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Traveling, no vegetables

Two very significant things happened (for me, personally) in the past two days and neither of them have anything to do with vegetables. First, the van started for the first time in four months. Just in time for its fifth move with me. This thing is my age and from its humble beginnings (ending) as an as-is junker on a cash-only auction block, it has come to represent to me my vehicle for freedom (from both parasitic responsibilites and convention). I have enough stories in 6 short years to fill a movie. And it's taught me a lot of lessons on the way. It has a host of problems and quirks and legitimate dangers (caught fire. twice), and every one is MY fault; I try to blame it for every problem and without fail they have come back to something I screwed up. It is a moving van AND a rolling humility factory. If I had such an indomitable and unassailable spirit, I could accomplish absolutely anything. The other story involves an even more significant force in my life, Brittney. B and I went to St. Louis this weekend for a boardgame convention, and I think we knew it had to be special, whether by happenstance or by force. This was a major splurge for us and we were ready to make it count. B left the planning to me, in error: 1) My guess for how far St Louis was was optimistic by two hours. 2) We didn't have a place to stay either night or know anyone in the area. 3) We didn't have any directions or have our passes printed out. We got into St. Louis at 1:00am and checked into a Budget Inn with a very noisy television next door. The next morning, we got to the convention center at 8 in time for the early-bird giveaway. The crowd of people puts their hands on their "tail" or head, and the organizer flips a coin; if you guessed wrong you sit down. Continue until there's a winner. The guy was late though, the irony, and while we waited we picked up a lengthy and very popular game called Mage Knight. Lengthy as in 3-4 hours, and we rightfully figured from the people requesting the game next that 8am was the only shot we were going to have to play it. The game was play-to-win, meaning on Sunday that copy would be given to a random person who played it during the convention. I'm selling the weekend short by saying that kicked off 31 HOURS OF GAMES. A blur of games and meeting people and hunger and fatigue. We ate a sandwich or a sushi roll every 12 hours and stayed awake with gross energy drinks. 5am we couldn't handle any more and took a 3 hour nap in the car in order to get back in time for Sunday's early bird giveaway. The games were INCREDIBLE: 1) Mage Knight 2) Summoner Wars (4 times, with every basic race) 3) Quarriors 4) Lords of Waterdeep 4) Flashpoint 5) Red Dragon Inn 6) Pitchcar 7) Chaos in the Old World 8) Kittens in a Blender 9) Manhatten Project 10) Kingsburg 11) Timeline 12) Impossible Machine As you may know, many of these run over two hours. But we crammed in as much as we could before 2pm Sunday rolled around and it was time for a chance at some game acquisitions. To be continued...

Cat of the Kisa

I didn't buy an ironing board. The cheapest one is $10 at Target, too much, so I use a towel over a hard suitcase. For the first time in a long while I made a genuine sacrifice to save money, and it feels really good. Not much of a sacrifice, but then not much savings either. The trick to saving money is evaluating value, and this is hard. What is the true cost of buying a lower-quality item? There is no feedback for this, there is no way to look back on a decision and compare that item's value with what you would have gotten otherwise. Without hindsight there is no learning, and you get advice like "Buy quality so you only have to buy once." The line where this starts to be a post-purchase justification is completely invisible.

We are making our own bread, we made hamburger buns for the first time, we are putting together a weekly menu that lets us manage ingredients, we are tracking groceries by more than just total/month. I am finally getting genuinely motivated to making our own tortilla shells. My girlfriend made the most wonderful yarn coozie that I use every day. This is a real change in how I approach money, that I can feel, the process of shifting my approach to money from adversarial (spend as little as possible) to cutting money out completely. The connotations of money are clear to me, and I am convinced of the importance of learning to disconnect money and value. But I don't yet know how.

Title without (but with pics de camera nuevo!)

Pulled everything dead and dying - down to one of each of my squashes, some revitalized onions and a broccoli. Covered everything in straw - looks more like a garden than it ever has. A winter blanket. Got me thinking about what I've learned about this season - Oregon climate, soil nutrients and plant deficiencies, watering systems, cultivating, landscape fabric, trellises, and most of all realistic financial investment. This winter, if I'm doing it right, will be even busier garden-wise than the growing season.

Frankenfish

...the GM salmon, growing to harvest weight in half the time, the first GM animal to be released for public consumption. It will arrive unmarked, and largely untested, in an astounding display of FDA corruption and AquaBounty greed. But honestly, why not? The most demoralizing thing is that I can't even come up with a quick someone to blame. That, in my opinion, is a key component of a facebook-status-sized rant, along with a sensationalist name like "frankenfish." Thus, this decidely not-twitter-sized rant.

We will pay AquaBounty, and handsomely, to produce this fish. We do not pay them to consider health benefits or environmental impacts. When, not if, we have proof of the many ways GM salmon is a terrible idea, they will as usual pass the buck to a faulty contractor or the FDA. Even if, in a stroke of genius, we actually manage to hold the company accountable for lying to our faces then their condemnation will be small reconciliation for the human toll and environmental destruction this playing-God will reap.

FDA will approve this fish, and everything else that comes across their table, in time. We pay them to exist, not to protect. This is because they have no accountability. At this point they are, like most governmental regulation agencies, a tax on innovation. You'll get through, it just takes time and money. That doesn't prove your product is safe or wise, just that you have time and money. Even if, in a stroke of genius, we actually manage to hold the FDA accountable for lying to our faces, well, I guess we fire the head and get a new one. If people had any evidence they'd be held accountable, we wouldn't see this parade of corruption scandals (including the previous head of FDA). We would see greedy, reckless companies like AquaBounty pause, even a moment, before condemning our future. That PAUSE, not FDA's mere existence, is our protection.

Accountability, transparency, incentives. In a land where Presidents claim powers that exist nowhere in the books or the Constitution, and where organizations such as the FBI, CIA, FDA conduct irrefutably illegal activities, lie to Congress and us citizens about them for years, get caught and then get...ignored, accountability is nowhere to be found. With it, on the same midnight train out of this country, is any sort of incentive to look beyond one's own paycheck. What has struck me the most recently is the trend of audacity, that people of power need not even pretend they're doing the right thing. I guess, well, at least that's transparency. Isn't that something.

October

The rains are out and the bugs have returned to swiftly coup de grace my suffering crops. As I wait out my last two healthy plants - a crookneck and the pumpkin, I've been thinking of what I really grew in this garden. I guess it doesn't matter - I wasn't counting on any of the food, and I've only begun an understanding of how to incorporate a seasonal harvest into our diet. It only takes a broccoli crown or a couple garden tomatoes in the fridge to realize how artificial our diets really are. I can figure out the best burger in town, go 20 miles to pick it up, bring it home, eat it and clean up easier than I can figure out what the heck to do with a tomato.

I always see gardening as just a piece of a much more encompassing effort. I say, "Gardener" but I think, "Homesteader." Farm animals, with meat and dairy and breeding, compost, greenhouses, outhouses, woodstoves, fruit trees and berry bushes... It all works and interrelates so well. To grow a tomato in a bucket on the porch...is gardening...is to miss the point of gardening. Getting back to our human nature, decoupling ourselves from an irresponsible/unsustainable system, taking ownership of our diets, this is gardening and homesteading in general. I don't think a tomato bucket has much to do with this, but then some think nothing less than a team of work horses, or 100 head of cattle has much to do with it either. I wonder what trait determines where on that scale, if anywhere, a person falls.

October is coming, heralded by my birthday, and ushering in months of short days full of gloomy rain. My spring/summer (Oregon only has two seasons) had plenty of bright spots, but I didn't reach all my goals and spent much of my time/money laying (hopefully solid) foundations for the future. Our garden was the exact same way. I see this winter as a time to come back to present, and if we're still here come spring, well it'll be time to build some memories.




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Sept harvest

I don't actually own a camera. Almost doesn't make running a blog worth it. My girlfriend designing a blog header that is nothing short of incredible, certainly does. Anyway, we have yet to pick some tomatoes, a cuke, some crookneck squash, a birdhouse gourd, broccoli, and some spinach I just sowed. The tomatoes are staying there, because they all taste like...beef? Not fresh beef either, the kind you'd bring back to the store. Every variety (4) and over the last few weeks. It has to be something in the soil, then, not in timing, and I recall the only reason they grew was a 16-16-16 chemical fertilizer I used heavily for them this summer. It's suspicious, since they grew better than the rest of my garden (except the peas) but they're the only crop that tastes off. Visually they look perfect. And look, about those cheap wire tomato cages, even my malnourished, water-starved plants took those down. I don't understand how they keep selling when they can't hold any kind of tomato ever?

As I look on, over my sad kingdom of struggling vegetable citizenry, I realize the true impact of good soil. Wihtout organic matter and/or mulch, the soil couldn't retain water and my plants dried out daily. Without nutrients, vegetables idle, stagnate or turn yellow and wither away, depending on how deprived that variety is. This makes gardening a big waste of time. I'm debating expanding the garden, and going to an automatic drip system, but I will not be debating soil amendments come spring. I can hardly wait, but for now I will preoccupy myself with a "fall crop" of spinach. Mmmm iron.