Come the Revolution

Archive for April, 2008

So. It appears that the revolution may be coming sooner than we anticipated. I’ll be honest: it makes me anxious. Some days it’s a vague, rootless anxiety, and other times it’s full-on gut-wrenching terror. I’ve avoided sitting down and writing about it for fear of bringing on the latter, but eventually a writer’s instinct takes over; sorting things out by writing them down is what I do.

This week I ordered 25 pounds of long-grain white rice, to be delivered to my parent’s house. They don’t eat a lot of rice, but the dogs do. Ever since we lost two older dogs during last year’s pet food recalls, my parents have been feeding the dogs a concoction they call slump: rice, hamburger, cottage cheese, and whatever dog-friendly leftovers have landed in the slump bucket. With the price of rice up 64 percent since the beginning of this year, I wanted to make sure they had a stable supply, at least for a while. The next step is to encourage them to move away from hamburger in favor of grosser internal meat bits. They’re just as good (if not better) for the dogs, and less wasteful. (I should note what a luxury it is that at this point my family’s primary food concerns are over the animals — many in this country are facing quite different circumstances.)

I’m not buying rice for myself for a variety of reasons, one being that I don’t eat that much of it. It would be foolish to buy enormous amounts of rice in a panic, driving the price up, only to have it sit in the closet. I’ll buy a little rice and a larger amount of quinoa instead, and a decent supply of beans. I’m not too worried about the price of produce at the moment, but I am planning to put up quite a bit over the course of the season.

Which brings me to my next anxiety: home. Storing food is (I imagine) a lot easier when you know where it is. As it stands, I don’t expect to be in this apartment or this city for more than another year, but exactly where I’ll be next spring I couldn’t say. I expect I’ll be on some farm somewhere, learning the ins and outs of growing food (and hopefully milking goats). But the eventual goal is to buy a bit of land to settle down on, and when the economy is in crisis… well, it would have been awfully convenient to be a few years ahead of where we are now. Both Cian and I know that we’ll always have homes to go to (separately or together), and my parents certainly live on enough land to grow food for us all, but that wouldn’t exactly be an ideal situation. On the other hand, as nice as it would be to already be set up on property, it would not be nice to have a mortgage right now. Talk about anxiety.

As easy (and justified) as it is to be gloomy about the state of the world, there’s also a lot to be joyful about. Like asparagus at the farmer’s market and flowers in full bloom, learning new songs on the banjo, and long walks with good friends. Last week I met a homeless looking man on my way out of the office; I asked how he was, and his response stuck with me. He said, “I’m so blessed it’s scary.” Now that’s something to keep in mind.

Photo: Asparagus by Esteban Cavrico.

The upcoming decades will hold in them a water crisis- the aquifers are emptying, many reservoirs aren’t re-filling as they used to, and there will be continually less snow runoff in the spring to keep them at their current capacities. The better prepared we are for this, the easier it will be to get through it relatively unscathed as individuals and communities. One of the biggest ways to prepare is to conserve water. How does one do this? Pretty simply, actually. First think of all the things you use water for that aren’t drinking. Ask yourself why you’re using potable (that means safe to drink) water for these purposes. Do you need to? For all the ones where the answer is “no,” think of ways to re-use water for these purposes.

#1- The lawn. You don’t need to use drinking water for your lawn, even if you water it! Set up a rain barrel (pretty much a 55gallon barrel that sits under your gutter). Use that water to water your lawn- and do it in the early morning (like 5-6AM) or at dusk to maximize the amount the grass gets before it evaporates.

Same idea for your houseplants- use a smaller barrel (5gallon bucket, garbage can, etc.) and fill your watering can there instead of at the sink.

#2- The toilet. Think about it this way- you take a couple of gallons of perfectly drinkable water, and you shit in it. Literally. I would argue the person who decided we would universally use potable water to contain our urine has done more damage to the earth than nearly anyone else in history. Ok, maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but pretty close. Remedy? Set up a greywater system in your house. You could reroute your used sink water into the toilet via direct or indirect ways. If you can’t afford that you could use a bucket to retain some of the water from a shower and manually flush by pouring some of it into the bowl. Not the ideal for many of us, but absolutely functional- and you can hide it with the shower curtain when company comes over.

An intermediate remedy for toilet use is to use less potable water in it. This is easily done by filling a half gallon or gallon jug with water and sticking it in the tank of your toilet so that it doesn’t touch any moving mechanisms. Alternately there are products you can buy to sit inside your tank to do the same thing (more effectively, I might add), or if you need to replace your fixture for other reasons- more efficient fixtures.

Get creative, but DON’T USE post-sink water on your plants directly if it’s soapy. The soap, even friendly biodegradable and organic soaps in higher concentrations, can damage plants.

I’m sorry for being AWOL for the past few weeks. I moved myself and some stuff up to an organic farm in New York State where there is no internet access. I recently moved close to a café with wireless, so I may be able to post more often from now on.

Please come back for posts on: