Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

“My answer is this: I am still an optimist because I see what innovation accelerated by artificial intelligence will bring.”

Artificial intelligence won't likely even slow aquifer depletion or many other similar negative trends. During the maintenance phase of this declining civilization he did a lot to slow the decline. But as the new dark age takes hold, it seems his relevance is drawing to a close. One time, he commented that his friend Buffet would not have done well during prehistoric times by shouting at a predator, "I allocate capital well."

This was written 12 years ago and it only seems the negative trends have accelerated.

Bill Gates and others say this is not like Roman times because of all the great technology we have. To that point, let's talk about some of this great technology and how it relates to the drawdown of the resource. I only see technology that works to draw the resource out faster; for example, irrigation in the Midwest that draws down the aquifers, or fracking that draws down the oil resource. Both of these then allow the renewable resource excess extraction rate to be maintained at a higher level than would otherwise be possible. There does not exist any great technology which is putting water back into aquifers or increasing stores of liquid fuels (unless it depletes the other resources - ethanol for example). Most of the enhancement of soil is done with fossil fuel derived products.

Although deforestation has slowed by about an estimated 15% in recent years.

[Higgenbotham]

One time, he commented that his friend Buffet would not have done well during prehistoric times by shouting at a predator, "I allocate capital well."

Warren’s success:
- “I was born wired to allocate capital well.” If I was born in Bangladesh and I walked down
the street explaining that “I allocate capital well”, the townspeople would say “get a job”.
- Bill Gates says that if I was born 1000 years ago, I wouldn’t survive because I am not fast or
strong. I would find myself running from a lion screaming “I allocate capital well!!”

https://tilsonfunds.com/BuffettVanderbi ... !%E2%80%9D

[Higgenbotham]

At this point, we are close enough to collapse that preparing for collapse seems more important than trying to figure out the when and how.

Yesterday I started my tomatoes indoors.

Last year, I didn't want to spend much money until the garden proved itself out. Turned out I harvested about 200 pounds of tomatoes despite some severe flooding in early July which reduced my crop substantially. How much reduction is hard to say, but maybe half. That was good enough to justify spending some money. We're still using sauce but will probably run out this month. So I invested in a couple grow lights shown in the photo below ($150). Also bought 1,000 seeds of a variety that grew well ($94) and is known to be very disease resistant, which might be necessary if the same ground is used year after year.

However, I'm hoping that an heirloom variety that someone told me worked just as well here will eventually be what I use. He harvested 30 pounds per plant last year. That way I can save the seeds. So I'm trying those at a cost of $8 for about 27 seeds from the same source he used.

As far as the grow lights, I downloaded an app that measures something called ppfd which essentially measures how much light a seedling gets. Winter light supposedly will not give a seedling enough light but I suspect that is not entirely correct. There's a lot of bad information out there and I can be sure my grandmother in rural Nebraska wasn't using grow lights. But I can't ask her because she's been dead for 35 years and is the last one in my lineage who knew how to do this. Hopefully, I can find a very old person around here who knows. I'll also be exploring alternatives to using grow lights such as outdoor cold frames but that's for another day.

As mentioned, I am trying to use as little plastic as possible in the garden. You see the paper milk cartons in the picture below. Problem is, I belatedly discovered that those paper milk cartons are not just paper, they are coated inside and out with a thin layer of polyethylene. So back to the drawing board on that one. I thought they were coated with wax, but that was only true decades ago. I read the wax was discontinued sometime in the 1940s. Also, paper cups and paper plates are coated with polyethylene and those cardboard oatmeal containers have a thin sheet of plastic in them too. I discovered that years ago when I put one of them in a worm bin to decompose it.

I'm willing to go high tech if it pays out but also want to know how to dial it back to dark age tech if need be.

[FullMoon]

Knowing when to plant and what you should be growing to have enough food definitely comes with experience. I don't grow tomatoes anymore because they became a fun project that didn't yield their efforts' worth. Roots and greens. Stuff that you can dry and can/pickle. Sure tomatoes work but if you get a bad tummy then it's too much acidity. Also bad for your joints as you age. That's my experience.
Learning to trap, hunt basic animal husbandry will put the meat on your plate. After 10 years of gardening I found that we actually weren't vegetarian and did want/need protein. Some plants provide that but humans in North America are meat eaters. Learn to grow food for your food. And get outside sources as they're available. Pork in Texas is apparently extremely bountiful and needs a little hunting skill. Learning to dry salt and preserve the old fashioned way.

[Higgenbotham]

I don't grow tomatoes anymore because they became a fun project that didn't yield their efforts' worth.

Last year I worked on figuring out how to reduce the time investment in growing tomatoes.

1. Cherry tomatoes take too long to pick. It's necessary to grow a tomato that has big fruit.
2. Tomatoes that have a lot of seeds take too long to process. It's necessary to grow a tomato that has few seeds.
3. Indeterminate tomatoes take a long time to stake. It's necessary to grow a tomato that requires minimal labor to stake. I used the Florida weave method to stake them but in my opinion that is still too labor intensive for vines that grow 8 plus feet.

This is in contrast to what I was told. What I was told was the Spring season down here is too short to grow full size tomatoes and that it's necessary to grow cherry tomatoes if you want a good yielding crop. My full size tomatoes were done well before the brunt of the heat hit and the yields were outstanding (about 6-8 pounds per square foot) . Though I will say that indeterminate cherry tomatoes are more resilient and this year about 1/4 of my plantings will be those.

My wife eats lots of tomatoes. I don't want her getting the pesticide exposure from conventional tomatoes and good organic tomatoes are pushing $4 per pound.

I knew tomatoes would probably take a lot of preparation and practice. Whereas if someone wants to start a farming operation that brings in income within 60 days, lettuce will do that. I saw a story about a family in Tennessee that did that after the man was laid off. They now have a successful operation that supports their family. So I went with the more difficult to produce thing first.

Here's his story:

In the summer of 2009 I was laid off from a really good job, leaving us debt-free but no savings to start with. So we had to start with zero, but we were rich with vision and determination for our family to make a go of farming, allowing us to get a sense of what could grow in our punishing humid summers and it also gave us time to figure out where our markets would be.

We were farming insane hours, rarely it seemed was I around for meals or bedtimes for our children. At this time we were farming with a tractor on 2 acres (terribly!), got into chickens, laying hens, pigs, and even a few cows. All in trying to practically find a way to make a living here in our area which was proving to be very difficult! Regulations for raising and selling livestock here caused us numerous hardships, and without consistent clients to buy our meat, it became more of a struggle to maintain a family of 6, keep track of our animals, and keep the Tennessee weed bank under control, which did not even come close to happening!

To top it all, early in the spring of 2015 right at transplant season, our 6-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a very aggressive life-threatening stage 4 cancer.

Life was in chaos.

And we needed a change.

How We Got Through It

By this time in 2015, we had already established some really good methods for growing lettuce, especially in the summer. And after a radical diet and lifestyle change that followed our daughter's health crisis, we started to consume large amounts of vegetables, a lot less meat, and in the fall of 2015 we made a leap of faith to sell our meat business, stop using a tractor, and farm using only one acre. Our farming friends thought we were insane, but we were pretty certain that focusing on just produce would allow us to master the lettuce crop in 2016. We had lettuce for sale every week that season! We were so thrilled to discover that we tripled our income on half the amount of land that year! Excited and inspired, we knew we were heading in the right direction. By focusing on creating better-growing systems in our produce operation, changing our farm practices, we now have year-round production, a near weed-free farm (which makes me thrilled nearly every day), and being really aggressive and creative about our sales outlets for our area, we have been able to live a sustainable and enjoyable life, rarely working in the fields more than 8 hours, which was one of our top goals!

https://rosecreekfarmstore.com/pages/our-story

For me, it's just a case of looking at where we are spending our money and to produce it here starting with the more time consuming/more expensive stuff first.

Many years ago, I bought a book called The Metabolic Typing Diet. It has a long survey used to determine one's optimal diet which can range from vegetarian to primarily meat with a mixed diet being in between. Though at the same time I don't discount what my body is telling me and what my long lived ancestors did and advised. I ignore quacks like Dr. Gundry.