February - Cold and wet
This month I am re-reading the most excellent book Overshoot by William R. Catton. If you have not read it yet, make a note to get a copy from your local library, and read and reflect. The predicament of our Civilization is long in the making, and Catton makes that perfectly clear, using the language and concepts of ecology, as if Homo sapiens is an animal among others. As if we are not 'above' the other species.
His dry humor penetrates the delusion of 'human ingenuiety', and I realized again how dependent my lifestyle is on mining. Mining is by definition a temporary activity. Everywhere I look in our place, especially while writing these words on my computer, I see manifestations of mines and mining. Not much would be here without minerals and fossil carbon.
The scientific spotlight on our conundrum is unforgiving. The Overshoot book has a very different message than the cheerfully coloured UN "Sustainable Development Goals", where some rich countries like Sweden have top scores (despite being completely dependent on myopic strategies like mining).
We are in for a ride.
The main focus for me for the coming time is to continue to reduce dependencies on grid electricity and centralized systems.
One incident happened last week, which again highlighted a weak link in a chain, and how a temporary fix is called a 'solution'.
Snowmelt and flood
Since December, a small lake has been forming on our neighbour's land. Since early February, a second lake formed on the other side of their farm. There are fields of approx 500 hectares that are drained to a culvert system that passes under our small land, below another neighbours asphalt driveway and passes under the large road to the West of our place in a large pipe.
Lake forming at our neighbour's land. Our place is on this side of the white fence.
The pipe was clogged under the asphalt somewhere, so the stormwater could pass the road bank. Therefore the ground water level kept rising, until last week it went above ground level.
Ground water level is now higher than the soil level
Walnut trees do not like this. Fortunately only for two days. This time.
After a day of slight panic and many phonecalls, a pipe-cleaning contractor came to clear out the culvert.
The next day, I dug a hole to better monitor the ground water level, now at 40cm below.
During pipe cleaning, quite a lot of sand and gravel came with the water, which means that the pipe is broken somewhere below the tarmac. The 'solution' is just a postponement of replacing the broken pipe.
I also think that the clogging is due to eutrophication from the fields, which leads to a strong growth of a kind of algae mats inside the pipes. These algal clots sometimes let loose and cause an blockage of this vital artery of our water system.
In the past, the water went through an open ditch/stream, and I wonder if it is not better to sacrifice some productive land and make an open waterway again, at least across our place until the road bank culvert.
Or have a specialized contractor dig in another pipe under the road, to have a backup solution in place when this happens next time...
Floor plans
Our Sunny Room is now almost ready. Since we got new windows in place in September, we have been fixing lots of small things, and the last thing to arrange was to paint the floor. Inspired by our friends Palle and Stina, we decided to paint using egg-oil-tempera, with burned earth as pigment.
10 eggs + 500g lineseed oil makes a nice mayonnaise, plus 500g water mixed with 500g burned earth.
The mixture looks and feels like chocolate sauce. But it smells quite strongly from the lineseed oil.
This time we purchased earth pigments. Next time maybe we can find some interesting soil nearby?
In a dance, we got the floor painted.
Two disadvantages so far:
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Very slow drying of the paint. It takes a week between coatings and at least a month before the smell is gone. I realize why modern building painters don't choose to use this kind of edible paint - it would be too time consuming and therefore costly. But for us who have time, it works great.
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Too matte surface. It gets dirty too quickly. We are looking into how to make it more glossy. Maybe a shot of pure lineseed oil will do the trick. We will try in a corner.
Graft and grift?
Winter time is also a time for cutting cuttings. I did only take photos of a few places, here is the amazing forest garden of Bosse outside Goteborg. At this place, it works. He has hundreds of different trees and bushes and climbers with the most amazing flavours.
I got some chestnut graft wood, which is very precious in Sweden, since we have strong import restrictions.
Bosse at his amazing forest garden
A bag full of genetics
Lent to remember the hunger gap
We made some Swedish style 'semla' for the mardigras celebration. It is a sweet and greasy bun that was eaten the day before the lent started, to gain some additional calories to survive the semi-fasting period of 40+ days until Easter.
Traditionally, they are filled with marzipan, but we made a hazelnut filling which was great.
Almonds are much more difficult to grow here than hazelnuts. So we used hazelnut mixed with honey instead of classic marzipan.
Sweet and fat.
Nowadays, most people, including us, just eat the bun and skip the fasting.
Nut growing course
Last year, I was one of the teachers to hold a nut growers' skills training course at Holma Folkhogskola. It was quite appreciated and we decided to run it again this year. It is a 12-day training, spread over 9 week-ends over a whole year.
We started by planting a hazelbush 'Gunslebert', and everyone got a shrub to bring home to plant as homework for next time.
Walnut seedlings in air-prune beds made of pallet-collars. Clever!
Clear cut
No words can express the pain of the stupid clear cuts that plage our forests.
Vole wars
Those of you who read regularly know that we wage a war with our rodents called water voles (Arvicola amphibius). They are vegetarians, which is good. However, their favourite food is tree roots, which is not so good for our tree nursery.
We surround these poor rodents with candy. How could they resist?
The roots are all gone. This was a 'Red Cascade' silverberry.
This was a kaki tree 'Russian Beauty'
This was a fig tree
In the beginning, I planted only our apples and prunes in nets, but now we have resorted to netting all tree roots of the trees that are here to stay.
Steel mesh around the roots to discourage rodent nibbling
I tried to entice the voles to move out, but when that failed, we erected a steel mesh fence around our whole property and are now waging a war of attrition.
I use five different kinds of traps, but so far only one of them has caught voles (so far nine voles).
And the visiting dog Ester.
Ester, the vole hunter.
We are not yet ready for a dog at our place. We are still too often out for a week-end or off all day on lectures or other paid work, and have not found enough back-up here. One day, when our roots here are deeper, I think a dog will join us on the farm.
In the meantime, visitors like Ester are most welcome!
They are beautiful creatures, like small beavers
Larger than mice, smaller than rats
The only trap that has worked until now is the Top-Cat trap by Andermatt.ch. It is a Swiss company, and it is a high quality product. Since snow melt I have caught approx 2-3 per week. I think we are only half-way.
I also purchased four of their Standby traps, but so far, no vole has been trapped in those ones.
The gun-powder-powered Kerbl did not yet fire.
The Swissflex traps have not yet shown their killing skills.
And the old clamp that I got from my Uncle Bo did not once clamp shut.
Farm Chips
Around us, there are quite a few potato farmers, and some potato processing industry. One of the factories make chips/crisps called "Farm Chips".
Why is our society so forgiving to corporate lies?
That is a question I have been thinking a lot about lately, and I do not know the answer.
When I grew up in the 1980s, we were laughing at the Soviet Union, where the TV news did not tell the truth. Every year was a 'record harvest', even though there sometimes were bread queues. The name of the main newspaper - 'Pravda' - was kind of a joke, since it means 'The Truth'.
However, nowadays, half the content of any newspaper I pick up in the Western World is advertisement, i.e. lies. Why do we accept that? What do you think?
A most unusual farm.