Food

[greenstorm]

Quick fb repost here, since I haven't written on this much:

I just want to acknowledge how many core beliefs food touches on how our bodies relate to the world and its creatures, and how big and significant restructuring that relationship can be, and finding good meaning in a new type of relationship. Especially if it's been such hard work to preserve the old relationship for so long.

I've never been vegetarian or vegan. There were many years where I was known-source-animal-products-only, which many times looked like functional veganism.

Two things led me to my current system, which is to grow 75% of my calories and carefully source about 15%, then let the last 10% be what it will:

I've always had a very deep relationship to plants where eating their bodies and products feels equally significant to eating the bodies and products of animals. It feels more comfortable for me not to divide creatures into two categories and treat those categories differently, but instead to develop a relationship with each type of plant and animal and fungus and understand how it fits into the environment as part of it also fitting into my body.

I began to let go of 100%ism in everything. I'm allowed some softness and some ease. That roughly 10% is so I don't need to count my calories, go hungry when my mind or circumstances won't allow certain foods, or stand apart from social sharing. I've allowed myself to make choices that are easier sometimes. Allowing myself this grace changed my relationship with food from one of control and scarcity to one of recieving bounty.

Comments

[amazon_syren]

I would love to hear more about this, particularly the part about "develop[ing] a relationship with each type of plant and animal and fungus and understand[ing] how it fits into the environment as part of it also fitting into my body".
Are you up for saying more?

[greenstorm]

I am!

I have a lot of lenses or frameworks that align on this, I'm not sure how far in I'll get.

It's not a stretch to think of the biotic part of the environment (plants, animals), myself, and the abiotic part (rocks, mineral dirt) as basically a flow of molecules through various patterns, enabled by solar energy that comes in from various routes (photosynthesis and then burned in mitochondria, water driven through heat energy into the air and then back down again, gasoline from so long ago). Anything I eat is a set of molecules that becomes part of my body because of the way it was previously part of the biotic (usually) world: genetics and sunlight and water and soil and heat work together to make specific plants and combinations of plants grow here, which are sometimes in turn eaten by certain animals, which are in turn eaten by me. The environment is always becoming part of my body through this process, and then my body is always becoming part of the environment in return.

Growing most of my own food it's easy to understand this because I can see it. I've been drinking primarily my own well water for over 4 years, and watering my plants and animals with it. "Extra" water ends up in the sewage lagoon on my property, where it evaporates into the air and then falls as snow. I'm not sure where my aquifer comes from but it may well be recharged by the snowshed that tends to concentrate moisture here. I've been eating my own meat for several years: a lot of that is a nutrient flow in the form of grain from the next town over but some is from local grazing etc.

We all know that this happens in an abstract sense. The relationship I'm developing is about knowing how it works in particular, starting with my body and tracing forward and back: both the flow of actual molecules and the diverse and amazing energy and pattern sources that allow patterns to perpetuate. So: my environment becomes really cold in the winter and a lot of energy is needed to store food to use during that time to keep the system moving. But also: animals use a portion their food energy to collect and store food energy in their bodies really efficiently; they can collect all the leftover cornstalks and tomatoes from the garden and turn that into food for me that's ready anytime I can do a slaughter, and they self-perpetuate and self-heal. Plus, my body itself prefers a lot of fatty and meaty types of energy to high-carb foods. Emotionally, I have a set of beliefs about evolution and life that includes the acceptability of raising animals for meat. The Ossabaw hogs I raise are particularly good at making use of the energy and conditions I have to self-perpetuate, unlike maybe pink commodity hogs would be. And finally, my body is more able to produce the right kind of energy to feed the pig than it would be to raise enough sunflowers or canola, for instance, to supply my fat energy needs.

So I characterize the environment as a pattern where my own body is woven through it like a single colour in a complex painting: biophysical, genetic, emotional, intellectual, energetic, input, output. My goal is to use my emotion and intellect and physical energy and I guess spiritual drive to bring all these things closer to a robust, sustainable, and pleasurable system. I've started fairly directly, with things I consume/eat, and step the process out from there. Eating is the most basic form of fitting something into my body, after all, and being able to obtain it through my personal characteristics is one step out from that. Then there's the downstream side, but I think maybe you get the point? It's easier to know all this about something that is grown by me or someone I know. Or, for instance, the vanilla co-op I buy vanilla beans from has tight direct relationships with their suppliers and they teach us a lot about the ecology and processing of vanilla too.

Does that make any sort of sense?

[squirrelitude]

On the downstream side, have you ever looked into biogas generation? It's very tempting to use let all the manure (human and otherwise) ferment anaerobically and produce lightly pressurized methane for cooking and maybe even heating, but the devil is in the details -- apparently this all has to be done under reasonably warm conditions, meaning underground for most of the year for you (and me). Some kind of modified septic system, for instance, or insulated and solar heated (or heated by its own pilot light, heh).

[greenstorm]

I have a lot of thoughts about the downstream side!

Feed -> animals -> manure -> soil works really well for me in a lot of ways. In winter I do deep bedding, which uses manure & straw/woodchips composting to add a little bit of warmth to the environment. The animals distribute their waste biomass pretty well since they're rotated somewhat thoughtfully, which prevent my having to use my body and energy or a machine (lots of resources there) to redistribute most of it-- mucking out the barns in spring is plenty of work for me.

For my own waste, of which there's not a lot since it's just me, I'm pretty happy with a conventional septic tank and lagoon. A complex mechanical system requires a lot of resources to install, to think about, to buy the parts, and to actually put them in place (underground below frost is over six feet here, which also makes it pretty difficult to maintain). If it needs to be maintained at a temperature, that's a failure point that requires energy to monitor regularly and even if it's just running in the back of my mind as something to check that's using up a finite source of energy. Anything involving fire or solar requires a level of maintenance. And there wouldn't be a lot of return if it was just hooked up for me, and it would be a lot of physical work (force x distance) and a change in my animal husbandry to try and maintain animal manure moving into the system.

So that kind of system likely works for other folks but it really doesn't here. In general I try to minimize the mechanical systems that I need to maintain in favour of biotic ones: they self-sustain better and are more easily tested and removed if they don't suit.

[squirrelitude]

Wow, I had no idea the frost line went so deep even in my area.

The home biogas setups I've seen are pretty much "no moving parts" except for whatever it takes to get the stuff into them, and otherwise seem to be pretty similar to septic tanks -- they produce a liquid fertilizer out one end, and biogas into an inflatable gas bag, and very slowly silt up. I'm not actually clear on why we can't just capture the methane that vents from a normal septic tank, which makes me think I'm missing something. It might be that the temperatures are just too low in a septic tank for the kind of methane production used in home biogas setups. I did see some research into using psychrophiles from Alaskan permafrost for lowering the productive temperature, so maybe temperature really is the only difference!

Passive solar heating probably wouldn't be sufficient up your way, would it... I'm curious how warm things stay in the greenhouse, though, since you mentioned that recently.

[greenstorm]

Oh, that might not be so bad if there are no moving parts. And that does seem basically like a septic tank. There might need to be a level of airtightness somehow? I know my septic is pretty ...accessible, just being basically a piece of plywood over the tank, and a couple tattered pipe caps on the run down to the lagoon (my ground is to clay-y to perk for a septic field). I guess maintaining the biotic community would be much the same either way, noo bleach, periodically renew, etc.

You want to look up Dong Jianyi's greenhouse, which is the pinnacle of active management of passive solar if that's not too much of a contradiction. He's in Alberta, which is colder than me in winter and warmer in summer, and he starts his tomatoes in that greenhouse in spring. I am in awe of that setup.

The sun is really low here in winter. I can get a fair bit of heat but not any distance into the ground: it basically needs to be on a south slope and have a good straight shot to the sun, then have every direction including up very well insulated. My south-facing lean-to greenhouse gets pretty warm during the day but re-radiates really fast, and the animal barn has a south-facing row of poly panels that do similar. I'm not sure if adding thermal mass would help all that much but that's an experiment for another time.

Now maybe if the system heated itself...? Like if I ran a greenhouse on top of it and it heated the greenhouse and thus the ground below...?

[squirrelitude]

The one thing that's kind of a Big Problem is that anything enclosing one of these setups has to be well-ventilated, since otherwise any methane leak could accumulate to explosive concentrations. I don't know how that squares with keeping things warm, because then you get into things like heat-recovery ventilation... which is good stuff, but yeah, moving parts for sure.

Wow, I just watched most of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXPakvPzgpE and yeah, that's a neat design. Pretty active management, but I guess that might be what you need for growing stuff that deep in winter. (I love the snow vibrator.)

[greenstorm]

Yeah, sounds like it gets complicated. Much like Dong Jianyi's setup, but man am I in awe of that dude.

I prefer my complexity to be genetic, using the environment rather than changing it as much as possible for the meat of my project. Something like a heated greenhouse is very important for play, but I don't want to bet my food on it.

[squirrelitude]

But yeah, more self-maintaining systems are a huge benefit. I'm also just very prone to trying to start a thousand projects at once, and these kinds of "optimizing" projects are very shiny to me. 😅

[greenstorm]

Ha. Yeah, you're trying to optimize for ambient energy, I need to optimize for my mind and body's energy-- and the kind of energy I like putting out. That's why I'm doing the tomato and corn trials, because my leaning is that way.

Doing this out here really, really helps me appreciate how a diversity of interests and skills is a strength to the species.

[greenstorm]

Also the way the land is a reflection of the energies of those particular people. When Josh is here I do more building/jiggery-pokery projects, for instance.

[squirrelitude]

I also just like... fundamentally have no awareness that available time is not infinite and that my body and mind will not always be operating in top form.

(Except, obviously, when I'm in a time crunch or am sick or depressed, heh.)

[greenstorm]

Aren't you then always in a time crunch? I can't imagine running out of things to do.

[squirrelitude]

Not really. My todo list certainly always has stuff on it, but a great many of the items don't have a particular deadline and are just annoying/slowly degrading/suboptimal/a vague risk.

[greenstorm]

So things go onto the list easily, but they also aren't pressure when they're there/come off easily?

[squirrelitude]

There's pressure to burn through the todo list, but that's not time pressure -- I'm easily distracted and a terrible procrastinator. (-:

[greenstorm]

I'm honestly not being deliberately obtuse, but-- terrible procrastinator as in, you do not procrastinate and so you get a lot of things done very quickly because you do not procrastinate and so have internal pressure to finish things on your to-do list? Or terrible procrastinator as in, you procrastinate a lot and so the to-do list is more interesting than what you're supposed to be doing and it distracts you? Some other option?

Once again the ambiguity of a common phrase throws me. :P

[squirrelitude]

Hahaha, I was thinking as I wrote it, "is this ambiguous? maybe? ...probably not". As in, I procrastinate quite a bit, and the todo list gets longer and longer, and I feel bad about that. It doesn't feel like "there isn't time to complete all this" (which may or may not be true) -- more like "I'll never burn through this list".

[greenstorm]

Oh that's super interesting! So things seem interesting/fun and you put them on the list, and then their existence on the list makes you feel bad about them (maybe partially cancelling the "fun" part)?

[squirrelitude]

Oh, no -- the things on my todo list aren't fun! I do the fun things without having them on the list. :-P

The list is stuff like...

- Diagnose leak in worm bin (messy, will take a long time)
- Scatter ironweed seed (OK, that's a little fun, but involves some decisions)
- Order replacement bike trailer hitch
- Research a new dentist
- Order replacement rain pants
- Ask landlord to replace some window springs

[greenstorm]

Oh no! Your to-do list is nearly fully aversive! I can see why that's pressure.

[squirrelitude]

Yeah! If something needs doing, I either do it right away (because it's easy, fun, simple, straightforward, materials available, etc.) since I'm so distractible, or I put it on the list (because it's... not.) So the list sucks.

[greenstorm]

I think one benefit to having multiple humans within a system is the increased ability to learn specialize, and the increased monitoring/thought ability.