There will come soft rains...

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

A poem by Sara Teasdale, first published 1920.

Thirty years later, in 1950, a short story was published, by Ray Bradbury science fiction author.  The story was loosely based on the Sara Teasdale poem of the same title but of course she, in her time (she took her own life in 1933), would have had no knowledge of the intimated cause of the situation depicted in the Bradbury story.  Interestingly, or perhaps I should say sadly, Ray Bradbury passed on on 5 June 2012 at age 91, only around ten weeks before I write this.  There are other links in this chain of related works...

Four years ago, in 2008, a young Scot, Peter Cotter, produced an animated video based on the Ray Bradbury story, based in turn on the Sara Teasdale poem.  Cotter is a young photographer and animator who from 2006-2008 studied at the Glasgow School of Art. According to his resume of 2008 he was awarded The Motion Graphics Award for outstanding achievement in animation and time-based media, presumably for this dramatic, poignant and beautiful animated video.

This chain of links goes one step further in that, although the poem on which all of this is based is a very well known work, I first read of it today in a blog post by Damien Perrotin. Here is an article that explores our reluctance to accept the likely fate of our civilisation, as all civilisations do in time pass away, yet we are fascinated with the idea of joyfully continuing to trash the biosphere on which we depend for life.

Of course, though I claim no artistic merit or input into the process, this, my own post, is the final link in this current web of connections on the subject.  Or is it?

How Time Flies

It is the 31st July and I haven't blogged this month yet.  Well, I haven't blogged here.  I did open another blog site here which has seen some action this month but I do feel a certain responsibility (not sure why, because no-one else seems to read my thoughts, and perhaps that is a good thing in itself) to say something on Meanderings also.

I have to say that time does seem to fly these days.  Is there any truth in the speculation that this is some sort of actual cosmic phenomenon?  Or is it perhaps a function of the ageing process?  It is certainly not associated with having too much to do in an allotted time, although there never does seem to be enough hours in the day.  Perhaps this is why I have sub-consciously (ie. without any valid reason) taken to staying up later and later recently.  This practice of course consequently shortens the day by making it start at a later time, so defeating the objective and making it pointless.  As long as I understand that this is happening, it is OK.  I expect I shall adjust my habits, probably also sub-consciously, when I feel the need.  As a mostly self-regulating creature, I usually do.

Bye-bye July.

Yacon Do It

Seems I have been able to successfully grow Yacón up in the North Central Victorian mountains.

I needed something to cheer me up this morning as my car wouldn't start again today.  It made me miss out on birthday lunch with my daughter Naomi yesterday.  So, I was very happy when, wandering around my garden, the thought came to me to dig up a Yacón tuber to try something new for dinner tonight.  I already knew that there were some tubers under my plant but I had no idea how big they were or whether they are ready to harvest.

Now, Yacón, a native of South America, is known to be not highly frost resistant and we do get frequent winter frosts where I live. So it was with some risk that I planted a sample, not knowing what results to expect. 

  

The leaves of the Yacón are huge and quite beautiful.  Sort of like a leaf within a leaf.  There is a well defined normal ovate leaf shape set within a fairly triangular jagged arrowhead shape.   But Yacón leaves are very, very tender, and hairy.   

My plant was almost in flower when the first frost came, a few weeks back.  I got up early next morning to check on it and it appeared to be fine.  The leaves were still green.  But that was before the sun appeared over the mountains to the east.  Later that day the leaves had turned black and the tips of the stalks were drooping.

I had a peek underground and was delighted to see lots going on there but resolved to leave things as they were until I had time to investigate further.  I did cover the area with straw for frost protection but not before I noticed that there were green shoots coming from what I later discovered are the smaller propagation tubers that sit a little closer to the surface than the huge edible ones.  I have yet to decide whether to lift the whole lot or leave next years young plants in the ground and hope they do not show their heads before winter is over.  Food gardening really is fun, and so rewarding.

Back to today and renewed delight when I uncovered and just snapped off my first harvested Yacón tuber.

But what to do with it?  Time to consult. 

I recently came across what I think is a great gardening site called Foodnstuff which is run by a gentleman previously unknown to me but who lives in my general locale around Melbourne, Australia and whose site I am very happy to recommend.  His Yacon page (you have to scroll down in it a bit to find the detail) contains some useful information on growing, harvesting, storing and using Yacon.  If you scroll down a bit further there is also a picture of the beautiful leaf detail I mentioned earlier.

Wikipedia has a very good entry for Yacón.  Well worth reading for information on this lesser known but useful edible food source.

Then there is also the Diggers Club web page.  This is where I sourced my plant.  There are of course many other information sources available.

Now to think about dinner.

Later That Day

So what did I do with my first Yacon tuber? Well, first I just had to try it raw so I washed and brushed the complete thing before weighing it. It weighed just under 500gm and that is only one tuber. I don't yet know how many there are to be harvested from this one plant and I am also wondering just how many rhizomes I can separate from this years growth to expand next year's crop.

Anyway, the taste test. Having cut and peeled a slice and taken a big chomp I can say that the texture was something between an apple and a pear. Very juicy and cooling in the mouth with a pleasant taste and a definite but not overly-strong sweetness. I have nothing so far to provide a comparison as to whether this was more or less sweet then could be expected although I have read that after a couple of weeks of drying in the sun, the sweetness really comes to the fore. Still, fresh from the ground, it was a pleasant treat and I could have eaten more but I wanted to do other things with it. 

I decided to use half to make juice with some apples. Half a tuber (250gm) to five smallish apples almost filled my juicer jug and made a fine thirst quencher which I can recommend but which might have benefited from a slightly increased Yacon content.

The remainder I sliced, chipped and fried together with some tofu cubes in a small amount of coconut oil. I added to this a small can of baked beans which may not excite everyone but hey, I am not out to impress anyone here. This is the first time that I have eaten fairly crisp (in a fruity, apple type sense), semi-translucent, semi-sweet fries, and I can honestly say that the experience was very satisfying. OK. The baked beans. I admit it. They were there just as a backup in case the whole thing flopped, but there was nothing left on my plate when I had finished eating.

Grand Harvest Next Day

Today I dug up, well probed about in the dirt with my hands actually, the remainder of my edible Yacón tubers, and here they are.

Three and a half kg, just under 8 lbs, in total with yesterday's dig.  Very happy with that, considering they did not have a full growing season.   I left the main plant with it's new propagating rhizomes in the ground well covered with straw.  I will decide whether to lift them all for indoor over-wintering later.  From the number of new node points it looks like I will be able to start around 8 or 10 plantings next Spring.

Testing Teddy Bear Power

I came across a reference in a Facebook post to the power of teddy bears to draw traffic to web posts through the many searches for the term 'Teddy Bear' that occur on a daily basis.  So this is just an experiment to see if that is at all true.

I have my own bears to show so here is a reward for any teddy bear lovers who arrived here by such a search.  Please leave a comment if you did that, or have any questions about my bears. 

My "About Me" got too big to save so I posted it here

I was born shortly before the end of the war in Europe 1945, in Lincoln, UK where I lived until age 21. Finishing school in 1961 age 16, even though I had good school qualifications but chose not to go on to gain university entry, I entered the workforce and with very few breaks, holidays or illnesses, earned my living in a variety of ways, for the most part quite enjoyably, for almost 49 years until retiring towards the end of 2010.

For my early working life, the first 10 years or so, I had a variety of jobs (you see, I never really knew quite what I wanted to do back then) including working in insurance, sales, window cleaning and factory food processing (I have butchered, gutted, bagged, frozen, packed and stored a whole lot of chickens) rising from operative to foreman and supervisor (I was even offered a management position of one of their farms).

For part of this time I left home to spend a couple of years in Nottinghamshire (Newark & Long Eaton), mostly wasted years, though no period of life is entirely worthless, pursuing what I now see as a fruitless illusion associated with now defunct (for me) religious beliefs, before returning to Lincoln and home.

I Married at age 24 and decided that I needed some stability in my life and also money to support my family. Military service seemed a good option at the time and turned out to be so. I Served 9 for the most part enjoyable years in the Royal Air Force through the 1970's and emerged from there with a qualification that enabled me to enter a profession that I had now finally been able to choose for myself and which with foresight had, although it was at that stage in its infancy, the makings of a future growth industry. I speak of what was then known as Data Processing and has now morphed into the Information Technology that no business can operate successfully without. A very good choice in hindsight.  In computer programming and systems design I had found an outlet for my creative instincts.

After two years of programming and Systems Analysis experience, on a whim I/we decided to emigrate to Australia. Actually it wasn't really on a whim, at least not for me. I had been studying during those two years with the newly formed Open University, achieving 2 credits (in Maths and Technology) towards the 6 credits required for a BA degree. This study opened my eyes to the fact that the future didn't look too rosy for Britain and Europe, or for the rest of the world for that matter, but Australia was or seemed to be as far removed geographically from the sort of problems that I foresaw as it was possible to get. Emigration was a good decision.  Australia was pretty much a backwater in those days. Way behind the times. But in the decades since then, the nation has developed in leaps and bounds and now stands proudly among the top performing of the world economies.  

So, we arrived in Australia towards the end of 1981. I still can't believe or understand why my then wife, who had very strong ties to her family, wholeheartedly agreed to come with me to the other side of the world. We eventually divorced in 1986, having raised three children. I remarried in 1988 to an Australian with whom I have raised three more children.

As it turned out, I remained a computer professional from 1979 through to 2010. I am now retired.

For the most part my IT career was very satisfying.  I never lost the original thrill of creatively making things happen through my keyboard but after the turn of the century/millennium I noticed a distinct change in the direction of the computer industry which gradually gnawed at me for the next decade.  This, together with what I perceive to be an awakening within myself (call it spiritual if you like or it may just be part of the ageing process) which began in the years leading up to the millennium and which opened my mind to a broader understanding, to use the Douglas Adams "Hitch Hiker's Guide" quote, of "Life, The Universe and Everything", and also a short but disruptive illness which hospitalised me for a few days in 2010, brought me to a point where I could no longer ethically continue to work in a system, supporting a global business model that I began to see was at the very heart of the problems facing the world around me.

So, to use a common expression these days, I 'Got the Hell out of Dodge', or 'Woop-Woop' (choose your own location), retired and intend to spend the rest of my days preparing as best I can for an uncertain future where I can best look after myself, my family if they need it and my local community. I live as simply as I can, working towards having as few dependencies on the industrial system as possible.

Military Musings - Part1 (of what may become an occasional theme)

I have been reminiscing.  A sometimes dangerous pursuit which has the potential to stir up ghosts from the past and, when one has as many years behind them as I have, there can be a great many ghosts lurking in dark spaces of the mind, waiting to resurface.  However, my thoughts today have been of mainly pleasant memories from a particular period in my life that I never quite appreciated or valued at the time as much as I should have, in hindsight.

Throughout the decade of the 1970s I voluntarily served as a soldier of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.  More accurately I was an airman in the Royal Air Force, but it was impressed upon us that first and foremost we were soldiers.  

While internet surfing today, as it was extremely wet outside, my meanderings led me to RAF Scampton, home of the No 617 (Dambusters) Squadron of WW2 fame.  Scampton was my home base for two separate postings totalling a period of four years out of my overall service commitment of nine years.  During my years there, Scampton was a busy operational station at the forefront of the NATO nuclear deterrent force.  This was still well within in the Cold War period.  The station was one of the home bases to that superb British aircraft design from the mid-1940s, now retired of course but in its day decades ahead of its time, the Avro Vulcan bomber.   ...But more of that another time.

Bourton-on-the-Water

RAF Scampton is now the home base of the Red Arrows, the world renowned Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team.  There is a dual connection here for me.  As well as serving at Scampton, I was also privileged for a very short time, about three months (before I was promoted out of the position), to serve with the Red Arrows when they were based at RAF Kemble in the English Cotswolds as part of the Central Flying School.  I spent three very pleasant years in all at the CFS, based at RAF Little Rissington, both bases (LR and Kemble) being located around Bourton-on-the-Water, an outstandingly beautiful part of the country. 

If you are not familiar with the work of the Red Arrows then I guarantee that you will be amazed by the video below.  I got to work with these guys (well not actually these particular guys as the ones I knew would all be retired like me now) and could watch them practice on many occasions while I was there.    

The aircraft have changed also since my days, as have some of the patterns and manoevres but there is still no better flying to be seen anywhere in the world, now, or at any time in the past.  The Red Arrows are top of the heap when it comes to aerobatic flying.


I don't have many images of myself from those years but even though it is fairly unrecognisable, I  am proud to be part of the Base Groundcrew image below (highlighted by red arrow, no pun intended) from the official Red Arrows 1976 publicity folder. 

I learned a great deal in my time served in the Royal Air Force, about myself, other people and the world in general, for which I remain thankful.  That experience has in many ways shaped and strengthened me in the years that followed.

Coming back down to earth, I should add that my views on life and my opinions have changed greatly in recent times with an increasing awakening to the prospects facing us all in the future.  Without enumerating the reasons here, I can say that I now accept but do not condone the need for any form of flying by anyone, now, or in the days ahead and look forward to the time when it will be neither affordable nor necessary and perhaps not possible, to indulge in that particular form, or indeed most other currently predominant forms of travel/transport.   


Think globally, act locally.

It has been a cold, wet day here today up here in North Central Victoria.  Seems like we have had a month's worth of rain.  Not much can be done on days like this.

I did take the opportunity to go outside though to check how my new swale, which was finished last week,  was coping with its job of harvesting rainwater run-off.  I wasn't disappointed.

Above is the new swale as it was filling with rainwater streaming downhill as can be seen in the up-hill view to the right.

Below is what it looked like just after completion of the ground work and before it was seeded with a cover crop and mulch.


And further below is a view of both old and new swales.  They are about five metres apart and on different levels of the hill that runs down to the creek at the bottom of the picture.  The older swale was done about nine months ago now and it is planted with a number of fruit trees and shrubs.  Ok, it looks just like a bunch of sticks stuck in the ground now, and it mostly is that, but come Spring it will come back to life again.  The leaves have just finished falling.   Except for my poor Yacon, whose leaves were killed off a few days ago by an early frost.  Fortunately there are lots of new tubers shooting up from underground.  I am keeping fingers crossed that it, or at least its tubers, will survive the winter.  It was a bit of a gamble up here in the mountains but I am hopeful of good results.

I also had another enjoyable first today.  Friday is the one day of the week that I go down to the General Store to see if I have any mail.  I was hoping for something special and again I wasn't disappointed.

A week or so ago I shopped online for a manual grain mill.  In my journey to be as self-sufficient as I can, or at least as non-reliant on the current and potentially soon-to-be defunct industrial system as I can, I am learning to do my own baking, among other things.  I normally buy organic/biodynamic bread flour in 12.5kg bags for this purpose but not only does this take up a lot of space, by the time I get to the end of a batch of flour it is getting quite old.  I have recently learned that flour starts to deteriorate as soon as it is ground from the seed used to make it.  Also, a cup of wheat grain, for instance, makes 1.5 cups of flour.  So it makes sense from a freshness and from a storage point of view to only grind flour as it is needed.

Having made the decision to obtain a mill I also wanted one that would:

• Fill more than one need ( a good permaculture principle)
• Not rely on what may become an unreliable electricity supply
• Be simple to operate and maintain

The mill I chose meets all of those desirable criteria.  It came in the post I picked up today and having unpacked it, it would seem to exceed all my expectations.  A more solid, robust yet elegant specimen you would be hard put to dream of.  Here is a picture.

Of course I have yet to use it, but all the reviews are good.  It comes with two sets of burrs, both stone and stainless steel for the widest range of uses.  As well as flours from most grains and beans it will produce nut butters and even grind my favourite coffee beans.  Can't wait.

Just another small step along the way to a secure future. 

Not such an eventless day after all.