Archives for July 2012

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• I am working on a personal manifesto about small-scale agriculture and how our ranch should be created.
• Four chickens have landed in the coop, but only one so far has laid an egg.
• I don’t believe that human civilization as we know it faces imminent collapse due to a new world order, climate change or peak oil. I have faith in the innate human creativity to adapt quickly to change. I do believe the world will look astonishingly different in 25 years.
• I think in many respects the world can look better in 25 years.
• Backyard chickens might be part of the solution.
• I drove 15,000 miles in 3 years and loved being on Highway 89. Now I don’t want to leave the ranch.
• It’s not really a ranch.
• I have to go to Phoenix on Wednesday. I can’t take my chickens on the road.
• Our two wheel tractor arrives this week. I will probably miss the unboxing. The only implement we bought this go-round was a mower.
• The alfalfa in the orchard is up to my thighs. You could lose a cat in there. I have lost a cat in there.
• I am thinking hard about expanding my definition of creativity. I printed one of my photos on art canvas, then sewed the canvas into a useful object. I wrote a piece in my journal about a cowboy who cried on my shoulder. I reinvented a Greek supper dish into an apple pasta. I designed and built a chicken coop and painted it blue and yellow. Distractions or artistic expression? Some days, on my private scorecard, none of it counts as real creative work. Monet had to plant his gardens before he painted them. This path I’m on is a winding one and I can’t see clearly how it connects the things I’m interested in: photography, writing, homestead craft, and agriculture.
• As Jim Dodge wrote in Fup, “The reasons for things are tricky.” I don’t really need to know the future to make myself a good one. I’ve gotten pretty far on faith and intuition, so long as I keep plugging along. Maybe I should quit thinking about “Art” with a capital A and go feed the chickens.