This fall brought the largest bumper crop of acorns we’ve seen in our eighteen years in Lone Bobcat Woods. This manna from black oak heaven keep Squirrel busy, and Bear and Deer fattened for winter, and maybe skunk and who-knows-who-else. We decided to join the crowd and began harvesting the long shiny-brown nuts from the heritage oaks.

The autumn of 2005 after we learned of peak oil, Robyn had fastened on the idea of harvesting this high-protein, high-fat staple cultivated by the native Maidu people. A grinding rock (bedrock mortar) in our woods, near the year-round spring, ringed by our tallest old oaks, attest to their importance. A decade back we’d eaten some acorn mush prepared by the native people. It had very little flavor — but felt substantial in our tummies.

We collected two five-gallon buckets-full before the rains came, and there was beaucoup bounty, plenty to share. As I gathered acorns under leaves and pine cones, seeing where squirrel had already left acorn caps in piles, I saw abundance — not the scarcity that’s ingrained in our society. A natural economy of plenty, so long as we live within nature’s constraints. It felt like a faint whisper of possibility from past and future, very far from the insecurity and constant straining and striving that’s our civilization’s birthright.

Robyn poured over the internet to find a number of different instructions for preparation, as well as recipes. With trial and error she figured how to crack the nuts (whack them on the tip), then pull apart the innards from the shell using the nutcracker tools. She grinds them into meal in the blender, then leaches out the tannic acid by repeatedly soaking and draining them for a couple days. Finally, they’re dried in a wide pan over the woodstove. Voila! Deep-golden brown acorn meal.

We’ve made acorn pancakes (they’ve got gunch…real staying power), acorn cornbread, and added it to local grass-fed beef meat loaf. Since it has nearly no flavor, it makes a good supplement for a lot of dishes.

Sure, it’s labor intensive. We keep our hands busy while sharing the day or listening to audio programs. There’s a lot more to learn about them, particularly from the local native people. I feel a quiet satisfaction and fascination in our learning this totally native food that requires no petroleum to gather, a minimum of energy to process, and that’s nutritious, adaptable and satisfying.

Chocolate chip acorn cookies, anyone?

Each Monday evening this summer we return home from our in-town errand day and lay out the beautiful abundant fresh local foods — vegetables from the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) growers, fresh local eggs from Shan’s Happy Hens, and fresh local raw milk. I smile as I think, “Getting more local food has come a long way in three years.”

In the summer of 2005, a friend asked if I wanted to join in a one-week Eat Local experiment. “Sure,” I enthused. “What do you call ‘local’?” I asked. Read the rest of this entry »

Vignette 1
We drive to town through the smoky skies for our weekly errands. Arriving at the business to which I’d emailed my files for printing, I learn that their email is down, and they haven’t received my files. I have my laptop with the files, but they don’t have wireless service or a USB storage device. There is no means of transferring the files to them. Lesson: bring the thumbdrive or flashcard reader as well as the laptop. Resilience means having backups if plan A doesn’t work.

Vignette 2
We head towards the grocery store and learn there is a power outage in town. The grocery store has closed down. No groceries. We shop weekly for groceries, and this is our day. Can we eat for the week? The good news is we’re prepared on this front. We will be picking up our local raw milk and eggs later that evening. We have plenty of food in the refrigerator, freezer and pantry. We will miss fresh produce. But we can eat just fine this week.

Vignette 3
We’re scheduled to meet out-of-town visitors at a local restaurant. Since we’re near the restaurant, we swing by and find out that it will be closed because of the power outage. We need to phone our visitors to arrange to meet for dinner elsewhere (as well as to phone other restaurants to find out who’s even open on a Monday night).

Fortunately, we have their cell number.  We have just gotten a different cell phone service and this will enable us to test its coverage in town. Bad news: coverage is abysmal; a call never even connects. Ditch that service. There were very few people out and about, and I was hesitant to use a stranger’s cell phone (that might change in future!).

We drive a few blocks to use the landline at a friend’s house. Oops, with the power outage and her electricity-powered phone, there’s no access to landline phone service. Which means that pay phones are out, too, if we can even find one of that disappearing breed. Giving up on calling our guests, we return to the restaurant and wait until they arrive. Fortunately there’s still gasoline for the cars. Right now, anyway. Of course, that’s the least efficient communication means. What if the restaurant were many miles away?

On the way home after dinner, we say, “Today was Collapse Practice. What to learn from this, for next time?”

Collapse requires resilience in a range of scenarios. Resilience, the ability to withstand shocks. An ability to adapt to the unexpected. We aren’t going to be able to think of everything, but increasingly we need to think of continency plans, backups, possibilities, and preparations.

Especially, I need to shift my feeling along with my thinking. Rather than being surprised and frustrated or angry, I need to EXPECT such things. To expect breakdowns, shortages, failures, lack of communications, a long time to get replacement parts, not being able to get through to a real person in some faceless large corporation. I need to see that in this New Normal, “little” collapses like these will occur more often and from a variety of angles. My frustration will be less if I can take a deep breath, remind myself this is The Way It Is Now, and then cultivate adaptation, resourcefulness, and quite likely cooperation with other people — neighbors, friends, and strangers.

Last week we taped a Peak Moment conversation with a local financial market analyst who we first heard on our local community radio station KVMR about a half year ago. What Marc Cuniberti said on his “Money Matters” show made sense to us.

He talked about the Fed Reserve’s recently printing tons more money and thereby continuing to worsen inflation. He talked about protecting the purchasing power of the dollar. And he obviously cares about others: “I don’t want people to lose money.”

Read the rest of this entry »

A smoky haze penetrates our forest like a fog. The sun is a bright-red disc blazing through the haze. Over 1000 forest fires burn here now in Northern California, tipped off by 6000 lightning strikes a week ago. The normal evening breeze wafting downslope from the Sierra usually brings welcome “coolth” after the warm days. Now the breezes bring intense smoke, too thick to sleep outdoors. We close the house, whose rooms smell like a just-out campfire. The particulate matter readings are off the charts–unsafe for everyone, says the Air Quality Board.

Robyn hands me a copy of James Hansen’s essay of June 23, 2008 titled “Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming.” On that day he testified to Congress, just as he’d done exactly twenty years ago to the day, alerting the public that global warming was underway. The big difference between then and now, he says, is that “now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb.” Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Heinberg and I sit on the straw bales forming the corner of our newly-prepared compost pile here at Lone Bobcat Woods. I was really pleased to have Richard and his partner Janet Barocco come here to tape this Peak Moment Conversation. It felt like we were deepening the connection we’d made last year when Robyn and I taped their suburban permaculture home in Santa Rosa (episode 100). They’ve inspired us to begin some permaculture at our place.

In front of us, Robyn, Carolyn and R.C. tweak camera positions and mic sound before we began rolling. Outdoor tapings are always tricky — accounting for the movement of the sun while taping.

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As I waited in the grocery store line, the customer ahead of me departed with a sardonic comment to the checker about higher food prices, citing last-month’s consumer price index (CPI) percentage for inflation.

“Did he say 2.1% last month?” I asked the checker as I moved up.

“More like 2% PER DAY,” he replied with a wry grin.

I grinned. His impertinent reply hit the mark: it feels closer to reality than the official CPI. People know through their guts and their wallets that the government figures don’t match reality. The sharp reduction in auto sales and other discretionary spending tells us otherwise.

That’s because the inflation figures have been manipulated. In 1983 they downgraded what’s in the basket of goods they’re checking — like exchanging steak for hamburger. Don’t increase the index, cut the lifestyle!

And since 1998 they removed energy and food costs from the consumer price index.

Helloooo?! What universe are they living in? Can you exclude gas, electricity and food in your life?? So that 4% CPI they report for March is actually 7.3% when you add food and energy back in, and 11.8% if based on the original basket of goods from before 1983. You can see it in a graph by Shadow Government Statistics in “Seeking Alpha: The White Elephant That Could Destroy Your Portfolio, part I.” They’re not dumb. Lower inflation figures means less paid out for services like social security.

You may not know the exact numbers for inflation or a lot of other things in the official reports, but like the grocery checker, you know in your gut the stories we’re being handed from many governmental and mainstream media sources are not the whole picture. To paraphrase a Teacher, “Trust your gut, Luke.”

Yesterday I discovered a small western bluebird lying beside the front porch. Apparently she’d died after flying into the large glass panels we put up for winter. Now that it’s warmer, and the migrating spring birds are returning, it’s time to replace the glass with screens.

I hold this lovely tiny bird in my hand, saddened by the unintended consequences. I think of the turkey chicks who tumbled into the ditches we’d dug for our utilities back in 1990. It is impossible to not create hazards for wild creatures.

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Last fall I was invited to be one of five women giving a short talk at our local Nevada County Gather the Women event on March 8, 2008, International Women’s Day. Coordinator Marilyn Nyborg said the day’s theme was Being the change we want to see in the world and asked me to speak about living sustainably, and how that has affected who I am.

Here’s the video: (Journal entry continues below the video.)

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Gray clouds scudded across the sky and a few raindrops splattered the windshield as we approached Boise from the north. “I hope it doesn’t rain while we’re trying to videotape John Weber,” I said.

We were greeted by a gentle, cheery and accommodating John Weber. In the fading afternoon light Robyn scurried to set up gear while John gave me a tour so I could formulate the program sequence.

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