Petro Burners

Weaning ourselves from the gas pump is going to entail the discriminating use of existing technology and interim solutions. For example, I spend an hour a day on the commute to my job. Someday I hope not to have to do this, and I am hoping for something closer to home.

But we are by no means debt free, so it's off to work I go. As Wendell Berry says, the only thing I know how to make is money. I'd rather not commute, but there is some good I can make of it. I get a little wind-down time after work and I've re-subscribed to the Doug Wilson pulpit tapes. His blunt and pastorally concerned sermons both inflict pain and offer healing. His sermons, by the way, rarely utilize the serrated edge found in much of his writing. I generally find him to be very helpful.

But if I can find a way to get out of my 30 minute drive and get a job closer to home, I will. One hour on the road per day = 250 hours a year. My gas hog commute is now costing me something like 250 bucks a month just for fuel, at a time when we are trying to reduce our dependancy on cash. I could accept a lower wage without this expense of time and money.

So is the automobile evil? Not in itself, but we have put it to bad use, which is to say, overuse.

The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. - Ivan Illich

After living in Phoenix for five years my records show an astounding amount of money that was spent keeping our used vehicles moving. That is spite of the fact that I would often bike to work and had a commute of less than 2 miles. And Ivan doesn't even mention the car wash!

It seems we have a window of opportunity and necessity with regard to all the petro burners that we are dependant on and that require so much of our resources. What we don't really know is how long the window will stay open. It may be some time, and I think it will most likely close slowly, possibly over a few generations. But no one can be badly hurt implementing solutions now that don't cost anything. I emphasize that solutions should not cost much, if anything, to avoid more of the same mistakes that got us into this mess.

The craft of persuading people to buy what they do not need, and do not want, for more than it is worth. - The definition of salesmanship, according to Wendell Berry.

I plan on keeping a sharp eye out for that salesman fellow.

Thanks Naddy

I used to think I knew something about computers, but that goes back to Windows 3.1, which I really felt like I understood to some extent. Now that I have pretty much reverted to computer nincompoop, I'm happy the daughter knows more than I do about a lot of this. She tinkered with the template and now I have this nice agrarian looking blog page complete with snips of a favorite Grant Woods painting.

Chicken Minimalism

We've been taught to think big all our lives. With the big thinking comes a thick crust of complexity. This isn't necessarily bad in itself. But sometimes an experiment in thinking small can be interesting. To think inside the box I sometimes try to imagine how something would have been done 150 years ago. Obviously, one of the first things I realize is that I have underestimated people who lived 150 years ago.

Along these lines, I'm trying a minimalist experiment with our flock of chickens. After not much study I realized that chicken feed is pretty much a 20th century invention. How did chickens survive all those previous centuries without $8.00 a bag chicken feed?

So the chickens on our place are having to scratch or die. We use a bit of feed to entice them back into the chicken tractor at night. The few chickens that were stubborn about getting back in at night have not been seen in a while.

The chickens seem ok so far, but I'm not an expert. We are getting a few eggs when we can find them. The chickens get kitchen scraps. They are eating all the little worms that infest the walnuts that have fallen. They free range in a radius of about 100 to 150 yards.

My goal is to have a pretty much self sustaining flock, with my job consisting mostly in protecting them from predators. The only confirmed predator so far is Hank, a shepherd/collie mix pup who showed up for dinner one night and wouldn't leave in spite of my most eloqent pleas. The first time he showed up I beaned him squarely on the forehead at close range with a good sized walnut (the kind with the husk still on it) and then drilled him with a few more shots during his noisy retreat. Anyway, Hanks supporters have proved even more eloquent in his defense. I told them all that he could stay as long as he did not kill chickens and that if he did kill chickens I was sure the shelter could find him a nice suburban home.

Well one morning I'm sleeping in after a late shift when there is a knock on the bedroom door. Seems that Hank is under serious suspicion of a very bad deed of the kind that could land him in Suburbia. Everyone is weepy. The evidence is strong. Seems that everyone came in for breakfast and when the smallest one went back out - no pup in sight. Very unusual, so a posse formed up and spied pup way out on the back side of the slash pile digging a hole. In the hole was discovered a poult. Bad.

It was at this point that all concerned gave up hope and woke Dad for the inevitable reckoning. So I go out to inspect the slash pile hole chicken and I'm thinking, "Ah maybe he found a chicken that was already kilt or otherwise dead." Nope. Limp chicken, definite lack of rigor mortis. Killed during breakfast. Weepy people.

I recall some conversation where someone mentioned dog training tips for chicken killers. I am trying to remember this because weepy people are hard for me to take, maybe harder than chicken killing pups. Did you know that if you hold a limp dead chicken by the feet and swing it in an arc, the head of the chicken quickly accumulates quite a lot of centrifigal force. Yes, its true, people actually told me to beat the dog with a dead chicken.

That's not all, they also told me that if this did not work, I should tie the dead chicken around the perpetrators neck. Being willing to do about anything to please the weepy people, I did not wait for the second infraction but proceeded immediately to step two. I returned from work 10 hours later to find a very contented looking pup with two chicken feet tied to his collar.

The up side is that Hank is jealous to protect his chickens from any other claimants and was seen chasing off a possum (they think) the other night. The procedure now is to chain him up during the day when no one is keeping a close eye on him.

Now where was I. Oh yeah, the chickens. We figure we will have to keep a larger flock to get the same amount of eggs and chicken meat as someone using feed, but it does reduce our dependance on cash to go this route, as long as the chickens don't die from the experiment. Or Hank.

Settling

We have been very transient people and we live among a people of great transience. Most have heard the often cited fact that Americans move every five years on average. Our family has moved far more frequently than that. Although some of our moves were to different houses within the same small community and did not affect our lives much, others have created great upheaval in our lives, as we have lost touch not only with the people who knew us best and cared for us most, but also with the places and sights of familiarity and comfort.

We have moved for a variety of reasons, and each time we were able to justify our decision based upon the greater importance of what we were seeking wherever it was we were going. A couple of times we moved to be with a church where our particular beliefs would fit in better. A couple of times a better job (or one not so trying) beckoned. Sometimes the company offered us better housing. But each time we have packed up our lives, putting everything we owned in cardboard boxes and plastic bags, transferring these into vehicles, and unpacking them at the other end. Not once have I felt that everything we put into the boxes came back out again; I have always felt a loss.

I grew up this way as a member of a military family. We moved at least every three years. A kid has no choice in these things, and the fit I pitched as an eleven year old had zero net effect on where I lived. The pattern grew very normal. Later, Sue (the bride) accomodated herself to the nomad's life as well as can be expected, becoming such an efficient mover that she amazed people when we would go to help them pack for their own moves.

Now the part that is really hard to swallow is that our plan to discontinue our transient behavior involved another move. Can a drunk be saved by one more drink? Nevertheless, as we sat in our suburban Phoenix house, (the only house in my life, by the way, that I have ever lived in for five consecutive years) we determined that, for us at least, the City was going to be a problem in our future that we were ill equipped to deal with. I felt the irony rather sharply of coming to convictions about transience in a place that I was convinced simply would not work for our family.

We have called our little farm home for all of four months. And I call this blog The Settler? I hope the name is not hypocrisy, blindness or foolishness, but a wish and a hope of really becoming a settler, a settled person. It is a wish that my children would grow to love a place on earth and not be torn from it. It is a wish that the vision of the Heavenly home promised to God's people would have greater meaning to them.

Perhaps one reason a Heavenly home leaves our imaginations blank and confused is because our experience of being rooted in an earthly home is deficient. Maybe people who have never spent more than five years of their life in one place will have trouble contemplating eternity anywhere. I know that home is primarily about the people not the place, but if you have ever returned from homesick travels you know what comfort you draw from the familiar sights and sounds of a particular place on earth. Why do we keep changing the place?

I will try to write soon on the factors that contribute to our mobile culture as I understand them, including the auto-mobile. Now isn't that really an odd word, if you think about it?

Another Try

I'm going to try blogging again. Some people who mean something to me seem to think I should put some of my thoughts out here in cyberspace. I've been reproved for not only quitting but deleting my previous blog, Ozark Rain. I hope that I can focus on the few issues that I may have something to say about and overcome my fear of having my thoughts out where they can be dissected.

I'm going to make one somewhat introspective point and then I promise to be done. Someone recently posted something to the effect that the reluctance of some people to write or comment is not due to humility but to pride. This is because we are afraid to say or write something stupid which might damage the illusion of wisdom we have created. But this would be a good thing, no? And so if I speak wisely it will profit you, and if my foolishness becomes evident it will profit me. Sounds like win/win.