[green_achers]

Luckily the vegetable part of the mix is something doable in a small scale. It's the meat and staples that are the problem.

Actually, with just a couple of years at it so far, and a lot of hurdles still to overcome before I can get into anything more that experimental scale, I have the vegetable and protein parts about 50% whipped for me, with a surplus of vegetables to share at the market. I could probably fill all of my vegetable needs at least 10 months out of the year now, and protein is from various legumes, native pecans, and deer meat. Add chickens and goats to the mix, and my diet could be a lot less boring.

Carbs are still a problem, but Atkins tells us we don't need to eat all of that, anyway.

[mos6507]

It takes 100 years to make 1 inch of topsoil.

Maybe at the glacial pace of undisturbed nature. There is no need for that. Not when you can actively form it out of compost. Did you even look at the no-till article I sent you?

[AgentR]

I've often thought that moving to the country is one of dumber things you could do in response to peak oil.

My reasoning for this is simple: people in the country have a massive dependence on cars and gasoline. For example, my brother used to live on a ranch in the extreme boondocks of Idaho (the area was only electrified in the 1980s) and he and his wife had to drive about 100 miles to go to the supermarket.

This is a really good snippet to elaborate on.

People, in looking for that great "doomstead", move out to the country, but drag some really inappropriate habits with them.

In your particular example, supermarket dependence for perishables, yet living on a piece of property that could produce all needed perishables, fresh. They should be getting ALL their milk, cheese, butter, meat, and such from that ranch, and perhaps also most of their carbohydrate needs (potato, grain, fruit). Instead, they choose to drive to the supermarket for steaks and one gallon jugs of milk.

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with a 100 mile trip to the market, round trip cost of the travel is about $60 and 4 hours of time. The question is, how many $$ of groceries, are they buying per $$ of trip.

A comparison point, I want some fresh bagels and cream cheese this morning, so I hop on my bike, peddle a mile and a little to the grocery store, buy $15 worth of groceries (chicken on sale or something too) and peddle home. Net, $15 worth a groceries, and an amortized cost on the bike of say 20 cents. This is just about as cost efficient as you can get.

To get equivalent value for your ranch dwellers, they need to buy $4500 worth of groceries. Can they do that on a weekly shopping trip? No. Monthly, no. Semiannually? Yep. Hook the trailer to the duelly, and drive to town, spend $4500 on the non perishables you would buy during that time (grocery, canning supplies, hardware, tools, and any other townie stuff) if you lived close, and then leave at the end of the day with a ton or two of supplies, and don't come back for six months.

How many are ready to give up contact with town for six months at a time? Thats the real question.

Now, common comparisons are no where near that extreme, someone on the gulf coast, or OK or Mid west, is almost certainly within 50 miles of a suitable market; and most urban dwellers still do not bike or walk to the grocery store; even when I lived amongst a few thousand people within walking distance of a grocery store, they would choose to drive their cars to them, instead of walking. Your ranching friends could likely have sustained a pattern of monthly trips, $500-$1000 purchase amounts, and kept their current level of efficiency and still lived on the ranch.

[mos6507]

Did you read the rest of my post? How long would it take you to make enough top soil to cover even 1000 sq. ft one foot deep?

That depends very much on what we decide to do. 6.7 billion people can accomplish a lot when they all decide to do something productive. Right now we are converting fossil fuels into one-time-use calories. If we actually redirected our waste streams into building soil maybe it would start to add up. That to me is the biggest misallocation of resources right now.

I was recently visiting a fellow doomer north of Worcester who grew her raised bed on little more than horse manure and it put my raised bed to shame. So don't tell me you can't grow anything on top of compost. Potatoes in particular seem to love unfinished compost.

[JohnDenver]

I've often thought that moving to the country is one of dumber things you could do in response to peak oil.

My reasoning for this is simple: people in the country have a massive dependence on cars and gasoline. For example, my brother used to live on a ranch in the extreme boondocks of Idaho (the area was only electrified in the 1980s) and he and his wife had to drive about 100 miles to go to the supermarket.

This is a really good snippet to elaborate on.

People, in looking for that great "doomstead", move out to the country, but drag some really inappropriate habits with them.

In your particular example, supermarket dependence for perishables, yet living on a piece of property that could produce all needed perishables, fresh. They should be getting ALL their milk, cheese, butter, meat, and such from that ranch, and perhaps also most of their carbohydrate needs (potato, grain, fruit). Instead, they choose to drive to the supermarket for steaks and one gallon jugs of milk.

The problem with that suggestion: like most people in the country, my brother and his wife (and all the cowboys/staff on the ranch where they lived) were busy *working* from 8-to-7 everyday doing their very demanding *jobs*. They simply don't have the time, energy or capital to simultaneously be dairy farmers, cheesemakers, butter churners, butchers, potato farmers, wheat farmers and fruit pickers/canners. You're talking with stars in your eyes.

A comparison point, I want some fresh bagels and cream cheese this morning, so I hop on my bike, peddle a mile and a little to the grocery store, buy $15 worth of groceries (chicken on sale or something too) and peddle home.

I agree with you; this is very efficient. I do the same thing for all my shopping. But I have to ask you: Why are you buying bagels, cream cheese and chicken at the supermarket? Just up thread you're talking about supermarket dependence as a bad habit, and saying that people should be basically growing/producing everything on their own. Why aren't you making your own bagels, cream cheese and chicken?

I agree that shopping in big loads is a good tactic if you live in the country. But if you read the various articles I posted on rural people getting pounded by high oil prices, you'll see that they're very aware of that tactic, and use it. Yet that still isn't enough to prevent their communities from being deeply mauled by high gas prices. There are too many necessities of life which require driving in the country, e.g.:

-Work: People have to commute to their jobs, often over extremely long distances. They don't have the choice of not working.

-Medical care; people who are ill or the elderly have to frequently drive long distances to their doctors. There are a lot of elderly people in the country.

-Ambulances, police, inspectors, garbage collection, school buses and other govt. services. Rural communities don't make a lot of tax revenue in the first place, and increased gas prices can bankrupt local governments.

-Children have to get to school or daycare.

-Divorced couples who have to drive long distances to a spouse to share custody.

-Worst of all is a vicious cycle of depopulation. High gas prices cause commuting to work/the doctor/school/shopping to be too expensive, so people leave the rural towns/counties and move to larger cities. Govt. revenues decline (people fleeing) while govt. costs rise (gas for the cops/school buses etc.) Then merchants pull out and gas stations pull out, because there isn't enough population to support them. Govt. services get erratic. More people get fed up and leave etc. etc. This stuff isn't hypothetical. It was all happening when oil was high in the Summer of 2008.

[Pops]

How 're ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm?

The day they built the first factory, kids started moving to town to earn that shinny coin. Who can blame them, all that stuff to buy? Survey after survey say people want to live in a Martha Stewart meets Pa Walton slice of heaven but they want to also be close enough to town to earn the big bucks and shop at Macys.

If po causes the economy to contract to the point the jobs paying big bucks and even jobs sweeping the floors at Macy's dry up and it becomes obvious they aren't coming back I assume people will try to become more self sufficient and try to make a little income, a small farm may be a good way to get there.

Today one farmer feeds 100 people – but that one farmer employes 100 oil slaves. I don't know the actual numbers and it doesn't matter for this discussion, the growth industry in a post oil future will be in agriculture.

[Pops]

I live 2 or 3 miles from the old Route 66 , which was the road many people took in the '30s and '40 when migrating from the midwest to the west coast. When you drive down that old road there are the relics of gas stations and "motor courts" every couple of miles - there are has-been towns about every 5-10 miles.

Our place is about 5-6 miles from a little town of 4k but on an old post office map from 1906, there was a little town just a half mile in the other direction.

My point here of course is todays distribution of services is based on cheap fuel, good roads and comfortable vehicles. I think there will again be the time it pays to have a store within walking distance of a few dozen families, whether in town, in the 'burbs or in the country.

[mos6507]

How will a couple of raised beds in the backyards of those lucky enough to have backyards, on little plots of land in the Greater Sprawl Zone make any real difference to what is going down is beyond me.

Who needs JD around when we've got you to tell us how hopeless preps are. Bravo.

I will answer my own question:

Did you read the rest of my post? How long would it take you to make enough top soil to cover even 1000 sq. ft one foot deep?

500 years?

You've got some rarefied idea of what topsoil is. I don't care what you call it. If you can grow food in it, if it isn't topsoil, I don't give a damn whether it fulfills the definition of topsoil or not, and I don't think it would take 500 years to do it. It could be hydroponics, unfinished compost, whatever. It makes no difference to me. So I don't know why you are looking for the most pessimistic numbers possible and pushing it out there as the only estimate of what's possible.

There is a clip somewhere from a TED talk from a guy who visualizes humanity's consumption and one of the things he showed was the number of disposable paper cups that is used up in a year and the picture was staggering. We generate an immense C:NPK waste stream and that is, ultimately, our greatest source to harness for peakoil mitigation. If you don't see the potential of that, well, that's your failure of imagination.

[AgentR]

In your particular example, supermarket dependence for perishables, yet living on a piece of property that could produce all needed perishables, fresh.

Why are you buying bagels, cream cheese and chicken at the supermarket? Just up thread you're talking about supermarket dependence as a bad habit, and saying that people should be basically growing/producing everything on their own. Why aren't you making your own bagels, cream cheese and chicken?

I said more than supermarket dependence is bad; the "yet" clause is the focus there. They executed a decision to purchase a large property a long way from town to live on. That decision has certain ramifications. I live on the edge of a small town, thus have chosen to live close to markets, but do not have the capacity on site to grow any food. I think of this as my forward position, close enough that I can have a normal job and normal lifestyles, but nicely positioned and supplied to enable rapid, unimpeded fallback to rural / farm life.

As long as the job holds, being close to market poses no problems, and grants access to numerous modern luxuries.

My next comments are going to be harsh.. apologies to the easily offended...

Yet that still isn't enough to prevent their communities from being deeply mauled by high gas prices. There are too many necessities of life which require driving in the country, e.g.:

Work: if they are commuting to a job, they had no business moving into the country side to begin with. Either draw your subsistence from the land, or live in town. Stop acting like some entitled British lord.

Medical: Elderly people need to either live near their desired level of medical services, or choose to go without with the consequent reduction in lifespan. Surprisingly, given reasonable sanitation, people don't require all that much medical attention till they are basically dieing of old age anyway.

Ambulance: see above.
Police: I didn't know they were particularly useful in-town, in the country, shotgun works fine.
Inspectors: right. Now there is an important service. *NOT*
Garbage collection: burn pit.
School buses: five miles I say! In the snow! uphill! BOTH WAYS! Homeschool if its a prob.
Divorced couples and shared custody: NO FREAKING BUSINESS being in the country. Move or shut up.

More people get fed up and leave etc. etc. This stuff isn't hypothetical. It was all happening when oil was high in the Summer of 2008.

Certainly it happens, but it happens to people who should not have been there in the first place.

In summary, your necessities are NOT necessities; they are privilege and luxury. If you make a decision that places those privileges and luxuries outside of your economic means, then you have to be content without. Surprisingly enough... doing without won't kill you.

[AgentR]

The problem with that suggestion: like most people in the country, my brother and his wife (and all the cowboys/staff on the ranch where they lived) were busy *working* from 8-to-7 everyday doing their very demanding *jobs*. They simply don't have the time, energy or capital to simultaneously be dairy farmers, cheesemakers, butter churners, butchers, potato farmers, wheat farmers and fruit pickers/canners. You're talking with stars in your eyes.

Not stars in my eyes at all. I would suggest that your brother and his spouse bit off more than they could chew. Essentially getting sold on high intensity practices wanting to emulate the real big players, yet not recalling, that the real big players do their work from office buildings in the cities with massive scaling factors and corporate structures that create high efficiency.

I see this in a lot of American practices. People will say, "wow, look at all that activity.." and they start counting dollars; but they don't see the millions of dollars in monthly payroll and the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of real assets being put in play to make a very tiny margin, multiplied by a huge volume to net a decent profit.

From your description, it seems that your exemplars took the bait right in the worst spot too; a large enough operation where they could hire and assign productive work to multiple staff, but not truly big in the sense of tens of thousands of acres. So they got all the expenses required to keep staff, but none of the efficiency that comes from having thousands of employees and contractors. In other words, they showed up for a gun fight wielding a nerf bat.... results predictable.

[mos6507]

We should ask for our lives back, not crumbs. We Americans have the technology and wealth to live gracious full lives on the land and the city and need not accept their domination. Your suburban ghetto will become a jail.

Why don't you fill in the blanks in a separate thread to explain how we do that. I'd love to hear some productive ideas instead of just trashing other people's ideas with short sweeping quips like the above.

It still remains that the 294 million suburban/city Americans do not have the collective suburban land to feed themselves. Very few individuals (even the wealthy on one acre plots do not).

I don't think we can save everyone, period. Just on the basis of global warming alone (see Lovelock) we're headed for uberdoom worse than Cormac McCarthy. So I've chosen not to adopt his level of pessimism, at least in the short to mid-term, in favor of being more constructive. There is still a range of outcomes between 1 token casualty attributed to collapse and a die-back to georgia guidestones levels. Perfect is the enemy of good and we have to deal with the deck that we're given. I'm not going to discourage reasonable macro level projects or local projects. But the macro level projects are less likely to get off the ground. Just look at something as relatively simple to pull off as the Pickens Plan, which has now been derailed by tanking oil prices and the credit crisis. To put all your eggs in the basket of macro level transformation is just too risky. It's a trust issue. I don't trust the idea that we can pull together and retool at that level of scale. I still contribute to things like the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club, but in the meantime, and I hope for the best, but in the meantime all I can do is try to work at the grass roots level, from my own backyard outward.

One of the strengths of the Transition movement, whether intentional or not, is to accept the futility of trying to come up with heroic plans to save everyone (think Plan B 3.0, Plan C, etc...) and to focus on local solutions that leverage local resources. It's the logical step up from isolated doomsteads. For those who live in patently unsustainable conditions, well, they are SOL. I have to adopt some level of emotional detachment from them. My loyalty has to have a limited boundary. That becomes my lifeboat, so to speak. It's up to the residents of any area to decide for themselves whether they are f*cked or not. I'm not going to solve a Los Angelino apartment dweller's problems for him. I have mentally written off areas that I see as lost causes. And the way things are going, I'll likely write off this town I'm living in as well. I hope there is a way forward for them, and I would endorse any viable macro-level plans that would help them, but I am not interested in being dependent on those sorts of macro-level ideas, because the trendlines indicate they won't happen.

[Pops]

What happens to condo and apartment dwellers?

Yea, that's the deal, there is no one right solution.

An accountant who can't figure out which end of a screwdriver goes where would be just as silly to move way out in the sticks as I would be to move into a condo and try to be an accountant since I don't know which side of the ledger goes where.

Neither the accountant nor the berry farmer is sustainable in isolation. Luckily we aren't likely to ever see real isolation again.

[vision-master]

What happens to condo and apartment dwellers?

Yea, that's the deal, there is no one right solution.

An accountant who can't figure out which end of a screwdriver goes where would be just as silly to move way out in the sticks as I would be to move into a condo and try to be an accountant since I don't know which side of the ledger goes where.

Neither the accountant nor the berry farmer is sustainable in isolation. Luckily we aren't likely to ever see real isolation again.

I live in a Townhouse. For 30 years I did J6P HVAC/R and General Building Maintenance. I won't change oil in my own car anymore.

I do like wrenching on bicycles thou.

Just the idea of heating with wood is a huge project. eYe wonder why ppl buy propane.