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It is a really simple idea - things that can't go on the way they have been, usually don't. Sooner or later things that have no future just stop. We all know intellectually that we can't all live and consume like middle class Americans, that our kids are going to have a harder time because of our way of life, that Empires end and ecological disasters cause things to come to hard stops. We know it, but we don't KNOW it. This blog is about coming to KNOW, and figuring out where we go from here. I'm a science writer, teacher, environmental activist and small farmer who is trying to put her lifestyle where her mouth is, and live in a way with a future. When not writing books, serving on the board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, I run my farm with my husband, where we raise dairy goats, herbs, pastured poultry, heirloom vegetable plants, children and havoc.
December 31, 2009
Category: Misc.
What is your blogiste doing instead of writing posts and working on her new book these days? She is frantically trying to make her home a suitable place for the workshop she's running in it in a few days. That...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 11:35 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 30, 2009
Category: Climate Change
I've decided to call this year "The Year of Losing Faster" - because I think the theme of this year and the coming decade will be loss - loss of economic stability, loss of dreams and expectations, loss of the ability to predict how much food and energy will cost you, loss of normalcy in every respect. We put off our troubles - but they are coming back, and are not lighter for being put off.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:40 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: retrospective
Today is "Year in Review" day in which I post my predictions and my evaluation of last year's, but first, here's a meme I stole...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 9:54 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 29, 2009
Category: Classes
From time to time my co-author on _A Nation of Farmers_ and I teach classes on practical topics about adapting to lower energy life, food storage and preservation, garden and farm design, etc... The classes are offered online and are...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 12:08 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: agriculture
Does this mean that everyone who gets chickens is doomed to own a yak? No, of course not. But it does mean that once you open up a system to ecological management, the process of figuring out what its proper mix of species is isn't an easy one. Honestly, if I didn't want ducks and another dog, I'd find another way to do things. But it is the case that the small farm of the past has lessons for creating a low energy small farm of the future - there's a reason that there are more species, not fewer.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 9:03 AM • 32 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 28, 2009
Category: Collapse
I've often heard people wonder, with Jared Diamond, what the last person, cutting down the last tree on Easter Island thought while he was doing it. My guess is this - "I have no choice." The reality of vicious circles is this - once you are in one, it is very hard to get out. The infrastructure to get you out may not exist - or if it does, you can no more get ahold of it than you can fly.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:59 AM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 27, 2009
Category: food
As I've mentioned, we raise our own dairy goats and milk them, and we drink the milk raw, or rather, unpasteurized. Since I wrote my last piece about the goats, I've had several people email me asking for advice about...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 4:50 PM • 75 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Economy
I'm in the process of composing my annual predictions for 2010, and as those of you who were around for my last set will know, let's just say that my number of hits won't be as high as the previous...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 4:14 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 24, 2009
Category: Collapse
My prediction for the coming decade is pretty simple - we're headed fairly rapidly into a time past all choosing. If the "aughts" were about the growing recognition that things are going to change, the teens, I think are now about the growing reality of that change - the recognition that none of us have the resources, or the wealth, or the immunity from changing circumstances to resist change for very long. The question is how we will change, not whether we will.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 8:49 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 23, 2009
Category: Peak Energy
personally would reframe Dr. Konrad's conclusions - I don't so much disagree with them as believe they could be more clearly stated. What he says is that the return on investment of conservation is vastly greater than new energy resources (something that will not be a big surprise to people who have done research on this issue - the famous "negawatts" always win any kind of EROEI calculation, and many of them can be rapidly put into place.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 11:52 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Orac 02.14.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
Jason Rosenhouse 02.12.2012
Orac 01.26.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front
A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil
Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation
