Now on ScienceBlogs: HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets
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.
August 31, 2010
Category: writerly things
First, there's the end of summer canning and preserving - the warm dry weather has meant the most astonishing harvest, all of which needs attention yesterday. Second, there's the beginning of fall getting everything ready before winter on a...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 4:23 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 30, 2010
Category: writerly things
This was one of those conversations fueled by long friendship, good wine and no real reason to anchor oneself in reality, and finally, when pressed further to name my dream job, I told them that
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 1:51 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: agitprop
give a lot of credit to people who try and make peak oil and climate movies - trying to overcome the natural impulse of most people to say "Let's not go see that movie about how we're all doomed, instead, let's go see The Expendables" is one of those tilting at windmill things I admire.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 8:44 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: garden
"...and that's true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Guy Clark Guy Clark's song is true - and over here we've got homegrown tomatoes and true love coming out our ears. The true love can be put up for winter until...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 8:31 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 29, 2010
Category: goats
Jessie finally kidded early Monday morning, giving us a solid ten baby goats, five does and five bucks. And on Thursday while celebrating one of my best friends' birthdays, we set them almost all out on parade.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 11:58 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 26, 2010
Category: agriculture
Perhaps because all my other work was so devoutly rear-down, I felt that farmwork, real farmwork was done with muscles and involved being up and moving or down on your knees in a field full of weeds. It didn't, I count, I thought if I was sitting at the dining room table writing things down - this was not agriculture.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 5:32 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 25, 2010
Category: future
It is tempting to despair of all action. And sometimes those who despair are right. But sometimes they aren't.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:44 AM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 24, 2010
Category: agitprop
Could a system of energy rationing, or even rationing of high energy goods and foods work in the US? The conventional answer is that it is politically impossible to even consider it, and that the public would never go along with it. But a closer look at the history of rationing during the second World War suggests that it might not be so unthinkable.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 12:06 PM • 50 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 23, 2010
Category: Economy
Just another layer of proof that most of what is being done to "fix" the economy is actually being done to "fix" the game so that the remaining affluent folks profit.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 11:25 AM • 43 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 20, 2010
Category: post-apocalyptic novel reading club
On ye olde blogge, in 2008, I ran a post-apocalyptic novel reading club for about six months. Why, you ask? Well, why not? When you deal with real doom, mocking (or praising on the rare occasions when it is good)...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 4:02 PM • 107 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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
