We are winning

For five hundred years, we have been waging a war on Nature, and now the end-game is in sight. We are winning. We powerful men of European white descent, have relentlessly fought, generation after generation. We have built bridges and dams to restrain rivers. We have covered cerrados with concrete constructions. We have eliminated the eagles, the bears, the tigers and rhinos, from all but the most desolate destinations. The oceans echo hollow after our voracious vacuuming for fish, large and small to consume or convert into feedstock for our livestock.

We have taken hairy boars into captivity and bred billions of naked pigs. We have converted the ancient aurox into cattle and covered the surface of the planet with our four-hoofed offspring.

Man, conqueror of Nature, can proudly look back at a successful series of campaigns to destroy birds and bees, whales and warthogs, ticks and tropical trees.

In the remotest of seas and the most uninhabitable valleys, there are still some remnant populations of refugee vertebrates, but all the great swaths of fertile and lush lands have been developed into industrial parks, farming fields and celebrated cities.

Alas, a few backwards people could not understand the greatness of our destiny and have objected in protest, but their voices have been effectively silenced by our mainstream media machine. Hear the jubilation when our economy is growing! Hear the happiness with the release of new short-lived electronic gadgets! Hear the celebration of human ingenuity!

The facts exclaim our victory; Our concrete constructions now outweigh all living matter on earth. Our prodigious production of plastics outweigh all animal biomass. The most common wild mammal, the white tailed deer, has a lower biomass than our fat domestic cats.

We are winning.

Man, Conqueror of Nature

Biomass vs Human-made mess Elhacham, E., Ben-Uri, L., Grozovski, J. et al. Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass. Nature 588, 442-444 (2020).

Humans vs wild mammals Greenspoon, L., Krieger, E., Sender, R., et al. The global biomass of wild mammals, PNAS 120 (10) (2023)

Life at our place

December is a time to slow down, reflect and remember the ups and the downs of the year. We have had lots of ups, but also some downs, of course.

We were lucky to have our boys come over to spend Christmast with us, for a week together. Lots of traditional foods. I was down with a stomach flu, so this was a weight-loss holiday. I have been healthy most of the year, but sometimes I am just as unlucky as anyone else.

100% whole grain rye-wheat bread. Also good at Christmas.

Our home started to hear to a new sound; boom-boom. Boom-boom.

M got a loom from a friend, and is learning the ancient skill of weaving.

Our new friends Marianne and Anders gave us the permission to take a tree in their forest.

Christmas tree of the right size for us.

Trip to the Netherlands

We had a good start of the month with a trip to the Netherlands to visit family and friends. First we stayed at Ms parents and visited her brother to celebrate his birthday and meet his family. We don't see them so often, so it was good to spend some days together.

First a day with our nephew Darius.

We also spent a few days in our old town Soest, where we lived for 15 years. Of course we have many friends there.

Our friend Els, with a newly planted tree.

I also visited some of my non-human friends; some of the trees that I planted during our time there. Some of them have grown amazingly well.

A hickory nut tree from 2016, it was only 30cm then...

In the small community orchard Clemenshof, the trees are really taking over now. It was a dry sandpit when we started in 2017. Now it gives bucketfuls of fruits and berries, and starting to give nuts.

A walnut tree in a community orchard.

We also visited friends in Amsterdam who had the most clever knitted sock-slippers:

Most excellent socks.

Back on the farm

We came home, and it seemed like the winter really had come here. Beautiful frosty nights and clear blue skies.

Frost came here, but no snow.

Could it maybe snow tomorrow?

No snow. Instead, we got warmer wind blowing in from the South. We have so far had no snow in December. It is very mild and we even had an unseasonal drizzle rain on Christmas Day.

The weather is strange. We just had two hard winters, maybe this will be one without any frozen ground and no snow? It is still early, the coldest time is usually around the end of January.

Nuts and Trees

Our colleagues in Malmö, who run the Miljömatematik company organized a community cooking event. We made a three-course lunch with walnut as the main ingredient. Delicious. Filling. Fun. It has been one of the best things this year, to work more together with them.

Lova shares the instructions and divides us into teams

Delicious lentil-walnut-burgers

Happy people preparing healthy and sustainable food. What is better than this?

On the farm, since it was so warm weather, I took the opportunity to take out the hazelnut branches that had been mound-layered. Some had beautiful root systems, others almost nothing. Some had not made a single rootlet. What a difference! What makes one root and the other not? What can I do to improve the probability of success?

Here I had put a bucket with no bottom at Midsummer, and top-filled with sand and sawdust.

Another good example. Lots of roots!

Wish you all a good end of this year, and best of strength for 2025. The ride will just get wilder!