sastyk | March 8, 2012Well, I guess I timed that last piece reasonably well ;-), no? As you may have noticed, I am at present typing this on the internet, rather than carving it into a stone tablet (actually I'd probably just use a pen and a piece of paper, but stone tablet does sound more apocalyptic), so the latest solar storm wasn't a big deal. Still, it does seem like because there are so many fun things that could take out electricity for an extended period - let's call it widespread outages for months, anyway - that it does seem to be worth talking about. So let's talk.
What do you imagine such an outage…
sastyk | March 6, 2012Quite a few years ago I wrote a piece arguing that the single most likely scenario for most of us having to deal with long term electrical shortages doesn't involve gridcrash scenarios, but the growth of poverty and utility shut offs. I suggested that people should be prepared to deal with electrical outages in large part simply because of the economic consequences of our situation. It isn't that I didn't believe anything could shut down the electric grid, I simply felt that realistically, the probabilities of more than short-term outages in the near term were pretty small.
In news that…
sastyk | March 5, 2012I wrote this for Dr, Seuss's 105th birthday, and thought it was worth posting (a bit belatedly) for his 108th.
I once read an incredibly entertaining literary critical analysis of _The Cat in the Hat_ which began from the premise that all the action in TCITH is an attempt to fill up the overwhelming absence of the mother from the scene. She has "gone out for the day" leaving her children untended, something she clearly is in the habit of doing, since there's a sequel with the same issue embedded. The glimpses we get of "mother's new gown" and her empty bedstead stand in implicit reference…
sastyk | February 29, 2012For the last several years I've been working on the invention of "Urban and Suburban Right-to-Farm Laws" and have had some notable successes including a legal conference on the idea and a few municipalities that have implemented them. This is one of the reasons I think this is so incredibly important - zoning presumptions simply can't be allowed to prevent people from using less and meeting their own needs.
Over the last 50 years, food and zoning laws have worked to minimize subsistence activities in populated areas. Not only have we lost the culture of subsistence, but we've instituted…
sastyk | February 29, 2012Michael Ableman has written a lovely manifesto from the 2% - the tiny percentage of Americans who actually farm:
There are far more people in prison than growing our food, more stockbrokers and lawyers than those of us who feed our neighbors. We are the 2 percent we call farmers.
There is nothing more central to our lives than how we secure our food. Yet the responsibility for this has been almost entirely handed over to someone somewhere else, to an industrial system where farms have become factories and food has become a faceless commodity. The results have been disastrous; epidemic levels…
sastyk | February 27, 2012I admit it, I'm a generalist in a world of specialists, and I always have been. Looking back on my career history, for example, I see the way I attempted to make the academic model of specialization adapt to my own taste for generalism - my doctoral project was a little bit insane, integrating demography, history, textual analysis and half a dozen other disciplines across a 250 year timeline - just the sort of thing advisers hate to see. The polite word was "ambitious" but "nuts" is probably more accurate. As you can probably guess from the title of this blog (for those who haven't read…
sastyk | February 24, 2012I got to see it back in November when I gave a talk to a class at UMASS - next time I go there I'm asking for payment in cuttings ;-).
Neat videos of how it came together:
sastyk | February 23, 2012Note: I wrote a slightly different piece under this title on ye olde blogge back in August, but given the emphasis on discussion of contraception going on, I thought it was worth reiterating and mulling over further.
When your specialty as a foster family is taking large sibling groups, you hear a lot of stuff you'd rather not. The typical comment involves forced sterilization, and it is hard sometimes not to have a little sympathy. Of the kids we've taken or been called about, we've had three groups of five and three of four, and almost all have involved very young mothers, sometimes with…
sastyk | February 21, 2012Did something unpleasant to my elbow the other day and I'm taking a few days off from typing - promise I'll be back soon!
Sharon
sastyk | February 16, 2012The Report "The Potential for Urban Agriculture in New York City" reveals that there's a lot more open land even in one of the most densely packed places in the US than most people think. This simply backs up what we know from other cities around the world which do much more urban farming than New York City - that while no major city will ever feed itself, there's enormous potential to raise food in urban areas.
"We have identiï¬ed almost 5,000 acres of vacant land likely to be suitable for farming in the ï¬ ve boroughs, the equivalent of six times the area of Central Park. In addition to…
sastyk | February 16, 2012Hi Folks - I've gotten (rightly) a number of emailed complaints about the number of comments that are disappearing, and more questions about whether I am censoring comments, or moderating them.
Other than a few occasions for egregious attacks on other posters or sucking up my time until I had no other choice, I don't censor comments. The reason your comments are disappearing and being marked as held for approval is because of Science Blogs - there are a number of technical problems with my blog that SB has basically not been able to fix (and some of them affect other blogs) - the idea is…
sastyk | February 15, 2012Here's the syllabus - I still have a couple of regular spots and one scholarship spot available, so please email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com if you'd like one. The class runs six weeks starting tomorrow and is asynchronous and online. Cost of the class is $100. Hope some of you can join us!
Week 1, - Introduction to Food Storage, How much, where to put it, and how? Can I afford this? Overview of food preservation methods, their energy and economic costs. Storing Water, making space. Food safety, thinking about the food future, recommended reading.
Week 2, : Water bath canning 101,…
sastyk | February 13, 2012One of our families favorite things to do is check out old cemetaries - my kids love to read gravestones and talk about the stories that came behind them. I love cemetaries - I find them comforting in an odd way, although I'm not fully sure I can explain why, and I'm glad that my children have the same passion for historical records and also the same pleasure in knowing something about lives before ours.
Walking in old graveyards is also always a reminder of how fortunate I am. Most graveyards have a "children's" section, or family stones record the brief and incredibly short lives of…
sastyk | February 10, 2012I won't usually publish ID updates here, but I did want to remind everyone who wants to participate that this is going on - please feel free to jump in, post updates at your blog, on facebook or in the comments of the update threads (posted on Fridays) at www.sharonastyk.com. In the meantime, here's the first one:
The weather of our discontent continues - weirdly warm for upstate NY in winter, plants and animals blooming or returning too early. The pussywillows have catkins, my elderberries have green buds, the daffodils are up and we saw a red-winged blackbird yesterday - all of which are…
sastyk | February 6, 2012Kurt Cobb has a great article at Resource Insights about why I think the best case against fraccing in my area isn't the water, it is the boom and bust cycle - with a predominance of bust. The last thing rural PA or upstate NY need is another short term boom and bust cycle that leaves them with a lot of played out gas heads and environmental consequences. Or worse, just a plain old bust.
But, in its early release of the Annual Energy Outlook for 2012, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) cut its estimate of technically recoverable resources of U.S. shale gas from 827 tcf to 482…
sastyk | February 6, 2012Are you gearing up for the new garden season and thinking ahead about what to do to make your garden work all year long for you? Concerned about the rising price of food and looking for ways to feed your family through tougher times? Want to get in on the fun and wonderful flavors of home preserved food? Concerned about how to adapt your storage or preserving to special diets? Want to make the most of your farmer's market? All of the above? I'll be teaching a six week online, asynchronous (ie, you don't have to be online at any particular time) class on food storage and preservation…
sastyk | February 6, 2012Fairly often, when someone comes to our farm to make a purchase or do a job, the implicit assumption is that they should talk to Eric. The first time I remember seeing this was when we were farm shopping back a decade ago - we met our first realtor and visited our first farm, and the realtor led me into the house and then turned to Eric and said "Let me show you the barn." My husband's very calm response was "Sharon knows much more about barns than I do, I'm going to take our son for a walk." This was the beginning of my experience with "farmer's wife" syndrome.
Now on virtually all farms…
sastyk | February 6, 2012I am a homeschooler, a private schooler and a public schooler, and as such, don't have a strong ideological commitment to any of the above - I think they all have their place. My oldest son has severe autism and attends a private school for children with autism, but paid for and managed by the school district since they have no appropriate placement for him. My three younger boys are homeschooled, which we started not because of a dislike of public schools, but because our local school went to all-day kindergarten when my son Simon was ready to start. His birthday was late November, and at…