as rototillers and mowers? What principles, if any, do you use to guide this decision making? Do we calculate which approach has the lowest financial costs for us? Which has the least costs to the environment? Do we have to take into account the materials that were used to create our tools, mechanized or not, and how those materials were created or cultivated? Do we appeal to some abstract and nebulous notion such as the purity of the land that will become our homestead, our desire to have it untouched by the harsh sounds and odors of machines produced by a corrupt, decaying, and unsustainable system?
Here's where I am: The electric (assuming non-solar) and gasoline powered machines use non-renewable resources and generate pollution, and they might disturb the immediate working environment with their sound and smell. But using them does make things move more quickly and it leaves more human energy for other kinds of things, meaning that the garden can begin producing sooner and we can build and move off the grid sooner. And these machines won't be used on the regular basis--they're being used once to help us get established.
And when it comes right down to it, my damn back just isn't up to that much digging. So it's rent the machines, or have a very small or no garden at all. Frankly, in the end it's my own personal preference that moves me in the direction of renting the machines. I want a garden and I'm willing to rent the machines and disturb my environmental tranquility temporarily in order to get one. I value the personal state of mind I'm in when I work in the garden and when I savor the flavor of fresh vegetables I've grown. I imagine that I develop skills that I think are worth having when I work in that garden, making me a better person than I would be otherwise.
Just to be clear about the nature of decision making here: nowhere in this process did I do some calculation about whether having a garden is more cost-effective than buying vegetables, whether organically grown vegetables from my own garden would be more healthful than grocery store bought produce, or whether growing my own vegetables is better for the environment than buying at the grocery or the farmer's market. To the extent that I think those things are relevant to my decision and I didn't take them into account, I suppose my decision is irrational. I think when we come right down to it, most of our decisions aren't made in a rational manner. We just like to think they are, so we come up with justifications to support our decisions after the fact. We decide first, justify later.
If you're interested in learning more about the ways we delude ourselves into thinking we act rationally when really we don't, check out You Are Not So Smart, a truly awesome blog I highly recommend. According to the blog's author,
I spent the day on Wednesday juggling multiple tasks, including mowing
the yard which was really overgrown; the grass had seed heads in quite a
few places. We had fantabulous Ethiopian food at a place that my son
and a friend have been raving about (Nile Kitchen and Market). Wednesday and Thursday, I did some reading in Little House on a Small Planet by Shay Salomon and Nigel Valdez. Friday, we drove back to Virginia.
Saturday, I transplanted the tomatoes from their tiny cells into larger pots I had sitting around in my shed. They're kind of scrawny, but now that they're in bigger pots, I'm hoping they explode with greenness and growth. We'll see.
I spent most of the day Saturday reading and re-reading The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith, and Linda Smiley, and finding images of cob house designs through google image. I'm finding this book to be incredibly valuable so far--there's a lot of useful information about siting and design. I'm looking specifically now for the interior designs of cob houses for some inspiration and information about the different possibilities for laying out our cob house. I posted a bunch of images I found on my Pinterest page, in case you're curious.
Today, Sunday, M and I spent the day on the site, moving the cut grass to the newly designated composting area, laying out the garden perimeter, and beginning to bust sod. Oh my freaking god is busting sod hard! M probably spent about two hours and me one with shovels, digging one square foot of sod out at a time. We haven't yet made it around the perimeter of the garden. Now, I'm sunburned and both M and I have aching muscles, including the arches of our feet from stomping on the shovels to get through the layer of sod. I stopped for the day and was feeling pretty glum about starting back up busting sod in the morning: seriously, I couldn't imagine that we would actually be able to do it. My body just isn't up to the task. So--even though I couldn't imagine how you could possibly remove sod more easily (I mean, you have to cut it on four sides and lift it forcefully enough to separate it from the soil underneath, you can't get around that basic process), I decided to do a quick search on the internets for some strategies. Turns out, there's such a thing as a gasoline powered sod cutter machine! And these things can be rented! So tomorrow, we'll be calling up the equipment rental company to get one of them things.
We did briefly contemplate how much easier our lives might be if we had nanobots who could just cut and till the soil for us, and I thought about a 3-D printer that might just print us out a garden from a big pile of dirt that we could have hauled in. I wonder if homesteaders will ever use those kinds of technology to ease the process.
Seriously, how do you (and how should you) decide how to do each thing when you homestead? Do you use only your bare hands and other body parts? Do you use simple mechanical tools, tools powered only by your own body, such as hammers and hand saws? Do you use gasoline or electric powered machines such as rototillers and mowers? What principles, if any, do you use to guide this decision making? Do we calculate which approach has the lowest financial costs for us? Which has the least costs to the environment? Do we have to take into account the materials that were used to create our tools, mechanized or not, and how those materials were created or cultivated? Do we appeal to some abstract and nebulous notion such as the purity of the land that will become our homestead, our desire to have it untouched by the harsh sounds and odors of machines produced by a corrupt, decaying, and unsustainable system?
Here's where I am: The electric (assuming non-solar) and gasoline powered machines use non-renewable resources and generate pollution, and they might disturb the immediate working environment with their sound and smell. But using them does make things move more quickly and it leaves more human energy for other kinds of things, meaning that the garden can begin producing sooner and we can build and move off the grid sooner. And these machines won't be used on the regular basis--they're being used once to help us get established.
And when it comes right down to it, my damn back just isn't up to that much digging. So it's rent the machines, or have a very small or no garden at all. Frankly, in the end it's my own personal preference that moves me in the direction of renting the machines. I want a garden and I'm willing to rent the machines and disturb my environmental tranquility temporarily in order to get one. I value the personal state of mind I'm in when I work in the garden and when I savor the flavor of fresh vegetables I've grown. I imagine that I develop skills that I think are worth having when I work in that garden, making me a better person than I would be otherwise.
Just to be clear about the nature of decision making here: nowhere in this process did I do some calculation about whether having a garden is more cost-effective than buying vegetables, whether organically grown vegetables from my own garden would be more healthful than grocery store bought produce, or whether growing my own vegetables is better for the environment than buying at the grocery or the farmer's market. To the extent that I think those things are relevant to my decision and I didn't take them into account, I suppose my decision is irrational. I think when we come right down to it, most of our decisions aren't made in a rational manner. We just like to think they are, so we come up with justifications to support our decisions after the fact. We decide first, justify later.
If you're interested in learning more about the ways we delude ourselves into thinking we act rationally when really we don't, check out You Are Not So Smart, a truly awesome blog I highly recommend. According to the blog's author,
The central theme of You Are Not So Smart is that you are unaware of how unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old-but-growing body of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or think the way you do. Despite this, you continue to create narratives to explain your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and these narratives – no matter how inaccurate – become the story of your life.Check it out. I'm off for a cool and refreshing beer.
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