A storm is brewing

We do live in interesting times. It is hard to know what is really going on. Our elected leaders in Sweden want to keep the populace happy this election year and has taken on a lot of new debt in order to subsidize consumption. Diesel and petrol prices are down, food is cheaper and even public transport is cheaper. Surprisingly socialist policies from a supposedly right-wing cabinet. Left is the new right?

If I squint, I see political figures grappling with reality. Old truths from the 1800s are no longer valid. The economic theories "explaining" growth, unemployment, inflation and finance are falling apart. Still, most schools keep teaching the old stuff. The ideologies of a large, empty world full of resources are dying, but hold a death grip in the heads of lots of people. The models are deceptively simple, with price as a fair measure of value, with supply and demand meeting at optimal points and other nonsense.

The question is, what other economical and political theories are less nonsense? Just because it is different, it is not necessarily better. I think that the modern monetary theory people, with their propensity to print money left and right, are just as deluded as the current crowd.

I think that the physiocrat-style economists who focus on materials have one leg up, since they talk about things that are real. I like the no-nonsense approach of thinkers like Charles A Hall, looking at available energy as wealth. Richard Heinberg, who left us this summer, focussed on the flow of energy - power. However, how to translate all that into actionable and electable strategies on country-wide scale is beyond me. When it come to local adaptation, on the other hand, there are lots of opportunities.

During the last couple of years, I have taken small steps into the local political scene. It is quite interesting to learn how the municipal machine works (and sometimes not works). In our small town, something like 10% of the population is employed by the municipality, since the municipality runs almost all schools, most elderly care and quite a lot of infrastructure like water, roads and parks. I entered this world as an observer, thinking that the processes were slow and stupid, but the more I see, the more ingenious I find the democratic process. Of course there are dysfunctional aspects of the administration, but that is no different from any other workplace I have been part of. When push comes to shove, the core activities can be done in simpler ways. And more people can be invited to play more active roles in the decision making process. I see many possibilities regarding how to provide local services, even with much less resources in the future.

In mid-September, we will have elections for both local, regional and national parliaments on the same day, and I will vote for myself for the first time ever. That will be a new experience.

Campaigning with my buddy Qutaiba.

Nuts

Unfazed by political trends and mineral oil depletion, nut trees keep growing and sharing their abundance. We are on the fourth year of the nut growing course at Holma Folkhögskola, and the course is getting better every year. We have place for 20 part-time students who are all budding nut growers on different scales. Half of the time in the course, we visit other growers, tree nurseries and arboreta, so that the students can experience what their walnut trees and hazel bushes will look like after five, ten or a hundred years.

Alnarp arboretum - with Peter Linder - here we look at a beautiful black walnut (Juglans nigra).

Visiting Håkan, the #1 nut grower in Sweden.

We also visited the Förna tree nursery, run by the nut tree activists Fabian and Gustav.

Fabian talks about their growing philosophy and strategy.

It is very good to visit many places to see how different growth is in different locations. The hazel bush above at Håkan's place is five years old, but still small and not much growth. Below is a photo from a hazel bush planted in spring 2024, in a sheltered location just 20 km away, with no grass competition and plenty of water. It is much larger and bears more nuts.

Visiting former student Claes, with a third-year happy hazel bush.

Hazel

Slightly unripe hazelnuts are a delicacy. In Denmark, there is a market for "green" hazelnuts, and some restaurants in Sweden are starting to work with this product. It is handled as a cooled vegetable.

Slightly unripe, delicious "green" hazelnuts.

Some hazelnuts have red leaves in the spring and pink nuts.

Chestnuts

I love chestnuts. It is still six weeks or so until this year's harvest in mid-October. This year, a few trees have flowered, and maybe we will get the first chestnuts off our own trees. The female flowers are swelling into spiny burs, but we will only know on harvest day if the chestnuts are filled or empty, depending on the summer pollination.

Our largest tree, growing more than 1 meter per year.

I am also learning about the few other chestnut trees that are planted in our surroundings. Next to the closest cematary, there is a chestnut tree that seems to be at least 30 years old. I think that chestnuts as a crop is very promising.

Roadside chestnut tree.

The chestnut trees in the nursery grow well this year, despite dry weather. Drip irrigation is amazing.

Outdoor grafts grow well.

Pine nuts

Last October, I got some pine nuts from a friend, and after tasting a few, I decided to seed the rest. Now we have eight or so seedling trees. It will take some 10 years before we get pine nuts from these ones, but it is really worth the wait.

Pine nut seedlings (Pinus cembra).

Garden and harvesting

August is a great time in the garden, and for wild harvest.

Blackberries boiling into jam.

Happy hens eat oats off the straw.

First harvest of apples from municipal trees.

I also pulled out the scary old wood chipper and pruned our inner garden japanese cherry tree. Chipping branches, making delicious ramial woodchips.

Some branches turned out to be stick-men.

Rye

Last year, we sowed some rye as green manure in some garden beds after harvest. It grew well, so we decided to harvest some grains, to learn the process.

I cut the sheaves in July and dried them indoors, before threshing.

We put the sheaves into a bigbag for threshing.

M swinging the home-made threshing stick.

Halfway through the process, whith half a bucket of grains.

We did find ergot in the rye, so we have to inspect and hand sort out the purple grains to avoid poisoning ourselves.

A farmer colleague in our municipality told me that ergot has been heavy on rye this year. He suspected that it is due to the pig feed factory that is asking lots of farmers to grow the same rye. Even sprayed "conventional" rye suffered from ergot this year, which is unusual. One farmer had to throw away something like 50 tons of rye, since there was too much ergot. My guess is that too many hectares of the same rye and same sprays is a breeding bed for resistant ergot disease variants.

Friends

Summer is a great time to meet friends and spend time together.

Meeting with Jon and Emmy, walking by the old oak outside Västervik.

Our barn, prepared for a whole day workshop on seeds, water and power.

Meeting a new friend, Kalle, who has the fastest bikes in town.

With some friends, we demonstrated on Hiroshima Day, against nukes on our lands.