| Best Reads - Articles List: |
*Preparing Kids for the Unknown
By LISA BELKIN, The New York Times
“What if we’re raising our kids to succeed in a George Jetson kind of world, but they wind up living more like Fred Flintstone?” ...Our world, particularly America, is in the midst of huge economic, environmental and technological changes. We could be living in a very different society 20, 25 years from now. Who is to say that the key to success (or even survival) in that world will be having a degree from a top college? It could be that the kids who grew up less programmed are, in fact, more prepared to thrive. Maybe instead of getting them SAT tutors and signing them up for tuba lessons we should be taking them camping and teaching them how to grow their own food..."
*100 Items to Disappear First (in a Disaster / Emergency)
"1. Generators
2. Water Filters/Purifiers
3. Portable Toilets..."
*8 Tips from a Sarajevo War Survivor
"1. Stockpiling helps, but you never no how long trouble will last, so locate
near renewable food sources.
2. Living near a well with a manual pump is like being in Eden.
3. After awhile, even gold can lose its luster. But there is no luxury in war
quite like toilet paper. Its surplus value is greater than gold's..."
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*Our Finite World...Is this a Problem?
by Gail Tvesberg
"The world is finite.
The number of atoms is finite. The mix of molecules may change over
time, but in total, the number of molecules is also finite. Growth
is central to our way of life. Businesses are expected to grow. Every
day new businesses are formed and new products are developed. The world
population is also growing, so all this adds up to a huge utilization
of resources. At some point, growth in resource utilization must collide with the fact that the world is finite.
We have grown up thinking that the world is so large that limits will
never be an issue. But now, we are starting to bump up against
limits..."
*Prepare Your Family (for Hard Times)
by Doug Willhite
"If
your family is NOT feeling a burden from higher food and fuel prices,
the bursting housing bubble, wobbly Wall Street, or too much debt, then
count yourself among the very fortunate. The
good news for the rest of us is there is much we can do to help cushion
our families and stabilize our communities in the face of financial
hardships and vital resource shortages..."
*Fencing Boer Meat Goats & other
Livestock
by Doug & Hillary
Willhite
"Boer goats are a
win-win
arrangement that can provide your family with fun, husbandry skills,
increased
food security, and wildfire safety. They can substantially ease your
mowing, weed trimming, and tractor work load... Strong, durable,
long-lasting fences are a must for Boer goat containment. A herd of
Boer goats that are hungry, horny (or both ;-) will jump up against your
fence, walk along leaning their weight hard against it in order to
scratch themselves, and ram into the fence with their horns trying to
break through..."
*Chicken Condos... How to Best House
Chickens in the Backcountry
by Doug Willhite
"Raising chickens
in your backyard is a relatively simple way to produce your own food
(meat and eggs), learn animal husbandry skills, hedge against a
struggling economy, and make your family more self-reliant and
financially independent... If we are to carry
on living well, we must re-learn to do some activities, such as feeding
our families, in ways that our forebears did back in the old days."
*Chihuahua Valley – A Short History
By Phil Brigandi
"By
the 1880s, the valley had a name. A Mexican herdsman from the State of
Chihuahua had brought his flocks to the valley. Most people simply
called him “Chihuahua,” and the name was soon attached to the valley...
*The Good Hunter & the Ethics of Killing Animals for Food
by Jeremy Lloyd
"There are many
hidden ecological and economic costs of veganism and vegetarianism. Ted
Kerasote, in his well-researched book Bloodties, coined the term
“fossil-fuel vegetarianism” to describe what’s going on today. If
someone wishes to forgo meat — either for moral reasons or because they
believe eating meat is unhealthy — I say more power to them. But how
many vegetarians grow or gather all their own food? Practically no one
falls into that category, which means you’re buying farmed products.
Somebody has cleared land, costing many birds and animals their homes.
Maybe that land was cleared a hundred years before you were born, but
you’re a direct beneficiary of that destruction of the wild. Then there
are all the chemical fertilizers. Even if you’re using organic
fertilizer, it has to be shipped using fossil fuels. Every spring a big
diesel tractor will be used to till the soil and will smash burrows and
kill countless moles and mice and burrowing owls and even deer fawns.
This considerable carnage is all conveniently invisible..."
*The
Differences Between Predators & Prey Animals
by John Mallon, Gentling & Training Llamas & Alpacas
"I
hear people
sometimes say “I don’t like to think of myself as
a predator; “I don’t want to think of this as a
predator-prey interaction”. Fine, then, don’t; but
realize that that is how the llama or alpaca views
it, whether
we like it or not, and there is absolutely nothing
we can
do to change that simple fact. We are meat-eaters
(whether
individually vegetarian or otherwise), lamas are
meat, to
put it in its most basic light. This doesn’t mean
that
we have to approach the llama or alpaca in a
predatory fashion,
stalking and “attacking”/ it means that we have
to try to understand another creature’s point of
view,
a point of view which is far outside of our
experience..."
*The Truth About Vegetarianism
by Lierre Keith, Mother Earth News
"The vast majority of people
in the United States don’t
grow food, let alone hunt and gather it. We have no way to judge how
much death is embodied in a serving of salad, a bowl of fruit or a plate
of beef. We live in urban environments — in the last whisper of forests
— thousands of miles removed from the devastated rivers, prairies,
wetlands and the millions of creatures who died for our dinners. Many
inhabitants of urban industrial cultures have no point of contact with
grain, chickens, cows, or — for that matter — with topsoil. We have no
idea what nourishes plants, animals or soil, which means we have no idea
what we ourselves are eating..."
*VICTORY GARDENS...
by John Michael Greer
"The victory garden as a social response to crisis was an
invention of the twentieth century. Much before then, it would have been
a waste of time to encourage civilians in time of war to dig up their
back yards and put in vegetable gardens, because nearly everybody who
had a back yard already had a kitchen garden in it. That was originally
why houses had back yards; the household economy, which produced much of
the goods and services used by people in pre-petroleum Europe and
America, didn’t stop at the four walls of a house; garden beds, cold
frames, and henhouses in urban back yards kept pantries full, while no
self-respecting farm wife would have done without the vegetable garden
out back and the dozen or so fruit trees close by the farmhouse."
*Economic Survival Tips
by Dmitry Orlov
"What we can do is
prepare ourselves, and each other, mostly by changing our expectations,
our preferences, and scaling down our needs. It may mean that you will
miss out on some last, uncertain bit of enjoyment. On the other hand,
by refashioning yourself into someone who might stand a better chance
of adapting to the new circumstances, you will be able to give to
yourself, and to others, a great deal of hope that would otherwise not
exist."
*When the Body Says NO! Understanding the Connection between Stress & Disease
by Amy Goodman & Dr. Gabor Maté
"The
Vancouver-based Dr. Gabor Maté argues that too many doctors seem to have
forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption—that emotions are
deeply implicated in both the development of illness and in the
restoration of health. Based on medical studies and his own experience
with chronically ill patients at the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver
Hospital, where he was the medical coordinator for seven years, Dr.
Gabor Maté makes the case that there are important links between the
mind and the immune system. He found that stress and individual
emotional makeup play critical roles in an array of diseases."
*The Idea of a Local Economy
by Wendell Berry
"If
the government
does not propose to protect the lives, livelihoods, and freedoms of its
people, then the people must think about protecting themselves. How are
they to protect themselves? There seems, really, to be only one way,
and that is to develop and put into practice the idea of a local economy
- something that growing numbers of people are now doing. For several
good reasons, they are beginning with the idea of a local food economy.
People are trying to find ways to shorten the distance between producers
and consumers, to make the connections between the two more direct, and
to make this local economic activity a benefit to the local
community... They want to use the local economy to give consumers an
influence over the kind and quality of their food, and to preserve and
enhance the local landscapes. Without prosperous local economies, the
people have no power and the land no voice..."
*How To Build a Financial LifeBoat
TheAutomaticEarth.blogspot.com
"Hold no debt...
Hold cash and cash equivalents (short term treasuries)...
Control the necessities of your own existence... (self-reliance)
Work with others... (build community)
Look after your health..." (and more)
*Getting Your Family on Board with Storing Food
by Sharon Astyk
"The idea of storing food isn't seeming quite so
crazy to a lot of folks in the country, but still, I hear all the
time "I want to start building up a reserve but my husband/sister/mother
in law thinks this is nuts." Ok,
I've convinced you - you need a reserve of food, you want to learn
to can and dehydrate, you want to start eating more local foods.
But you haven't done anything yet, because, well, the rest of your
household isn't on board. Before you go there, you need to convince
them. So I offer up this handy guide of answers to common protests
about food storage and preservation. I also offer up some suggestions
on what not to say, just in case you need them, mostly because
that part was fun for me to write..."
*The Coming Deindustrial Society: A Practical Response
by John Michael Greer
"Imagine that you're on an ocean liner that's headed
straight for a well marked shoal of rocks. Half the crew is dead drunk,
and the other half has already responded to your attempts to alert them
by telling you that you obviously don't know the first thing about
navigation, and everything will be all right. At a certain point, you
know, the ship will be so close to the rocks that its momentum will
carry it onto them no matter what evasive actions the helmsman tries to
make. You're not sure, but it looks as though that point is already
well past. What do you do? You can keep on pounding on the door
to the bridge, trying to convince the crew of the approaching danger.
You can join the prayer group down in the galley.
You can decide that everyone's doomed and go get roaring drunk. Or you
can go around quietly to the other passengers, and encourage those
people who have noticed the situation (or are willing to notice it) to
break out the life jackets, assemble near the lifeboats, take care of
people who need help, and otherwise deal with the approaching wreck in
a way that will salvage as much as possible... Life jackets, anyone?"
*Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post Oil Society
by James Howard Kunstler
"We have to produce food differently. The Monsanto/Cargill
model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil
and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming
organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability
to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of
American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more
locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human
labor. The value-added activities associated with farming -- e.g. making
products like cheese, wine, oils -- will also have to be done much more
locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational
opportunities for America's young people (if they can unplug their Ipods
long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in
land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill
for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the
dumpster of history. Get busy."
*Cow vs. Goat!
Hen and Harvest.com
"If
you’re thinking about getting into dairy animals, there are two primary
choices: Cows or goats. You might think that the cow is the more
obvious of the two, but it’s said that more people in the world drink
goat’s milk than cow’s milk. There are a number of factors to consider when choosing which way to go. We’ve tried both..."
*All He's Saying is Give Brush a Chance
By Joe Mozingo, The L.A. Times
"Naturalist, Richard Halsey, says it is an insult to nature's ingenuity to label the vast biodiversity of California's
most extensive plant community "brush" and to discuss it only in terms
of "fuel load." There are 492 types of birds, an estimated 500 native
bees and 148 types of butterflies. He's all for targeted brush thinning
and clearance near homes and even favors strategic prescribed burns of
old-growth chaparral near communities. But burning the backcountry over
and over is going to deal the fatal blow to the natural ecosystem..."
*The Garden Farm Guide to Beekeeping
by Gene Logsdon
"Locate
hives in an area where they are protected from harsh winter winds, but
where in summer they are shaded in the afternoon. Nearness to water is
not as important as some books insinuate. Bees can get plenty of water
from dew. But it is important to have your hives located near nectar
sources. The farther a bee has to fly for nectar, the less nectar it
can gather. Bees are in bad humor on cool days when they can’t find
much nectar, but when there is a good flow of nectar, as from an apple
tree in full bloom, you can brush the bees in the blossoms without
fear..."
*Calling Dibs On Groundwater
By Jennifer Bowles and Gail Wesson
The Temecula Press-Enterprise
"Concerned
that development in the area will draw on groundwater that belongs to
them, the Cahuilla Band of Indians and a smaller nearby tribe asked a
federal judge to establish just how much water they're entitled to...Ruling could affect 6 water agencies & 2,900 property owners..."
*Farmer In Chief
by Michael Pollan, The New York Times
"We
need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across
America -- not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a
matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to
substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised
in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign
sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil,
there are no alternatives to food..."
*Starting a Small Flock of Chickens
by Harvey Ussery
"Chickens
are the easiest of all livestock to raise. Their needs for feed and
shelter are easily met. The eggs and meat you can get from a home flock
will be superior to anything you can buy. And a flock of chickens is an
endless source of fascination for the whole family. Give them a try!.."
*Is Goat the New Cow?
by Sarah Newman
Goat is a great
way for people to eat locally grown, humanely raised, tasty foods. And
unlike the cattle industries, there aren't any massive, industrialized
goat farms.
*Growing for Profit & Sustainability
by Paul & Barb, Old World Gardens
"To
be sustainable, growing must first sustain the grower. Market growing
must be profitable and practical, or few will be growing - sustainably
or otherwise. Growers profit most with a combination of best practices,
by producing more and using garden space more efficiently, and doing it
with less work and lower cost without machinery..."
*A Generational Challenge to Repower America
by Al Gore
"There
are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life
depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a
present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and
boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise,
clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for
whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to
join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The
survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And
even more - if more should be required - the future of human
civilization is at stake..."
*The Integrated Homestead
by Harvey Ussery
"How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used."
That statement (from Wendell Berry) is a potent reminder that many of
the problems we have created for ourselves derive from the fact that
eating in our time has become a great act of forgetting. Forgetting
foremost our sacred responsibility to nurture and safeguard our land..."
*The Integrated Homestead - Part 2
by Harvey Ussery
"More on season extension growing, the "forest garden," livestock, and using fungi in the homestead..."
*How to Build a Backyard Coop
by Gene Logsdon
"My
henhouse design, based on what I've learned so far by building three
coops of my own, differs from standard designs in a few ways, which you
might find interesting to think about when you build your own..."
*In Defense of the Family Farm
by Wendell Berry
"An
example known to me of an American community of small family farmers
who have not only survived but thrived during some very difficult years
are the Amish. I do not recommend, of course, that all farmers should
become Amish, nor do I want to suggest that the Amish are perfect
people or that their way of life is perfect. What I want to recommend
are some Amish principles:
1. They have preserved their families and communities.
2. They have maintained the practices of neighborhood.
3. They have maintained the domestic arts of kitchen and garden, household and homestead.
4.
They have limited their use of technology so as not to displace or
alienate available human labor or available free sources of power (the
sun, wind, water, and so on.)
5.
They have limited their farms to a scale that is compatible both with
the practice of neighborhood and with the optimum use of low-power
technology.
6. By the practices and limits already mentioned, they have limited their costs.
7. They have educated their children to live at home and serve their communities.
8. They esteem farming as both a practical art and a spiritual discipline..."
Sustainable Living. Backyard Homesteads. Family Farms. Links.
News, Blogs, Raising Awareness & Online Communities... (or shop below)
*Energy Bulletin
Cutting-edge
news on oil, gas, renewables, climate, transportation, biofuels,
nuclear, food, water, ecology, farming, gardening, economics, housing
& community building.
*FARM AID
family farmers, good food, a better America
*Path to Freedom
Pioneering a journey towards self-sufficiency, one step at a time.
*Mother Earth News
original guide to living wisely -- free e-newsletter
*National Sustainable Agricultural Information Services:
Introduction to Permaculture: Concepts & Resources
*More Permaculture Links
*The Oil Drum
Discussions about energy and our future
*The Modern Homestead
Educational homesteading blog with emphasis on integrated poultry farming.
*Living On the Land
Informative posts from market gardeners & others living on the land.
*Food Growing, Animal Husbandry, Medicinal Herb & Health - Online Sources
compliments of Living On the Land
*HuffPost Green
free online newspaper
*The Contrary Farmer
homestead farmer: Gene Logsdon & friends
*Food & Water Watch
*Nuclear Security Project
*Organic To Be
Organic recipes, garden/farm skills, news & opinions.
*Growing Edge.com
Sustainable garden news for growers that are growing on the cutting edge.
*Biomicry Institute
the science and art of emulating Nature's best biological ideas to solve human problems
*Causabon's Book
Ruminations on an ambiguous future.
*Hen and Harvest
sustainability - good cheer - better food
*Post Carbon Institute
reduce consumption - produce locally
*Archdruid Report
Perspectives on nature, culture and the future of industrial civilizations
*Real Climate
climate science from real climate scientists
*GRIST
a beacon in the smog
*Environmental Working Group
the Power of Information
*SurvivalBlog.com
A daily Christian weblog for prepared individual living in uncertain times
*The Sun Magazine
personal. political. provocative. ad free.
*LINK TV.org
"Global news, uncompromising documentaries & diverse cultural programs -- connecting you to the world."
Direct TV Channel 375
*Hope Dance
celebrating transition, opportunity & resilience
*Transition
California
Rebuilding community resilience and
self-reliance.
*Transition
United States
Bringing the head, heart
& hands of community together to make the transition to life beyond
oil.
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