Off the farm...

Well, I'm sad to say the farm adventure has come to an end. I decided the isolation was a bit much and am now hanging around Ft Wayne looking for something useful to do with my time. This blog will most likely keep going as I'm sure my adventures will continue in one fashion or another, perhaps even as an OTR trucker. I spent my 21st in lafayette monday night, one year older, hurray!

Fun with poop

Time for some do it yourself, ever wondered about a better way to dispose of your own excretions without wasting all that water and scrubbing that toilet every week? Well, here is humanure to the rescue! That's right, all you need is yourself, a five gallon bucket and some shredded junkmail. One crap + one scoop shreddings/sawdust = fertilizer! I've been crapping in a bucket since I got here and I've got to say it's actually better than using a normal western toilet. There's amazingly no smell or flies and when it's full it goes right onto the compost heap, ready to fuel that next round of tasty garden vegetables. Interested yet? This man wrote a whole book about it and it's available free online:

http://www.weblife.org/humanure

I'm beginning to realize just how far removed society is from the natural cycle of things. For a little bit of planting and weeding the garden supplies most of our food out here, a bit of feed and some attention gets you fresh milk and cheese without chemicals and the chickens cover eggs for very little work. I'll never look at lawns the same way again, all that wasted time and effort for a useless patch of green when the average backyard could supply a family of four with food for the entire year. Instead of those rebate checks ol' George should have sent everyone a gardening book and a bag of seeds, hand to mouth! If anyone in this country ever goes hungry it's out of laziness and stupidity, not for a lack of potential food.

A thought on housing, ever heard of cob? Basically just sod, gravel and hay. All you have to do is mix, mold into place, put a decent roof over it (choose a living roof and there's more garden space!) and it lasts for generations. Absolutely amazing stuff, you can have curved walls, build benches, bookshelves and even a stove right into it. Completely negates the need for a wasteful and expensive construction industry as you can build even a small cottage out of it for less than 500 bucks. If you don't like the shape of it you can just re-wet, re-work and voila, a new nitche or add on.

Civilization is just seeming more and more like a big pile of retarded glued together with a lack of foresight and a love for wage slavery. Just gaze beyond that iPod and a whole world opens up.

Baby Goats!

Got to see two baby goats come into the world about an hour ago, man are they cute! Zoomer's the mother and Isac and Elsa are the new goats, whole thing took less than a half hour. I'm starting to like the goats around here, good milk, tasty cheese and they're fun to talk to. Enjoy the pictures!


Went to the library in Neosho this morning and got a few books, was surprised to find some descartes and spinoza, maybe I'll get to catch up on some reading tonight. Anderson and Neosho have nice little down town strips, mostly locally owned stores and a few good places to eat although I haven't tried them yet. Seems to me these towns are better than that hellhole Naperville with it's four starbucks within spitting distance of each other, I'm glad those'll be the first on the chopping block when the economy really starts tanking. I've got to say I don't mind being out in the middle of nowhere, last night I brushed my teeth under the stars and there was no light pollution, ain't nothing in civilization I'd trade for that view!

Should have some pictures up this week, supposed to rain the next two days so maybe I'll be driven indoors and work on getting unpacked a bit more. Hope everyone has a good week!

Oh, and oil is at 120, yeeeeehaaaaawwww!!

pictures will be added hopefully later today, meant to post yesterday but the goats didn't want to pose, maybe today.

I'm here!

Well, here I am, three days on the farm and pretty much set up. The wireless network reaches out to my little napping house so at least for now my umbilical cord to the 21st century remains intact! Got to see the closest town yesterday, little place named Joplin. Just like everywhere else it's mostly just strip malls and sprawling subdivisions, 600 miles from where I started and I couldn't outrun the commercial tracts, oh well.

Leaned quite a few things the first couple of days. First, don't buy packaged cigarettes, why you ask? Well, when you're right next to an indian reservation a full months supply of rolling tobacco only runs about 8 bucks and there are no chemicals added to it! I got to find out what a rocket stove was, drive a few fence posts, plant some corn by hand(my poor back!), meet all the animals, eat several completely home grown meals and meet the new family. Lots of things to keep straight in my head but I'm catching on pretty quick. There's a nice little stream on the property and plenty of woods to go exploring in although I haven't had the time to do it yet, maybe next week I'll swing down the road and rent a canoe and see where the waterways around here go.

My host family turned out better than I expected. Comrade and his wife are nice people, they've been developing the whole place with sustainability in mind and have a great son who's seven and is just about the smartest seven year old I've ever met, not to mention that he's far better behaved than I was at that age. Life around here is a bit more lax than normal and most of the day is spent outside either working or just sitting in the shade, far more agreeable than being stuffed up in an office all day! This'll be my first summer spent AC free, not too hot around here yet but I guess I'll see how it goes.

It's just too nice out at the moment to spend too much time punching the keys so I'm headed outside to read a bit and maybe go exploring, aurevoir!

Getting started

Well, here it is, one day before I head out to SW Missouri to try and integrate myself with a subsistence farm. I'm psyched, a bit scared and very eager to get things rolling. Still have a few things to pick up and pack into my car. This blog will serve as a record of my adventures in subsistence farming and attempting to adapt to a rural life style after 20 years of suburbanite living. So unless I get eaten by a wild animal or crushed by a tree, I look forward to regaling all readers with my tale.