Happy fucking new year from me and the missus

Guest post from my wife: (yeah, you tell 'em baby!)

So I’m feeling totally discouraged today. Fuck the new year and everyone’s silly resolutions that don’t mean shit. Today is just another reason to overspend and get shit faced. Tomorrow isn’t going to bring any real change. People don’t want real change. They don’t even want to look at the reasons why change is inevitable. They’re like big kids covering their ears and singing “la la la la la la, I can’t hear you!” Ya, because ignoring what’s right in front of your face is going to help you. Thanks- for your part in fucking up the world. Way to go loser.



Alright, let’s try this again…


Happy frickin’ new year. I don’t have anything good to say. I applaud those who are able to get shit faced and pretend that it’s all a bad dream. All reality all the time can get a little heavy.

Okay, I’ve got nothing. I’ll try again in the new year.

(My wifes blog can be found at www.canadiandirtbags.com)

Oats and bubble gum

Anyone who thinks the shit hasn't already hit the fan may very well soon end up eyebrows deep in it. And then what? You can only stand on your tippy toes for so long. Yeah, perhaps I'm a doomer. How could anyone not be? Maybe those who have yet to be blessed with the loud popping sound of a skull extraction.

Sure I could bitch and moan about the state of the world and probably will somewhat. A bit of a hobby I suppose. One that provides the same pleasure as scratching a rash. Kind of feels good as the pain keeps increasing. The economy is tanking pretty hard. Has been for a looong time. There's debate right now on whether or not to stop making the Canadian penny. Costs more to make than it's worth. 35 years ago I could buy 2 pieces of bubble gum for a penny. Now the same gum (smaller peices) costs 5 cents per piece. Even a kid that's been dropped on his head can see that's a pretty significant devaluation of our currency.

Recently I posted about feed store rolled oats. Well surprise, the damn things still have all the husks. We cooked up a sample pot of oatmeal to try anyway. It was kind of hard to eat. Probably quite healthy for the pipe though, what with all those husks, and much safer than swallowing the barbeque brush. So we sealed it up in food grade buckets and will store it as food for the critters. So, not a total failure for the experiment. We also plan on trying a small amount in muffins and whole grain breads. That actually might work out quite well.

Feed Store Preps

What did you do to prep this week? That line from MD Creekmore keeps running through my head. Every week of spring through fall I worked on building my earthbag domes. But now it's winter and the daylight is so short. It's cold all the time and plenty of snow. That doesn't mean I can't prep though. I've been sorting out my tools, organizing different materials, getting things done that I never had time to do during the building season.

My wife and I have been building up our food supply for a while now too. Canned fruits,  tomato sauce and a variety of staples are filling up our shelves. We bought a quarter of beef this fall too. This week we started on some longer term storage. I picked up 25kg (56lb) of rolled oats and enough food grade cotainers to store it all. I got the oats at the feed store for $11. That works out to 19 cents a pound. If I were to buy rolled oats at the zombie infested supermarket, they are at least $2.50 per pound. The buckets were free from a bakery in town.

Sure the rolled oats were sold as animal feed, but so what? It's not like the farmer plants different oats in different fields for human feed. And when SHTF, no one will think twice about eating cheap grains. I'd even eat the horse the oats were intended for if things got bad enough.

If your buying grains at the feed store, just make sure to get stuff that does not have anything added, like hormones, molasses, etc. Just plain grain. Just plain cheap.

Kill the messenger

Unbelievable. Tom Flanagan is a top adviser to our country's Prime Minister. This idiot was on national television advocating the murder of the wikileaks guy. Is this the best Canada has to offer?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtIafdoH_g&feature=player_embedded

You would think that of all the dirty, corrupt backrooms across this country they could do better than this twit. He is stupid enough to make a comment advocating the assassination of a foreign citizen. Oh, wait a minute, he's saying that Obama should do it. Well that makes sense. After all we don't do such things in Canada. We don't because we can't. But just think if we could... Good thing we have such people as Mr Flanagan stroking our leaders. When we finally get the kill skill that our American pals have we'll be ready.

Until then, I will just concentrate on my little hill with windows. Just about finalized the design for the rocket stove mass heater.

Closed for winter

Well, winter is here. There's a heavy snowfall warning tonight. Then the deep freeze. We had such a lousy spring and a wet summer, our building season was so short. We didn't get nearly as much done on our dome home as we thought we would. Still, pretty happy with what we did get done. There is only my wife and I working on the project. Must be nice to live in warmer climates where people are just planning what to put in their winter gardens.

Not us, our plans are a little more on the staying warm to stay alive theme. Soon it will be minus forty. Our power goes out a lot here so winter survival is a very real concern. Yesterday I went to start up both our small generators to make sure they run. The diesel started but not the gas one. I think I need to do some carb work on it. I can't wait till our off-grid home is complete. Right now a lack of power means no heat, no lights, no well. Once we are heating with wood in our rocket mass heater, no power just means dark. We always have jugs of drinking water so that is never an immediate concern. A move to using the humanure system means we always have toilet facilities no matter what. We've been doing that for a year already.
  

View into the front entrance
Each full bag becomes a 175lb brick

 The front door is installed, and some windows too. The other holes for windows and doors are boarded up for winter. At least this will allow us to do some work inside two of the five domes over the winter. Its actually possible that the two larger rooms may not even end up being domes. The current thinking is that we may possibly put a roof on these. The other three smaller rooms will still definitely be domed. It's been such a busy year, we kinda flew by the seat of our pants. The deep freeze gives a chance to refocus and develop a plan we will be happy with.

Need to get 'er closed up for winter

Temporary roof coming along

Cast Iron

Our new earthbag home will be heated with wood in a rocket stove mass heater. We will be using a wood cook stove for cooking. We managed to pick up a used stove in really good shape for $75. It came from a lady that had been using it since the forties. It's sure hard to find anything that is made with such enduring quality anymore. Pretty much the whole thing is made of cast iron, so it is pretty heavy. The picture shows the dome that will be our kitchen. It's one of five domes that will make up the total structure.

Even though we won't be in the new house till next year, we've started dramatically changing our lifestyles already. Preparing to live off grid. We've started purchasing and using some cast iron cookware. The first pan we bought was a complete dud. Cooked with it once and a big crack appeared. The next one we bought was obviously better quality. Cooked with it a few times so far and no problems. It is a Lodge Logic and we are quite happy with it.

Now it';s kind of crunch time though. Winter is here and there is still much left to do. The weather may still be mild enough for the next few days to get some work done. We have to finish plastering the bags that are in place (first coat), place a few more bags on the entrance walls and place a temporary roof on the two larger domes. In the end there will be no roof as such, since the structures are domes. The temporary roof will allow us to do some work inside the domes over the winter and keep them from filling up with snow.

uh oh...

I don't know the whole story, probably never will. But I've heard enough to make me think Orwell would probably have wished he would have thought of it first. See, there's this guy being charged with murder. He was a kid at the time. He appears to have been protecting his homeland from an invading army. The kid ended up killing one of the invaders. Now the invaders are trying him for murder. Is there a moral to this story? I think so. Do not let the invaders get the upper hand or you are screwed.

Invade my land, threaten and kill my family and friends and you can be assured I will 'insurge' all over your ass.

The agressor went to that place to bring 'freedom' to people who never asked for it and who have a completly different idea of what it means anyway. What a neat coincidence that that place has a trillion dollars worth of minerals and is stategically located for pipelines. Sometimes you just get lucky I suppose.

Talk about luck. The region around here has plenty of oil, wood, water, minerals....

...OH SHIT.

warm ears

We all want freedom, right? I'm not so sure. So many of the sheeple don't even want to think about the fact that they are slaves, let alone do anything about it. It pisses me off. But whatever, keep shopping, watching sports, sucking the government tit. What these sleep walking bots do will not keep me from thriving and surviving. It would be wonderful if more people could wake from the trance that gov-corp has lulled our society into. Maybe it will happen, maybe not. The deception has been in play for generations now.

Central banks including the Federal Reserve are privately owned companies. Mainstream media is owned by the same elite that own the banks. Countries are forced to lick the boots of the International Monetary Fund. The education system teaches lies to our children. Corporations are bigger and more powerful than governments. Profits are more important than people. And all this buggery is controlled by a very small group of very powerful puppet masters. If you don't think so then your some kind of retard. Or in such denial you've convinced yourself that sphincter around your neck is a comfort you could not live without.

At least you're keeping your ears warm.

Lately a lot of American politicians have been coming to Canada to talk about our tar sands. There have been campaigns for and against oil from this source. Sometimes I find it to be comical, sometimes it makes my blood boil.

An example of humour in this is companies that will not use 'the dirty oil' from the Canadian tar sands. Yeah, good luck with that. Americans are willing to send their kids half way around the world to die for oil. ( Oil, freedom, freedom, oil, it's all the same right?) And just how do these dipshits plan on determining where the oil they use comes from anyway, let alone separate it from the supply stream that feeds almost every product in the market today? It's just another example of blow-hards getting on the media to play the masses who refuse to think for themselves. Oooh, Greedcorp says they won't use that filthy Canadian oil, they must really care about the environment and me. What a warm load of exit stuff.

But here's the part that gets my dander up. Pelosi is having supper with the Premier of Alberta and they are talking about America's dependence on foreign oil. She actually says to him, 'Don't worry, we don't consider Canadian oil foreign.' Premier Ed Stelmach responds with such childlike glee, he almost wets his knickers. Excuse me? WTF? Do I need to send both these retards a map?

First of all, if the US doesn't want to buy our oil, then so be it. We'll keep it for later. But no, we're so anxious to sell it at any price they see fit and comply with whatever terms they wish.  The US, China, whoever. It doesn't matter. We will sell anyone all our raw materials, then try to scrape together a few bucks to buy back some finished products. We can't make anything here anymore. We've been de-industrialized.
I used to think I lived in the greatest country in the world. The more I look around though, I realize this country is just a resource whore for the world's johns.

A Year of Composting

We had to leave the acreage yesterday for a trip to the city. I really hate going there anymore. Everyone seems to be on edge, not even realizing it. I don't blame them though. The traffic, noise, pollution, crowds, advertisements, and many other things just getting in your face non stop can really strip you of your serenity.

We went to a little restaurant for lunch before heading home. I went to the washroom and was struck by the thought : "Here I am pissing in one days worth of treated drinking water for a person, and I'll use two more days worth to make it magically disappear!"  Talk about crazy.

About a year ago, my wife and I started looking into alternative ways to deal with our septic tank/field concerns. Building a new home, we were faced with many thousands of dollars to deal with toilet waste. What we discovered was a system that is incredibly cheap, easy to operate and will actually add value to our property. Maybe not dollar value as some suit-wad from the real estate company might calculate, but REAL value. Value as in we are able to improve the quality of our own soil. Value as in we don't have to produce potable water just so we can shit in it. And the whole system was super cheap to put together and operate.

Plywood box, 5 gal pail, standard toilet seat

Bin system from free pallets

If you haven't read Joseph Jenkins' Humanure handbook, then you should. It gives plenty of details on setting up, operating, and most importantly, the science and data behind showing the safety of such a system. At first I was mighty skeptical, so was my wife. So we tried it on a week long trial. It's been a year and now I hate having to use anything else. The book recommends using sawdust for cover in the pail. Well that isn't so easy to get around here, but wood shavings in bale size bags are, so we use that.

The book can be purchased through Amazon or viewed for free (some versions downloadable) at the authors website : http://www.josephjenkins.com/books_humanure.html

People may think I am crazy for using this system (mostly city folk, not rural or old timers) but I'm not, and I don't care what anybody thinks (except for the wife). When you turn on the tap and nothing comes out, will you be sorry you took a dump in the last gallon?

Domestead Pictures

Some photos showing the recent progress on our little domestead....

We still have a long way to go but I'm pleased with what we have been able to do so far. After all, there is only my wife and I working on this with out the aid of machinery. Well not entirely true. My old lady is a machine. Since I scurry off to my wage slave thing every day, humping a desk for the man, she has built more than half of this place by her incredible little ol' self.

Rural vs Urban Living

We left the city 2-1/2 years ago. Best decision ever. During our last couple years living in the city, we were located in the city centre. What a horrible existence that was. Noise, crowds, pollution, crackheads.

Traffic noise started about 6:30 am. This would go on until all the wage slaves had scurried out of downtown by about 6:00 pm. Just when things seem about to get quit, the bar crowds start staggering around yelling and vomiting. Meanwhile the crackheads are twitching about screaming at each other or someone only they see. This goes on until about 4:30 or 5 am. Finally a little peace until 6:30 when it all starts again. The homeless are always wandering around but they don't make very much noise usually. But watch where you step, they do all kind of nasty things in the most unusual places.

So now we live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but distance. Being on the prairie, even the horizon is many miles away. Our closest neighbor, a friendly farmer, is a couple miles away. People think there is nothing out on the prairie, that it is just a vast wasteland between things that are interesting or useful.
Quite the opposite actually. There are many species of plants that are useful, even edible. There is a wide range of wildlife; deer, coyotes, fox, owls, eagles, porcupine, even moose. And many more. Certainly no shortage of things that like cats. We've lost about a dozen so far. Gotta have them though for mouse control. Got those in the country too.

By far the most interesting and important critters out here though, are the people. There are only five thousand of us spread out over an area of five million acres. Sparse. I ran into the friendly farmer at the country store one day and asked him if I could buy a bit of straw. A couple days layer there were some bales in front of my house. I phoned him and asked how much I owed him. He refused to accept payment.

The small country store itself is such a refreshing change from the city. It's only a tiny place, but they sell everything from gravy mix to welding equipment. And if they don't have it, let them know and they will get it for you. More than once they didn't even charge me for a small item because they 'just had it sitting around anyway'. Shortly after arriving in the area I called to find out the store hours on a Saturday because I was running low on cigarettes. The manager told me 5:00 pm. So about 4:30 I head off to the store and get a couple packs. I didn't see the manager, but paid the lady at the till and went home. About 5:30, I get a call from the manager. He says that he didn't see me and that they are closed now but not to worry, he knows my brand and will swing by my place on his way home with a few packs. I live about 12 miles from the store and he lives in the other direction. Wow.

It reminded me of  going to get some smokes once near the end of my city living. I show up at the store 10 minutes before closing and the door is locked. I see the store clerk standing by the till. He shrugs. I look at him and point at my watch with my index finger. He looks at me and points at the ceiling with his middle finger.

I find it interesting that the smaller the population base, the stronger the sense of community. When living in the city, I hardly even knew any of my neighbors at all, not even their names. City folk (I'm getting all farmy now) don't look each other in the eyes when passing by, let alone say hello to a stranger.  They may call a cop or scream for help. At the very least look at you kind of oddly. Out in the rural areas people wave, say hello, strike up conversation with everybody. Even those they don't know.

It doesn't take very long to adjust to that kind of courtesy and friendliness.

Tell me a little about yourself...

Every where you go, every bloody thing you do these days somebody wants personal information. The cashier at most stores now want to know your postal code (that's ZIP for my American friends). I understand why they want this info. It's for demographic analysis. The corporations want to know how they can sell us even more worthless crap we don't need. They cross reference our addresses with income levels and other tidbits they can purchase from the federal government. The feds get this knowledge  by forcing us to complete a census form. Then they sell it to some private-for-profit money sucking greedcorp. Until recently here in Canada you could be fined and even sent to the big house for refusing to fill out this intrusive census form. Government forcefully extracting something from people to provide to corporations? Hey wait, doesn't that smell a little like fascism? Should we really worry? Maybe they are only in cahoots to  improve our shopping experiences. After all, as long we as continuously increase our consumerism, then things will be quite comfortable all the way to the collapse.

So I don't comply with what may seem like a harmless request by the cashier. Sometimes I reply that I will not take part in their financial profiling. Other times I say I'm homeless. Once in a while I've asked 'why?' No matter what I do, they always look at me the same way; 'Why won't you just blindly give me the answer I'm trained to ask for, like everybody else does?' Lately I've noticed they want an email address too. Some stores have even asked for my phone number. Are you freakin' kidding me? I might give you my phone number after you take me out for dinner and provide an evening of gasping pleasure. Maybe not even then. Of course if they did have my number they could have a computer call my GPS enabled cell phone with 'specials that may interest me' when I'm near one of their outlets. Just in case I'm not truly getting all the pleasure out of the shopping experience I should when left to my own devices.

Mayberry talks about starving the beast, starving the monkeys. There are many actions to take for this to ever be effective. But I know one for sure, don't give them something just because they ask for it. They already know too much about us all. They can take what's been tracked and collected about me using debit cards, banking, gov't forms etc., and run it through sophisticated computer algorithms. They probably know things about me that even I don't. I'm doing what I can to change this. Barter, pay cash, just don't buy, as much as possible.

Starve the beast or it will starve us.

We'll never run out

I gotta tell you I love dirt. The stuff is everywhere and you can do so much with it. I played in the stuff a lot when I was a kid. Building little dams, roads and ramps with my toys. I would make tractor noises while pushing a little yellow bulldozer. Then I started hearing all the crap, "get educated, get a career, get money, get stuff"  is what they told me. "Get enslaved to a system that needs you to do your part so the super wealthy can get super wealthier and maintain power while you really get dick" is what they meant. I was one of their robots for decades and barely escaped with my life.

Things have come full circle for me in a way now. I'm back in the dirt. Now it's not really play time but neither is it like work. Sure it is a lot of physical labour but it is very personally rewarding. You see, my wife and I are building a new home out of the earth. It's a group of five domes made of bags filled with clay and aggregate that are tamped solid. The place will be warmed and cooled to some extent using the earth itself as it is sunk into the ground. Further heating will be provided by a rocket mass heater that we will build ourselves. Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves YOU Can Build There is a ton of info about building these things yourself on the internet and all of it from what I can tell comes from this single book. But there is some stuff you won't find on the internet like some exact dimensions and such. I won't give them to you either out of respect for the author and inventor, Ianto Evans. This man is certainly a remarkable character.

My wife and I had the opportunity to meet Ianto and his wife Linda Smiley last year at Cob Cottage. They are both accomplished authors and are extremely knowledgeable about so many things a person wanting to free themselves from corporate slavery needs to know. Showing how to build your own affordable home, heating it, gardening and many other helpful topics are passions for these people. If you ever get the chance to go to Cob Cottage and meet them, you won't be disappointed. Unless you are some sort of ass-kissing middle management type wishing to climb the ladder faster by stepping on peoples throats while you clean them out so you can show your boss (your master) how ruthless you can be and are 'willing to do what it takes' to show a profit this quarter. Then your time would probably be better spent taking yet another business course to further hone your evil.

Back to me and my dirt. We will build a home, an outdoor kitchen, garden walls, pizza oven and other projects all from earth on our site. There is a plenty of it and some has just been laying there for hundreds of years heheheh. Some smart ass business type commented to me the other day that it is a 'finite resource'. Yeah, bite me ass-wipe. This coming from a guy who lives on the prairie in a McMansion made of processed wood from 1000 miles away. We will never run out of earth. There will always plenty for everybody. Soil, well that's another thing all together... Perhaps a future blog ....

Obey your masters

The trick is we need to shift our thinking from accepting what we are told to actually thinking. Thinking for ourselves. We're taught from a very early age to obey. Obey your parents, obey your teachers, obey the law. While there is a certain amount of merit to this there should be boundaries. Most people just blindly obey whatever they are told by endless agencies, commissions, officials, assessors and so on. Banks, governments and employers certainly demand obedience.

What ever happened to common sense? Self-reliance? Personal responsibility? I guess we don't need these things anymore, we're being told what to do. Obey. Shakespeare said "To thine own self be true". It wasn't followed by "unless somebody would rather you obey their rules to serve their own selfish needs for control or power".


We're so conditioned, we will obey a sign even if it makes no sense. How many people will stand at an intersection waiting for the light to change so they can cross the street even when there isn't a car anywhere in sight? Don't walk says the light. Obey.

Who's really running the show?

We don't live in a fascist country, we live in a fascist WORLD.  Fifty-one of the world's top economies are corporations.
http://www.corporations.org/system/top100.html

Is it any wonder that some ass-wipe from big oil can negotiate the release of a terrorist?
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/15/bp-confirms-lobbied-libyan-prisoner-release-denies-involvement-lockerbie-case/

That's some pretty serious power the evil clowns have. Sure, they deny requesting the release of that particular terrorist. Any old terrorist will do, as long as they can make Libya happy enough to let them have access to the oil.

What gets me is that as everyone runs around trying to 'save the economy' all it does is make these evil clowns bigger and more powerful.

Muddome

Bank morons

I'm not sure who's the bigger moron, me or the bank employee. Is it me for even using these soul sucking corporations, giving them a portion of my limited funds to basically do nothing of value for me? Or is it the bank employees who don't even realize they are just little pawns in a huge multi-national scheme to drain wealth from people and provide their corporate masters unlimited power and control over every aspect of our society?

I guess as long as neither of us are aware of what's really going on we can't be blamed for our ignorance. Ignorance is one thing, but refusal to look at facts is stupidity. Wake up sheeple, ignoring what's going on won't help you in the long run. Watching reality TV, sports and shopping won't be of much value if/when the economy/society implodes. Seventy-five million people play that silly farm game on facebook. When the lights won't come on any more I guess they can eat their computers. Enjoy.

I digress. Back to the bank employees. At a bank a while back I closed an account and the teller prepared a bank draft for me. She then informed me that they normally charge a fee for such a piece of paper, but in this case she would waive said fee. Then she looked at me, waiting for me to express exuberant appreciation of some sort. Like perhaps I should bow down and offer to wash her feet. Ridiculous. That little paper contains my money, taken from my account, issued to me. I have to pay to have access to my own funds? We've all somehow come to accept this when dealing with the teller machines, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay a fee when I actually show up in the bank in person to get MY money that I have been gracious enough to let them use for a while. Don't even get me started on what a scam the fractional reserve system is and the evil they perpetrate with my money while I let them borrow it from me.

While I'm waiting for papers to be printed I'm sitting in the office of an account manager. We're chit-chatting a bit and I ask him "What do you think of our monetary system being based on debt?" He says "I think it's fine." I ask him "What do you think of the fractional reserve system?" He replies "That's a little above my pay-grade Sir." I ask him one more question, "did you know that the US Federal Reserve is a private corporation?" His answer, "No."

So the guy doesn't know anything about the world of finance after all the money and time he spent getting an education in the field, so what? Well he is the individual the banks have glossy ads for, trying to persuade me to 'consult' with for all my investment needs. A 'professional'. Oh well. As long as he can keep a smile on his face while he is selling the financial instruments he is instructed to (whether or not he even understands them) he'll be fine. And if he sells enough of them, maybe in a couple years he'll get an office with a window.Ooooh, dare to dream big.

Another long weekend is here and I could sure use one. There is so much to be done at the domestead that I can't even make a list. It would take so long that the time would be better spent actually working on the things to be done. I am determined to get from overwhelmed to just plain old whelmed. The one bright spot in all this seemingly endless work to be done is that my old lady is like a machine. I can't imagine taking on the lengthy list of projects without her. I've gotta work my butt off just to not look like some sort of pansy next to her efforts.
The list of stuff we have on the go includes building a new home (made out of mud of course), new permaculture plots for food production, working on electrical generation blah, blah blah. We're moving to an off grid lifestyle. We've already moved to the middle of nowhere and have a small piece of land to work with. What an incredible amount of work it is. It's not that I don't like work, actually I do. I find manual labour to actually soothe me and clear the brain. Maybe that is some kind of disorder, I don't know. Seems like everything is a disorder these days.
I'm trying very hard to get away from my old way of life. One where I was the perfect little consumer. Working at a career that paid me well to help mess up the world. Living in a big city that now seems like a prison without walls. Always locked into some sort of crazy internal race with myself to see if I could make more money or spend more money. The further I get from that rat race the better I feel.
Anyway it looks like the weather will be perfect for working outside this weekend. I'm going to be working on the garden and the earthbag dome home so that my tiny piece of the world improves somewhat. I wonder what those evil bastards at Monsanto will be doing with their time...