December - Winter and Holidays

Titans of waste

I would like to start with a winter story I heard a few times when I lived in Russia in the 1990s. It was an anecdote about the poor results of state-led allocation of resources.

"In the Soviet Union times, the government resource planning agency (GosPlan) decided who would get which materials and how much. In the 1950s, a large part of the titanium metal production was allocated to the metal strips on childrens snow-sledges. Said and done, such was the production. At the time, the engineers who were working on the space programme needed titanium for the rockets and the spacecrafts for Laika and for Yuri Gagarin, but this initiative started halfway through a five-year plan, so they had no allocated titanium. The engineers went out all over the country to purchase sledges, and re-machine the metal strips into usable titanium sheets to build their rockets!"

It is hard to verify the veracity of the story, and if anyone has some sources or links, please let me know! The point was of course that "the market" would allocate resources much more efficiently than a Moscow bureaucrat. In the 1990s, the market extremists were very loud and convincing. I fully bought their message at the time.

Anyways, jump forward to the fall of 2023, and I was looking into titanium use in OECD. The immediate reason was that EU has declared titanium to be a "strategic raw material". There will come new legislation deciding how much of the titanium used in the EU must be recycled, and I was looking into how we use this valuable and important mineral. Some of the titanium is used in metal form in various alloys, and the pure metals can be found, isolated and re-used. But not all titanium is in metal form...

As is common these days, we leave it to the market to find the most optimal use of this resource as well. Today, more than half of all titanium is used as titaniumoxide (TiO2) - a white pigment used in lots of paints, coatings, toothpaste and even "coffee-whitener".

This kind of use is a one-way use. We spread out the titanium in a thin layer over the whole planet and it will never come back to be recycled and re-used. It is lost essentially forever.

Are we really so much smarter than the Soviet GosPlan functionaries?

Winter work - scion cutting

The most important tree nursery task for the winter is to cut scion wood when the trees are asleep. For us here in Sweden, the most important tree is the sweet chestnut, since there are restrictions on importation for graft wood. My good friend Anders Linden has some beautiful trees from large-fruited varieties like 'Comballe', and I was allowed to come cut scion wood. It was a snowy and cozy day in his food forest.

Winter Tracks

We have now placed a steel mesh fence around our whole property, to keep out hares and water voles and other tree eaters. When the snow fell, we could walk around to see where the animals move and if there are any gaps in the fence. We had left one big opening on our driveway, where we thought no hares would run, but that was not true. We saw tracks from two different hares, running a wonderful round in our property before exiting. Fortunately, no damage on the trees.

We could also see several places where the water voles were moving, and one place next to our compost pile where the mice were super active!

Continuning the masonry for the potato cellar

For several months, I have started too many other parallel projects, so I had no time to work on the potato cellar - a cold and wet storage for apples, potatoes, carrots. One of our boys was home for a few days and we contined with a few more layers of light-concrete brick.

We use a mix of clay and sand to stick the wall together. The walls stand on a strong concrete foundation and we secure the wall to the other adjoing walls, so I think this will be strong enough. And it will be possible to disassemble if needs arises.

A tour to Holland

We went for a week to the Netherlands, to visit our son J. and to see the growing family at M's brothers place. It was great to meet friends and family. For me, family, friends and food are most of the meaning of life.

We had dinner with my good friend Marcel.

We passed through Lubeck to visit the Christmas Market (Weihnachtsmarkt) to enjoy the atmosphere and drink some gluhwein. As you see behind me, they also served roasted chestnuts ("Heiße maronen"). Mmmm..

European re-use packaging

During the last year, working with recycling of materials, I start to notice some good systems in different places. In Sweden, there is almost no re-use packaging for anything, unfortunately. There used to be re-fill glass bottles for softdrinks, wine, beer and juice. Nowadays almost all of that is gone.

Dutch re-use glass jars for dry stuff:

German dairy in refill jars ("MEHRWEG" means usable multiple times - deposit scheme for refill containers).

German mayonnaise and other sauses in refill jars.

German veggies in refill jars.

Ending the year

We ended the year with my parents and brothers for a large dinner in Trollhattan. Before that we baked some Dutch style "oliebollen" - a delicious deep-fried bun.

It has been an intense year. My good friend Joop died. I worked a bit too much in the office, especially in the beginning of the year. I started many projects, but did not finish more than a handful. Therefore, my new years resolution is to start less projects and finish more instead. I have water tanks for rain water, not yet connected. I bought greenhouses that are not yet assembled. I even bought components to build a better composting toilet, not yet built. The firewood storage needs another compartiment. The room that got new windows needs some interior painting. I want to dig in some water piping to have permanent taps on more places. A veggie prep kitchen will be installed in the old stables... Lots of thinks to work on...

On the other hand, next week I promised to start working on a new project to support farmers to plant nut trees, probably for one day per week for the whole year. Next week the first meeting with the project team will reveal more of what we will do...

With M. we will grow more vegetables and enjoy our place even more. We are happy to be here.