Monthly Archives: February 2019

The News Is Getting Out. What Will You Do?

I have kind of been in hiding for the last month, and plan to be for the foreseeable future.  Since leaving work and having gone through surgery, I really needed to take some “opinion and judgement free” time to sort a lot out.  The long and short of it is trying to figure out what the last third of my existence on this rock is going to look like.

It is no surprise to readers that I am no climate change denier and think that those who are are pretty mis-informed folks.  In fact, I will not allow those comments here nor will I allow the ignorance of those that think a “Grand Solar Minimum” is an actual thing that  is causing the weird issues with the weather.  Look at the science behind what is causing the Polar Vortexes and educate yourself.  Science denial seems to be a new mental disorder.  Physics, Chemistry and Biology don’t care what your opinion is.

I was a Financial Planner for about 30 years.  A cornerstone of financial planning is preparing ahead of time, as much as possible,  for the unforeseen.  Rules of thumb included having 3 – 6 months of cash available in liquid accounts to cover deductibles, non-regular expenses, emergencies, etc. (So you don’t have to go into debt if you need to replace your tires, etc), having adequate disability coverage through your employer and on your own to replace your income should you not be able to work, life insurance if you have family dependent on your ability to earn an income, Long Term Nursing care coverage (which my in-laws are both using right now) and other protections to help one stay solvent financially despite roadblocks and pot holes that may arise along the road of life.  This should always be done prior to, or concurrently with, saving for your goals.

As I progressed through my career, I became more and more aware that there were some pretty serious issues on the near term horizon that no manner of saving and protecting was going to mitigate.  Issues like Peak Oil (which we are seeing the wars over and the resulting economic slowdowns today), the issues brought to the light of day in MIT’s publication, “The Limits To Growth” (which appears to be right on track), water and food shortages, overshoot from over population and excessive resource exploitation, environmental collapse, and then, most heinously, Abrupt IRREVERSIBLE Climate Change, had a profound impact on me because my career was built around trying to help, as one of my clients was want to say, “keep me from becoming a bag lady in my old age.”  This was a gut check time for me and it led to us adopting this kind of self-sufficiency lifestyle.

I would now add to the financial planning schematic described above that in addition to covering one’s family with savings and insurance, learning how to grow food, store food, and learning lost skills needed to thrive when this veil of civilization collapses.  I advocate mitigating in place because I can’t even imagine the insanity if every person in urban and suburban Romper Room donned a ruck sack full of protein bars and handguns and hit the street to go to some alleged “bug out location”.  FEMA recommends having at least 72 hours of food and water stored in case of supply disruptions.  Grocery stores have about 3 days of food available, which can be depleted rapidly (just ask those who have been through hurricanes or prolonged blizzards – raises hand).  Also, 95% of this country is unprepared for a 2 week emergency and recently a report came out regarding our electrical grid that said people should look at what would be required to withstand upwards of a 6 month disruption in electricity availability.  Should you think this be an alarmist statement, read the book on said subject by Ted Koppel entitled, “Lights Out”.  Not exactly a tin-foil hat wearing prepper nut.

But today, I took pause.  I thought I was pretty up on most of the climate change literature and research.  Vice Media posted an article that references a paper that distills it down in a public way that I am so pleased to see; not because it is a gloom and doom paper (It is) but because it comes out and clearly calls B.S. on the IPCC (The International Panel On Climate Change – one of the most politically sanitized committees in existence) .  We are being fed a canard that goes something like this:  “If we don’t take corrective steps in the next dozen years, then we will feel the brunt of climate collapse by the end of the century (As though we won’t see bad stuff until December 31st 2099).  This paper seems to support my assertion that we don’t have 12 years to make these changes, we simply have 12 years…. period.

I have posted the article and paper here.  I suspect that most won’t take the time to read it.  However, if you do read it, you will need to sit with it for a time.  Many people, when their eyes are open to the futility of our endeavors, find themselves needing emotional support.  My going into hiding has included this issue.  After all, finding out that most of your life and why you strived to “achieve” was all based on lies and abuse, is a tough pill to swallow.  Buy a good wine, or whatever you may imbibe in, and be gentle with yourself.

The rest of the world runs around blaming each other for everything and beating each other numb with the stupidity of left wing vs. right wing politics (after all, they are two wings of the same diseased corporate bird).  I stand out in the gardens a self-proclaimed, die hard, “Regressionist”.  After all, that’s where it is all headed and that ain’t all bad – except for the whole extinction thing.  I wish you all peace.

The VICE article:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-paper-so-depressing-its-sending-people-to-therapy

Also, in the article there is a link should you want to listen to it via MP3 format.

The actual paper:

Deep Adaptation

Gardening Class BIO

I was asked earlier this year to teach a series of gardening classes at the gardening store where I buy my potting soil.  The classes range from Starting Seedlings to Planting them out, Building good soil, Planting bare root vegetables and fruits, Constructing raised beds, and Growing awesome Tomatoes.  I’ve done two of them so far, Zina being my Vanna White, and everyone seems to think they are great.  It’s a lot of fun to be able to show off what we do and have it be helpful to folks as well.

The store asked me to write up a bio that they can use in the marketing they do to promote the classes.  Because of that, it dawned on me that we hadn’t done that here on the blog.  “Who are these loons?”  “What are they doing and why?”  So I decided to post the bio here for the curious.  I will have to do some searching (I probably won’t – LOL) that shows me how to pin this bio to the top of the page permanently so folks will be able to see who is doing all this weird stuff.

Anywho, here is us:

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>>Jon and Zina DeJong (pronounced Dee-Young), are homesteaders on Colorado’s high eastern plains. They call their place JAZ Farm (Jon, Aaron, Zina – Farm)

Jon, a recently retired financial planner, and Zina, currently a CPA and Federal Tax manager, felt a need to live life in a more self-sufficient manner in keeping with the lost ways of generations past. The industrial food system and other issues led them to investigate and then build, their own small farm near Byers.

The DeJongs first began their gardening endeavors as hobby hydroponic growers, raising all of their own salad in a grow room in their basement. This evolved into Urban Farming in Westminster, Colorado where they turned their entire backyard into a vegetable garden and landscaped their front yard using Xeric principles. From there, they found 40 acres out east of Denver and have spent the past 6 years building 50 raised garden beds, as well as livestock barns and fencing in pastures and, where possible using Permaculture guidelines to work with nature to provide for a more self-sustaining lifestyle.

 

Currently, the couple raises all of their own meat and eggs. Except for plants and ingredients that don’t grow well in Colorado, they raise all of their own vegetables and do extensive food storage via canning, freezing, vacuum sealing, and dehydrating . They recently acquired a small flock of Nigerian Dwarf goats for milk, cheese and soap, rescued two donkeys, and raise a flock of turkeys and some pigs. The farm is “mostly off grid”. They generate their own electricity via solar panels and batteries. Water, septic, and heat are all disconnected from any public utilities. The gardens are all irrigated with timed drip irrigation systems for water use efficiency.

Jon and Zina raise and grind their own wheat, churn butter, make soap, start all of their vegetables from seed, compost, process their own meat, weave, quilt, and are amateur astronomers. They bring years of experience to the classes from their research, the trials and errors of learning the challenge of vegetable growing in Colorado, as well as the mistakes and hurdles and successes they have encountered along the way. They love sharing their knowledge and experience, encouraging people to create community through the use of growing and raising great tasting food.

Dahr Telling It Like It Is

While I think the over use of the phrase “By the end of this century” is very unhelpful (being WAY too optimistic) Dahr Jamail gets it, writes about it, and is unapologetic.  His book, The End Of Ice, is a lament about our untenable predicament. An important read.

http://www.democracynow.org/2019/2/12/the_end_of_ice_dahr_jamail?fbclid=IwAR2u-zc0kOVFIWzN2qPkh0QDMULc3guGFtpf4fYIdmyi_ueJvUT7nrLJQ60

 

Building The Beds

The goal this year has been to get the last of the raised garden beds built, placed, filled and covered so that we can get all the vegetables planted in the area in and around our greenhouse.  The bigger garden is transitioning into a berry patch and small orchard.  I got 6 of the 9 beds built but can’t place them yet because it’s been too muddy from all the melting snow.  As soon as it dries up a bit they will go into place and I’ll call in the order for yet another semi-load of planters soil.  I just unloaded the 50 2×4’s to start building the hail and sun guards as well.  I’m looking forward to just working the gardens this summer with minimal construction tasks.  Once done this will bring us up to 40 framed beds and the new orchard; roughly an acre.

I will be building one more fence to replace the netting we have around the greenhouse gardens to keep the dogs out, and I’ll be getting the water catchment and storage tanks hooked up and plumbed, but that is nothing compared to years past.  We’re going to combat this drought one way or another.

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No More Sugar Coating For Snowflakes

We have no more time for “beliefs.”  “I don’t believe we are headed for trouble.” I don’t believe in Climate Change” “Or,  “If it is real, humans aren’t the cause”.  Along with the biggest reality denier:  “If things progress as they are, then “By the end of the century things will start getting bad”. If you think that, then quit reading this blog.  I’m done glossing things over.  I’ve gone into retreat here on the homestead and have gone no contact with most of the world so that I can heal and regroup from abuse and from the ignorance of the society we live in that has been perpetrated by a culture that deifys and elevates Sociopaths and Narcissists.  We are all being gaslighted and my experience with Narcissistic abuse has shown me that the ruling elite are doing it to everyone.  You are being made to ignore the man behind the curtain and told to only listen and believe what the thin veil of doublespeak tells you.  Orwell was right.  This system is coming down and it’s high time we quit worrying about ruffling our abuser‘s feathers by talking about it.  Saving for some “retirement”?  What a joke.  This embedded video speaks the truth. The financial system is going to collapse as nature does.   You don’t want the truth?  Go to Disneyland.  This is why I dropped out.  This is why for most of 2019 I will be unavailable to family and to society.  There is work to be done and hurt feelings can go drown in someone else’s wine.

Sincerely,

The Farmer

To quote Greta in my last video posting above, “I want you to panic.”