Tuesday, August 2nd 2022

Yesterday was pretty good really. A lot of nice things happened yesterday. I have my doubts whether today will fit in the same mode but you never know.

It’s a quarter to 8:00 and I’m just getting moving for my morning routine. Exactly like yesterday, I’m not hungry at all. Something weird is going on with me. It might be the overall change in diet or all of the fresh food but I have not been hungry even a little.

Yesterday, I guess you could say I had one meal and a snack in the evening. I made some rice and beans and cooked a few old potatoes and the stem from that giant broccoli plant along with the rest of the leaves that were lying around. Broccoli leaves are awesome. Broccoli stems are awesome. I understand not everybody likes that deep rich veggie flesh but to me, it’s like artichoke on steroids. It’s serious meat. Maybe I’m using that word inauthentically but it makes sense.

You can be a vegan and eat steaks. Nature provides stakes for vegans. If you let a zucchini go to Mama size, just take a huge slice off and you’re looking at a steak. Pumpkins can end up being steaks depending on how you cut them. Or like I said, a really thick cabbage stem can be steamed to softness and sweetness and it just tastes good.

It also puts you to the point where you really don’t want to eat anything. It’s not illness. I don’t feel down in any way. It’s just feeling like I’ve got a brick in my stomach already. You don’t need to eat if you have a brick in your stomach.

Or it might be that snack. I tossed a bunch of raw peanuts into a pan and toasted them for a little while. I ate those with about four small green apples. Maybe that’s a meal and not a snack. Protein, fat, sugars and vitamins and minerals. Tell me there’s something wrong with eating green apples and peanuts. Definitely satisfying.

So making breakfast is not a big deal. Let’s just go with that and not worry about it too much more.

Ghenna said he was making an appearance this morning to finish up helping me with the last of the lentil Garden clean up. I don’t mean to be an ass but I still owe him money so I’m pretty sure he’s going to show up. He will probably follow the same routine as yesterday and work for a while, say he has to go to work, demand some money for the morning’s work and then come back in the evening to finish up. I think that’s about how much work he has to do. Probably, I’m okay with that. He did an amazing job on the first two rows. They are much cleaner than I thought they would be.

The best thing about this situation is that I can probably get some fertilizer this year. There is an argument in there about my veganism and how much I want to do that. There is a second argument as to how much I actually want to plant in those gardens next year. There are questions about how much work I want to do, how much work I will be able to do, what I will be able to do about watering that Garden and of course how much food I plan to grow generally. I don’t know the answers to these things.

It’s not like I have to rush. I learned this year but we really do have a short growing season here at 52° North. Perhaps if you have a greenhouse you can get busy in March or definitely in April. But just dealing with the world as it comes, May and June is when everything goes in the ground and not everything goes in the ground in May. That makes for a short season. And, a short hot and dry season thanks to global warming.

I guess the only thing I’m absolutely sure of is that there will be a plan and this plan will be much stronger than the one we went with this year. One way or the other, I’m going to know everything before we even think about getting started. If there’s going to be any improvisations, it’ll be in seed buying between now and next April.

I also know that I’m not planning on doing any more direct sewing next year. That is an absolutely foolish mistake if you can help it.

To me, the problems with direct sewing are that you just don’t know what is going to be good and what is going to be bad and you cannot do anything about weeding the garden until you can see your plants coming up. Perhaps there are certain things like carrots that might not really lend themselves to replanting but I think I would like to greenhouse everything first or at least as much as I can. We just have more control and you can see what you’re doing. And this is exceptionally true in a garden where you know there are going to be some weeds. Anyway, always a lot to think about.

It’s 8:00 so I have about an hour before Ghenna shows up so I guess I’ll get moving. Today is probably going to be a watering day in the afternoon. No rest for the weary. I’m thinking about not watering the potatoes though. I don’t know if this is helpful but they are heading into their last days, this is where the plant itself starts to drop down and all of the remainder of its life goes into the tubers. I should probably look this up.

Should you water potato plants when they start to die?

Stop watering your potato plants about 2-3 weeks before harvest, or when you first see the foliage on the plants starting to turn yellow. Make sure to harvest your potatoes on a dry day when the soil is dry—harvesting potatoes when wet or damp can cause the potatoes to rot more easily in storage.

You know, I love it when I know things intuitively that end up getting backed up by more experienced people. Excellent!

Okay, Tuesday. Let’s go.

***

This video is an interview with Dr Neil Bernard Bernard is a leading expert in preventative medicine. Preventative medicine is connected with the idea of holistic practices where people take their own responsibility for good health rather than relying on doctors to fix them after problems appear. He is also a leading member of the vegan/vegetarian community and is very outspoken about the benefits of a plant-based diet. 

This particular video talks about newbies who might want to give plant-based cuisine a try. I would love to say something like “it’s not for everyone” but that would be a ridiculous lie. It is exactly for everyone and in my opinion, the actual correct diet for the human animal.

If there is a problem with this video, it is that it begins with a request that people act scientifically about their eating habits. He says that it is a good idea to make a list of all of the non-meat foods that you believe you could tolerate and begin with that as a part of your new diet. You will find yourself feeling healthier almost immediately, you’ll have more energy, your blood sugar will drop, you’ll actually feel smarter and sharper and certain problems you have with inflammation will go away. The problem of course is that if people were scientific in any aspect of their life, we wouldn’t need videos like this, would we?

What I found was that the effect of giving up meat was almost immediate. I’ve told this story a hundred times but when I got into this thought, I was riding my bike a lot trying to restore my health. I was into studying heart health and when I started noticing how many references to a vegan diet equated to better heart health, I decided to give it a try. For me, this is not the first time I’ve gone vegan or vegetarian in my life but this was the first time I did it with some genuine scientific backing.

For me the results were almost unbelievable. My recovery and endurance doubled almost immediately. Whereas before, my limit for riding around was maybe 20 km and the next day was full of pain as I tried to recover. Within a day or two of losing meat, my limit went up above 35 km, that wasn’t actually my limit for anything except ass pain, and I basically did not need any recovery. I was able to do the same thing the next day. A little bit later in the season, I was up to 65 or 70 or even 100 km and was even able to do that two days in a row. At one point, I wrote a minimum of 30 km every day for 30 days as a stunt for cancer research.

But I have a new question today that I should ask about. It’s not really just about eating plants, it’s about eating the entire plant.

Can you eat the entire daikon radish plant?

The answer to this question is yes. I think usually this would refer to both the bulb or root which is what people usually eat and the leaves as well. I like red radish leaves in the springtime and I am a big fan of beet leaves as well. But what I’m talking about today is the bolted plant which has a stock and seeds as well.

I know the answer to this is yes because it’s not the first time that I’ve done this but for my breakfast today, I pulled up two plants that had already bolted. I didn’t just eat the green leaves and the seed pods, all of it was tasty but I cut up the stem as well. The stem is very fibrary but it does end up being a little bit like celery.

I can probably say this a hundred times but most probably, this would not be what you imagine to be good food. Most people would consider it too indelicate for their tastes. Most people are extremely used to very refined and already pre digested food for their comfort. Just chopping up an entire plant and leaving it in hot water for a while would probably be not normal for people’s taste buds. Also, those fibers really don’t break down so they are going to go through you.

I believe he gets something from this though. There are certain vitamins and minerals that come from not only a plant-based diet but eating the entire plant. I believe there are certain types of nutrition and of course fiber as I mentioned that people are probably lacking. Truthfully, I think adding a little genuine strength back to people’s diet would not be a bad thing.

I’ve been doing this a lot this year. It has something to do with having a vegetable garden. It might have something to do with some of the negative feelings between my ex partner and I. That we are good friends but life is not without its tension. When I visit her in her apartment, her cooking is of course almost entirely supermarket. She visits the market somewhat but she never was religious about it the way I was. And when she cooks, she throws away probably 80% of the food. She would never consider eating carrot greens. She will cut the ends off of things because they are a little bitter. She’s right and I’m Norm by normal cooking standards.

When I am at home though I am a bit brutal. When I want to throw a plant into the blender, I will certainly take away any bad leaves or rotten stems and I will clean it but I will put the entire plant into the blender. Does it affect the taste? Well, of course it affects it but I’m not convinced it makes it bad. I’m also convinced that in terms of vitamin profile and additional fiber, this is definitely the way to go.

Over the last week I’ve baked two loaves of bread. The first was a flatbed failure that got baked because I forgot that I wanted green wet ingredients. Green wet ingredients means simply adding entire plants, an entire beetroot, an entire radish, a dill plant, etc and blitzing them all up. The results are phenomenal. The color and the texture of the bread are fine but eventually it’s the vitamin profile that gets raised.

This is not a new idea and people have been eating spinach pasta or tomato pasta for a long time. I’m not convinced that you want to eat tomato plants. I think the leaves and the stock might be poisonous. Actually I don’t know, can you eat tomato stalks and leaves?

Contrary to popular opinion, yes—tomato leaves are flavorful, fragrant, and 100 percent edible. You can cook the fresh, young leaves like most other sturdy garden greens, such as kale, collards, or cabbage (leafy greens that need a little longer cooking time to become tender).

Well what do you know about that? Probably has a bit of a tomatoey flavor about it. Something to think about in the future.

I’m not the only one who thinks this way and I’m not the only one who lives this way. I’m just too serious an advocate of feeding the human animal what it needs and what it’s built to digest. I am completely convinced that the fat based diet that people consider normal for themselves these days, a diet that used to be only for the aristocracy, has nothing beneficial about it other than to make us sick and lazy. It increases heart disease, quite a few debilitating diseases that are becoming more and more common like diabetes and cancer and frankly make us stupid, angry and ridiculously aggressive. I am not sure we should be eating things that make us stupid, angry and ridiculously aggressive.

But then again, you would need to change at least a little bit to make yourself a bit more open-minded, a bit more scientific and a lot less of a psycho killer. If you think eating flesh is civilized, have a look at this through my eyes for a while. Seriously, unless you believe that those psychopaths who killed and ate people were perfectly normal members of society, you’re being a bit hypocritical about it frankly speaking.

Food for thought? Let’s hope so.

***

Ghenna showed up a little late today but he showed up. He went straight down to the bottom and started pulling weeds on the last row. He definitely likes getting paid at the end of each work session. I can understand this but it makes it hard for me to give him a tip. I’m sitting here looking at the rest of his day’s money and I included a tip in it. But if he insists on getting paid for every single work session, I think I should just pay him what he asked for and be done with it.

We also had a talk about some other Garden problems I have. I feel pretty good about his help right now. It has a lot to do with my leg being messed up. Also, his prices are not deadly. I don’t feel like I’m taking advantage of him but he has a friendly pay scale.

He mentioned that he has dug a pipe well and that it has been working for him for about 8 years. His well, he doesn’t remember the diameter, is 15 m and he uses a surface pump that turns on and off automatically to bring water both to him and to the field when he needs it. He doesn’t know the current cost but it might not be so expensive to think about putting in another well.

My current will is coming close to bottoming out right now. To put a bucket down is about 30 cm to where the line holds the handle and I am almost unable to pick up a full bucket right now. Also, the water gets Sandy very quickly. I don’t know how long this situation is going to last. I can assume that if agriculture stops pulling the groundwater or we get some rain in September or October, the water will start coming back. But right now in August, I seem to be hitting bottom. I don’t know how many years in a row of drought this is but if I wasn’t saving rainwater, I would not have a garden.

He says that he has been able to water his plants just from this pipe well. He doesn’t have any other numbers as to how many liters of water he uses or how many are in the tank. Just taking a wild guess that the diameter would be something like 13 cm or thereabouts, he might have something like 14 liters per meter. If the ground water is equal, we’d be looking at an amount somewhere between 150 and 200 L available. If it’s clean and it recovers as quickly as mine, I don’t think there would be enough water to cover my whole field. But it would take a lot of stress off of things and give me perhaps a good backup system and some insurance.

It also could be a natural way to go as far as creating a watering system. Because we would be using a pump to draw the water out anyway, you could run that pump to any particular output you wanted. In my case, I could use it to fill up a central tank or buckets that were running low but I could also use it to water the field or at least run a sprinkler system.

All good things to think about.

Anyway, Ghenna is turning out to be pretty helpful this week. He showed up at exactly the right time. I could have done that job myself but it would have been a tremendous amount of misery. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to sit this one out and I’m exceptionally grateful for his friendly prices.

Okay, I’ve talked myself into it. I’ll give him the tip. The work really does look beautiful. And besides, if we do put down fertilizer, he’ll be the one bringing the horse.

***

I don’t know how many times I have to say it but I’m not the only one who thinks like this.

What are the odds for planetary Extinction?

Using only the information that Homo sapiens has existed at least 200,000 years, we conclude that the probability that humanity goes extinct from natural causes in any given year is almost guaranteed to be less than one in 14,000, and likely to be less than one in 87,000.

I guess that means we are going to kill ourselves. Or we are killing ourselves. Or we have been killing ourselves. Or we have killed ourselves. I’m not sure of the language on that one.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the current trajectory of global warming predicts that more than 30 percent of Earth’s plant and animal species will face extinction by 2050. By the end of the century, that number could be as high as 70 percent.

Again, the language is difficult to get right. It’s some combination of we kill everything. Again, whether it is present continuous or some form of perfect is debatable. What is not debatable is the fact.

Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.

I know I can be kind of a downer here. I make people depressed sometimes. If I’m really doing a number on you now and you just don’t want to be touched by the things I talk about, why don’t you get in your car and drive to the national chain supermarket. Buy some packaged meat and bring it home in a single use plastic bag. Then go and sit in your bathtub, put the plastic over your head and tape it around your neck. This would be a personal greenhouse effect just for you to enjoy your selfishness one last time.

The planet has experienced five previous mass extinction events, the last one occurring 65.5 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs from existence. Experts now believe we’re in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.

What can individuals do to help global warming and climate change?

Living sustainably is the new challenge with great opportunities for us all. Economic growth is not what everything is based on – but an intact planet.

I am not…

Everyone can help limit climate change. From the way we travel, to the electricity we use and the food we eat, we can make a difference. Start with these ten actions to help tackle the climate crisis.

Save energy at home

Much of our electricity and heat is powered by coal, oil and gas. Use less energy by lowering your heating and cooling, switching to LED light bulbs and energy-efficient electric appliances, washing your laundry with cold water or hanging things to dry instead of using a dryer.

…The only one…

Walk, cycle or take public transport

The world’s roads are clogged with vehicles, most of them burning diesel or petrol. Walking or riding a bike instead of driving will reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and help your health and fitness. For longer distances, consider taking a train or bus. And carpool whenever possible.

…Who thinks…

Eating more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, and less meat and dairy, can significantly lower your environmental impact. Producing plant-based foods generally results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires less energy, land and water.

…Like this.

***

Sorry, these clips from Schindler’s list have been showing up on my algorithm. I thought that the fourth one belonged in this group.

***

9:00 p.m. and that’s it. Today was a pretty darn good day. I say this because a job got done today and I’m extremely pleased. Ghenna was almost perfect today and the result is a very clean garden which is ready for whatever we are going to do with it next. Basically, I have till September to make up my mind what’s going to happen down in the lower gardens for next year. The choice is annuals or perennials. There are quite a few meters of garden space, enough to grow a lot of food. It’s just a matter of putting in all of the variables and making a good solid decision. Annuals perhaps if I feel I’m going to be available and ready to do all of the work necessary to keep those gardens under control. Perennials for a longer term payoff and only moderate maintenance.

I managed to do the watering today myself. It was a pretty clean job except that the hose burst in one place and I had to find a way to patch it back together. I was very happy to be able to recycle some broken junk to do the job. The splice held eventually so there’s really nothing I need to do about it.

There was some talk about digging a second well. This one would not be traditional well but a pump well or a pipe well depending on how you want to call it. I would need to talk to the fellows who do this sort of thing and find out the diameter of the pipe and how much money they would need to do the job. It would take a lot of pressure off of water security to do something like this. Right now, I cannot even take a full bucket of water out of my own well. Tomorrow should be washing day and a day to refill all of the water tanks for the house but I’m not genuinely convinced I have enough water to do any of that.

I’m also not empty but I am getting deep into my saved rainwater reserves. Perhaps there will be a little rain on Thursday but it’s going to be warm and dry all the way until at least Sunday or Monday. I quit wondering the potatoes so this will somewhat save things. But basically, if we don’t get some more rain, things are going to get sketchy before too long.

Most importantly though, today was a good day because I had some help. Ghenna did a good job and we basically got along pretty well. No romantic friendships but I’m pleased that he showed up and did his job. It’s not always like this here.