Cultivating Community

tl;dr: We're forming a local conservancy with the goals of preserving our neighbourhood's natural and historic environment, and, hopefully, as a tool to help us build a community with some resilience against climate change and post-carbon energy descent. Yay (maybe).

Self-sufficiency is not a loner's game. It would be impossible for a single family to live completely self-sufficiently; at the very least self-sufficient living is a village-scale affair, and, even then, many niceties of modern life will elude even the most dedicated and hard working bunch of souls. Stuff like MRI scanners, space telescopes, quality reference libraries and large-scale semiconductor integrated circuits. Meanwhile, we can approach a reasonable level of self-sufficiency only if we work together with like-minded neighbours. (Reality dictates, though, that many of my neighbours are unlikely to be all that like minded, especially in a neighbourhood like ours. Anybody who chooses to live outside the fringes of urban life is, by definition, likely to be a bit iconoclastic; strong-minded and opinionated. And get the hell off my pasture.)

Over the past few years we've seen a number of changes in the regulatory climate that surrounds us. Mostly we don't like those changes. Some of us fear them in some degree, and generally it just rubs us the wrong way that the authorities won't just leave us alone to get on with our slightly hermit-like lives. From being outside of any municipal boundaries, and thus "deprived" of all services like piped (but fluoridated and metered) water, garbage collection and libraries, but free of property taxes, we have, against our will, been incorporated into the local municipal boundaries. So now we get to pay rates and use the library gratis. We still don't get garbage collection, and we (thankfully!) still don't have to buy municipal water or sewerage connections.

Another big change has been the promulgation of the Garden Route National Park as an enclosing super-entity managing many of the pre-existing National Parks in the region. I believe it is considered a world-first, since the super-park encompasses towns, industrial areas, shopping districts and commercial farms agri-factories, along with traditional nature-reserves. I think that nobody is sure how this is going to work, but it's a noble experiment. The close-to-home effect was to see the management of the indigenous forest transferred to SANParks – the national nature-reserve authority. All this means that both the national provincial governments, as well as local Municipal government want to "manage" us and design Structure Plans around us in mysterious, undefined and largely unwelcome ways.

For a long time we were able to stick our heads in the sand, pretending that life carries on as it did before, but the bitter truth is that the wider world has chosen to take some notice of us. Time to respond, to organise in a common cause.

We have decided to form a local conservancy: the Bibbey's Hoek Historical and Nature Conservancy (or some such name, if and when we ever get around to agreeing on it).

Several weeks ago we organised a community meeting to gauge the appetite for forming a conservancy. We held it on a Sunday evening so that the maximum number of people would be able to attend without excuses like work obligations. The weather played foul, and we ended up with a fairly small turnout – only about eight properties represented out of the thirty in the neighbourhood. Consensus was that we lacked a broad enough representation to take any decision likely to impact the entire neighbourhood, so we decided to try again.

Now, things move at Bibbey's Hoek speed here... next year is just as good as next week. Newcomers to the area are frequently frustrated at the relaxed¹ attitude we have to time and calendar, accusing us of allowing our brains to become infested with Outeniqua Rust. Consequently our plans for another meeting were a little bit overtaken when SANParks management requested a community meeting (held a couple of weeks ago). Our neighbourhood and its rich history is inextricably entangled in a relationship with the forest. Indeed, our properties were carved out of the very forest itself back in the mid-1800's; some older maps even show the forest boundary as enclosing our smallholdings. It seems reasonable that SANParks management and scientists regard the area as an important buffer zone between the natural forest they manage² and the adjoining larger farms and urban areas.

All this culminated in (yet another!) meeting last evening where we were given an interesting talk by a chap from Cape Nature ‒ the provincial environmental department ‒ on conservancies. Rather than arrange yet another meeting, we went ahead and formed a Steering Committee, tasked with drawing up a constitution for the conservancy and generally getting the ball rolling. Actually, there's not a whole lot for us to do: I had already drawn up a draft constitution, so all we really need to do now is give everybody a chance to discuss and change it to suit some consensus view, and then we can go ahead and appoint an Executive Committee and register the conservancy with Cape Nature (which gives it the status of a legal entity). Then we can get on with trying to implement whatever nature and historical conservation projects we choose. Clearing alien vegetation from water-courses and dealing with some very aggressive and destructive Baboons seem to be the highest priorities.

I have been pushing for us to also include climate-change and energy-descent adaptation as an explicit goal for the conservancy, and, so far, there seems to be reasonably broad acceptance that this would be a good thing ‒ including vigorous nods from the SANParks and Cape Nature people. Quite a large proportion of Bibbey's Hoek's residents are permaculturally minded, and quite conscious of these issues, so it hasn't really been a hard sell.

So: an interesting (and long overdue) step along the path of self-sufficiency. Having to deal with otherwise-minded neighbours and government authorities... not so much fun. But necessary.

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[1] No, "comatose" is probably closer to the truth.

[2] I have some uncertainties over the notion of "managing" wild areas and just what that might mean, but that's a discussion for another day...

World Made by Nuts

So yesterday was one of those days when you just know you're going to waste a bunch of time attending to annoying, but sort-of necessary, stuff.

The car has been giving some trouble, and nobody in town was able to pin it down. Yeah, it is an almost 20 year-old Corolla, so some repair work comes with the territory. It's still a whole lot cheaper than the repayments on a new or newer car, and I greatly doubt I'd find another car with similar longevity, resale value and overall reliability. But I digress...

To get the car diagnosed and fixed I took it to Dr Quincy the Car Wizard in George (he's brilliant!) which meant hanging around his office for a few hours while he sorted things out. While waiting I hobbled down the road to buy a snack – a bag of delicious mixed nuts. On the back of the bag was printed a message that made me feel eerily like Wonko the Sane.

"This product was packed in a factory that uses tree nuts."

Well, yes. I'd think so. It is, after all, a bag of mixed tree nuts.

What sort of insane, fucked up society have we become that somebody felt compelled to print a legalistic cop-out warning that the product might contain traces of nuts, on an actual bag of nuts? I don't doubt that there are some unfortunate individuals so violently allergic to nuts that they need such warnings about products that might possibly contain traces of nuts. They have my deepest sympathy. But if such a person should go out and buy and eat an actual bag of nuts,... well, that would look suspiciously like a suicide attempt.

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A couple of weeks ago the news broke that the ungrounding of ice sheets in Western Antarctica is inevitable and unstoppable. We should expect a rise of about 1.2m in global sea-levels. In the words of the original paper, “this sector of West Antarctica is undergoing a marine ice sheet instability that will significantly contribute to sea level rise in decades to centuries to come.” In NASA's slightly easier-to-read synopsis, glaciologist and lead author of the paper, Eric Rignot: “The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be unstoppable”.

So. Flooding in many major cities. Goodbye to swathes of The Netherlands and Belgium, Bangladesh, south-eastern parts of the USA, and many, many more. Huge displacement of people and infrastructure. Loss of farmland. Loss of biodiversity. And that's probably just the beginning. Unstoppable.



Expect more.

Denialist nut-jobs notwithstanding, we've known for decades that this is coming. Yet we've done absolutely nothing to stop, or even slow, the process, despite the clear and incontrovertible evidence that it is the industrial-capitalist economy that is the primary driver of current global climate change.

You may note that, when we chose our farm, the altitude of the land above sea-level was an explicit selection criterion. We're above 200m. I've made plans for a jetty¹.

We've known for decades that this is one inevitable result of unremittingly pouring millions of tonnes of Carbon into the atmosphere year after year. We've known and done nothing. We totally ignored the warnings printed on the packet. Well, that looks suspiciously like a suicide attempt.

My personal conclusion is that nothing can save the mass of us humans from a massive population reduction short of the total, immediate shutdown of industrial activity. And, even if we did manage to implement such a shutdown, we're still in for a solid smack from our mother Earth. Not going to happen, though, is it?

And even as we speak, Eskom, our state-owned electricity monopoly is forging ahead with their plans for three new nuclear power stations, even though the selected sites are likely to be inundated before construction is complete. What sort of insanity is this that ignores incontrovertible evidence before us, yet persists in selecting against survival in favour of this quarter's profits; in favour of stupendous, largely useless, personal "wealth"; in favour of some mythical "progress" chimerical "economic growth"?

Remember, too, that nature seldom works in a gradual, incremental manner. She works by catastrophe: One heavy rain and the Goukamma River changed course overnight, taking a section of the Buffalo Bay Road with it; one heavy rainfall and the slope beneath the George-Wilderness railway line slid into the sea taking the rails to Dave Jones' locker; one smallish earthquake and the town of Ceres was nearly wiped off the map. This is how natural forces normally work. So the statement that we can expect 1.2m of sea-level rise by the end of the century should not give too much comfort. No doubt politicians will read it as "plenty of time, and my term of office will be over long before anything has to be done," but I'll remind them that the major part of that sea-level rise could just as easily happen over mere days or weeks. It will still be "by the end of the century," just a lot more abrupt than any worldly-wise scientist would be willing to put their name to.

Is there anything we can say or do to wake people up from the collective insanity of sitting on our hands doing nothing? I sadly, dejectedly confess that I can't think of anything.

Written from Outside The Asylum.

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[1] Joking.

My Dams Runneth Over

After a record May rainfall – 230% above average for May in the time I've been keeping records – we were really happy to see water in our dams after years of seeing nothing but sun-baked mud. The song of Frogs returned to lull us to sleep.

Even though its hopelessly too late in the season, I optimistically sowed some of the veggie beds with Carrots, Swiss Chard, Garlic, some Barley,... Funny how a little water affects one's emotions.

House dam. Overflow foreground right.

Whenever the district council get around to sending a grader to maintain our little road, we know that rain is on its way. It's the surest rain dance we know, and infinitely more reliable a predictor than the weather forecast experts. On Monday the road got graded. On Tuesday evening it started to rain at about 6p.m. And didn't stop a steady, solid downpour, until 6 the next morning. 74mm  overnight! Both our dams are overflowing gently – a thing we've not seen in perhaps 5 years, and the rainfall already exceeds the average for June (though not the mean) despite being less than one third of the way through the month.

Bottom dam (and Keira, a bit mystified by all this water.)

The first question everybody asks is, "So does this mean the drought is broken, then?" And the answer is a predictable, "Maybe."

The rain we've experience over the past month is still way off normal. The point is not "drought or not drought". The point is not "too little water vs. plenty of water vs. too much water".

The point is "abnormal weather patterns" – unpredictability. The most reliable prediction climate scientists can make is that, as we humans stress the climate further, we can expect to experience a greater number of extreme weather events, more extreme weather of greater severity. I think that our own experiences seems to bear this out. Even though the recent rain does not really count as a "severe" weather event it is certainly poking its head well up above the "norms"¹.

Even as I write the rain is falling so hard that we can barely hear ourselves shout, as it beats down on our metal roof... and we're very happy to have the water visiting again.

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[1] Whatever "norm" means in relation to weather. The very notion of climate is, itself, no more than a mathematical fiction.

Happy International Biodiversity Day

In which we embark on a new venture in Mycology

Shiitake mycelium, Day 2.

Funny thing is, the mainstream western press seems to have missed IBD completely. I guess the UN's announcement that today¹(22 May) is International Biological Diversity Day was lost in the noise of all those species extinctions directly resulting from man-made global climate change. (Deny it all you like, the evidence is pretty compelling: we are the cause of global climate change.)


Serendipitously we started a new project last Thursday that can only help – in its own tiny way – to bolster our local ecosystems' robustness. We have started a Mushroom growing project.


Buoyed on by my success in culturing brewing yeasts (despite the significant limitiations of my "lab" setup) I decided to have a go at tissue culturing Mushrooms. The result you can see for yourself... the little grey smudge in the middle of the jar is (hopefully) the mycelium of Shiitake mushrooms-to-be. The other smaller greyish smudges towards the right of the jar are really dings in the agar medium where I cooled the knife prior to excising a tiny bit of flesh from a reasonably fresh mushroom prior to placing it on the agar substrate.

See, it's all part of a bigger permaculture-ish picture... three threads coming together...

Thread One: I've read, watched and heard quite a lot about "Hugelkultur" lately, mostly as evangelised by Paul Wheaton over at permies.com. I like the way that Sepp Holtzer, the guy who has been practising and working on this technique, refuses to get pigeonholed as "doing permaculture", thereby dodging all the Permaculture Dogma that tends to go along with Permaculture True Acolytes. I like his style so well that I think I'm going to steal it... The hugelkulture idea seems reasonable to me, especially since I daily observe decaying tree trunks and logs in the forests and plantations that surround our home, and it is blatantly obvious that the decaying wood serves as an effective water and nutrient reservoir. Then, too, I have long noticed that veggie beds that host a vigorous and healthy fungal life also host the healthiest and quickest-growing veggies.

Thread Two: Reading Paul Stamets' ideas for myco-permaculture, I've been researching mushroom varieties that would (hopefully!) work well in guilds and successions. Based on my reading in Stamet's excellent "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms", I chose Shiitake for my first mushroom-cloning attempt. Shiitake should grow easily on the growth media most available to us – Pine logs, chips and shavings. The Shiitakes will play their part in decomposing the wood substrate, which should (if my understanding of the theory is not too broken) then be quite well suited, with the addition of compost and soil, to growing other mushroom varieties – probably Portobello (button) mushrooms, but maybe some other variety between them and the Shiitake. After that I should be able to grow veggies in the remaining bed.

Thread Three: I've been doing some work on modifying the brewery² (described here, here, here and here), not to mention brewing up a storm. So I am ending up with lots of spent grain remains from brew sessions. A 40litre batch of beer produces around 25 or 30kg (wet weight) of bran containing some weak sugars in solution, cooked grain kernels, and a bit of starch left unmodified by the brewing process. Ideal stuff for growing mycelium! Then, too, yeast is just another fungus, and has, indeed, been used in experimental trials for sterilising/pasteurising mushroom growing media. A win all ways!

Convergence

So I thought to myself, "Why wait for several years for a hugelkultur bed to gain a natural mycosystem? Why not hurry things along?" And thus was born my mycosphere garden-bed idea... (or is that a "Mike-o-sphere"?)

I plan to build some beds using pine logs, wood chips, shavings,... whatever I can lay my hands on cheap (read: free) and in abundance. These beds will be innoculated with (initially) Shiitake mycelium, and hopefully we will, in the fullness of time, harvest mushrooms. The Shiitake will be followed by further mushrooms in some sort of yet-to-be-determined sequence, thereby rendering the woody core of the bed quite well decomposed. After that I will convert the bed to conventional veggie production. The mushroom growing plays along extremely well with the brewery, and both endeavours demand a small amount of lab culturing, which has been fun to learn about. And, if the Mike-o-sphere beds work out anything like conventional Hugelkultur beds, I should be able to reduce the brittleness of our water-dependence in the garden, because, although the Offialdom Of The Kakistocracy no longer consider us to be a drought area, and. although we have experienced over 50% above average rainfall for May, we are none too convinced that the drought is truly over.

The Garden Route truly is a canary in the coalmine for global climate change...

We simply have to Adapt Or Dye.

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[1] I guess the UN must have missed noticing that they were scheduling IBD day for the day after The Rapture. Oops.
[2] I'll write about the brewery redesign soon.

Climate Change and Science

Just a quick shoutout to Climate Change and the Integrity of Science - a short read, so you've no excuse. Go on, click the link!

We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act ... But delay must not be an option.

Update: Only one small nit to pick with that article: "For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet." Sorry, but that's just not terribly realistic, in my ever-so-humble opinion. The planet, and much of the life on it, will roll right on without noticing much. It's just us, and probably quite a lot of the larger life-forms, that will be vanished. And they will soon be replaced by other, newer species. (For some value of the term "species".) Explosive post-catastrophe respeciation has happened enough times before.

Be Disturbed

With thanks to Gavin for this.

He warns that "some viewers may find this video disturbing". I'd comment that anybody who fails to find it disturbing probably needs serious professional help.

Drought Finally Official

 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 easilymonitor 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

Catch-up: WinterSeason09

The Winter season has been an almost total write-off due to the still-continuing drought. Good rains (46mm) last week might be the break we've been looking for.

In the ground currently:

• Self-sown Deer Tongue Lettuce and Cimaron Lettuce for seed;
• Kabouli Black Chickpeas, Winnifreds Chickpeas and (ordinary white) Chickpeas from the health-shop, all for seed;
• Spelt in 2 locations, doing quite well;
• Beets for eating;
• the Chenopod grex, which, though not doing particularly well, plods on;
• Amber Globe Turnip (also for seed);
• some surviving Chiles;
• and lots and lots of Chickweed.

The season is very warm. A handful of Tat Soi are flowering already! Lots of volunteer Tomatoes are still looking healthy, and they should be dead. Some Tomatoes are even still fruiting (though the fruits are not ripening.)  Golden Sweet Snow Peas: One batch got mowed by Rats or Guinea Fowl but survived and are just flowering; another batch are doing quite well. A small handful of Texas Grano Onions are doing quite well. Birds are gathering OB-fur for nestbuilding, and the Anna Apple tree has started flowering, so, taking a big chance on the very limited quantities of seed I have from last year's order of Chile-seed from Solana Seed in Canada, I've planted a 10x20 speedling tray -- 1 variety to a row -- of Chiles and putting them on the stoep, which should be warmer and sunnier than the seed-racks in the veggie garden. On cooler days I'll move them into Dale's room, which has proved to be quite a good hot-house for the few late-sown Chiles from last year (which are thriving!)

No compost. (See drought notes prior...) so it's going to be an interesting Spring/Summer. I believe that this new climate-regime is permanent. This is our New Normal weather. Welcome to it; Adapt Or Die.

Drought Update

What can I say? Still no rain. I'm just back from a week in Cape Town teaching a programming course, and still in recovery. Business trips to CT seem to knock me out totally for about 2 days after I return... I've hardly even looked at the veggie garden since I returned -- just been out there to take a look and water the seed trays.

It's disheartening, to say the least. I estimate about 4kl of water left in the dam -- just enough to keep the tadpoles and Chillis alive. The Brandywine tomatoes are dead, along with Lime Green Salad, all the green-beans, and the Galapagos Orange and Resi Gold are on their last legs. I'll try and keep the Resi Gold going awhile longer if I can -- perhaps with the bathwater. Plants that I've watered with washing-machine water have not fared well. I think the surfactants and shit in the detergents are just too harsh for most veggie plants. The fruit trees seem to handle it better.

Right now I should be planting seed trays of Onions and Cabbage Tribe, and direct sowing Peas, Chickpeas and Broad Beans, and preparing Winter beds. There's no point. The weather forecast for the coming week predicts a 20% possibility of Trace Amounts of rain on Wednesday. Or, in other words, an 80% of sweet Fanny Adams.

So Thank You All, those of you who have been so kind as to send me wonderful new Chickpea seed, new Brassica varieties, Wonderful Winter Grains,... you're stars! But it may be a while before I get to grow them... I'm not prepared to squander these gifts unless they stand at least some small chance of success. I keep planting seed-trays for Winter, using varieties where I have a plentitude of seed, in the vain hope that the drought may break by the time they need to be transplanted. No such luck, so far; I've tossed any number of seed-trays of otherwise-thriving seedlings that don't stand a chance.

I know that sooner or later this drought has to break. (Or does it? Says who?) But right now it's depressing. And I'm bored! No beds to dig -- the ground's too hard. Not much to harvest -- the drought's killed the fucking lot! The best I can do is try to mulch the few empty beds that remain un-mulched (for lack of mulching materiel.)

The only bright light in all of this is that it's a great time to weed and hoe!

Death Grip: The Lesson for Climate Change

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.

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[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

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

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

1. the Western Cape Provincial Government is actually taking Climate Change seriously, and not in denial like some other governments we might mention,
2. 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
3. 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!)

My point: We can talk about climate change all we want, but unless we take actual, specific, concrete actions, we might as well be wanking.

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[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.

"Oh the Climate She Is a' Chaaaangin'"

(Apologies to Bob Dylan)
Something unnatural's going on. Its Winter. The very middle of Winter.  And yesterday I harvested a (Lime Green Salad) Tomato off a plant left over from last Summer.
A Japanese White Eggplant has just fruited.  Normally Eggplants don't make it through the Winter, here.  The climate is just that much too cool for their liking.
Normally seedlings are safe from cutworms at this time of year.
The volunteer Tomatoes popping-up all over the veggie patch never make it as far as growing their true leaves.  This year I have some that have reached 10cm tall and look ready for permanent homes.  Whilst I can (and will!) "make hay whilst the Sun is (briefly) shining", I find the whole thing deeply worrying.
There's a small beetle I call the Cabbage Bug, since the Brassica tribe are their favourite food, along with Beets and Chard.  My reading seems to indicate that they are a sub-family of Laybug, but, unfortunately, one that eats plants.  "Dormant in Winter." I would advise the Neophyte Gardener. Oh! How they would laugh at me now, as I daily watch my Beets, Turnips and Chinese Cabbages -- even Lettuce -- getting shredded by these small beasts.  They look something like Ladybugs -- about the same size and shape -- their colours run to red-and-yellow on black, and they seem to have lack any form of predator.  Oh the Sin of Hubris!  It is soooo tempting to get out some sort of Spray to sort them out.  Presumably whatever birds or bugs normally keep them in check are sleeping through the alleged Winter.
Oh well, we will be Powerless for most of the day.  The electricity company will be replacing a transformer and improving insulation on the cables upstream from us to prevent birds electrocuting themselves.  I'm happy to be powerless for a day in the cause of bird-preservation, even if they are merely the Bloody Noisy Hadeda.  I shall spend the day planting Very Early Tomatoes, Chillis, Eggplants and Tamarillos.
(For those of you who may have been following the Saga Of Autumn-Sown Chillis: The Chillis have survived handily so far.  My seed-tray mix tends to be a bit heavy and airless, being almost-pure compost, so the seedlings are all a bit yellow and pale, and they really want moving out into better homes.  I shall attempt to oblige tomorrow.)
Anybody who claims that there No Such Thing As Global Warming[1] has, I think, probably been eating some of those odd, spotty fungi.  I am deeply worried and frightened by the coming Summer.  Last Summer we saw the "Hole in the Ozone Layer" larger than ever in recorded history.  The Ozone Layer might not be getting the press coverage it was a few years ago -- seems that Al Gore and Peak Oil are stealing the limelight -- but it's still there.  And growing.  I fear the effect on our crops of ever-higher UV levels.  This is part of the reason I am consciously choosing to plant red- and purple-coloured varieties of vegetables where practical; the anthocyanins that cause the red/purple colouration also impart a UV-tolerance.  So I'm told.  We hope.
Already I'm trying to figure out how to erect shadecloth barriers to protect plants through the heat radiation of the coming Summer's afternoons to avoid sun-scalded Tomatoes and Chillis!
And it is only July.
----
[1] Alright, alright: It's really "Global Climate Change" and not "global Warming".  But shorthand works!

Coal-to-liquid Myths

An article over on ifenergy.com carries a quote to the effect that

SASOL, a South African energy and chemicals firm, to build two
coal-to-liquid fuel plants in China. These plants, costing $3 billion
each, are reported by the Financial Times to jointly produce 60 million
tons of liquid fuel (440 million barrels) a year.
...
raw material and capital costs of a barrel of fuel would fall under $10
and other costs would not bring total costs over $15
...
If these newspaper reports about the SASOL costs and
volumes are correct, they would indicate a breakthrough. The SASOL
costs are also far less than those of current US technology.

As a South African I am not inclined to believe a single word put out by SASOL.  If the figures are so good, why do we South African taxpayers continue to (involuntarily) subsidise these arseholes to the tune we do, year after year after year, despite the high price of oil?

Not to mention that coal-to-liquid tech -- no matter how good, cheap and efficient -- is still going to add to the atmospheric carbon load, continuing to drive global climate change.

The "we can continue live our soccermom-driving-4.8litre-Land-Cruisers lifestyle just by using some magically-more-sustainable energy source" propaganda machine rolls on.

The Ozone-Friendly Way of Gardening

Gardening in the Sun is getting scary.  Over the past couple of months I have had the feeling that the Sun is fiercer.  Its not that the weather is hotter, as such, but the Sun's rays burn harsher, sunburn comes easier.  I seem not to be the only one - numerous people are commenting on this.  Are we really feeling the effects of the worst-ever Thinning of the Ozone Layer, or is this just some sort of auto-suggestion effect?  The sceptic in me says, "Let's leave it at 'I don't know.'" though, honestly, I was feeling this before I started seeing news reports about how how bad the ozone layer is this year.

Three Strands of Thinking...

Fit the First: All this has got me thinking, and observing my veggie beds much more closely.  I'm becoming much more concerned with mulching the surface of beds, particularly at this stage of the growing season, where plants are still tiny, and much of the surface lies open and exposed to the Sun, Wind and Rain.  Expecting a dry, hot and burny Summer, I also need to implement soil-moisture conservation strategies - something I've simply been lazy about for too long, now.

Fit the Second: Then, too, as I have been clearing beds, resuscitating the Hex Project, the whole Hex scheme as really crystalised in my mind - outer beds feeding mulch and nutrients to the mid-ring and inner beds; inner beds providing seed, and so on.  I promise a full write-up - to do so now will just be a distraction from my point for this post.

Fit the Third and Final: Lately I have been stacking crops in time a lot - seeding or transplanting directly into a standing crop that is still a few weeks from harvest.  Having neglected garden-bed maintenance during the year in favour of various other stupidities, I am now paying the price in being very pushed for space for the Summer crops.  And there's nothing like necessity to get the creative juices flowing!  This sort of stacking was pioneered by Masunobu Fukuoka, and, though I have not read his books, I think I have a basic understanding of the principles - far too many ramifications and implications to go into here and now - very deep stuff!  I would love to read of his work and hopefully will be able to afford some of his books soon.

...Click

A click brought on by tripping across "The Road Back To Nature".  I feel that I am advancing to yet another stage in my gardening.  Yet a deeper level of understanding of soil biota, the rhizosphere and how they interact. Yet a deeper connectedness with the Earth herself.

It shows up in funny ways, too.  I find myself apologising to Earthworms I have accidentally disturbed; unwilling to kill obvious pests.  Better to leave them as food for the predators that protect my garden.

The more I learn about growing things, the more I have come to believe that the only limit to the productive capacity of our gardens, is our own knowledge, empathy, respect and understanding

Tomato Transplant

Perfect weather today for transplanting: Light drizzly rain.  Not enough to make the soil wet and sticky, not too cold to make outside work unpleasant.

The first Tomato seedlings - Tigerella, Ida Gold, Black Krim and a few Cherokee Purple - are ready to go into the ground.  I'm dubious about the timing of the Cherokee Purple, though.  CP is a medium-large heirloom variety, with a beautiful, purply-browny-red colour, shading to green shoulders, with a wonderful, rich flavour.  Last year was my first trial with them, and they suffered badly from sun-scald.  Later in the season, when the sun was less fierce, they faired much better, so I decided to use them as a late-season harvest, but a few volunteers popped up early this Spring, and I didn't have the heart to weed them out.  Now I have these few very-early plants, and it looks like the coming summer may bring particularly harsh sun.  Not good news for Cherokee Purples.

I have planted another batch for late-season harvest, but I doubt we'll see much fruit off the earlies.

We will have to deal with much more of this sort of uncertainty as the globe warms.  Species that have traditionally been well-adapted to an area may find themselves unsuited to their homes as climate change progresses.  Our only defence is diversity - lots of species, lots of different varieties from different parts of the world.  Especially since we can't predict the direction and severity of change.

I know this goes against the grain for many conservationists.  I grew up in the Cape Floral Kingdom, the geographically smallest, but most diverse per unit area of the world's six floral kingdoms.  Large areas of the Western Cape's indigenous vegetation, and unknown numbers of species, have been lost to alien plants, so we are deeply wary of intriducing strangers into the area.  But, where food plants are concerned, I can see no reason to introduce new varieties of species that have been imported a long time ago.  Then, too, our cultivated food plants tend to be so much less vigorous than wild plants that they stand little hope in competition with endemic species.  Not universally true: Cosmos, Canna, and St Johns Wort have become invasive alien nuisances - but a reasonable generalisation for vegetable species.

Still, with the uncertainties of climate change, variety is our best strategy for coping.   Variety, and accepting that we are likely to suffer some weather-induced losses each year.

Veggie Garden Update

Things are taking shape for Summer in the Veggie Garden.  I finally finished clearing the top bed in the new area of the garden, and have taken a break from that in favour of clearing beds in The Hexes.  It is all a question of the most effective use of my limited energy – its quicker to clear Hex beds than to clear Kikuyu from new areas.

Most of the seed-trays are showing signs of life.  The quickest of the Tomatoes are almost ready for setting out: a locally-common variety called Red Kaki – an ordinary-ish, red, medium-large Tomato, but selectively bred over the years by yours-truly for improved flavour, so I guess I could start thinking of a new name for it one of these years.  Always good to have a hardy backup in case disaster strikes with the Brandywines or any of the other exotics.  Perhaps in another ten years or so I will have selected decent strains of all those imports to be better adapted to the local soils and climate (whatever climate we may have a decade from now!)


I keep intending to plant more Basil seed.  I've had rather poor germination this year – perhaps I used particularly old seed, or maybe I was just too optimistic in my timing.  Either way, its one of those cases where I keep looking at the spotty little seedlings in their tray, and think, "I must plant more," but somehow haven't got around to it yet.  Could be my "disaster-of-neglect" for this year :-O


The Big Happy Surprise is the appearance of some Sweet Banana Chilli seedlings.  The seed is really old, and I failed to produce any of them last year.  Barring Slug, Snail or Cutworm disaster I shall cherish the few plants carefully to ensure fresh seed for the future.


I'm way behind on planting dried-beans and Squashes, and there's heavy rain forecast for the next few days...  Oh well, we need the rain!

Global Climate Change

Earthtimes.org has a story on the EU-funded Antarctic ice core project, "Air bubbles from Antarctica ice core tell a scary environmental story".

"we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35 per cent in the last 200 years. Before the last 200 years, which man has been influencing, it was pretty steady."

– Dr Eric Wolff, British Antarctic Survey

the natural level of carbon dioxide over most of the past 800,000 years has been 180-300 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of air. But today it is at 380 ppmv.

In one of the universe's divine jests, on the same day we have our Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, speechifying:

[Africa will] see "an increased incidence of extreme weather events; substantial reductions in surface water resources; accelerated desertification in sensitive arid zones; and greater threats to health, biodiversity and agricultural production"

Now, my opinion is that van Schalkwyk is a halfwit. He has absolutely no clear understanding of the urgent need for strong protection of the environment.  He has been handed what is seen as a sinecure post in Cabinet – his reward for screwing the voters of the now-thankfully-extinct New National Party by delivering their votes into the hands of the ANC. 

One of his first actions as Minister of Environmental Affairs was to ease requirements for Environmental Impact Assessment in constructing cellular phone masts.  His department has recently granted carte blanche to golf course developers in the local area to do as they will, in clear conflict with provincial attempts to ride herd on these megabuck millionaire retreats that trash local environments, returning nothing but lies and broken promises to the affected communities.


That aside, I am very happy that he acknowledges the fact of global climate change, unlike some of his counterparts in other countries, who remain steadfastly in denial.


The question remains, though: What is government doing about it?  As a nation we are one of the worst polluters of the environment on a per capita basis.  We produce more pollution per South African than almost any other country on Earth.  The state-owned electricity utility, Eskom, largest electricity supplier in Africa, runs the dirtiest coal-fired power stations in the world.  That is why our electricity is among the cheapest in the world.  At least in the very short term.


Environmental pollution limits, lax as they are, are seldom enforced.  Simply getting chemical suppliers and toxic-waste management companies to comply with regulations commonly takes years, and seldom results in permanent and effective solutions, even after the courts have spoken.


The saddest indictment is that the post of Minister of Environment Affairs and Tourism is considered unimportant-enough by the ANC government to award it to an ex-Nat!  (And guess which part of his portfolio gets the significant porion of his limited attention; Environment or Tourism?)


So: The South African government believes that climate change is before us.  That is, at least, reassuring.  We might have to say goodbye to Cape Town, goodbye Knysna Forests.  Are we doing anything about it, yet?  No chance.

Fourth Reich is Rising

So there's this halfwit, right-wing American senator who believes that "People who believe in global warming are like the Third Reich."

Lets look at what he is saying:

1. Hitler claimed that the Jews were guilty of spreading "The Big Lie".
2. Global warming is a Big Lie.

So..... what?  The Jews are guilty of Global Warming?  :-)

No.  From his axioms the only logical conclusion one can draw is:  Sen. Inhofe, by claiming that people who believe in Global Warming are perpetuating a Big Lie, is a modern analogue of Adolf Hitler. Please note that this is the inescapable logical outcome of his own axioms. I did not make this up.

Well, I don't really believe that he's in Hitler's league.  But his logic is equally twisted and faulty.

I'm off to listen to Stratovaius's "Fourth Reich"... (highly recommended band!)