Thinking About Greta Thunberg

Another cold rainy day. Nursing a summer cold, tired of being chilled to the bone and buried in blankets, I broke down and acknowledged the elements this morning by putting a fire on in the kitchen wood stove. I spent my early morning as usual, checking email, surfing Facebook, and playing Spider Solitaire on my iPad before making breakfast. But such a day is a day to write, and while washing dishes my mind was thinking about Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old climate change activist we are hearing much about. She is heading out now, on the Malizia II, a racing yacht that uses solar panels to power underwater turbines, to go to climate conferences in the US and Chile. Why is she taking the time to travel by “sailboat”? She believes air traffic is a huge contributor to climate change and the casual attitude we all, including myself, have of hopping a plane to get quickly from here to there should be reconsidered. But, but, but... (I can almost hear people’s minds rejecting this premise) Canada is such a huge country! It takes days to get across it! And we really need to escape the north sometimes, go to a sunny tropical paradise and soak up copious quantities of vitamin D. What about vehicle emissions! And the time! How could we get places in a reasonable amount of time without air travel? How could I go to my cousin's wedding back east? ...

A meme I saw on Facebook today. Not sure of it’s accuracy but I can see the point. 

I often wonder if  our global economy was a huge error in judgement. 

Hmmm. If you think that this climate change chatter is all a lot of BS, that the science behind the idea is skewed, that climate has always changed (which is quite true), that human activity has nothing to do with weather or excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, or that this excess is no problem, well, that’s a comfortable place to be, and a good excuse to do business as usual.

Climate change is such a contentious issue, and I know thinking people on both sides of the fence, so I tend to talk about global pollution instead. Pollution is something we can see, smell, feel, something we can all recognize as out of control, something we can agree on. Addressing the causes of pollution and finding solutions to clean up our environment are bound to be a good for planet earth. So I try to find positive news to forward on Facebook, breakthroughs in science and industry that may address pollution and still enable us to maintain our current lifestyle, with some modifications.

In those parts of the world where we live the “good life” we have no political or personal will to make changes that will lower our living standard. No one wants to live without electricity, cars, central heating (or air conditioning), washing machines, running water, indoor plumbing, supermarkets, internet, TV... I could go on and on with this list. If you have it you don’t want to give it up. We’re even quite willing to turn a blind eye to our exploitation of third world countries so we can obtain all these things, things which are desired but not always necessary. 

Most of us live in cities. Cities pollute. The industries located out in the hinterlands are producing products to keep the cities chugging along as usual. Farms are keeping cities fed. City people seem to find all sorts of ways to criticize those of us who are out in the country serving their needs, while conveniently ignoring their collusion in the whole scheme of things. Campaigns about cow farts and burps, dirty oil and pipelines, clear cutting the forest, keeping dogs in warm houses, etc. seem, on the surface, to be noble and sensible. But trucks are still lining the highways bringing products to the cities, planes are still delivering fresh lobster to our table, container ships still chug across the oceans filled with plastic junk to gift at Christmas time. Very few people are changing the way they live in any discernible way.

I understand this attitude. When I came to our bush farm 45 years ago with a baby on my back, almost no money, no power, no outhouse, no water, a tiny shack to live in and an outdoor kitchen with a wood cookstove, I had a dream and a desire to improve. And we did improve, slowly. Now I’d fight tooth and nail to keep the improvements we made. If something breaks down we don’t throw up our hands and say, oh well, we’ve done it before, we know we can do without. No, we fix it! So let’s do some sensible things we are able to do as individuals, and let’s encourage our governments to tackle the big things, support science and innovation to clean up the mess we never realized we were getting ourselves into. For this we need to light the fires of political will. This is accomplished through activism.

Greta Thunberg, child activist - GOOD for YOU! 

A Honey of a Summer

It’s July 28th under cloudy skies, intermittent rain, periods of sun, the plants and the ground are wet. This is a good weather day if you compare it to the torrential downpours we’ve had for the last month. The rivers, streams, dugouts and lakes are full to capacity, inches in some places from spilling over. But so far, in our little corner of the world, no flooding - at least not yet.

Summer has been busy and at the same time frustrating. We sat in the house doing other stuff while wishing we could be outside getting summer things done. My great plan to save seeds has been crushed. My peas failed to come out of the ground, maybe there’s 70 plants or so in two 25ft rows.  My beans were eaten by a critter. I replanted and covered the new planting with Reemay Cloth for protection which worked, but the plants are late and may not produce. Excessive rain and lack of sun has slowed progress of most plants, but potatoes and carrots seem to be doing well and they are the staples of our winter meals. Thank heavens we have sandy soil - it drains. Some of our neighbors, who have clay type soil, could make mud pies in their gardens.

Then there’s the bees. Bees don’t like cold, wet, rainy weather. They barely exit the hive, just cuddle up in there to stay warm, and deplete what little honey they have managed to make. While I was down in Colorado in early July visiting my sister my husband FaceTimed me with very glum news - the bees had swarmed. He was bummed right out because the swarm took off after he spotted it and he figured that was it. They were just gone. But next day they were back again, hanging over the lake’s edge on the chain link fence of what used to be our duck pen. So he and our neighbor, who is also attempting to raise bees, cut the wire and gently tapped them into a spare brood box. If they got the Queen it’ll be a new colony - for the neighbor. We are not set up for a second hive. In hindsight we should have made our enclosure larger, but we never were planning on more than one hive.

A couple of days ago our bee whisperer called us up. He’s the fellow from whom we purchased our bees and our human, as opposed to computer, source of all things related to bees. It’s time, he said, to harvest your honey if you plan to keep your bees over winter. (Honey production in August stays in the hive to provide winter feed.) So my husband donned a bee hat today and set up a jar to catch the honey flow. We thought, after the swarm, that there’d be no honey at all, but looks like we’ll get about 4 kg. The honey flow system works like a charm.

The honey wine (mead) we made together with our neighbor is all gone with the exception of one bottle. It was good, mild, sweeter than our other wines. We kept the one bottle because much of our research says it gets better with age. Aging can be difficult when you are excited and pleased with the product you produced and you want to share with your friends. I have 2 carboys of rhubarb wine on the go right now, one with added raisins and one with added strawberries. I haven’t tried making rhubarb wine for years, usually I make rhubarb juice. But my cellar still holds quite a few jars of juice from last year and the rhubarb plants keep going and going. I found some blueberries in the freezer. Blueberry/rhubarb jam is scrumptious. Guess my project for tomorrow is set.

August 8

It’s still raining. We have been getting some nice days, defined as cloudy with no rain, and some beautiful days, defined as sunny. But it rains nearly every night. Much of the garden is okay. Heat loving plants (cucumbers, squash) are a loss, but we dug some potatoes yesterday and they’re good. The rhubarb/raisin wine is ready to bottle, tomorrow’s project. Raspberries are happening. We’ve picked about 25 lbs so far. I’m going to make raspberry wine this weekend and I have 6 pints of jam so far.

My husband came in 2 days ago announcing we’d lost a lamb. Coyotes? North Country Cheviots are not a flocking breed, making it hard for the guardian dogs to be everywhere they are. Many of the lambs, now a good size, go grazing in a small group without their mothers. Maybe early morning fog created an opportunity - who knows. So tightening up fences, some patrolling, and putting the sheep in the barn overnight has been added to the chore list. A new beaver dam, which appeared between our place and our neighbor to the east a few years ago, is threatening, with all this rain, to overtake the low areas of the east pasture. The corner post is in such soft wet ground it was threatening to topple - another hard job. And, as the rain falls, the hay continues to stand. We buy ours from a friend. He cannot get out into his saturated field. Hopefully the rain will stop soon or... The sheep need winter feed. All the grazers do. The crops are drowning. Disaster areas are being declared. Rain, rain, go away.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, Aug 8, 2019