Drought Finally Official [ earthstuff/ ]
Finally our region has been officially declared a Drought Disaster Area, and the Provincial Gov is pumping in emergency funds for "emergency projects such as drilling of boreholes/treatment of effluent water etc."A couple of weeks ago the local Muni announced that they're going to be constructing a desalinisation works for Sedgefield. They're even trying to get emergency permission to delay parts of the Environmental Impact Assessment processes that are legally required... despite the fact that brine from a desalinisation works is classed as toxic waste... despite that fact that Eskom has no spare electricity generation capacity to power such energy-intensive boondoggles projects...in the same breath as local pols are mouthing empty bullshit about reducing our Carbon Footprint...
Something is very smelly in the District of Eden! (And it's not just the illegal-but-ignored below-the-water-table septic tanks in Sedgefield.) Apart from totally abdicating responsibility for allowing the development of housing estates in Knysna and Sedgefield far in excess of the actual carrying capacity of our catchment, local officials seem to studiously avoid looking at much simpler, lower tech, more sustainable and cheaper options.
Like requiring rainwater catchment for every house...
Like requiring in-house water to be gravity fed and not pressure-driven (thus reducing by about a factor of 4 the flow rate from taps)...
Despite the drought our rainwater tanks are all full, even while our dams are pretty empty.
Even when the boys were both still living at home we never, ever used as much as 5000litres in a month. And yes, we do wash ourselves and wash our clothes. Pretty regularly. Perhaps when you know and can easily monitor your stored water levels being conscious about water usage comes more easily.
I shudder to think what the situation will look like in another few weeks when Peak Tourist Season hits...
Update: Forgot to add that the Provincial Gov rates this as the worst drought in 100 to 150 years. Didn't know they were capable of keeping records from that long ago! :-O
Kakistopoly [ earthstuff/ ]
Wrote up the origin and definition, with appropriate ranting, of the word "Kakistopoly," a word of (as far as I know) my own invention.Share and Enjoy!
And Now For Something Completely Different [ earthstuff/ ]
Jason returned from a short business trip to Sweden, and brought back something special: A copy of the (Limited Edition) new album by Folk/Pagan/Melodic Black Metal band Eluveitie, Evocation 1 - The Arcane Dominion.
All I can say is...
Awesome!
Don't be put off by the "Metal" tag... the album has not an electronic instrument in sight, yet still manages to pull of this weird fusion of Celtic folk, metal, prog-rock and even a bit of rap on one track! Almost all the lyrics are in the ancient and extinct Helvetii Gaulish language, giving a very Pagan, spiritual feel that haunts and teases some memory deep in the DNA.
I cannot praise this album highly enough. This is a work of genius.
Death Grip: The Lesson for Climate Change [ earthstuff/ ]
My last couple of posts about The Drought probably sounded like whining. They were. To some extent, anyway. But beneath that there's a lesson.So many people -- the world around -- are hoping... waiting... assuming... praying... that there'll be some sort of Return To Normal.
There won't be. Get over it!
I well know that we cannot ascribe directly the current weather conditions to GCC (Global Climate Change a.k.a. Global Warming) -- that's just not how this thing works. After all,"climate" itself is nothing more than a mathematical fiction. An average of weather conditions over some short spane of recent decades. But the climate models -- no matter how deficient they may or may not be -- do predict a greater number of more-extreme weather events than we've historically seen. Still, whilst it is scientifically incorrect to connect our current drought conditions (or any of the other extreme or unusual weather events happening in the world) to GCC, there is one consequence we can note... one realisation that comes out of this drought...
Climate change screws up our ability to predict. For the farmer, the gardener, the self-sufficient, it is impossible to over-emphasize the impact this unpredictability has. Forever... for as long as we've been cultivators... we've pretty-much been able to predict.
"If I plant Beans now, I should see enough rain to get them growing, and in about 4 moons from now, I should be harvesting the next year's Bean Stew suppers."
But now, something seems to have slipped. Take our (anecdotal) local case: We had the Humid Season back in December, instead of now (February) as is "normally" the case. Our Windy Season -- normally September and October -- is still on-going. The Once A Week Rain that characterised the region 15 years ago is clearly now a part of History. Our Spring was long, exceptionally cool, and characterised by almost 2 months of permanent overcast, resulting in very slow Spring growth from most plants. It's as though the "seasons" have slipped forward by about 6 weeks.
Maybe so. Maybe not. That's not the point.
The point is that the weather has become just that much less predictable.
Until last year, I would have planted Maize in the 1st or 2nd week of January1. This year the dry conditions stopped me. Perhaps fortuitously! Perhaps I should now plant Maize in mid-February... (If we get some rain.) But I don't know.
And next year? I won't know!
It's all gone Random. That's the real consequence of Climate Change.
----
[1] In most parts of SA, people would plant Maize much earlier in the Spring and/or spray the plants with some Toxic Cocktail. Around here, early-to-mid-Jan is the Right Time for "organic" growers to plant Maize whilst avoiding the worst depredations of Corn Ear Worm.
Drought: Climate Change Shows Its Face [ earthstuff/ ]
We're in the midst of the most serious drought we can remember since moving to Braamekraal some 13-and-a-bit years ago. So far, here at near the end of January, we've had only 10.5mm of rain this month, with little prospect of any more. "Normal" for January would be between 60 and 70mm. The last decent rain we've had -- any single fall of over 10mm qualifies as "decent" -- was in mid-November. The neighbouring town of Sedgefield has run out of water and the municipality is having to truck in drinking water for the town's residents.Triage Time
I've written-off the contents of a couple of beds full of seedlings. They're easily replaced if/when rain returns.
The House Dam is almost empty -- I have at most two more waterings for the veggie garden. At that I am only watering the well-established Tomatoes, Chillis and Squashes. Everything else must fend for itself.
The house water tanks are fine -- we still have around 12kl in the storage tanks (out of 15kl capacity) which would last us (I guess) 8 or 9 months. By the time things got that serious we'd probably be the last people left alive in the region. ;-) But the garden is suffering, as is the forest.
The New Normal
This, I have no doubt, is the bare face of Climate Change. For the past 10 years we've seen the weather patterns steadily change -- always towards the more extreme... always towards dry...
Why, then, are the local government bureaucrats and politicians running about crying about a "crisis"? Crises are ephemeral in nature! This is the new reality: Less rain. Less frequent rain. Less reliable rain. More extreme weather events. More frequent extreme weather.
And it looks like it is too late to do anything about it.
In Consequence?
I guess we're going to be selecting seed on the basis of Drought Resistance this year.
How Far Future [ earthstuff/ ]
I was noodling around the 'net the other day for info on arcane bits of Provincial legislation. You see, some local property developers want to park (yet again!) an industrial "development" in our beautiful, rural neighbourhood. The current proposal -- in stark contrast to the last one -- is pretty softcore. The trouble is that, to get the zoning permissions, they're following an obscure process that eliminates the need for Environmental Impact Assessments, public-participation processes and the like. Or maybe not. It all depends on whether you can convince the Bureaucrat Of The Moment to buy your interpretation of the legislation and regulations.Long story short, all this led me to a link to the Provincial Government's Draft1 Climate Change Policy Document. Wow! Who ever would suspect that such a thing exists?
It will take me a good long while to read throught this thing, so all I've done is skim it so far.
Apart from some fairly obvious (to me) missing pieces, the whole thing seems pretty impressive to me. (And this is me -- the anarchist, using a word like "impressive", about government! Will wonders not cease?) In summary, the Western Cape is going to get dryer, mainly in the extreme South-Western areas (i.e. Cape Town, my home town) but not so much where we are (the Southern Cape.) That's assuming the IPCC models have some resemblance to future reality2. The Western Cape is hugely dependent on agriculture as an economic driver, so there's much discussion of that. None of this is the impressive bit...
To me what is important in the document is that
- the Western Cape Provincial Government is actually taking Climate Change seriously, and not in denial like some other governments we might mention,
- they're actually advocating mitigation strategies, depsite the fact that, as a "developing" nation, South Africa is not "technically" obliged to worry about mitigation4, and
- they're talking about actual, concrete actions, not just a lot of waffle, like the National government's discussion documents. (In fact, the National Government's list of "Key Issues" does not even mention climate change at all!)
[1] In the (long) time it took me to write this, the policy document has been gazetted, and is therefore no longer merely a "Draft"...
[2] Extremely dubious! I think that consensus amongst climate scientist3 is that the IPCC model is disastrously wrong. Climate change is happening far quicker than anybody expected or predicted, and it is accelerating faster than any "accepted" models. Of course, academic process being what it is, the climate will simply have gone and changed -- maybe radically -- before academic bodies accept the models that explain the change.
[3] Any climate scientist who reads this and wishes to correct my views, please do!
[4] What bollocks! Every human being is going to be "impacted" by climate change. Anybody who think that mitigation is not part of their personal responsibility should be put up against the wall is clearly deluded.Technorati Tags: climate-change, global-warming, western-cape, southafrica
Simmering the openseed.org pot [ earthstuff/ ]
An exercise in Extreme Slow Cooking, this! For quite a long time, now, I've been (sporadically) working on a web-based tool for tracking and matching seed-exchange wants and offers. You'd think it's such a simple thing I could have batted it out in a couple of weeks... probably so, but I've also been using it as a way to explore different technologies and software design approaches. Not stuff that's interesting to seedy people or self-sufficiency hackers, I know, but satisfying to my inner-geek.Anyhow, I'm quite determined to get this thing implemented and running as soon as possible. The first version is (deliberately) terribly simple: Anybody who wants will be able to sign-up with the site, and enter a list of the seeds they
- offer for swaps and/or
- are looking for in exchange.
What The Hell Inspired All This?
There are lots of bloggers who keep their seed-lists (more-or-less) up-to-date on their blogs, websites, etc., just as I do, or who list their seed offers and wishlists on various web-forums and group-chat sites.
As a tech geek, it seems just obvious to me that computers should be doing more than that -- they should actively be matching us up to make it easier to swap seeds! I mean, this is exactly what computers are supposed to be really good at, after all. Isn't it?
The first release of the system will do just that. You'll be able to type-up a list of seeds you offer for sale, swap or giveaway, and you'll also be able to capture a list of seed varieites that you're keen to lay hands on. As soon as you do that, the server will look for other people who have matching wishlists and offers (in reverse, though, if you see what I mean) and will drop an email to both parties suggesting a swap.
I expect some challenges around the matching -- what happens if I misspell (say) Lettuce, or if I enter a plant as "Lactuca sativa" but you're looking for "Lettuce"? I don't know how well (or otherwise) its all going to work out -- I could really use some help from a SQL1 guru with this sort of stuff. All gods know I'm not one!
Right now most of this works, but it all still looks like crap, as I've made absolutely no attempt to "style" it to look like anything yet. If you have some web-design (especially CSS) skills and are keen to help out, please drop me a line! Otherwise I'll hack something up...
The only significant missing piece right now is any ability to Just Browse through the lists of what's on offer! I feel that this is a crucial piece of functionality, and need to implement something before the site goes into what we propeller-heads call a "Beta Release" -- a working, functional version, but May Contain Some Nasty Surprises2.
Other bits and pieces that I may add later -- depending on how important other people feel they are -- would be a wiki system so that we can write-up plant descriptions, with pictures, growing tips, seed-saving hints, breeding ideas of the various varieties. (My own interest is in veggies, but I really hope that flower and fruit growers will also step up...) Then, too I have in mind to add a "forum" chat system later... we'll see.
The software will be released as Free Software so that if anybody wants to run their own exchange system -- perhaps with a regional or specialty focus -- they'll be able to take advantage of the software. My aim is to build-in functionality that will enable all OpenSeed exchange systems to share all their swap offers globally, but that, too, is a "for later" feature.
So Why All The Waffle Now?
Frankly, I need a little help. Included on the site are the usuall stuff like a "Links" page, and I could use some input on what links to include. I'm particularly looking for seed-bloggers (you know who you are! many of you are already listed ;-) good-quality heirloom seed suppliers, and links to seed-saving, food-biodiversity, plant-breeding, heirloom variety information, seed-politics, etc. At this stage anything's game. Spammy commercial links won't make it ;-)
Where and When?
The site will go live as openseed.org -- hopefully sometime in late-Jan/early-Feb (but no promises -- if somebody offers me a bunch of money to do something else, openseed.org will have to go on hold.)
The site will be non-commercial -- for the time-being I can afford the hosting and such, but I could really, really use help with testing, ideas for more features, and, once it is up-and-running, feedback, bug-reports and content.
Oh, and any good heirloom veg seeds ;-)
(And after that I'll get around to making this blog look like something. Right now it looks like crap and leaves a whole lot of usability to be desired. But it's Summer, right now, and Prime Weeding Season and It All Takes Time.)
[1] The system is currently using MySQL, but could quite easily be transitioned to another database system, but there's no compelling reason to change right now, and it would only slow me down at this point, when my aim is to get something up and running for people to kick the tyres and suggest how to do things better.
[2] Like Windows Vista, then... ;-)
Technorati Tags: seed, seed-swap, seed-exchange, openseed, biodiversity, software, website
Oil Be Seein' Ya [ earthstuff/ ]
Hail on the chief!Power to the peakle! Piss in the powder and praise the ambulation. Prop up the prayerful. Lead us not in too uncertainty, but deliver us our pizza. Mine us the glory, the power of the vampire... at least until we've passed the peak, empirical evidence not with standing. At least until we've picked the bones of the past. At least until we're pissed.
Pickled in their owned whine, pickled in a peck by their own henpecked pack, their feeding frenzy turns on their own insecret urgents, kundaleaning on their puppets, saintgeorging their dragons. Landgrabbing at their own psychotrophies, paxing their blags. Pack to the future: the ünteröberfuerher's articulated cargo culture backed to the gills by their spindizzy illumiknotty cranking the turingspindle, fueling the smouldering krankenfear, winding the springs of smalldering souls. Fed to the gills on fantasy freelunches, fast boxlunch combustibusiness, massmart instalodges beating the ploughshares the landcares the earthwares into swards of instagratafie. Burgeoning crapitalism winnowing the crashcrops and salting the earth. Dah-doo enrunrun, dah-doo enrun.
Their disconnect, their triple-sec, piped pap for crumbfort -- thrice nine I lived there.
Take no heed the surgeon-general's warnings
Robotman's sexpak, empire sturmtrouper, freedom's child backs from the front, back from the udder side, sucks hind tit, sucks on exhaustgas of mannamachina running on empty, running on fumes, fuming and fulminating and running on emptation, "Where is my playcheck? You bastards! You've eaten it!" Sadly attempts reconstructing the undeconstructible kaputznik intellogies, slides down the slippery slopium in epimenidisney daze. Glide down the path of disticulated blatherbots' future imperfect, misstilling their weird from the sweat of my own frothers brow. Small beer in my contigulum.
Nightout in the diskriegulum
Back. Back from the utter realms of desolated trendfeldenkreit; back from the spam and the spin, the spick and the span, the tucked and tanned desertifed and stratified panglobulous hemi-semi-demi-quavered, the fucked and fanned transmogrified powerpack semisold into wageslavery. Back from where the normalisms rain. Back from the bangling headnoise of the neocrims and quaquaquaqua econofascisti; their blathering, their blistering ignoramofarten dismalism ranting and islamowailing "Let rip the warcrimes! Unleash the packs of lunchmeat!" Crunching bongbots. Thieving slavetakers.
Bring jah paper, bring jah fire. Fill up the rightbrothers with righteous fury and fire the eagle's nest; smoke the whitehouse wasps from their paper castle. Matchless we march the halls of terregnum, the walls of interment, the malls of terrafie. Donner und blitzen the gorgon's lair the liars creedpots the krankensteins castle. Galileo lift thy head raise thy eyes past the neohorizon. Il papa, il duce, spare us your sanctity.
No cheer for the menschless
So build aye my fortnot my safehouse my madhouse, my powerless mousehole. With walls inside out and doors of perception flung wide. And welcome aye the rain and sky, the earth and sun in roofless untermensch obscurity. Let fall the fools of power where they may, the tools of destiny. Enchancingly cast spells of remake; cultivate what's left of us an earthward spiral way. Mine is no disgrace.
Hands in the Soil [ earthstuff/ ]
What a great day it's been! I spent the entire day (well most of it, anyway) in the veggie garden. Planted a bed full of Dragon's Lingerie beans -- a great bean for drying. Cleared another bed for Carrots and Beets. Cleared weeds and thinned Beets. Cleared pathways and re-surveyed several of the beds that have "wandered" from years of being dug over using the Mark One Eyeball Edge Estimation Technique.The weather was not brilliant -- windy with a not-so-subtle
I really must build a compost heap, if only as a way to provide some bottom-heat for getting Chillis germinated. I have seed-trays planted out, but temperatures are certainly not what Chillis would really like, yet, so any help I can give them sounds like a good idea.
Even though I'm pretty out of shape from 9 months of deskwork and my lower-back and arms ache a bit, its a good ache! A much healthier feeling. I feel much, much better for having had my hands in the soil all day than I've ever got from having my hands on a keyboard all day.
The image of self-sufficiency as a life of pure drudgery and unremitting toil is just plain wrong. I can't imagine anything more drudgeful, unremitting and draining than a day of office politics, meetings and drearily coding CRUD1. The human mind, body and spirit are not made for that; we need variety. We need quiet time. We need non-thinking time. We need contact with the Earth; with the soil. Gardening gives us all these and more.
I recall reading that physical contact with the soil has been proven beneficial: Soil contains bacteria and fungi that stimulate endorhpin production and so literally makes us feel good! (Wish I could find the reference, but I can't. Anyone who does, please drop me a line.) I guess this assumes that your soil is healthy and free of toxic concoctions...
Whatever the reason... a Good Day!
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[1] For non-computer people, that's a technical acronym for "Create Read Update Delete" -- the most boring, mindless and tedious kind of programming there is. And a whole bunch of what's wanted out of corporate software.
Why You Just Can't Buy Good Horseradish [ earthstuff/ ]
Tomorrow evening sees the start of Pesach (Passover.) The time when Jews1 the world over remember the liberation of their ancestors2 from a life of slavery in Egypt. It is primarily a happy festival, but, intermingled with the happiness of liberation from slavery3, we remember the suffering and hardship, too, and one of the traditions is that we eat bitter herbs to remember the bitter times and tears -- even the tears of the ordinary Egyptians who had to endure the Ten Plagues brought down on them as a result of their political leaders' refusal to negotiate a good faith, mutually satisfactory settlement.
Prime amongst the Bitter Herbs is Horseradish -- "Chrain" in Yiddish ("ch" as in "loch".) Or perhaps that only happens to Jewish descendants of the European diaspora.
For most people, there are only really two ways to lay hands on Chrain in any shape manner or form: Either you buy ready-made Chrain, stained purpley-pink, and tasting about like crunchy cotton-wool, or you buy some Horseradish roots, and suffer tears, agony and pain shredding it up really, really small, adding vinegar, a bit of salt pepper and maybe a touch of sugar, and making your own.
Either way, every year, I hear the same complaint from my father and his brother: "You Just Can't Get Decent Chrain Anymore. It's Just Not The Way Chrain Used To Taste! Weak and Pathetic, I Call It."
And they're right!7
Even home-made from store-bought roots, its just Not As Strong. And finally I've worked out why.
By an amazing coincidence, one of the farmers in the near neighbourhood grows Horseradish, on we can only properly term "Commercial Scale". Last year I bumped into him at the local store, his pickup piled high with bushel-sacks of Horseradish -- merely a sample, he assured me, for the food processors to test for quality. Each year he ships out tonnes and tonnes of Horseradish. My guess is that he probably represents the country's entire Horseradish supply.
He doesn't make a fortune selling Horseradish. Like too many farmers everywhere, he barely scrapes by. I strongly suspect that, like everybody else who has ever grown Horseradish -- anywhere -- he grows it every year simply because, well... he grew it last year. You see, you can never get all the roots out of the ground. They spread in mass profusion, snap at so much as a glance, and the tiniest piece comes up as next year's crown. No wonder Comfrey holds no fears for me!
A few days ago I dug up my Horseradish roots. Grown from supermarket-bought crowns a few years ago, they have Migrated. Now they infest pathways and Real Veggie beds, and generally make a Bloody Nuisance6 of themselves. Got some fine roots out, though, and saved the crowns for planting for next year. My Plan is to fill a wire-bin with stable-sweepings, plant the Horseradish in that, and harvest long, straight, clean, Ready To Shred roots, without all the hassle of deformed, soil-grown roots, next year. I had the same Plan last year...
But here's why Chrain doesn't taste like the olde tyme thinge. IT CAN'T. You see, the characteristic Horseradish flavour comes about in an interesting8 way: The pungent aroma and flavour of Horseradish is a Mustard Oil produced from two separate chemicals that occur in separate cells within Horseradish roots. The Oil in question is only produced when you crush the root, mingling the two components. This oil is highly volatile, escaping easily through through rubber seals of glass jars. It is almost as difficult to contain as Hydrogen gas9, so flavour and odour don't last long once the chrain has been made up.
Now we can understand why Store Bought chrain is but a pale, pathetic imitation of the Real Thing. But how do we explain that chrain made from Store Bought Roots lacks the authority of the Real McCohen?
Warren (my farmer friend across the way) had to deliver his Horseradish samples to the Supermarkets at least three months ago. He had to deliver the Bulk Fresh Produce at least 6 weeks ago. I, on the other hand, harvested my Horseradish root at its very Prime. A mere ten days before Pesach.
Harvested two months before its Prime; Transported across half a continent; cold storaged until Ready For Processing. Pasteurized. Radeurized. God-Knows-What-erized. How the hell could Commercial Horseradish ever taste like the real thing? Thin, straggly, pre-teen Horseradish roots, not yet matured... How can anybody expect them to substitute for True Horseradish?
So the sad, sorry story is that Store Bought just cannot compete with Home Grown. My Dad (and Uncle) are right. "You Just Can't Get Decent Chrain Anymore."
Unless you grow your own.
You see, in their youth, the only Chrain available at Pesach was what Uncle Scholem grew. In their memory of Pesach Past; in their recollection of childhood seders, in the tears they cried from for our Ancestors Freed from Slavery In Egypt, my Dad (and Uncle) were right. Chrain Ain't What It Was. It can't be! Nothing harvested months ago can be!
I suspect that this story is all too true for far too many foodstuffs eaten in good faith by masses of people everywhere. People who believe they're eating Real Food. The truth is that they're eating Prematurely Harvested Crap. It is not any single body's fault. Not the Farmer's -- he just grows the stuff and ships what the supermarkets are willing to buy. Not the Supermarket's fault -- they just buy it in, ship it out (usually about as fast as it's being offloaded from the truck at the back of the store.) And certainly not the consumer's fault -- they just wanna buy Horseradish Root.
How many flavours are lost to the mass of humanity? How many wonderful tastes will most people never know? Simply because they cannot or will not grow their own?
[1] and atheists of Jewish descent...
[2] well... somebody's ancestors, anyway!
[3] Particularly poignant for Jews4 who grew-up in Apartheid South Africa.
[4] and atheists of Jewish descent who have an functioning conscience...
[5] There was a "5"? Give me anothe Scothc!
[6] Been watching too much of the Black Books series lately... You supply the voices.
[7] OK, admittedly some of that is just old men remembering their youth through rose-tinted specs.
[8] ...for some value of "interesting"...
[9] I exaggerate!10
[10] ... but only slightly.
Technorati Tags: horseradish, chrain, pesach, passover, food-quality
Storming-up a Brew [ earthstuff/ ]
For a while, now, I've been planning to start brewing beer again, as I did until some years ago. Remember that one of our self-sufficiency goals is Pizza dinner made completely from self-produced ingredients, baked in a self-built oven. And a critical part of any self-respecting Pizza dinner has to be the beer!As ever, the challenge is in getting all the ingredients and equipment needed. Despite homebrewing being quite popular in SA, it is not like more civilized parts of the world where there are plenty of homebrew shops that can supply the necessary. The tiny handful of suppliers that exist are hard-to-find, carry very limited ranges of ingredients, and are generally not very useful.
It is the harvest season. The road was fraught with grain trucks carting the harvest to silos. Wheat, barley, wheat, oats, wheat,
I made a stop in Swellendam, to buy some stone-ground whole flour for breadmaking; there is an old watermill at the local museum where they mill a small quantity of wheat every week. Swellendam is also in the very heart of Grain Country, and sports a very large grain-storage facility. As I drove out of town, at least 3-dozen grain trucks were lined up at the silos to offload their precious harvest. It's been a nerve-wracking time for the farmers. Millions of Rands tied up in getting the seed into the ground. Less than perfect rainfall during the growing season, and too much rain a mere fortnight before the harvest. But at last the harvest is in, safely stored in a silo. The nation eats.
I detoured off the usual route to Gansbaai, travelling via Caledon -- another major grain-handling town about an hour-and-a-half from Cape Town. The town is dominated by massive grain silos and the railway tracks that run through them, ready to transport the grain to Gauteng. My reason for the detour is that Caledon is also home to a very large maltings: SAB Maltings. The same SAB -- previously South African Breweries -- now SABMiller, that is one of the largest beer conglomerates in the world. The maltings was a fascinating and entertaining diversion. They produce something like 220000 tonnes of malt a year! But they're still happy to deal with homebrewers wanting only a tiny, little, insignificant 50kg sack of pale malt. A very helpful, friendly lady named Estelle was wonderful in helping me get my malt. For them a tiny little drop in an ocean of beer. For me a rather large1 quantity. Had to park the car on a weighbridge long enough to weigh a small train so that they could weigh my purchase. 50kg on the nose!
I'd have taken a picture of my little Corolla pimpmobile on the weighbridge, but, after my single pic of the maltings, the security guy on the gate came running over to tell me, "No, no! You're not allowed to take pictures!" Say what? It's not like this is a weapons factory. They make malt! We've known how to make malt for thousand of years! WTF?
"What would happen if I just stood outside the gate, across the road and took a picture?" I asked him. "You couldn't stop me then."
"Yes," he agreed, "It's a stupid rule, but its more than my job's worth!"2
I promised him that I would delete the picture from my phone. Faithless liar.
The Nation's Beer
Much of the drive is along the N2 -- the National Road that runs from Cape Town all the way to Durban. Driving along the smaller roads between Caledon and Gansbaai gave me a better appreciation of the vastness of the grainlands. I was quite surprised at the humbleness of the machinery still used to gather in the harvest. I expected to see lines of giant combines, four abreast, followed by large tractor-trailers catching the grain. What I saw was simple mowers, cutting down the grain and gathering it into windrows, ready for the thresher in a few days, followed by the bailer to make those gigantic round hay-bales that need a tractor with a forklift attachment to move them.
There was a logic to the old-style balers that made rectangular bales. Bales were still small enough for a man to lift. These huge round things? Never!
What would happen to these farmers if you took their diesel away?
They plough, disk and plant their multi-million-rand seedbed using massive four-wheel-drive tractors, four to six wheels per axle. They spray, spray, spray, poison upon poison, using aeroplanes and wide-boom sprayers aback their tractors. They harvest -- be it with the very large all-in-one combine-harvester mobile grainfactories (and there were some) or with the humbler, simpler and cheaper machinery -- and load their harvest onto 22m long trucks to be transported hundreds of kilometres to a silo. From there the grain gets trucked -- mostly trucked, since the rail network no longer finds it economic to transport grain -- to the millers. The industrial mills that tear the grain apart into its smallest usable components, to be reconstituted into computer-managed maximum-profit product, stuffed with additives to enhance the colour, smell, and, mostly, shelf-life.
What happens when you take the oil away?
What happens when diesel is too expensive?
How do the millions eat?
Let alone drink beer...
The simple truth is, "They don't!" The Elephant In The Room That Nobody Wants To Talk About: there are simply too many of us humans in an energy poor future. I am not suggesting a catastrophic starvation scenario -- those are more usually politically engendered than arising from natural consequence. But I don't see how to feed upwards of 6½-billion people without cheap and abundant energy.
I'm planning to get into small-scale grains over the next year or so. Even if its just for making my own beer :-)
[Pics taken with cellphone camera. Please excuse the pathetic quality.]
[1] Nearly typed "a very lager quantity" there... Freudian ship?
[2] Not in those words. Poetic license. This is a Xhosa-speaking man for whom English is a third or fourth language. You get the gist. (May I one day speak Xhosa half as well as he speaks English!)
Technorati Tags: beer, grain, food, food-supply, peak-oil, farming, agriculture
The White Lions of Timbavati [ earthstuff/ ]
That's three times, now! Three times that I've been tagged as a "Blogger for Positive Global Change". First by Sarah at Farming Friends, who tagged me months ago1, then, just in the past couple of days by James of "The Good Life" and Robbyn on "The Back Forty". Wow! Thank you all!2 I'll take the opportunity to act on something that has bothered me for a while, now: Reading this blog it would be easy to think that the whole "self-sufficiency, sustainable future, post-peak-everything" idea is, for us, mostly about gardening. It can never be that simple.Africa's Most Sacred People
Last night we went to a fascinating, shocking, terrible, wonderful talk/video/fundraiser in Plettenberg Bay (a schlep -- about a 50 minute drive away) presented by Linda Tucker, to raise funds and awareness of the plight of the White Lions of Timbavati. Linda (who was at school for a while together with J) wrote an incredible book, "Mystery of the White Lions: Children of the Sun God", which we are lucky enough to own in its first edition. Her book documents her incredible, 15-year spiritual journey from international model to being named "Protector of the White Lions" by no lesser a person than the Lion Queen of Timbavati.White Lions are considered by the High-Shamans of many tribes to be Africa's most sacred animals. According to sacred tradition they were sent by God to teach us how to become human. It is said that if ever the White Lions disappear from the Timbavati, all Africa will die.
Science and Business
The White Lions are a genetic variation on ordinary tawny Lions, their white (and they really are snowey-white, not merely some lighter shade of brown) colouring results from a recessive gene present in the Timbavati lion population, exactly like blue eyes in humans results from a recessive gene. They are not albinos; they are a true white colour.
Scientific estimates place the number of White Lions at less than 300 individuals. Not one White Lion is left in the wild. The Global White Lion Protection Trust is engaged in efforts to reintroduce White Lions into the wild, and things are looking hopeful. The trouble is that, in the wild, the lions become vulnerable to criminal "hunters" who have no compunction in illegally selling a kill to some rich first-worlder3. So, ironically, keeping a lion free turns out to be quite expensive. The Trust is also trying to get various legislative measures, CITES listings and other pushed through to protect these unique Spirit Guides. Sadly the battle is made difficult because the White Lions are not a genetically distinct species from ordinary tawny lions; they are "simply" a variety of Panthera leo. And, because Lions are not an endangered species, trade in Lions is permitted between zoos, parks, private collectors all around the world. Sadly, this means that trade in White Lions thrives, too, since they are afforded no special protection, despite the deep spiritual significance they hold.
The Timbavati lies in the Eastern part of the country, bordering the Kruger National Park. Besides being famous for the White Lions, the area is infamous for what has become known as the "Canned Hunting Industry." Wealthy landowners "farm" animals for trophy hunting. The White Lions are the most prized of these trophies, fetching upwards of US$70,000 a head. They are bred and raised in captivity, never knowing freedom, never knowing the hunt, denied the freedom of their natural homeland. They are tranquilized and constrained in tiny compounds. And then shot dead by some Brave Hunter standing safe outside the fence, to become a stuffed trophy.
The video showed several lions being "hunted" in this manner. A mature lioness, majestic in her power, awesome in her might, her beauty, confused, dazed and frightened by drugs and strangeness, tethered to a truck. Leaps into the air, screaming and twisting as shot after shot after shot after shot hammer into her... Her cubs paw at her dead body...
I cannot imagine the worldview of a person who is comfortable with this travesty. I cannot comprehend the soul sickness that must attend such depravity. It would be all too easy to fall into the trap of hating the people who run canned hunting operations and their customers. But really I think they're no more than a manifestation of a sickness that runs deep in our western-mode society (and the whole world lives to a greater degree in that western-mode society.) The sickness that starts with us seeing ourselves as distinct from the natural world, somehow superior to it and aloof. The sickness that results in our believing that "it is up to us to save the planet" -- from the global climate change we have induced, from the poverty of the strip-mall culture, from the soul-sucking aggression of the money system, from the poisons we've spewed into our air, soil and water.
The Earth exists quite happily without us. The Earth has been self-correcting against all manner of disaster for billions of years. The Earth and her people need us big-headed monkies not at all. The only thing that needs saving is humanity itself.
Take Action
Please click over to the Global White Lion Protection Trust website for more information than I can reasonably fit here. Make a donation while you're there, or, better yet, become a member of the Trust. Your Dollars, Euros and Yen are more powerful currencies than ours; what is a small amount for you is a large amount in Rands, and packs a correspondingly powerful punch.I highly recommend Linda's book as a fascinating insight into the spiritual heart of Africa. Proceeds all go towards saving White Lions and reintroducing them into the wild.
Please blog about this, write about this, shout about this, talk, sing, dance about this. Help us get the word out to more and more people. Help us celebrate the fact of the White Lions. Marketers and business-people, politicians and the bloggeratti, all are saying how powerful is this new mode of conversation, how quickly and viral a message can become. Let us prove that power now.
As an African I beseech you to help us save our spirit guides. As an apprentice human being, I tell you that we are lost if we cannot save these White Lions -- our guardians.
They were sent here to teach us our humanity. It seems they're not done teaching us yet.
[1] I'm practicing hard to make the SA Olympic Procrastination Squad, but am being outcompeted by the bureaucrats in the Dept. Environmental Affairs and Tourism. I don't think it is fair that government employees should be allowed to compete for Olympic Teams.
[2] I'll tag some other blogs as Bloggers for Positive Global Change in a separate post. I don't want to stray too far from the desperate, urgent, terrifying, heart-rending message of the White Lions.
[3] Just so you don't get the wrong picture: the people running these canned-hunting operations are not impoverished AK47-wielding third-worlders trying to eke out a living anyway they can. They are extremely wealthy, powerful, well organised business people who will stop at nothing to keep their multi-million dollar a year business intact. The government is set to finally enact legislation (it's been years in the making) in February next year to ban canned hunting. The canned-hunting industry has already made it clear that they will spend whatever it takes to fight the legislation through the courts, all the way to the Constitutional Court. Meanwhile, I am certain, they will simply bribe their way around the law -- just another business expense -- so I doubt the law will have any real effect.
Technorati Tags: lions, white-lions, canned-hunting, hunting, trophy-hunting, cites, timbavati, linda-tucker, spirit, humanity
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