"The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves." - Bill Mollison
Monday, October 24, 2011
Potting Up Celery & Little Willie
Still frost free and our celery is potted up. In a another week or so it will be transferred to the root cellar for the winter, providing us with tasty stalks and leaves throughout the snowy months. Each pot contains 3-4 plants, 1/3 of whose foliage, preferably the less than desirable ones, are removed to compensate for root disturbance during the potting procedure. Only healthy plants that show no sign of bolting (sending up a round central stalk) to seed are chosen for winter storage. Most plants will not only survive the winter in our root cellar where they will continue producing, albeit somewhat more pale in comparison to the ones produced under sunlight, but can be planted back out into the garden in early spring for more fresh greens and eventually seed from chosen plants.
A new variety that we grew this year called Crisp & Tender, thanks to the seedy generosity of the kind soul at Kabun-Malay Kadazan girls blog, was a big hit with us. Unfortunately, we did not place it in the most ideal location as it was the last batch of celery planted this past spring and wound up in a slightly drier and shady location at the end of the row under a fir tree. Even so, the plants provided us with a plethora of slender and surprisingly dark green flavorful stalks...for sure we will be growing this variety again next season. We also grew Ventura, Giant Red, Utah, and a leaf celery called Parcel.
Sweet & Tender celery, all the way from Australia, thrived in our cool shady garden.
Also, meet Willie! This newest member of our family was found in the bushes almost two months ago. Hungry and emaciated the poor little guy took to us without complaint...he was so small. Little Willie has grown a lot, he likes to take dust baths with the chickens, greatly annoy the other cats, play in the garden, eat, eat some more, and sit on my lap while I am on the computer.
Weary of the world and its illogical ways my wife and I have chosen a path towards self-reliance in all aspects of our lives. Our main focus is on growing and gathering our own food. We hope to use this blog as an avenue to share with and learn from others with similar interests.
The Good Life (click↓)
"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi
"Deep inside everyone of us is a call to the wild. Much of the impatience, discontent or violence around us is due to a lack of opportunity to reconnect with where we came from. For sanity and generosity of spirit, we should be able to witness nature at its unceasing, rejuvenating work." - Abdul Kareem
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." - Justice William O. Douglas
First They Came For My Seed..▼
Who Controls Your Food?
"Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine" - Thoreau
Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sakeof the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.
I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners plannedat blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factorieswhere the machines were made that would drive ever forwardtoward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I sawthe poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.I saw the passages worn by the unnumberedfootfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.
Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monumentsof those who had died in pursuit of the objectiveand who had long ago forever been forgotten, accordingto the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forgetthat they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objectiveas if nobody ever had pursued it before.
The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now freeto sell themselves to the highest bidderand to enter the best paying prisonsin pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,to the completed sale, to the signatureon the contract, which was to clear the wayto self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go homewould ever get there now, for every remembered placehad been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.
Every place had been displaced, every loveunloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeantto make way for the passage of the crowdof the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homelesswith their many eyes opened toward the objectivewhich they did not yet perceive in the far distance,having never known where they were going,having never known where they came from.