I work at a garden center full of plants sitting in pots or buried in gravel, waiting for new owners to choose them and whisk them off to forever homes. The bulk of the property is covered in asphalt, concrete, or stone, all of which soak up the sun’s rays and create a local heat island during hot spells.

The neighboring parcel is a grass-covered field where I take lunchtime walks. Stepping off concrete onto turf feels like leaving a furnace. It's still hot, but the breeze is an improvement over the oven blasts I've left behind.

When I arrive home after work it gets even better. I'm greeted with a shady greenspace under the high canopies of a red maple and tulip poplar where it is noticeably cooler than the garden center lot and the sunny field. The shade effect is amazing: Yard trees make our lawn pleasant on hot days, and tolerable during heat waves. They even allow us to live without air conditioning.

Gardeners usually think about shade in the context of plant placement and strive to match plants to conditions in which they will thrive. In gardening, shade can be deep, bright, dappled, or partial. When it comes to shade for the purpose of cooling, I think we need more categories. For instance, there needs to be a word for areas that experience constant shade during summer days. (Perma-shade?) These spots are cooler than others that are shaded for part of the time. Because the sun never hits them, they remain reservoirs of cool air throughout the day.

In midsummer the sun beats on my garden until evening, and even if I visit after the sun sinks below trees to the west, I can still feel the heat rising from the mulch. Not so by the frog ponds, where a nearby bench is shaded all day by maples and cherries. It's a bit uncomfortable here during the current heat wave, but still far cooler than open areas that have been soaking up the sun for much of the day.

Of course, to grow vegetables it is necessary to maintain areas of constant sunshine. The potager is a short walk from the house, outside the reach of the large trees that shade the yard and make for a pleasant walk before one enters the sun-soaked garden. This spot and the pastures must be preserved as open areas, but my goal for much of the remainder of the property is a living canopy to intercept the sun’s rays and put them to use, with a zone beneath that harbors cooler air.

Trees do all sorts of great things like slowing rain drops, sequestering carbon, and providing essential habitat, but we shouldn't overlook their role in cooling large sections of land. Climate change debates focus on CO2, but we are failing on a global scale to significantly reduce emissions. There is no energy transition happening, despite the claims of many environmentalists. I won't delve into the questions of whether such a transition could or should happen, I'm simply stating that current data shows it isn't happening. Long-term, we are on our own when it comes to staying cool, and creating a living infrastructure that provides shade should be top priority.

The existing built environment makes this difficult or impossible in many places. Many people have little control over their environment and are at the mercy of landlords whose main concern is keeping maintenance costs as low as possible. For those of us with some authority over our surroundings, there are still limitations. We need trees that don't interfere with overhead lines, or threaten roofs or foundations.

In the eastern US there are plenty of native trees that stay relatively short and can safely be grown in yards. Dogwood, hawthorn, serviceberry, and fringe tree come to mind. Pawpaws and hazelnuts do double duty by producing shade and edibles. These shorter trees won't shade the roof of your house, but by creating perma-shade around the house, they will keep you much more comfortable when you venture outside on hot summer days.

We all instinctively seek shade when we get overheated, yet the importance of shade’s cooling effects continues to be ignored. My town isn't suggesting turning the downtown into a pedestrian-only space, digging up pavement, and planting trees under which shoppers stroll and dine in comfort. We're not there yet. As ecological breakdown continues, driven by increased GHG buildup and wholesale destruction of the the natural world, we might arrive at the point where “radical” innovations such as my city center remake idea are finally viewed as feasible. Meanwhile I will continue Project Shadecover on my own property and enjoy the benefits.

While I've been distracted by the nightmare unfolding on the far side of the county, Mother Nature has continued with the ongoing project called Spring. Each day I am amazed at the growth of the potager and surrounding fields and woods. It’s time to share some photos and introduce new subscribers to the Turtle Paradise mission.

Early in the spring we had a short heatwave before temperatures settled down to average levels for this time of year. The hot spell jump-started perennials into rapid growth and early blooming. I feared this might mean shorter bloom periods, but cooler weather during May kept flowers looking good. The heat also brought out a wave of early butterflies, with zebra swallowtails being well represented.

This proliferation of zebra swallowtails isn't surprising since hundreds of host plants for the butterfly grow on the property. Asimina triloba, the pawpaw tree, is one of our most successful tree species, moving quickly into the abandoned corn field and colonizing sunny spots that resulted when the ash trees succumbed to the emerald ash borer.

Female zebra swallowtails typically lay one egg per leaf to prevent cannibalism among their offspring. They favor young leaves with high levels of the chemical that makes leaves—and caterpillars—distasteful to predators. One might assume that egg laying is limited to spring when leaves are young and tender, but that is not the case because the pawpaw webworm, a drab and less charismatic insect, flits in to help out. The larvae of this moth consume older leaves, thereby encouraging pawpaw trees to put out new growth which appeals to zebra females, enticing them to continue depositing eggs throughout the season.

The pawpaw webworm is described in some articles as a pest of pawpaw trees, capable of defoliating them to the point of affecting fruit yields. Integral component of a balanced ecosystem or thorn in the side of wannabe pawpaw producers? The difference is in one’s perspective: As a casual steward of multiple pawpaw patches, I don't need to worry about the pawpaw webworm. In fact, I didn't learn about it until just now, and I believe its appetite for pawpaw leaves is an insignificant factor in wild fruit yields. Only for highly cultivated backyard patches and commercial operations (there are few because the fruits don't keep well) would the webworm pose a problem.

Much of the thinking around earth-friendly agriculture revolves around the question of finding a compromise between completely uncultivated land and industrial monoculture: a sweet spot that can help meet human needs, while creatures like the pawpaw webworm serve their ecological role without becoming pests. Because I'm not a pawpaw farmer and merely rely on foraging for the fruit in semi-wild areas, I can appreciate the pawpaw webworm because it stays in its lane as one small part of a complex whole, each part of which tugs on the others to keep the system balanced and functioning.

If I were to move toward a more intense cultivation of pawpaw trees, this modest insect would become a problem to be solved rather that a interesting ecological footnote. Industrial agriculture has no room for the webworm or any other plant or animal that interferes with food production. In the industrial model, every aspect must be tightly controlled to ensure maximum profit which means one species is cultivated and all others extirpated by chemical or mechanical means.

As things are now, we need industrial agriculture to prevent mass starvation, but that shouldn't stop us from figuring out ways to grow food in settings that use functioning ecosystems to do some of the work. The human caloric harvest under such a system is undeniably less than in industrial agriculture, but so is the labor required, and the benefits for non-human life are immense.

If one attempts to restore functional ecosystems — with or without the hope of gaining a harvest of human food or fuel — it will be done with incomplete knowledge. If I only today learned about the pawpaw webworm, imagine all the other creatures and interactions of which I am entirely ignorant. Even a trained ecologist will have gaps in her knowledge because natural systems are incredibly complex. The forest that I encourage to return to this land is a pale shadow of the one that once stretched across these hills, but nonetheless consists of countless relations among all its living creatures that I could never fully comprehend in a lifetime.

The good news is I don't have to have a PhD in ecology or a God's-eye view to help in land restoration. I've fostered the pawpaw webworm without having knowledge of it's existence simply by encouraging the growth of pawpaw trees. That's the beauty of land work: It's okay to start by focusing on charismatic megaflora and fauna because by encouraging these noticeable species we are simultaneously supporting all the species that depend upon them. Even if I could investigate and identify all above ground species visible to the naked eye, the vast underground web of life would remain mysterious. Judging from the explosion of visible growth, that hidden world is also thriving, and the health of landscape improving each year.

I can reap the benefits of that health without comprehension of the exact how and why of it. For example, ticks are becoming a huge problem in Ohio and much of the rest of the country, and we seem to have perfect tick habitat here, yet populations seem comparable to levels when I was a kid. I am doing something right, even if I don't don't know precisely what that is. I assume that our low tick population is related to encouraging wildlife that feeds on ticks and the mammals that harbor them, and though I remain ignorant of the details, I can still enjoy the benefit that accrues.

Another success story on the farm is the plentitude of fireflies that show up when the warm weather hits. As tick populations grow, these bioluminescent creatures are rumored to be dying out. Here on the farm, both groups appear to be remaining stable. Lightning bugs need moist, sheltered places with leaf litter or rotting wood to thrive, along with dark nights so they can use their light to communicate with potential mates.

These needs aren't particularly difficult to meet, and though most firefly species are not yet endangered, the fact that we are failing to support a low-maintenance creature such as the firefly should tell us a few things. One, if a very visible creature like the firefly is suffering, many other lesser known animals must also be struggling. And two, how ridiculously easy it would be to adjust our habits to support fireflies and any other organisms that simply need moisture, shelter, and prey that isn't continuously killed off with pesticides.

Planting trees is one way many people interact with the land to create positive outcomes. Trees create shade, stabilize soil, provide habitat for countless creatures, and sequester carbon. Provided they are at a suitable distance from structures, there are very few downsides to planting trees. Plant one of the trees recommended by Doug Tallamy — native oaks and cherries top his list — and so many critters will benefit that knowing all of them and understanding their complex interactions could be your life’s work.

There is another little known benefit that has only come to be understood recently by science: Trees release microscopic particles called sesquiterpines which react with other molecules in the atmosphere to form condensation nuclei. These nuclei are crucial for cloud formation as they act as a center around which moisture condenses. Research has shown that trees have some control over sesquiterpine release, and produce more in times of stress. This indicates that trees are not only instrumental in cloud formation and the cooling associated with cloud cover, but are actually responding to heat and drought by actively working to create clouds and rain.

Everyone who plants trees or works to protect existing forests is helping to make clouds and rain, and most have no idea because this arboreal ability was only recently discovered. What other things are going on about which we have no clue? Common sense says there are plenty. Nature is working even when we don't understand how.

Even if you feel you are just fiddling around the edges, keep on doing what you are doing. The pawpaw webworms and countless other little-known creatures that toil in obscurity to hold the natural world together are depending on you. If knowledge of complex molecules motivates you to plant a tree, that's great. If you prefer to think of trees releasing tiny prayers for rain, that's wonderful also. With a different understanding of the process, or no understanding at all, the effect will be the same as long as we continue to do the work.

Apologies to my subscribers who show up to read about plants and gardening. I'm veering off that track once again as the data center coming to the northwest corner of my county consumes my thoughts and energy. As I tend the potager and walk around marveling at the beauty here, I can't help thinking about the land soon to be lost to this monstrosity. Just so nobody goes away disappointed, I'm including many photos of spring at Turtle Paradise with some in-depth descriptions. If you're sick of hearing about data centers and need a break, feel free to just read the captions.

As a gardener and land steward, I value land. What a silly sentence to write, you might be thinking. Doesn't everyone value land? We all understand that land has dollar value, which is sometimes immense and rising in many places. To me though, the word signifies not just the surface of the earth, but also the layer of life resting on it and reaching into the soil below. My land is the tiny section of biosphere that is somewhat under my control, and is connected inescapably to every other part through water, air, and living creatures that that move across arbitrary property lines.

Land sales for the data center project are imminent, and one has already gone through. Using my definition, I can state that land is indeed being sold, but what is being purchased is merely space to be filled, a platform on which to build. The mysterious companies buying this space do not value what exists there now, but only the potential for future profit. To maximize this profit, every scrap of life will be bulldozed. Trees will be removed, wildlife will flee, the surface will be scraped level, the site will become sterile, and the giant houses of death will rise above what used to be land.

Except for the scale and the speed of progression, this buildout isn't so different from a thousand other projects in the past. It feels different though, like one world is ending and a newer, diminished one beginning, filled with much more plastic, metal, and concrete — and less life. A world in which the line between real and fake is increasingly blurred, and fewer people care about taking the trouble to distinguish between the two.

The idea of land as a home for life seems almost quaint when I contemplate the disregard data center developers have for it. That which is precious to me is to our overlords merely a place to park the stuff they will use to build their gods before exiting a ruined planet to start over someplace else or otherwise pursue their sick dreams.

The names of the specific overlords involved in our local project remain unknown. Are they sitting in their towers, watching the fun as local ants swarm out of their hill and attack each other? No doubt the billionaires behind all this are too busy with the important task of figuring out how to control literally everything to pay attention to us, but their AI servants are probably recording our struggles so they can “learn” how to deal with future peasant revolts.

Here the swarming ants have turned against each other, at least where social media interactions are concerned. Staunch data center advocates defend the rights of landowners to sell their land to anyone they want (even though no one is arguing they don't have that right.) Passionate opponents list the horrible consequences of the coming development, but stop short of taking action. Tales of greed, corruption, and intimidation fly around online. In the real world, threatening notes appear in mailboxes.

This is the boots-on-the-ground reality of our local data center fight, though fight isn't the right word. It's more of a drawn-out span of time during which we snipe at each other, waiting for something to happen. Those heartwarming stories about residents packing town meetings and throwing out politicians who signed NDAs — yeah, that ain't happening here. (One county commissioner lost in the recent primary, but it is unclear which factors contributed most.) I'm willing to bet the situation here is the norm, and successful resistance the exception. Yes, some localities are voting in fresh faces, but are data center projects being stopped? Reports get a little hazy at that point. Most areas are either still in the waiting game like ours, or watching the bulldozers roll in.

It is rarely pointed out that if one locality succeeds in blocking a data center, developers will simply move the project to an alternative location. There is a lot of unzoned space in Ohio populated by the apolitical and the unorganized and ripe for snatching. It's the data center hunger games: Whoever fights the least gets a data center. We are all pitted against each other whether we acknowledge this fact or not.

There are a few bright spots in this bleak landscape. Against great odds, a small group doggedly continues to collect signatures to get the data center issue on the ballot in November. Fierce women patrol Facebook, mocking the (mostly male) toadies who defend the DC developers and the politicians who invited them here. Activists have come out of the woodwork to defend the county, and I've been lucky enough to meet many of them.

I've teamed up with a local man who recently returned to the spot he grew up to build a home and enjoy retirement. Not long after, he found out about the plans to build a data center a few miles north of his property. Together we hired an attorney and determined to remove a township trustee using protocols set forth in the Ohio Revised Code.

The trustee in question has land under contract to sell to the developers and is on target to become a very wealthy individual. He also happens to be one of the three officials elected to take care of the township and its citizens. Despite having advance knowledge of a large project in the works, and the authority to at least establish guardrails, he chose to do nothing.

If you are thinking that my new friend and I have been applauded for our efforts to bring to light an egregious conflict of interest and begin the process of dismantling the web of corruption here, you would be wrong. The response has been lukewarm at best, hostile at worst. Apparently people like the idea of railing against faceless outsiders coming to steal farmland and pollute rivers, but get cold feet at calling out one of their own.

This individual has been defended as someone who has done much for the community, as if this excuses wrongdoing. It's hard to tell if the sentiment is real or if his defenders are simply afraid of getting on the wrong side of an influential man who, if rumors are correct, has already announced he won't do business with those he feels have betrayed him. The ole boy network is alive and well, and residing in southeastern Ohio under the initials “GOP.” (In Ohio trustees run as nonpartisan, but in most cases their party affiliation is known.)

Republicans dominate county politics here. Rank and file Democrats are a small minority and elected ones almost non-existent. The data center affair has exposed a rift between the Republican populace and its leaders, as long-time Republican voters witness officials signing NDAs, stonewalling at meetings for months on end, and in general showing complete disregard for their constituents — in other words, flying their true colors. For an unaffiliated voter like me, it might be tempting to take the attitude of “suck it up, buttercups,” but the stakes are too high.

Not all Republican candidates and office holders are on board with the tech takeover and many are actively opposing it. In other states, Democrats are actively involved in welcoming data centers. This struggle is rightly framed as a non-partisan one, with ordinary citizens on one side, and huge tech companies and elected officials on the other.

As an unsurprising result of witnessing the data center war play out locally, I've lost all confidence in county officials. I disliked them and their policies before, but felt that with their powers limited to local affairs, I could still live a decent life here without fear. Now I doubt the integrity of every office holder. Not a single one can be trusted: They have shown without a doubt that they care absolutely nothing about their constituents. They are greedy, power-hungry, and self-serving (and I hope one of their spies is reading this. Hi Greg, hope the words aren't too big for you!) They've sold us out for a few magic data center beans, and if I wrote what I feel the consequences of this betrayal should be, I would probably have the sheriff at my door within hours.

No ground has been broken for the data center, but the damage to the community is already evident. Residents have been betrayed. Trust has been lost. Greed is on full display. Will we continue to fight each other when the bulldozers roll? We will soon find out.

If you would like to contribute to the trustee removal action, here is the link to my fundraiser.

I'm going to depart once again from my usual topics of gardening, climate, etc, to report on the the biggest resource grab in American history, happening in my little county and every other place the perps think they can get away with it. Tech giants are acquiring the land, water, and electrical infrastructure of large acreages, under the guise of the innocuous-sounding term “data centers.”

Here in Appalachian Ohio, this orchestrated effort to appropriate resources is a continuation of centuries of extraction, and at the same time something totally different. Viewed from one perspective it’s the same old story: Powerful monied interests, with the support of the politicians they own, plunder resources and divvy up the loot while a few lucky locals become rich as payback for selling out their fellows. Timber, coal, oil, and gas, and the wealth they created, have flowed from this region for centuries, primarily benefiting owners elsewhere.

People living here have borne the brunt of the ecological degradation, but have shared at least minimally in the wealth generated. Participation in extraction industries was often risky, but it meant jobs that paid well enough to support a family and a decent life, with extractive enterprises offering jobs that defined whole communities. Coal miners across the region weren't just exploited hillbillies, worked like slaves and bilked out their paychecks at the company store. They were skilled laborers who took pride in their work and the fact that they were helping to power the world. Even DuPont, whose Washington Works plant a few miles downriver helped contaminate the entire earth with forever chemicals, provided generations with well-paying jobs.

I grew up in a beautiful home in a safe neighborhood, enjoyed nutritious food and quality clothing, and went to university — all courtesy of the wage my father earned working in the oil and gas industry. As bad as the environmental degradation from these industries was and still is, they kept enough money in the community to promote stability and even upward mobility.

It’s not my intent to make a case that the irreparable damage to the environment, and the ill health and death that resulted, was justified because the perpetrators also signed thousands of local paychecks. I'm just trying to paint an accurate picture of the region in order to make what is happening now more understandable. If you’re following the current story, you’ll notice it isn’t proceeding in quite the same way. The old model of allowing locals a minimum of benefits to prevent outright rebellion is ending, and the new era of not even bothering is beginning. The latest round of plunder initiated by the data center bros is the old model on steroids, making promises of great riches in store for communities as as it tears through cities and townships at breakneck speed. The fact that the modus operandi is nearly identical in each locality shows a premeditated and coordinated approach, but one whose canned promises of coming prosperity sound like sick jokes.

Even in my relatively poor, deep red county, people are expressing skepticism of assurances that a data center will bring well-paying jobs. The wave of hyperscale data center construction that is breaking over Ohio and neighboring states is pushing before it a social media fueled cloud of distrust. There are tales of skyrocketing electric bills and water wells gone dry, and of course the unanswered question of what exactly employees would do in buildings filled with stacks of servers inside of which the actual work is takes place.

Data centers aren't like the coal mines, chemical plants, and oil and gas drilling that preceded them. These industries needed a work force of sufficient size to operate and therefore became integral parts of communities even as they removed raw materials and wealth. There necessarily existed a web of human connection that tied the newest hire to the highest supervisor, and though these relationships were often troubled, they embedded the enterprise in the community.

Data centers are more like the military bases of a soldier-less colonizer, fenced off from the surrounding land and having no connection to their neighbors. The one proposed locally is rumored to involve 1200 acres, a size difficult to visualize. I rounded off to 1000 acres and looked to Measuring stuff.com to help me out. According to this website, 1000 acres is about the size 756 football fields, 400 city blocks, 363 cruise ships. The exact product that will be created on this large chunk of land is unknown, as is who will be profiting from that creation.

Local speculation leans toward cryptocurrency mining or AI to support a total surveillance, cashless, 15-minute-city-type society where robots do the work, and humans are obsolete. (This description is my distillation of the thousands of social media comments I've read over the last month.) To be fair, others foresee a bright future with the data center bringing job opportunities and lots of cash. Which will it be? Do we really want to let them build it so we can answer this question?

“Let them build it” is a nearly meaningless phrase because according to local officials, no one — including those same elected officials — has any say in the matter. They claim that this is a simple case of a private company purchasing private land from willing sellers and anyone who has objections needs to shut the fuck up. They haven't used those exact words, but that is what they mean.

Our county commissioners sold us out and we're not alone. Elected officials at the city and county level all over the state have been sucked into the conspiracy, whether through carrot or stick is not clear because the process is almost entirely opaque. Officials sign NDAs which they use as magical hex signs against anyone curious about the details of the backroom deals, all the while clearly violating Ohio’s sunshine laws.

Though our county commissioners are rumored to have been in talks for several years, no information has been forthcoming regarding the local data center project. The commissioners sit stone-faced at meetings while empty words issue from their mouths. “We expect to hear something soon.” “Everything will be explained and there will be a chance for the public to ask questions.” “This isn't about politics.” (That last one is my favorite due to its total lack of meaning.)

If you pay close attention you can can detect traces of meaning behind the words. “Shut up, you ignorant hicks.” “This is bigger and involves more money than you can possibly imagine.” “These people are going to do whatever they want and we've sided with the powerful so we can share a chunk of the loot.”

The particulars of the carrots and sticks involved in courting the commissioners are unknown, but I can guess at them. Behind door number one: a long, lucrative career full of hefty campaign contributions and high-level endorsements. Perhaps quick escape to a state job from a podunk county position where half the constituents think you should be in jail. Juicy cash infusions from the influx of temporary construction workers who need the local services you provide. Behind door number two: Booted from the cosy good old boy club. Perhaps those indiscretions from youth suddenly making the papers again. I could be totally wrong. Maybe the officials who appear to have gone over to the dark side sincerely believe that donating our land and water to billionaires is the best thing they can do for the county. Maybe they are merely misguided and have our best interests in mind. Nah.

Constituents being so united in their rage over betrayals by those elected to serve is something new in Ohio. Historically, only a portion of the population was incensed by new developments, with the satisfied/angry divide often following party lines. Fracking pissed off liberals, but conservatives had little beef with it. Huge solar farms made Dems happy, while Republicans fumed. The data center rebellion has created a different beast and exposed a rift in the GOP. Prime farmland of dyed-in-the-wool conservatives is set to be fenced off and bulldozed into industrial expanses that emit air, water, and noise pollution. Most people are mad about some part of the project: Some are pro-data center but up in arms over the secrecy surrounding them, others fear a coming surveillance state complete with mechanical hounds and robot soldiers.

This assault is happening statewide and there is a concurrent rebellion underway across Ohio. It has all the elements of a great story: a small band of plucky misfits mounting a long shot offense, a bold investigative journalist exposing the depth of the corruption, the slick establishment politician who is part of the problem, and his upstart populist challenger who has problems of his own. The movement is being propelled by a massive groundswell of oh-hell-no-ism in the general population that appears to be bipartisan, persistent, and growing.

It's easy to feel that this is the start of something big. Perhaps mounting attacks over such a large territory all at once wasn't such a good idea for the enemy. Rather than swooping in for easy victories in many locations before the public could react, the tech billionaires behind this onslaught unwittingly created small pockets of resistance in multiple counties that now are now growing like petri dish cultures into a united mass. Come to find out these citizens aren't all beaten down hillbillies so desperate for economic opportunities that they will roll over for anything. Ohioans are now packing meetings and making impassioned speeches and voting out corrupt officials.

The jewel in the crown of the rebellion is a ballot initiative that would allow Ohioans to vote in November on whether to ban all data centers over 25MW. This cut-off effectively prohibits the new hyperscale centers while preserving smaller facilities used for non-AI purposes. The minds behind the initiative created and organized the project at almost super human speed, with less than three months between the official approval of the petition and the deadline for submission of signed copies.

I've lived and voted here for the last quarter century, and in all that time only on a few occasions have I voted with the majority. Year after year my candidate or issue ended up being the losing one, leading me to nearly give up on voting. That all changed in November of 2023 with Issues 1 and 2, when Ohioans voted to legalize marijuana and to guarantee reproductive rights including abortion. The people spoke, and the results shook the political establishment in Ohio and beyond.

I’m feeling positive because I have never before seen citizens so furious and motivated. Instead of Red against Blue, it's the common people versus the wealthy elites. This is the way it has always been of course, but now the façade of Democrats versus Republicans is starting to crumble, exposing the true nature of the opponent. If all goes to plan, in November the people will have a chance to speak again, and I’m ready to be on the winning side.

The first warm days have passed, and they saw me in the garden cutting back, raking, and removing debris in the potager. Getting out into the garden fulfills a basic human need to scratch around in the earth, feel the sun, and loosen disused muscles after the long cold spell. Does cleaning up make me a traitor in the world of ecological gardening? Perhaps it does, but before I'm put on trial I will offer my version of events and allow readers to judge for themselves.

I see advice everywhere to hold off on garden clean-ups, and I often wonder what inexperienced gardeners think of the confusing messages. I picture them looking longingly over garden fences, secateurs hidden away in a drawer to prevent the temptation to snip, afraid to enter lest they disturb a dormant pollinator. I wish I could tell them that it's quite possible to feel no guilt when tidying if you know your garden well and are acquainted with the plants, animals, and microbes that live there.

Across the pond the term garden is used to mean the plot of land surrounding one’s house, an area usually referred to in the United States as the yard. Garden in the U.S. almost invariably indicates a vegetable patch. Whether an area is dedicated to growing food or is serving primarily ornamental or habitat purposes makes a difference in how you should approach clean ups. However, the distinction is rarely made when advice is dispensed, and all garden clean ups are lumped together.

A spring veggie patch clean up is a practically mandatory. In a utilitarian space such as this, no one should feel bad about tidying up at any time. Decaying tomato plants and desiccated squash vines that sprawl everywhere don’t provide habitat for important pollinators, but do harbor pathogens and insect larvae that are best removed and composted. If your garden is like mine, the debris from spent plants is so extensive that tidying up is necessary just to allow access to all areas, and is an ongoing project. My goal is to get the major veg bed clean up done in fall, but there is inevitably still much to be done in spring.

Just because I'm meticulous about a tidy vegetable garden doesn't mean this area doesn't support wildlife. One of the most misleading aspects of the anti-clean up message is that removing or disturbing plant matter is the most critical factor in creating maximum potential for pollinators and other critters. Avoiding the use of insecticides and herbicides, minimizing soil disturbance, and providing water and diverse habitat space all rank as equally important, if not more so. If you haven't furnished the necessary conditions for life in the first place, whether you clean up or not is immaterial.

Because the focus is usually on protecting pollinators, it seems to me that most advice relating to garden clean ups refers not to vegetable patches, but to areas that are dedicated to growing ornamentals or specifically for providing animal habitat. Much of the advice, however (leave the leaves, save the stems) consists of pithy maxims that don’t provide sufficient background explanation. I understand the attraction of catchy slogans, but these are the fast food version of garden education, not the nutritious type.

Must the leaves be left? It’s necessary to leave them in place only if the sole alternative option is bagging them for a trip to the landfill. Leaves are beneficial as mulch in garden beds, but detrimental to lawns, which is where most leaves fall. “Keep the leaves and move them to a spot where they can be useful,” is a better slogan, but unfortunately too clunky. As for refraining from cutting stems, the situation is much more complicated than simplistic memes like the one below imply.

Is a clean bed an empty one? The meme maker is apparently unfamiliar with soil life forms which can be not only present but thriving, even in a “clean” bed. Bare soil will dry out and be subject to disturbance from freezing and thawing, but a layer of mulch can easily take care of this and still look tidy. In my garden, critters from miniscule to small also have many nooks and crannies in which to hide, thanks to bed borders made of logs and stones.

The biggest thing this meme gets wrong is implying that overwintered stems must be left intact to preserve the larvae of solitary bees. Not all stems are hollow or have a soft pith, and therefore won't harbor bees, but there is a bigger error here. A study reported by the North Carolina Extension found that:

Bees have to find a place to overwinter no later than the first fall frost. At this time, stems that grew and flowered the previous summer are dead, but they are generally still whole and intact. This means that bees cannot access their hollow or pithy centers to spend the winter. Indeed, in our study, we found no nests or overwintering bees in first-winter stems.

Judging by this information, there is no point in putting off removing hollow perennial stems from the previous season because they contain no bee larvae. After they have been dead a year, however, stems begin to decay and offer a welcoming spot to lay eggs, so you will need to completely refrain from cutting any hollow or soft pith stems for two years to benefit solitary bees. It seems silly to try keeping track of stem age, but there are two simple alternatives: Never cut anything or cut all stems and move them to a sheltered location where they are not in contact with the ground.

The former requires a dedicated space for a wild area that is minimally disturbed, such as a wildflower meadow. This might sound like a care-free option, but such spaces need significant maintenance to prevent them being taken over by invasive species, trees, or the most aggressive plant in the mix. It is often advised to mow a wildflower plot once a year to keep woody plants from taking over, but this destroys the stems you are seeking to preserve. It's best to learn to identify all the plants in the patch, both the ones you planted and volunteers, and remove unwanted ones by hand.

The easiest way to maintain a tidy garden while still safeguarding tiny critters is to simply have a pile somewhere out of the way. Gently transport your unneeded cuttings and rakings here. A base layer of sticks will keep everything elevated while this year's larvae mature and emerge.

Knowledge about what is happening in your garden is much more valuable than a set of oversimplified rules of garden conduct. The garden, whether vegetable or ornamental, can simultaneously function as a complex ecosystem supporting many life forms, and a tidy space with easy access and enjoyment for humans. Rather than following simplistic advice, spend time observing your outdoor space and really getting to know it. Instead of obsessing over whether it's safe to clean up, do these things:

• Incorporate a water feature. This can be as simple as a bird bath partially filled with small stones or marbles for insects to alight.

• Use leaves, compost, wood chips, or other appropriate organic matter as mulch to constantly feed life in the top layer of soil.

• Create varied conditions of sun, shade, and shelter.

• Use materials such as bricks, stones, and logs as bed borders.

• Most importantly, learn to identify as many plant and animal species that frequent your garden and spend time observing so you can assess the effectiveness of your efforts.

What happened?! Suddenly data centers projects and communities fighting them are everywhere. A few months ago I found out about a proposed data center in my county. Rumors have it that up to 1600 acres of land could be under contract for sale to an unknown company.

No one knows anything for sure because our county commissioners have been negotiating the deal in secret, possibly for years. They signed a non-disclosure agreement and now act as if it is totally normal for county residents to have no input and even no knowledge of a project that will forever and completely change the rural nature of an entire township.

The whole region is under attack by often unknown enemies, and corrupt local officials are facilitating the plunder. Some communities are successfully fighting back or at least insisting on moratoriums while the projects are examined. The towns and counties which present the least resistance will end up with hyperscale data centers. How will Appalachia fare, with its long history of exploitation and fierce resistance? Probably not very well, but there are reasons to be hopeful.

Irate citizens are showing up at town council and county commission meetings to voice their anger, and it is a bipartisan anger. Data center battles seem to transcend the traditional Republican/Democrat divide, with people from both sides understanding the nature of the threat. Lawsuits are being filed and anti-data center signs are popping up across rural landscapes.

Please listen to the audio recording above to better understand the contempt that those who stand to benefit from the data center have for us rubes who aren't smart enough to understand what is good for us. These remarks are from Flite Freiman, local attorney and government employee in Washington County, Ohio. Our long Appalachian history of wealthy white men with dollar signs in their eyes explaining to bumpkins how things work is encapsulated in his five minute speech. Give it a listen and share if so inspired.

To be fair I must give credit where it is due: the Washington County, Ohio, commissioners who decided to betray the people who pay their salaries are Charlie Schilling, Eddie Place, and Greg Nohe. Only the first is an elected official. The second two were appointed when previous commissioners vacated the office. A cynical citizen might notice the convenience of these formers officials leaving their posts just at a time when it was important to install data center supporters in these positions.

While this post is a departure from my usual gardening and opinion fare, I feel it's necessary to use any means at my disposal to get the word out about what is happening in my county and this region. Spring is springing and I'll be sharing the glory of it here, but also providing updates on the pillage of my county. While the proposed data center site is over 20 miles away and poses no immediate threat to my farm, there are frightening air and water pollution issues. Allowing one project to go forward could potentially open the floodgates for further development. Our (unelected) officials are sending a loud and clear message that the county is open for pillage.

A few weeks ago I expressed my wish that a big winter storm would be arrive and provide an excuse for doing nothing. The storm came, but the imagined days of indolence did not. This weather event reminded me to be careful what I wish for.

The storm started nicely enough with fluffy snow (yay!) but soon morphed into freezing rain (boo!) When the rain ended, the temperature dropped into single digits and stayed low for several weeks. The lowest temperature was -8°F (-22°C) and we routinely woke up with the mercury at 0°F. We ended up with four inches of snow sealed under a layer of ice not quite thick enough to hold the weight of an average adult. This made walking anywhere a huge pain, with paths treacherous and uneven like trails of frozen Lego parts.

Meanwhile the wood supply was dwindling rapidly and it was getting harder to coax heat from the big woodstove, indicating the catalytic conbustor needed replacing. The day before the wood ran out I was able to get a load delivered, giant chunks of barely-seasoned oak that needed to be split into smaller pieces and placed around the stove to thaw. Their length made them unusable in the smaller cook stove, so I made do with the Dutchwest with the combustor disengaged.

For the remainder of the cold snap the stove limped along on subpar fuel, sans combustor, barely keeping one room in the comfort zone. I lived in my pajamas (why not?), climbing into coveralls and multiple layers every two hours to carry hot water to the barn to thaw waterers, and to split more wood. We were able to leave to get supplies, but the twin ruts in the driveway soon became more suitable for luge than car tires. (The trick is to go fast — really fast — and not stop until you're on the plowed road.)

Being a winter person, I don't really mind conditions like this. The worst part was having to waddle like a penguin when outdoors due to multiple clothing layers and very slick, bumpy paths. The experience acted as a good warning that conditions can change quickly and for the worse. I truly thought we had plenty of wood at the New Year, but I should have paid more attention to it and not procrastinated when it came to finding someone to deliver more.

Catastrophe was avoided during the storm and the bitter cold that followed. Yes, I could have planned better, but everything turned out okay in the end. It's important to anticipate extreme events like cold, damaging storms, and floods, and prepare accordingly to avoid disaster. It is important to have stores of needful items like seasoned wood, and the physical and mental energy to cope with whatever comes your way. I found that the mere act of walking was exhausting in the aftermath of the storm, and had to ration my energy accordingly.

While severe storms and other potentially disastrous events might use up planning budgets and sap reserves, there is a more insidious thief of time and resources. Over the years, falling prey to the fallacy of sunk costs has drained more of my energy than dealing with unforeseen disasters. The sunk costs trap makes us irrationally put effort into things we shouldn't, just to justify the time we've already spent. We all do it, and learning to identify when we're doing it can help us to stop.

I was faced with the power of this pitfall while splitting the greenish oak that we so desperately needed to stay warm. If after several strikes a piece failed to split, I knew I should set it aside to wait for the repair of the gas splitter. After all, I had plenty of wood now and it made sense to work on the easy pieces with no knots. But I wasn't going to do that, dammit! I was going to split that wood! I kept telling myself after five or six strikes that surely one more would do the trick.

I eventually recognized what I was doing, and started making deals with myself so I could stop. If a piece didn't easily split, I would set aside the recalcitrant wood, and when I came back next time I would allow it a few more hits. Then I would give up if it refused to cleave, and put it in a special pile for naughty/knotty wood. Not a perfect solution, but at least I recognized the foolishness of what I had been doing and had a plan in place to deal with it.

Spending a few extra minutes on jobs when I'm laid off and not pressed for time is not a terrible thing. At least I got something useful out of it by honing my splitting skills, because to be honest I'm not an expert wood splitter. Over the years I’ve done things far more wasteful than spending too much time on firewood. I moved an ailing azalea around for years despite it never having more than a few leaves, before I finally uprooted it and tossed it over the hill. I've made garden space too far away from the house in a spot that was quickly becoming shaded as trees grew, and tried to make it work for way too long.

My biggest lesson in sunk costs has come from the orchard. Orchards are touted as good long-term food sources that require minimal work since they need only be planted once, and just need maintenance once they are producing. Mine takes up lots of space and needs more pruning than I can handle, and outside of a few exceptional years we've barely gotten any food from it. Theory and practice diverged radically in this case, though I made mighty efforts to keep up with the work for many years.

When reality caught up to me, it was delivered by fire blight, ill-timed frosts, and the difficulty of pruning full size trees. Fire blight is a bacterial disease that attacks apple and pear trees, and so far it has killed off four American and two Asian pear trees, leaving me with several young trees which I assume will succumb eventually.

I could treat this disease and take other steps to improve tree health and thereby increase the harvest, but I'm not going to do so. Much better to admit it isn't worth it and move on. Since the orchard trees also serve the functions of providing shade, blocking the view of the neighbor’s house, and simply being beautiful, I will keep them, and I feel no resentment toward them for their lack of fruit.

In the garden, coddling ailing plants can bleed time and effort. Function stacking makes the fruit trees worth the space given over to them, and I will nurse a rare specimen such as my mountain laurel shrub simply because it is the only one I have. Other plants such as my ailing azalea should be culled before they cost significant effort. Annuals need to be yanked if they aren't living up to their potential. I force myself to remove vegetable starts and bedding flowers that are stunted or slug damaged because pampering them drains effort and wastes space that could be filled by a healthy, productive plant. This can be a hard task for new gardeners who treasure each small attempt at life, but I'm now at the point where I realize it's best to yank ‘em and be done.

If you try to save unhealthy or non-producing annual plants, nature will cut your struggle short at the end of the season. Perennial plants take more discipline because we imagine great harvests in future years that will make all efforts worthwhile. Current sustainable farming wisdom advises investing in perennial crops because in the long run they produce more food with less work than annuals, while also lessening tillage and its associated problems such as erosion and destruction of soil structure. Annual row cropping as conventionally practiced also relies on heavy use of synthetic chemicals. Hence there is strong feeling among sustainable farming advocates that permanent crops like tree fruits and nuts, berries, and perennial grains are the way to go.

I agree in principle, which is one reason I sought to establish the orchard and various types of berries in the potager. I also have several beds devoted to asparagus, and tried maple syrup production early on. If I am totally honest in my assessment of work versus reward, however, these efforts haven't panned out. In the quarter century that I've been raising asparagus I've never gotten a decent crop. Berries need constant pruning to control spread and assure a harvest, and are often decimated by fungal problems. I abandoned maple syrup production when it became clear that a ridiculous amount of firewood was required to boil it down.

These experiences haven't changed my belief that it's a good idea to transition to agriculture that relies more on perennial crops. All the problems I faced can and have been overcome by others, but it's also true that I should cut my losses when something isn't working for me personally. Books, videos, and social media are full of advice about the best way to do things, and it's possible to waste lots of time way only to discover that best practices vary from person to person and from site to site. Clinging to someone else's idea of what is best will quickly lead to sunk cost problems, even when it makes total sense theoretically.

I’ve always tried to avoid implying that my way is the best way, which is perhaps one reason I'm an unsuccessful garden writer. Most people are looking for pat answers and don't want to hear that you must figure much of it out for yourself. And it's not just soil, weather, and other local conditions that dictate the “best” way to proceed. The make-up of the gardener must be taken into account. Someone else could have made the fruit trees a success, especially if they considered it a blast to climb around in trees and on ladders with sharp tools, and loved observing, tending, and immediately treating any problems that arose. What I view in retrospect as regrettable sunk costs, someone else might have experienced as self-actualization, and this totally changes the way labor figures in a cost/benefit analysis.

All projects have costs in the form of money, space, natural resources, wear and tear on the body. The most obvious and important cost — labor — is also the most slippery to define and the most difficult to place on our balance sheet. Our notion of labor is distorted by a culture that insists it must always be a cost, something to finish up so we can go have fun. For an enthusiastic gardener pursuing a labor of love that also happens to produce food, the line between cost and benefit blurs.

I can't instruct someone on the best way to grow tomatoes or build a compost pile or house chickens based on efficiency because I don't know which tasks she considers drudgery and which are labors of love. If you love what you're doing, time spent isn't a sunk cost, it's just living your life, and no time or effort is wasted if you're loving the process. I spend many hours each year moving perennials around just to get the right look. What many might consider a total waste of time is for me an exciting, long-term art project. Though I expect a return on investment in the form of luscious foliage and beautiful color, I consider no part of it to be lost time and effort under any circumstances.

No matter how hard we try to plan ahead, incurring sunk costs on projects that are eventually abandoned is inevitable. Like my orchard which provides so many benefits besides fruit, however, good things will result as well. Exercise. Time spent in fresh air and sunshine. Skills honed, knowledge gained, lessons learned. If you’re paying attention and enjoying yourself, nothing is really lost.

When I was in my twenties and between rentals, I lived for a few months with friends in an off-grid cabin. A wood stove provided heat, a propane tank powered the gas fridge and gave us light and hot water. Occasionally the generator was fired up for special jobs like doing laundry, but this wasn't strictly necessary since we could easily drive the three or so miles to the laundromat in town.

With hot meals and showers, and cold beer, we weren’t really living primitively, just a simplier, lower-impact life than that of neighbors who were hooked up to the grid. Nor was the cabin truly remote, though it was surrounded by woods and there was almost complete privacy. Bars, restaurants, and gas stations were a short drive away. This situation fit the definition of “off-grid” however, because back then the term simply meant a home that was not hooked up to the local electric service provider.

Over the years the meaning of off-grid has evolved, and now it has the connotation of a remote enclave insulated from the outside world. It is often used with the assumption of a replacement of grid service with personal solar power rather than eliminating electricity needs or reducing them to the bare minimum. Implicit in the term is the idea of escape—physical escape from urban confines to rural freedom, and relief from the tyranny of the 9 to 5 grind. “Off-grid” evokes a release from dependence on the outside world, and protection from it when the shit hits the fan.

The reality is that escape of this type is impossible for the vast majority of the population. Even the mega-wealthy with the wherewithal to buy their own islands can't truly escape, and it's a different kind of getaway they seek anyway, heavy on privacy but still dependent on the outside world for luxury provisions.

For regular folks seeking the freedom implied in off-grid living, there remains no wild frontier in the United States in which to hide from the world. Perhaps in Alaska there are still places to retreat where no one else cares to go, where at least the feeling of escape could be had. A more realistic goal for most aspirants is a bit of land in a rural area with little zoning and distant neighbors, surrounded by a sufficient buffer to feel safe and private — not complete escape, but an acceptable facsimile.

Even this more humble objective is a pipedream for many due to land costs. Homesteading in the historical sense ended in 1976, and if you want land you will pay for it and be on the hook for property taxes for as long as you own it. Adding necessary buildings and infrastructure piles more expense on top.

Despite the difficulties in achieving the off-grid lifestyle popularized on YouTube and TikTok, the idea of such a life is a powerful force. We can watch videos of attractive young homesteaders doing their thing, maybe learn a little from them, and fantasize about doing it ourselves. Such videos act as potent infomercials for a life that for most of us will never be ours. Like the best advertisements, though, they offer a way to participate in the experience in small bits, by buying the affordable items that support the lifestyle. Automatic door openers and specially designed waterers for the chicken house. Pressure cookers, dehydraters, water purifiers for the kitchen. Solar panels for power. Guns and knives for hunting and protection. Chainsaws, wheelbarrows, and all manner of hand tools to get the job done.

The lists goes on and on, as I found when I searched for “must have homestead items.” Many of the things on the lists are useful and some are imperative for the DIY life, and I'm not faulting the list makers for bad advice nor condemning them for affiliate marketing. It needs to be questioned, however, whether adopting a lifestyle that requires so much stuff really constitutes a simplification of one's life. Implicit in the idea of the off-grid life is something more than physically removing oneself to a private and protected rural spot. The term also holds the notion of exiting the treadmill of unfulfilling work and instead learning to provide for your own basic needs. Somewhere along the line the idea of making do with less, which should be intrinsic to any such project, seems to have been lost.

Will you really need an ATV and a Kubota with 16 attachments? A full set of leather working tools? A generator? Possibly you will, depending on your living arrangements and the work you will be doing. There are a couple questions that need asking first. Will you really have time to accomplish all the work that these tools imply? Can the jobs in question be completed without the expensive equipment? There is a simple way to answer such questions: By easing into the work rather than jumping in whole hog from the get-go, you can determine as you go along what you really need.

I started gardening with simple hand tools, and eliminated the need for a tiller by practicing no-till gardening. Permanent beds are actually less work, and much kinder to the soil. We use tractors here, but they are the smallest size they can be and still get the job done. A quick dabble in butchering demonstrated that it wasn't practical unless done at scale, and supporting local meat farmers made much more sense. This obviated the need for any specialized equipment, fortunately before I purchased it.

Admitting that it's impractical to try to do everything for yourself is helpful in the process of paring down the list of “must-have” items. Outsourcing certain jobs that require specific skills and tools makes total sense. In no village in the world did everyone produce everything: Instead there were bakers, brewers, leather and metal workers, etc. People are much happier when they are able to focus on jobs that align with their skills and interests, and doing so is necessary in order to avoid being overwhelmed. A great side effect of sourcing necessities from your community is that it helps to get to know people and integrate yourself into it.

Is it worth investing in all the smaller gadgets that promise to be labor-saving? It is easy to spend a lot of money on such items, especially when they are hyped by influencers as super useful, and each individual item isn't terribly pricey. Remember that many of these folks are making money by selling you stuff, and often haven't been doing the work for very long. I mentioned automatic chicken door openers because to me they are emblematic of the useful but unnecessary doodads that separate people from their money — and from real work. What better way to sabotage your new life full of meaningful tasks than remove walks to the chicken house? Fortunately you will be going out there anyway to feed, water, and collect eggs and will naturally start to wonder if you could combine trips and get rid of the gadget altogether.

If you decide to keep your door opener, you will learn that such things don't last forever. The higher the technology, and the more moving parts a thing has, the more chances for something to go wrong. When gadgets need repair or replacement, an immediate cost/benefit analysis should result. For me this usually ends with the decision that it wasn't worth it and I won't buy another. The more expensive the item, the more money I spent on my experiment that led me to this conclusion.

Big ticket items — and even most small ones —are not something you want to experiment with to find out if they are truly necessary. It should be done the other way round — try to get along without it first and see how that goes. Counterintuitive as it may seems to many, the more you spend on sophisticated items with high embedded energy, the more dependent you will be on the civilized world. This can be explained in one word: parts. When you make a run for your newly acquired land encumbered with a hefty payload of materiel for your battle against the wild, be aware that the need for replacement parts will lurking, waiting for a chance to bite you in the ass. Equally essential are the tools for dismantling and reassembling the broken item. The more complicated your equipment, the more tools you’ll need to have on hand. I believe in fixing broken things oneself, but I believe more deeply in eliminating items that need a lot of fixing in the first place.

An example of technology that never needs fixing: cast iron cookware. This is my kind of technology. It’s sophisticated enough that I can't manufacture it for myself, but once I've acquired it I never have to worry about repair or replacement. No moving parts and you don't even have to wash it. What could be better?

The tech I like to rag on the most is solar power. People who dream of retreating to a off-grid sanctuary powered by solar live partially in a world of fantasy. These folks might be temporarily better off than their neighbors if the grid goes down, but are ultimately dependent on a complicated concatenation of elements that runs from the panels themselves through controllers, inverters, and batteries, to the item that is being powered. It’s a stretch to claim that this represents a simplification if it merely replicates an electricity powered lifestyle without the grid hook-up. If you're in a position to take for granted the uninterrupted capability to power electrical tools and appliances, you will do so, making it all the more difficult for you if your system fails. The system is only as good as its weakest link, and will need upkeep and spare parts at some point. You might have the best and most reliable system on the market to light your home, but an ice storm at the production end, or a lack of lightbulbs at the point of use, will cripple it.

It might sound like I'm anti-solar power, but that's not strictly accurate. It some cases it might be the best way to go. For those of us for whom cost prohibits such a route, there are other options. One is old-style off-grid living, where you avoid reliance on electricity altogether. In the 90’s, my friends and I were still able to enjoy most modern conveniences courtesy of the propane tank. Though we were still dependent on regular propane deliveries, this was a much cheaper and lower tech option than solar.

The least hyped option — and the one available to the most people— is to stay hooked to the grid, but reduce your dependency on it. This might sound backwards, especially after my claim that having a constant power supply will make you take it for granted. It is possible to consciously tackle this conundrum, however, and work to establish back up systems. In an extended outage, my home will still have heat and the ability to cook food by using natural gas, and if the gas goes out we have the additional backup of wood. We will have a clean water supply until the tower runs dry and the water company can't pump it full. In a continuing emergency we can resort to boiling rainwater from various collection tanks and barrels. All this might not be ideal, but it's doable, since monthly charges for utilities are miniscule compared to the cost of installing solar or drilling a well.

There needs to be more emphasis on the “simplify your life right now” part of the homesteading dream, as opposed to the “build a zombie-proof fortress as soon as I save enough money” portion. Apartment dwellers won't be keeping livestock (probably) but there is no reason they can’t cook from scratch with food in season and bake with sourdough starter. Learning skills like mending and sewing, producing home remedies, and basic first aid don’t need to be carried out in rural retreat. If fact, it would be better to simply separate altogether the basic, DIY skills aspect from the need to own rural land, especially from the fascination with “raw” land.

“Raw land” in real estate jargon has no infrastructure, not even roads, and those who speak of searching for raw land to purchase most likely mean unimproved land, which is accessible by car, but not built upon yet. Regardless, it needs to be acknowledged that a common version of the current back-to-the-land dream (in the Eastern US at least) necessitates expanding into areas that are most likely second or third growth forest with functioning ecosystems and little development. In other words, exactly the spaces that should be spared from encroachment, perhaps not wilderness, but the best of what is left after centuries of extraction.

Beyond the acquisition of the astonishing amount of stuff that is encouraged by the off-grid fantasy, it is this that bothers me the most: the unexamined belief in these green spaces as some sort of frontier, and expansion into them as something other than sprawl. What if everyone could afford their ideal, remote paradise? The unfettered dream of self-sufficient fiefdoms would mean land outside of preserved areas would be snapped up and eager homesteaders would be begin cutting, clearing, and building structures.

The idea of carving out a place and a livelihood in the wilderness for one's family, a 19th century leftover, has to go. This statement might sound like hypocrisy coming from someone who already has their piece of heaven, and who is complaining that it would be ruinous to let everyone else gets theirs. In my defense, my location is not remote, and consists of former farmland that butts up against industrial and dense residential areas. Let me propose an alternative dream of escape: Multiple families or groups of single people form co-ops to purchase existing housing and land in areas abandoned by industry or farming interests. An emphasis is placed on human labor rather than expensive mechanical slaves dependent on parts and repairs. Older structures are rehabilitated. Land is evaluated for best uses while owners are inhabiting it and getting to know it.

The homestead vision as often portrayed is one of buying land and a lot of stuff and retreating from society. I think most folks are more realistic and dream of simply getting out of crowded cities and suburbs, but still have unreasonable goals of how much they can accomplish, leading to the purchase of lots of stuff they might never use. People tend to love gadgets and gewgaws, and since an overwhelming portion of human endeavor goes into persuading the public to purchase such things, this trend is unlikely to change.

On the other hand, there is undeniably a strong element of DIY folks who are intent on reskilling and exploring self-sufficiency in a more simple and earth-friendly manner. Many of them write here on Substack. These are the voices that need to be brought to the forefront of any meaningful homesteading movement. Feel free to link to your favorites in the comments. I hope everyone enjoyed the pictures. It won't be long before this:

Turns into this:

Gentle readers,

It has been over a year since we were last in communication, and many of you have no doubt feared the worst. A unfortunate accident high in the Himalayas. A dangerous run-in with backwoods dwellers. A severe infection from a soil-covered garden implement.

I can assure you that none of these scenarios has come to pass. The truth is quite different—an extreme lassitude has overcome me in these past months as I struggle to come to terms with the remarkable advancements in the realm of Artificial Intelligence, and the way they are potentially revolutionizing not only writing, but reading. Not quite sure what I'm going on about? Let's take a deep dive.

During the past year I have become obsessed with attempting to identify AI presence in everything that I read—to the point that content has become not just secondary, but completely immaterial. My consuming goal has been to detect the signs of the non-human, left behind like grubby, machine-generated fingerprints in specific words and phrases, easily recognizable with the proper tools. Crouched in my cave-like abode, I have become like a reverse Dr. Frankenstein, striving over the not-quite-human, not in an attempt to create and animate, but to expose and banish.

During this dark time not only have words on the screen or page become completely devoid of meaning for me. I have also been tortured by the thought that should I again become capable of writing something, my own words will be scrutinized by others merely for the purpose of ferreting out the influence of artificial intelligence, their message lost to this obsessive task. Further contemplation of the topic served as a stepping stone to the realization that perhaps all along I have peppered my writing with unforgivable clichés. Perhaps my writing has not been groundbreaking, with the potential to revolutionize the thoughts of all who read it—as I had previously believed—but corny and amateurish.

During this past year I have suffered nightmares of the most abominable sort. I dreamed that LLMs were trained exclusively on my writing, which was the source of all the shop-worn metaphors and banality found in AI writing. In the worst of my nighttime visions I am trapped on a spot-lit stage while faceless Luddites hurl bitter melons at me, my parents (Jean-Claude Van Damme and P. D. James) standing in the wings with stern but approving looks. (I won't be providing a deep dive into this aspect of the nightmare, though a more robust evaluation is definitely needed!)

For now let's delve into the details of my state of mind as I set out into the new year. Weary and desultory after months of endless consumption of meaningless words, I came to a realization. It wasn't that my answers were incorrect. I was asking the wrong questions. Previously I had wondered if it was possible for humans, even boomers, to successfully identify AI influences in writing. My new question is, “Can an unwavering commitment to the exciting and groundbreaking technology of AI play a crucial role in determining my retirement income?”

I threw myself into the new task of gaining a nuanced understanding of the problem. The potential of significantly enhancing revenue streams by harnessing the ever evolving wonders of our digital age cannot be overstated, and no doubt my readers are waiting with bated breath for a comprehensive overview.

Unfortunately for you, dear reader, I saw reason and have decided not to provide an in-depth overview of my valuable insights, nor offer any actionable tips. Not because I don't deeply care about my readers. But because I’d rather use my knowledge to benefit solely myself. That's not selfishness. That's common sense. I will, of course, continue to offer my usual content. Nothing useful. Nothing profound. Just fluff. And that's not a threat. It's a promise.

I checked the date of my last piece and it was published nearly a month ago. I assure you that I have numerous (numerous!) drafts of partially written articles, but it might be a while before any come to fruition. I don't suffer from writer's block exactly, but lately I tend to erase, cut, paste, and rewrite to the point of silliness. As a partial and temporary remedy I've challenged myself to type out a piece allowing the bare minimum of backspacing, and absolutely no excising of entire paragraphs to be pasted into new drafts with the intention of expanding them into future masterpieces.

I thought subject matter more of a personal nature than usual would be a good way to welcome new subscribers as we dip our feet into the waters of 2026. I've finally broken the 300 sub barrier (for the second time. The first time I slipped back under rather quickly, but this time feels a bit more secure.) I think the problem with gaining subscribers from recommendations, which is the usual source, is that I don't necessarily tackle the same same topics as my recommenders. Those who advise their readers to subscribe to Turtle Paradise do so, I believe, out of an admirable sense of solidarity and a desire to promote original writing in general. If any of you are reading this, please note that I am humbled by your support and immensely grateful.

Long story, shortened: A flurry of subscribes is usually followed by an outbreak of unsubscribes, with a very slow uptick of loyal readers. If anyone new is reading this, perhaps I can entice you to stay a while by providing details of my personal life, and the promise of a cleavage photo if you make it to the end of this newsletter.

We're deep into January now, and it is 11°F (-12°C) here in southern Ohio. Messing around with the Fahrenheit to Celsius converter, I just learned that if it were 11.42857°F (which it might be) it would be exactly -11.42857 °C. (Now it is no doubt becoming clear to readers why it is so difficult for me to finish a piece of writing.)

To introduce myself to new readers and offer background to longtime ones, I'll offer a description of a typical day for me this time of year. Due to the seasonal nature of my paid work, I'm laid off for much of the winter, so my routine now is quite different from that of other seasons. I get up usually between 3 and 4 AM and stock the woodstove or restart it, as the case may be. I climb into the number of clothing layers appropriate for the weather, leash the dog, and head to the barn, where I feed the horses and refresh their water as necessary. Nights are so long now and I don't like them having to wait until daylight to tank up. A quick return trip through the orchard for Josie to relieve herself and we're back inside where I reverse the dressing process.

Being human, I'm always a little bit resentful each morning that I must go through this routine yet again. Until I actually get outside, that is. As I step foot off the porch, a miraculous change occurs as I realize how lucky I am. No one else is out—no humans anyway—and there is actual quiet, a rare commodity here in our road-filled valley. If the night is calm, I can hear the sounds of unknown critters twittering and rustling in the dark. This morning I was treated to a new sound. At first the creaks and cracks mystified me, arriving randomly from all points north and west in a manner that ruled out footsteps. The -11.42857°C reading on the thermometer clued me in that ice forming on the river that curves around the property must be the explanation.

For a few precious moments I own the night, warm and comfortable and miraculously still wearing my pajamas, which form my base layer. When I finally go back inside, the house now feels deliciously toasty. I remove the stove ashes and feed it again if necessary, the small firebox requiring frequent loading. I then turn my attention to coffee making and drinking, and often writing, while the dark prevents any further outdoor work. Once daylight arrives I suit up again to feed and water everyone, release them to the outdoors, and remove manure as needed. In the late afternoon the chores will be repeated, the intervening time given over to a mix of indoor chores, idle pursuits, and winter projects.

Such projects this year include working on next year’s firewood and horse training. For the former, I had the local tree service take down three trees—a misleading number because each one had three or four main trunks—and a very large limb off another. These trees were threatening to drop walnuts and dead limbs on structures and vehicles and therefore had to go. To save money, I had the crew simply drop the entirety of the material in situ, so I've had the job of hauling brush away and moving chunks of tree closer to the woodshed.

All was going well until the borrowed splitter ceased working. The owner offered possible explanations for its demise, which included digressions on the modifications and improvements he had made, and a description of the act of repair, but no timeline for it. I don't blame him for not wanting to undertake the job in this weather. Wood splitting is indefinitely on hold. Luckily I got quite a bit of it split and stacked before the breakdown, and I'm proud of the results.

As part of the winter routine, I work with the horses as much as possible, with the goal of having the mare safely rideable outside fenced enclosures sometime this year. Yesterday’s lesson plan took an unexpected turn when the mare stepped on a wooden pallet and got her hoof stuck. Her patience quickly exhausted by the cumbersome appendage now attached to her foot, she panicked and took down a gate and its associated posts, boards, and hardware. Imagine the structure pictured below lying shattered on the floor and you’ll get the idea. A mini-project resulted which I was luckily able to get done before time for the horses to come back inside.

Readers might reasonably ask why such a hazard was left in the way in the first place, and I would answer that it wasn't. It was off to the side of the route we have always traveled safely, and I'm still not sure how the hoof got over there. I blame the malevolent and invisible fairies that hover around horses all over the world, bringing trouble and misfortune to the beasts. These evil creatures cause the poor equines to break down fences, lose halters, cover themselves completely in mud, and let loose copious amounts of urine in their stalls, seconds before turn-out. The horses are completely innocent and as bewildered as their humans as to the cause of such mishaps, as you can tell simply by looking into their eyes after the unfortunate events.

Another small project I tackled recently was removing finished compost to make room for fresh manure in the compost factory. The Camp Chickapoo flock spends the winter in a warm barn lean-to, their summer home being much too drafty. Here their natural tendency to scratch is harnessed to hasten the transition of horse poop to compost. Every so often I need to empty out a portion of the enclosure and wall it off so it can be filled with the fresh stuff, as illustrated below.

I had put off the task of removing the finished product because, unlike many gardeners, I have an excess of compost and no place to put it. My garden beds are maxed out since I spent the fall digging out and spreading the main compost pile in the potager. This is a good problem to have, and I'm not complaining. If fresh, living compost was valued more, I might be able to give it away, but it is full of weed seeds and possibly the larvae of Asian jumping worms. For other gardeners these drawbacks might be concerning, while for me they are totally inconsequential because the garden is already infected with both. I solved the problem by storing the harvested compost in feed sacks in the barn, confident I will find a use for it in the spring.

When the light begins to fail, I make sure the wood boxes are stocked and spend some time ruminating on all the projects I haven't started and probably won't. Each year is the same: In December, the winter stretches out into the dim distance full of potential. A month later I'm wondering where the time and motivation went. I reassure myself that if I keep up my momentum there is still time for flower bed poison ivy removal, fence repair, and filling mud holes with wood chips. But really I'm wishing for a massive snowstorm that shuts down the region and brings all work to a screeching halt. Chances look good for this weekend with predictions of up to 12 inches. Such a large amount is rare for this area, but fingers are crossed. Enjoy the cleavage!

I didn't set out to write about invasive species in December, but during the last month of autumn they jump out in the landscape, reminding me of their presence. Callery pear and burning bush spectacularly announce themselves, while the more muted Japanese honeysuckle covers a scaffolding of less aggressive plants like a blanket. As tree leaves fall, this vine is also revealed on the trunks of young sycamores and black cherries, scrambling to get as high as possible to maximize its share of sunlight.

Nearby, on the power company right-of-way that bisects the property, Chinese maiden grass has come to dominate since this strip of land was brushhogged a few years ago. Though it may surprise land stewards who are concerned about invasive species, I've been enjoying this plant that waves happily from roadsides all over the region.

Silver grass, maiden grass, or Miscanthus sinensis if you prefer, is still widely available at garden centers. Buyers seem not to notice or care that the plant they are purchasing has become a weed. The same is true of other plants like callery pear, burning bush, and barberry, which have also gained footholds in young woods and abandoned acreages all over this area. This incognizance of plant shoppers can be understood by the fact that for the average person, invasive species fall into two distinct groups: those that spread by seed and bamboo.

There are many other ways to divide invasives into binaries, but the bamboo/everything-else separation illustrates why the average landowner is unconcerned and even unaware that invasive exotics are a problem. A few decades ago, bamboo—specifically, Golden bamboo, or Phyllostachys aurea, not one of the other members of the 1,399 species of the bamboo tribes—was sold extensively in the eastern US, leading to landowners discovering its ability to take over entire backyards by sending out runners, and waging protracted battles to eradicate it.

Most other exotics sold at the time (and sold still) spread by seed, and tend to cause problems far away in spots of no concern to the typical homeowner such as parks, young forests, and roadsides. Thus privet, Euonymus fortunei and alatus, buckthorn, and many other plants that are listed as invasive in Ohio are not troubling to most people because they are out of sight and out of mind. Though they spread their seeds far and wide, their spawn is unlikely to survive in manicured lawns and landscape beds regularly subjected to weed control measures. In the typical yard, barberries and Bradford pears appear to be well-mannered, with only the occasional pruning needed to keep them tidy and thriving. Hence, members of the general public become apoplectic when discussing bamboo, but drive with complete indifference past fields full of exotic plants on their way pay top dollar for the same at the garden center.

It might be assumed that native plants never gained popularity as yard specimens because they were ubiquitous in local woods and field margins, and were therefore considered common. With a multitude of exotic garden center favorites now dominating in woodlands—and many natives now difficult to find—one might hope the trend would reverse. Unfortunately most homeowners haven't adjusted their tastes accordingly to view natives as more desirable landscape plants due to their rarity. All the usual exotic suspects are still being sold in great numbers (excluding a few such as banned callery pear.)

This suggests it was never about craving the new and exotic: Shoppers merely bought what they were sold. Most of the plants on offer at the local nursery are there because they are quick and easy to propagate, hard to kill, and deer-resistant. For these reasons, these plants are the ones that the landscape industry wants to sell. Salespeople can make credible claims about their hardiness and ease of care, and customers go home happy and stay happy because the claims bear out. Unfortunately, the characteristics described above allow such exotics to outcompete native plants once they escape coiffed landscape beds.

This is the state of affairs that has led to maiden grass rippling gracefully on local road banks and crowding our right-of-way. Unlike bamboo, it is a clumping grass, slowly forming a larger mass as it matures, but lacking runners to take over entire beds and backyards. Hence, homeowners consider it a well-behaved plant. Pollination and eventual dispersal of countless seeds by wind is assured, however, and Miscanthus is a highly successful cultivation escapee.

Readers will remember that I mentioned I was enjoying it though, and indeed I am. There is little I can do about it in the short run, so I might as well appreciate its graceful beauty. I also admire the extraordinary autumn colors of callery pear and burning bush, and I hope that all who witness them can appreciate their extravagant beauty. Walking around full of hate and anger toward the plants I encounter would accomplish nothing, but this seems to be the default position of many who seek to garden ecologically or restore land.

Enjoying plants considered to be invasive, or a least making the best of them, isn't usually suggested as a way to deal with such species. The three major stances toward invasives I’ve come across are: indifference or outright denial that they exist (excepting bamboo of course!) declaration of war against, and rejection of the concept itself on the grounds that such species have a role to play in ecosystems. I don't entirely agree or disagree with any of these perspectives, and I don't base decisions about what work I do in the former cornfield (now know as the Savanna) based on studying the ideology behind each. I make those determinations by observation and getting to know the land better and better each year. My opinion at the moment is that maiden grass isn't all bad: It provides shelter for small creatures, especially in the snow, forming perfect little refuges as shown in the photograph below. It takes up space that could be occupied by worse plants (I place invasives on a scale.) It displaces native plants for sure, but both Miscanthus and the plants it has crowded out are temporary citizens here in the Savanna anyway.

This former cornfield is rapidly becoming forest, with sycamores shooting up in the dampest spots and beginning to cast enough shade to make a difference. In the dryer areas upslope, pawpaws are asserting their sovereignty in a grove dense enough to discourage undergrowth. Observing native plants thriving and muscling out invasives makes it much easier to stop fretting about them. I'm not advising total unconcern, just acknowledging that constant obsessing over something not completely in your control is not good for mental health.

In the case of maiden grass, a sun-loving plant, I'm confident I will see less of it as trees mature and block the light. Shade-tolerant plants like wintercreeper present more of a difficulty since they can easily colonize a mature forest. I most certainly do not enjoy looking at this plant as it slithers across the ground, searching for trees to climb. If not stopped, one vine can eventually take over an entire tree, effectively smothering it by blocking light to its leaves. I’m not suggesting that plants such as these need to be enjoyed and appreciated, but the all-consuming rage against them that I've encountered isn't helpful either. I'm not in total control of what grows on the property and I'm obviously not able to stop the continuing sales of this plant.

This sort of attitude sometimes riles people who believe that everyone everywhere should be doing all they can at all times to eradicate invasive species. The intent to completely expunge invasive plants and create some sort of ecological purity bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the attitude of homeowners hell-bent on excluding every plant in their lawn but quarter inch wide blades of fescue, clipped at two and a half inches. Being a good land steward means being realistic and admiting that we are not totally in control.

In order not to descend into the madness of needing such control, I find the best way forward is to formulate a plan with realistic goals. I spend a certain amount of time each winter freeing trees from the grip of strangling vines, and chopping down (or girdling when appropriate) callery pears, autumn olives, and bush honeysuckle. It’s important to move beyond focusing exclusively on removing undesirables and to encourage the plants I want, plus introduce appropriate new ones. Some years I purchase a few native trees to plant, and I (ethically) collect native seeds on hikes in the national forest for spreading in the Savanna.

I also increase fertility by occasionally spreading manure. This might seem antithetical to restoration goals because it sounds like I'm feeding the very thing that I want rid of, but by adding nutrients and improving the land overall, I'm actually helping move things in a positive direction. Many of the exotic species so loathed by landowners are thriving because they compete well in conditions of very low fertility. Improving soil fertility jump starts succession and allows desirable plants to better compete.

I can tell I'm doing it right because each year the sycamores are taller and the pawpaw groves wider, and I'm still able to enjoy plants like maiden grass. I’m looking forward to spring when there will be a stirring across the Savanna. On breezeless days, careful listeners can easily hear it. It is maiden grass pushing up from below, causing old stems to crackle and shift, making way for new growth.

I've always been an enthusiastic eater. As a toddler I attacked my food with gusto (according to my mother) and have continued the habit into middle age. I retain memories of food and drink from my past at the expense of what some might consider more meaningful remembrances, recalling restaurant meals from 35 years ago in great detail, while struggling to name my companions.

While eating good food has always been a priority, as days shorten and nights grow chilly it occupies my thoughts even more than usual. This is normal. Humans are animals after all and it's natural for us to feel an urge to replenish fat stores as we head into leaner days. Our bodies are telling us to eat more while we can, before sunlight weakens and food grows scarce and we need the calories just to stay warm.

These days, however, our urge to eat backfires. Most of us keep plenty of fat stored up, and with every type of food imaginable kept year-round on grocery store shelves, eating large amounts of everything available is unnecessary and inadvisable. For our ancestors, I imagine late summer and autumn feasts as extremely enjoyable celebrations that strengthened communities physically and socially, and prepared participants to meet the challenges of winter. Now the end of year holidays are more often than not a source of guilt and indigestion as we eat more than we should of foods laden with sugar, preservatives, and artificial fats that weren't available to our ancestors.

Somewhere along the line our relationship with fall feasting changed and we no longer face the shared challenge of feeding ourselves in winter. Being freed from the stress of food worry in winter isn't a bad thing, but not only have we been set loose from the seasonal imperative of eating to prepare for winter, we've in large part abandoned seasonality altogether. Now we rely on food trucked or shipped from far away that has no connection to where we live.

I'm using the term seasonal eating to mean consuming food at its peak of goodness that has required mimimal processing, storage, and travel. It would be difficult to eat a totally seasonal diet in northern climes, but I strive to maximize this portion of my diet. During summer months we consume as much of the vegetable stream as possible as it flows from garden to house to chickens and compost pile. Now in November we are eating sweet potatoes, carrots, and winter squash from the garden, local eggs, and raw milk fresh from Amish Holsteins and Jerseys.

The obvious benefits of this type of eating include supporting local farmers and getting superior nutrition into your body, but it also provides a direct connection with the land itself. Reconnecting with the natural world is necessary if we want to preserve it and our sanity, and this is often taken to mean spending time in wild areas. Integrating our eating habits with the local and seasonal is another way to forge ties with the natural world that deserves a place next to hiking and camping. This doesn't have to mean foraging for wild foods, eating weeds, or growing native plants only, though these activities represent a deeper dive into local land connection. The precursors of the Beauregard sweet potatoes that sit in baskets on my kitchen floor originated in South America, but these tubers are grown a few steps from my porch, and by ingesting them I am literally eating local soil and sunlight.

The desire to eat seasonally may be frustrated by a lack of availability. In the 1990s the term food desert was coined to indicate areas lacking stores with fresh food, where residents are forced rely on convenience stores or to travel great distances. Even food oases with numerous markets may offer little in the way of local produce, however, instead contracting with large suppliers capable of delivering load after identical load year round.

There are various options for enjoying seasonal food that is unavailable at the supermarket. You can grow (or hunt or forage) your own or rely on friends and family who do so. Pick-your-own farms are fantastic if you're lucky enough to live near one, though they are often limited to fruit. I see such farms as an obvious solution to localizing food because they solve so many problems. Farmers are freed from harvesting and marketing tasks to focus on production, while consumers get lower prices because they do part of the work. U-pick visits are often family outings, so kids learn about where food comes from.

For those who can't grow for themselves and don't live near a pick-your-own operation, farmer's markets are the cornucopia of seasonal eating and can potentially provide victuals for the entire growing season. Their size is in large part determined by demand, and while the offerings at my local market seem quite bountiful, should masses of supermarket shoppers suddenly descend upon it seeking superior local products, everything would sell out in a few minutes. Wooing ever more customers to small town markets might be the dream of the local food movement, and certainly would be a boon to venders, but too much success would reveal that the fresh, local, and seasonal is only available to a few.

Higher demand would eventually allow farmer's markets to grow, but building demand might be a bigger challenge than it seems. When we began hosting volunteers from Helpx here on the farm twelve years ago, I became aware of a problem with local, seasonal food: Most of it must be cooked! The option of cooking as a way to fulfill the small work requirement was nearly always met with a deer-in-the-headlights look that made me immediately suggest the more copasetic alternative of shoveling manure. Not a single one of the young people that we hosted was comfortable with preparing food for others. I know this very small sample is statistically insignificant, but I certainly gained the impression that people don't cook as much anymore, and that we aren't teaching children basic culinary skills.

Lack of cooking skills isn't an issue when fast food and ready-to-eat meals are ubiquitous, and if this is what you want to eat. It is problematic when faced with a steady stream of veggies and eggs flowing into the kitchen that need to be used up. Taking whatever is available and turning it into a delicious meal is an invaluable skill, and not terribly difficult with basic knowledge. I was fortunate in that I grew up with a home ec teacher for a mother and enjoyed gentle guidance in all the homely arts from a young age. Not everyone is so lucky, a fact made apparent by the cooking anxiety of our volunteers.

Involving children in skill building from a young age eliminates a lot of stress when it comes to things like cooking and other tasks of farm and home, and makes proficiency seem like second nature. We do our children a disservice by excluding them from the mundane chores of life. With the will to do so however, anyone can learn to cook, and it's actually quite simple to make fresh produce taste great. Every good recipe starts with instructions to gather fresh, quality ingredients, of which seasonal produce is the epitome. A typical meal for us during the summer is stir fried mixed vegetables with rice and local meat, all cooked in a simple way so the natural flavors come through. To me this is the best food there is, with no need for elaborate flavors or complicated sauces.

To have the desire to prepare and consume such food obviously one needs to enjoy the taste of it. Not everyone does, and not merely because some people are naturally picky eaters. Modern, industrial food culture is influencing our taste buds. We tend to like the foods that we grew up eating, and kids who consume primarily fast food and highly processed snacks will crave these particular combinations of salt, fat, and sweet into adulthood. Such foods are designed to be very appealing, even addicting, and we are training young taste buds that these foods taste “right.”

If the flavors and textures of processed foods (or what Michael Pollan calls edible foodlike substances) are what children recognize as comforting and nourishing, they will continue to eat the same things as they get older, and feel pretty good about it. If the time comes when they start connecting poor diet with health problems or weight gain, switching to a better diet can be challenging because it means introducing all sorts of alien tastes and textures to their palate.

While some people are like me—loving almost all dishes and having a great willingness to try new ones—others have difficulty introducing novel food into their diets. At its extreme, this is known as food neophobia, literally the fear of trying new food, but you don't need to have a disorder to resist taking up a better diet that includes fresh foods. If you weren't introduced to to them at a young age, learning to like them will be difficult.

We've become disconnected from real food in so many ways. Far fewer of us grow it than in the past. Sometimes the inability to source or afford local, seasonal food is the biggest obstacle to reconnection, but the lack of love for real food is more worrisome to me. We're losing touch with what's real, not just where food is concerned but in all sorts of ways. From plastic surgery to AI generated slop, from the fantasy worlds of video games to the faux lives of influencers, we're bombarded by the less-than-real.

“Keepin’ it real” may sound like nothing more than a corny cliché, but for health— mental and physical—we need more of the real. Winter is nearly upon us, but it's not to late to get outside, visit the forest, and eat some real food. I hope readers are able to do all three this week.

In a weather plot twist, the temperatures plunged during the last few weeks of summer, and we went from sweaty nights with two fans blasting to mornings so cool I needed to light a space heater to take the chill off. After chores in an insulated hoodie, it was nice to return to a warm and cozy kitchen. When the sun came up, the outside temperature rose quickly, and that same kitchen felt deliciously cool. Oddly enough, the actual temperature indoors had barely changed. It goes to show that my perception of comfort inside the kitchen is entirely relative.

Modern humans are notoriously bad at assessing things like temperature, rainfall, whether wildlife is plentiful or not, and the severity of storms. In each case, our perceptions are colored by our subjective experience. A few days of drizzle during the morning commute and we form the impression that we've received lots of rain, while in reality it was just a trickle. A sweltering weekend when we finally get some time outside away from air conditioning and perhaps do some physical labor, and we suddenly start using the term ‘climate crisis.’

Social media has no lack of gardeners bemoaning the fact the drought or heat or extreme rain events they have been battling are clearly worse than past years. Many also lament how few butterflies (or other favorite invertebrates) they have seen compared to previous years. They might not be sure of the best tomato growing methods or cucumber varieties for their location, but they are absolutely certain that challenging weather and waning wildlife populations are due to climate change.

I contend that these beliefs come not from decades of observation coupled with scrupulous notetaking, (because many of these gardeners aren't old enough to have engaged in such work) but from constant media messages—social and conventional—telling us that they are so. It’s not just gardeners connecting earlier bloom times and missing butterflies to increased CO² levels. The public in general seems convinced that every summer is hotter, every storm stronger, every flood and drought and heat wave worse than ever before, and climate change is to blame.

Nothing has done more than social media to distort our notions of reality, which by its very nature delivers not only the most outrageous, dramatic, and extreme, but also uses algorithms that learn our preferences in order to provide constant evidence to confirm our biases. Users share their own ostensibly climate-related observations to bring more evidence to the table. While deniers are ridiculed by conflating weather with climate, climate activists do exactly the same thing and welcome anecdotal evidence that supports the climate change narrative. An echo chamber is created in which everyone knows what is true, and we know it is true because everyone knows it to be true.

Let me be clear: Human activities that have made significant changes to the atmosphere and biosphere are influencing the phenomena listed above at certain times and places. What I object to is claiming personal observations as evidence of a global climatic shift, and seeing climate change everywhere while ignoring other obvious factors. You can’t tell if there is a global increase in summer temperatures by how much you personally suffer from heat. You can’t use multiple basement inundations as evidence for floods worsening globally.

It's easy to understand why people believe that we can detect the influence of elevated GHGs on weather when headlines constantly tell us this is possible. It's natural to wonder what effect climate change is having on us personally and to seek to find patterns in extreme weather that can be explained by the alterations humans have made in the atmosphere. However, not only are our personal experiences merely anecdotal and filtered by our subjective experience, attribution in general is problematic.

A glance at an article from the United Nations Environment Programme, How climate change is making record-breaking floods the new normal, seems to support the feeling that there is a direct, easily proven link between climate change and terrible floods. Despite the flashy headline, in paragraph four the authors quote the director of the UNEP Global Resource Information Database with a more sober assessment:

“While it is difficult to make a direct link between an individual extreme event and climate change, it is clear that we need to be prepared to face more intense and more frequent extreme hydro-meteorological events due to climate change.”

The authors go on to explain how higher temperatures in general can lead to more extreme precipitation events, a much less controversial topic than individual event attribution. To help understand this point, consider the notion that cigarettes cause lung cancer. Everyone knows that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer, a premise so universally accepted that it is often the impetus for quitting the nicotine habit or never starting in the first place. While we can say that it is a fact that in general smoking causes lung cancer, we can't prove that an individual patient’s tumors were caused by his smoking habit. We can never say with 100% certainly that had Joe Rando never lit up, he would today be cancer free, because we must take into account other factors such as living in a city with air pollution and working in a factory with particulate matter.

Likewise, we can never say with certainty that an extreme weather event wouldn't happened in a world without elevated GHGs. Our sense that horrific events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Helene or the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas couldn't have happened, or would have killed fewer people or caused less damage in a non-warming world, is just plain wrong. Weather is the result of multiple meteorological variables interacting in a vastly complex system which would be quite capable of producing the terrifying and destructive events in a world without excess atmospheric carbon. We even have a term for it: a perfect storm.

Attribution science attempts to quantify the effect of climate change on the probability of weather events, in part for litigation purposes. It is also meant to foster a sense of urgency about climate change, i.e. frighten people, and has the further effect of focusing blame on emissions at the expense of other factors. As discussed by , attribution research is often not peer reviewed, but rather provided quickly to the media in the form of press releases, presumably to get the word out while the memory of an extreme event is still fresh in people's minds.

The issues with this McScience should be apparent, but that hasn't stopped it from having a serious effect on public perception of weather events. Let's take a closer look at how disasters are presented in the media. Do you feel catastrophic flooding has surged worldwide, causing more misery, death, and property damage than ever before? I know I do, but on reflection I admit to myself that it is the media coverage of such events that might be causing this feeling. In this age of effortlessly accessible video of events anywhere in the world, I can see footage of devastatingly floods almost as they happen, as can anyone with an internet connection. Videos of buildings collapsing spectacularly into raging rivers and floodwaters carrying cars down city streets are ubiquitous. And they are often accompanied by headlines reminding us that climate change is making it all worse.

Are floods really worse than in the past, or it this merely an impression formed by the echo chamber? In a search that took only a few minutes, I found some interesting studies. A 2024 study from the Bulletin of the World Health Organization entitled “Global, regional and national trends and impacts of natural floods, 1990–2022” concluded that “numbers of people affected and mortality due to floods declined over time.”

Another study published in the journal Natural Hazards and made available online by Springer Nature Link saw fit to put their conclusion in the title: “Floods have become less deadly: an analysis of global flood fatalities 1975–2022.” The authors state in the abstract, “Despite population growth and increasing flood hazards, the average number of fatalities per event has declined over time.”

The severity of flooding in these studies is measured in human fatalities. In some cases there are other ways to define severity. For example, in last year’s piece Are hurricanes getting worse? I identified three criteria that could be used to define what was meant by “worse” when discussing tropical cyclones: fatalities, property damage, and internal barometric pressure. The last criterion offers a convenient, simple metric, outside of a storm’s effect on humans and our possessions, by which to compare tropical cyclones.

Flooding, on the other hand, provides no easy way to compare inundations around the world because the category is too broad and varied. There are fluvial floods, pluvial floods, and coastal floods. There are floods linked to rainfall and floods where no link exists, as when a dam fails. There are storm surges from hurricanes and tsunamis from earthquakes. There are floods in wilderness areas where no measurements are taken because they are remote and no people live there who need to be warned of danger.

I point out the varied nature of floods not to imply that research on floods is lacking, but to illustrate the impossibility of finding out whether floods are worsening because the question is too broad. Assessing floods using human fatalities or property damage isn't illegitimate, but needs to be recognized as the anthropocentric stand-in that it is, absent a single metric like internal barometric pressure for hurricanes. As populations and their built environments expand, ever increasing death and damage should be expected even if rainfall amounts and rates remained constant. Taking these flaws and limitations into account, let's take a closer look at the studies mentioned above.

Though overall deaths have increased, deaths relative to population have decreased during the time periods in question. The second study points out that “mortality fractions per event [deaths as a percentage of affected population] have decreased over time for middle- and high-middle-income countries, but increased for low-income countries.” In other words, deaths in poor countries are rising, while those in richer countries are declining, with an overall decrease when numbers are combined.

How can this be? I go about my business each day (and probably so do you) with the idea in my head that the threats from catastrophic flooding are gradually and inexorably growing worse due to climate change (cue internal videos of city streets becoming raging rivers). Now I have read that overall deaths have diminished during the past decades, and must grapple with the knowledge that those who are dying are predominantly poor people, while the wealthy overall experience greater safety and protection from flood events.

The fact that economic status is a major factor in surviving floods indicates to me that the main problem we face is not meteorological but political. We live in a world in which losing people to floods is an accepted cost of our economic system. The poor not only live in more dangerous and flood-prone spots, but in areas where logging, mining, and extractive agriculture greatly increase the chance of flooding. Focusing solely on the role of climate change diverts attention from these environmentally destructive activities and the large role they play in exacerbating floods. In climate writing they are often reduced to an afterthought and contained in the phrase ‘land use changes.’

I'm not asking anyone to deny that rising CO² emissions have an effect on weather, but to step outside the echo chamber and notice the absurdity of research that is done mainly to provide fodder for lawsuits and to alarm the public. Imagine if attribution studies did what they ought to do: Analyze all the possible causal factors of dangerous floods and use this information to prevent death and damage in the future. The problem with this type of attribution research is that it would assign blame not only to specific projects but also the individuals responsible for them. This would violate the unspoken agreement that only oil company executives will take the fall for the environmental destruction that has been wrought.

The echo chamber receives and amplifies a simplistic story of ever more frightening dangers caused almost exclusively by out-of-control GHG emissions. Floods are discussed as if they are constantly and inexorably becoming worse, a progress that is easily detected by science and individuals. Alternative factors causing devastating floods are ignored or viewed as the inevitable cost of continuing business as usual. Echo chamber discussion about other weather phenomena is similar.

What is also troubling about the echo chamber is what is absent or pushed to the fringes. That atmospheric CO² is only part of the problem. That there are things to be done that don't require massive global cooperation or rest entirely on a renewable energy transition. That the climate movement is top-down and anti-nature. Critical, creative, non-doomerist thinking that questions the goal of frightening people in order to push policy is conspicuously absent but desperately needed if the climate movement is going to make any difference.

In the next installment I'll take a look at the contradiction of climate discussion that simultaneously creates extreme urgency to act yet makes us feel there is nothing we can do.

Coming soon: Part 3, Think locally, act globally?

I rarely travel these days, and the only way I see the wider world is the satellite view on Google maps, where I can fly anywhere like a witch on a broom, zooming in to check details and doing some creeping here and there on street view. It’s a good way to see places I will never travel to in real life, but it has second and more useful aspect: It allows me to observe the ways humans have impacted the land.

If you don't have occasion to fly across the US, I recommend taking a virtual trip across the United States (or your country of residence.) In the US, you will see coastal plains and river valleys choked with human-built structures, and sprawling expanses of monotonous suburbs. In the middle of the country you will notice unnatural patterns of squares and circles, the latter the result of center point irrigation set ups. You might know, as I do, that there is very little wild land left, but to actually view the country this way gives new insight into what has been lost.

Cross-country road trips don’t provide the same perspective. Looking out a car window during growing season, under blue skies and surrounded by lush vegetation, things don’t seem so bad. Viewed from above, the extent of human influence is much more noticeable, and the comforting, bucolic green of ground-level corn and soybean fields is revealed as a repeating pattern covering vast expanses. Sailing over the landscapes of Iowa and Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and eastern Colorado, provides images of land nearly wholly tamed.

Taking into consideration that people need to be fed, this intensive cultivation might be the best possible use of the land, but I doubt it. On a drive through flyover country, I might be able to sustain this belief, but witnessing the endlessly repeating artificial patterns from above belies it. It looks like what it is: a vast, artificial wasteland of extraction for profit, under the guise of feeding the world. That there are beautiful places remaining in the region with inviting towns and good people, doesn’t change this fact.

When I view the American interior from above, I imagine what used to be. An enormous aggregation of life, and the water which that life held in place, has simply been removed. Before all those circles and squares appeared there was something else there, something that reached deeper into the soil and much higher above ground than the height of corn and wheat. It was astoundingly intricate, and it softened floods and droughts, regulated weather, and stored carbon.

The fact that we don't connect this almost incomprehensible change in the land to a corresponding change in weather patterns and climate is astonishing. Of course, some do connect it: Many understand that an enormous amount of carbon was set loose in the atmosphere when the life existing above and below ground was disturbed. But our obsession with this atmospheric CO² is lopsided. We are intensely focused on how it functions in its current location, while rarely acknowledging its role when it made up life.

The word “unalive” has popped up recently as a way to avoid algorithmic censorship, a reason I understand, but one that doesn't prevent the term from sounding silly. However, it describes perfectly what happened to the molecules that made up the ecosystems of the continent that were destroyed over the last centuries. When we killed off grasslands and forests and their associated life, we unalived the carbon held in these living things. Now we focus almost entirely on how this carbon functions as an atmospheric gas, with little regard for what it once did when it comprised living creatures.

Before the Great Unaliving, the carbon cycled, and by cycling regulated systems. It fostered greater complexity over time, eventually reaching relative stability. In its living form it held water in soil and plants and released it slowly over time, softening temperature extremes, and mitigating floods and droughts. It helped to bring rain by releasing aerosols that encouraged cloud formation, and these clouds both cooled the land and insulated it. It coalesced in the bodies of beaver who engineered systems to sequester water, and in bison who turned plant matter into rich fertilizer, begetting more life. Now this carbon, which in its living form regulated climate, has been relocated to the atmosphere where it has not only been turned into a problem, but is the sole focus of our so-called solutions.

The best propaganda contains facts, but only carefully curated ones. Atmospheric CO² does indeed act as a greenhouse gas, but it is only half of the story. Among those who recognize the effect that life and its removal have on the climate, there have been various hypotheses put forth as to why in climate science the emphasis came to be placed wholly on atmospheric greenhouse gases. One explanation is that it is too difficult to quantify the role of living systems in regulating climate. Modeling climate scenarios based on differing GHG levels is easier.

Whatever the reason for this development — and difficulty of study seems a ridiculous excuse to me — it has greatly influenced people's perceptions of the problems we face. Since the focus of research tilts heavily towards atmospheric CO² and other gases, media coverage and solutions that focus on the same naturally dominate. The climate change story commonly told is simple and linear: Humans burn fossil fuels, carbon accumulates in the atmosphere, and this carbon is the main driver of global warming. This story isn't false as much as incomplete.

Biodiversity loss, on the other hand, is often reported in the media not as a driver of climate change, but as a consequence of heat waves or other extreme events resulting from rising GHG levels. Catastrophic die-offs are the focus rather than the inexorable destruction of habitat as forests are cleared and grasslands are plowed under and paved over. Because the general understanding is that the planet is warming due to an overabundance of atmospheric GHGs, and the main solution is reducing their concentration, people are therefore quite content to sacrifice biological systems if they think it will keep temperatures down.

The climate story has been dumbed down. Simplifying lessons when teaching complicated subject matter can be an effective strategy, especially with children, but reducing the story of climate change to an excess of GHGs has had ruinous effects on attempts to solve humanity’s climate problems. Actionable solutions such as restoration of land into functioning ecosystems and bringing water back to drying lands are ignored. In fact, it’s worse than that. In the name of reducing fossil fuel use, natural systems are destroyed. Forests are cut and burned to generate electricity; mines that extract minerals necessary for “renewable energy” gouge out vast expanses of the biosphere.

The dumbing down of our understanding of climate change mirrors that of politics in general. Listening to political commentary, you would be forgiven if you assumed that there exists no political landscape outside of Republican and Democrat territories. Climate change rhetoric is no different. You can believe either that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax or or that evil oil company executives have conspired to keep us hooked on fossil fuels, and the resulting GHGs are the worst problem we face. It is more important to pick a side and recite its doctrine unquestioningly in order to demonstrate loyalty than it is to seek solutions.

The environmental crisis has been simplified to the point of distortion. There is a whole suite of possible initiatives to heal earth and climate involving living systems that we're not reading about or discussing. Not only are we ignoring solutions, we are actively sabotaging them through further environmental destruction in the name of alternative energy. It is absolutely no wonder that that climate movement is failing. It will continue to be an exercise in futility until it is reunited with traditional conservation, and there is acknowledgement that the problem is more complex than an excess of carbon in the atmosphere.

Coming soon, Part 2: The Climate Echochamber

Here in the Mid-Ohio Valley the air smells like autumn, a heady mixture of sun on freshly fallen leaves and cut grass. Until the wind changes direction, that is. Then the breeze carries the stench of the decaying corpses of whitetail deer cut down by a disease sweeping through this part of Ohio. Mother nature is cleaning house, and right now it doesn't smell pleasant here.

The culprit in this catastrophe is a midge that breeds in mud puddles and delivers a virus-laden bite to deer that congregate near watering holes during dry spells. Death results in a few days from epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD for short.) Confusion, fever, and unnatural thirst drive deer to bodies of water where they attempt to cool themselves, but often end up drowning.

A few weeks ago, rumors of the carnage began to spread eastward from the far side of the county. Our farm remained untouched until one Sunday morning I drove out to stock up on hay at a nearby cattle operation and found a dead doe in the driveway. EHD was here.

Since chaining up the doe and dragging it to the middle of the Savanna, we've found two more deceased on the property. Another lies on the far bank of the river, and one beside the road on my drive to work. A young, anterless deer and a still-spotted fawn remain alive, and are probably all that are left of “our deer,” the small herd that has been spending much of its time here.

The disease is killing deer in large numbers in West Virginia as well, but south of the WV state line they are safer. Below a certain latitude, some deer carry antibodies and herds have built up immunity so die-offs tend to be more limited. Above this same latitude, EHD reliably pops up here and there, killing large numbers of deer before disappearing only to surface elsewhere the following year.

While the situation is hardly making headlines beyond the region, here the loss is devastating. There will be no hunting season, no venison-stocked chest freezers, no home-made jerky shared at work. The bump in sales at restaurants and stores from sportsmen who have traveled from more urban locales will be missed. It will be like the loss of a weeklong holiday for obsessed locals who will no doubt be presented with honey-do lists by spouses eager to fill the vacuum. Diehards will insist that they just like to spend time in the woods and venture out regardless.

There are a few positives to the situation. For anyone in the area who has been contemplating starting a garden, the time is next spring. You will enjoy a year or two of relatively deer-free gardening before the population rebounds, which will allow the gradual establishment of garden infrastructure. Once deer return it will probably take them a while to discover your garden and include it in their circuit. You will eventually have to put up fences, but it might be several years before it becomes necessary.

It's an especially good time to start that reforestation project you've been thinking about. If your plan includes so many trees that building protection for each one is out of the question, act now. Even if a few deer show up and begin nibbling, many trees will have time to establish root systems and will easily recover from limited damage.

It is somewhat of a mystery as to why EHD pops up here and not there, although warm, wet springs followed by dry late summers are known factors. So might be the fact that there are simply too many deer, and nature is taking care of the problem for us. Whitetails thrive in the patchwork of fields, woodlands, and suburban backyards that covers much of Ohio. This mix of land use with miles and miles of edges where open areas meet tree-cover creates a haven for deer, and their numbers probably far surpass that which the deep forests of pre-colonial times could support. Perhaps the next generation of deer will be bigger and heartier, and sport the racks that will only be found this season in the dreams of frustrated sportsmen. Time will tell.

It's not autumn yet, but it might be by the time this piece of writing is finished. Besides, has already thrown down the gauntlet with his top five autumn plants, so it's time for me to reveal my list.

#1 Snake Beans

(Vigna unguiculata sesquipedadis)

These are also know as asparagus beans or yardlong beans. I like the term snake bean because they greatly resemble little green snakes, especially if one happens to fall off the vine and lie in the mulch. (Eek!) They are a type of cowpea, a different genus from typical green beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) grown in the U.S., but they can be used similarly in cooking. They have marvelous texture, but lack the traditional green bean taste, which I think makes them more versatile in cuisine.

Snake beans grow quickly and once they start producing they just keep pumping out bean after bean. We've been eating them since June with no end to the bounty in sight. They require almost no care, but providing some sort of climbing structure is advised. The volunteers that pop up here and there tend to spread out and cover any foliage that is in the way. If you don't mind this habit, you will love the way this bean self sows. I like to keep mine confined to a specific spot so they will create this:

The bean wall, with chairs placed just to the east, makes a shaded sitting spot while the rest of the garden is still baking in the afternoon sun. It has been invaluable as an element that allows me to spend time in the garden observing bees and butterflies. When I began working on the central area of the potager I intended to add more tunnels of the type pictured below, but the amount of work involved caused me to put it off, which was serendipitous. I had had mostly aesthetics in mind, and hadn't included a sitting area. The old fencing repurposed for the bean wall ended up staying in place for years because it created such an inviting space. It's a good example of arriving at a design through garden praxis rather that simply imposing a design because you think it will look good.

#2 Smooth Criminal summer squash

I'm actually quite sick of this vegetable since we've been eating so much of it, but I include it here for that very reason. A few plants have easily kept us supplied with fruits. I started a few more mid-season in case the first planting succumbed to disease, and they are all still prolific enough to keep us as well as the chickens happy. Enough said.

#3 Delicata squash

It's no surprise that another squash makes the fab fall five list. Winter squash is the only vegetable I grow that keeps for the entire winter. Earlier this summer I still had a few butternuts and spaghettis in the kitchen, and finally decided it was time to chicken them.

Note: in our household “chicken” is a verb, as in, “This bread is starting to mold, should I chicken it?” I chickened the old squashes, but they had no visible flaws and were probably still edible for humans. Previously I tried to pass them off to a friend, but he claimed to have a spaghetti squash from two seasons ago that he still needed to eat and declined the offer.

I'm slightly skeptical of his claim, but it is certainly true that winter squash have an amazing ability to last. It might be a bit premature to sing the praises of my delicatas since I haven't actually consumed one yet, nor tested their storability. Due to a thinner skin than other winter squash — hence the name — delicatas don’t keep as well, but the products of my four plants will surely be consumed well before spring.

I'm keeping a close eye on the vines, hoping they live long enough to bring the fruits to the intense, nutty sweetness that they are famous for. In the past I was unsuccessful, but this year the delicata plants are outlasting the butternuts, which are usually the most disease and insect resistance type for this area.

#4 Volunteer tomatoes

Why volunteer tomatoes specifically and not tomatoes in general? It's a matter of labor and timing. Tomatoes are extremely easy to grow here, requiring almost no supplemental watering and little work besides suckering, tying up, and occasional pruning of lower branches. They tend to peter out late in the season though, as they succumb to blights and wilts. That is when volunteer tomatoes are just getting started.

The volunteer tomatoes require even less work. They sprout when the ground warms sufficiently, about the time tomato starts are going in, which puts them close to two months behind. Some of them I pull, but I always leave two or three to extend the season. They incur no labor whatsoever beyond the need to step over them when they grow into the paths. Since I don't train them up stakes and they sprawl on the ground, this is fairly easy. Never watered or pruned and of uncertain parentage, they somehow manage to produce perfectly acceptable fruits from the beginning of September until frost.

#5 Banana plant

It is possible that someday the climate will become drier and hotter, to the point that our native forests fade away and are replaced by a more open landscape where grasses thrive and only the most drought tolerant trees survive. Despite the climate doomerism that currently prevails, I do not think this will happen, at least not any time soon. As an interesting exercise, I like to imagine what this land would look like if it did happen.

The most successful plants would be what are considered invasive exotics such as maiden grass and autumn olive. Siberian elm and tree of heaven would perhaps thrive in low spots. I would like to think that our native pawpaws would be able to hold on for a while. They are usually described as preferring moist conditions, but they were some of the first trees to colonize the dry upper reaches of our abandoned corn field, and have proven spectacularly successful in this full sun environment.

There is another plant that grows slowly but steadily, looking completely out of place in Ohio, that I can easily picture surviving in a new savanna-like biome: the hardy banana. Although my specimens love water, they tolerate drought well. I imagine a future scenario where towering clumps create cool oases by harvesting rare rainfall and storing it in their massive stems. Their enormous leaves would make a deeply shaded haven for birds and other small creatures who would peck and bite the fleshy stems to suck their precious moisture.

This scenario is the sort of invention that hardy banana plants inspire with their tropical good looks and paradoxical ability to survive Ohio winters. They are tough plants that inexorably expand year by year, creating magical interiors perfect for a child’s secret place. They provide no food, but are generous with their shade and sheer magnificence. They just keep getting taller as the season progresses, reaching maximum height in autumn, and thus deserve a spot on the fab five list.

Do you have your own list of plants that stand out in autumn? Feel free to share in the comment section.

Eastern tiger swallowtail

In the seventies I witnessed enormous changes in my small hometown as subdivisions and strip malls spread outward. Even as a child I understood that land was finite and I worried about where it all would end. What would happen when all the towns simply grew together and there was no more land in which to expand?

Development slowed a little as buildable sites were filled up and steep and low-lying tracts were mostly left alone. Farther out of town, national forest land remained mostly unscathed, and farmland was preserved by those who were able to hold on to their property. This was often made possible by sending one spouse out to earn a wage in town, or simply because the land was too far out dirt roads to be threatened by development yet.

While sprawl continued to slowly claim land on the perimeter of town, in the 2000’s a new threat arrived, unconventional gas wells. Oil and gas wells already dotted the region, but their small footprints and short, vertical bores meant they were usually unobtrusive and unremarked upon. The new wells went much deeper, employed horizontal drilling techniques, and required a much larger piece of land. The area immediately to the northeast of here was drilled so extensively it became known as Frackistan. I recently found out the region in general is referred to as Frackalachia, an apt term I heard on soon-to-be-extinct public radio.

Hackberry emperor

While in the active drilling process the wells spoiled more than just the land on which they sat with their noise, lights, and the dust clouds from brine trucks speeding along narrow country roads. After the drilling was finished the frack pads subsided into merely being eyesores and occasionally exploding and sending massive methane plumes skyward.

Now it is 2025 and the fracking boom has slowed, but there is a new threat on the horizon: renewable energy development. A few months back I received a disturbing text that alerted me to the danger. I'm used to solicitations, usually from people who want to buy my land, but this one was different. It was from Sarah at Farm-to-Power, a “non-profit focused on uplifting farmer and rural landowner voices,” wondering if I would like to chat.

I looked up the organization and found it has a staff of 17 and a website quick to state that it is not affiliated with any for-profit land developers. According to the site, it is funded by grants from rural clean energy groups for the purpose of “advocating for clean energy projects at the state and local level.” What exactly this means, and who these people are, I do not know, but it calls up a sick feeling in my gut despite all the pretty phrases about empowering farmers. The testimonials from landowners notwithstanding, I don't believe for a second that these folks care about me or my land.

At this time, there are no solar or wind projects in my corner of Ohio, but I fear this is set to change. After all, there are fortunes to be made. A tsunami of industrial energy development is breaking over rural areas and it will take a lot to stop it, especially now that data centers have entered the picture. The pressures are strong and the amount of money involved is enormous.

Silvery checkerspot

I oppose so-called clean energy development on Ohio farmland, and if you buy into the mainstream narrative this fact might have you pegging me as a right-wing knuckle-dragger or an oil company hireling. I'm neither. This portrayal of solar farm opponents as ignorant pawns isn’t just offensive, it's backwards. From my perspective, young progressives like Sarah at Farm-to-Power are the stooges who have been convinced of the righteousness of renewable build-outs, and accept pay to do outreach to further such projects. They see themselves as the good guys because they believe that a transition from a fossil fuels to wind and solar is not only possible but mandatory. Once we acknowledge that it is neither, the narrative falls apart.

It is possible that some groups opposing industrial-scale renewable projects receive help from oil companies, but in most cases this accusation seems preposterous. It is probable that many are Trump-voting climate change deniers seeking to preserve their pastoral views and property values, but so what? At least they are fighting for something near and dear. Those working to further renewable development are merely greasing the rails for capital to roll in and industrialize places that mean nothing to them beyond profit potential.

My judgement of who the goodies and baddies are in this story rests on the assumption that eventually fulfilling energy needs — or even a significant portion of those needs — using solely renewables is impossible. There is plenty of evidence that a transition to clean energy without a significant concomitant reduction in energy use is pure fantasy. Because I think solar farms are the more immediate threat locally, I looked into the issues surrounding such projects, and what I learned strengthened my belief that they are destructive boondoggles.

I found that at this point in development the tech just isn't that great. Large tracts of land are needed to produce relatively small amounts of energy, and solar panels only last about 30 years before efficiency wanes significantly. It’s not unrealistic to imagine a second wave of new and improved solar arrays being deployed as technology advances, in the way interstate highways parallel the two lane roads they replaced, and unconventional drilling followed old-style gas wells.

Wild indigo duskywing

Solar farms affect more than just the land they sit on. Manufacture and disposal of photovoltaics must be included in any realistic assessment. Enormous amounts of raw materials are extracted and transported elsewhere (using energy from fossil fuels) for the panels themselves and for battery storage, so that not one but two or more localities are negatively affected. Large amounts of water are also used to mine, manufacture, and maintain solar panels. Recycling the materials when panels age out is expensive and difficult, and toxic waste is already a problem in countries with early adoption. All told, the energy return on investment is vanishingly small if cradle-to-grave costs are calculated honestly.

Here's the real kicker, which is apparently a taboo subject for wind and solar cheerleaders: Even as the proportion of energy supplied by renewables grows (it’s at about 15%) the overall demand for energy also increases, so that we are in a race in which the finish line is continually shifting. More coal, oil, and natural gas are burned each year. What is the plan for renewables to replace diesel, jet fuel, and heavy fuel oil? How will they fill the unfathomably large energy demands of industry? It's only possible to believe that renewables can eventually replace other energy sources because we are continually bombarded with the message that they must.

There are lots of articles that attempt put a rosy glow around current energy statistics. They proclaim things like “last year the growth in demand for oil slowed” and that “energy from renewables accounted for the largest share of the growth in total energy supply.” The first quote means that the world burned more oil in 2024 than 2023, just not quite as much more as was expected. The second quote tells us that renewable energy now makes up slightly expanded portion of an ever burgeoning whole. The key word in all the verbiage is “growth,” which is always to be celebrated, even when something is both growing and slowing!

Common buckeye

There is substantial evidence that renewable energy development will not solve the problem it purports solve — emissions will continue to rise — and in the process of failing it will destroy wild land, farmland, and the special character of rural areas (plus the places hidden to us where mining, manufacture, and disposal take place.) I predict that wherever solar and wind farms appear, the promised jobs will be mostly temporary (as with the fracking boom.) A few landowners will make lots of money while the rest of us merely observe (just like the fracking boom.) A period of rapid and much celebrated installations will be followed by a bust (just like all booms ever.) I predict that in 30 years we will have fields of junk in the way that we now have orphan oil wells that are abandoned and leaking with no one held responsible for clean up. Then the next big thing will arrive with all the same promises and the cycle will begin again.

Belief in industrial scale renewable energy is like a religious faith, and its proponents are in the grip of climate fundamentalism. explains climate fundamentalism is this way in an 2018 article in Utne Reader:

If we agree that the survival of humanity is at stake, then any means is justified, and any other cause–say reforming the prisons, housing the homeless, caring for the autistic, rescuing abused animals, or visiting your grandmother–becomes an unjustifiable distraction from the only important thing. Taken to its extreme, it requires that we harden our hearts to the needs in front of our faces. There is no time to waste! Everything is at stake! It’s do or die! How similar to the logic of war.

Climate fundamentalism says that even if there is validity to the issues discussed above, they must be suffered because in the end we will be delivered to a glorious future of clean and abundant energy. Then we can all shake hands and tackle the other bugaboos. Renewables proponents are apparently able to harden their hearts when it comes to the destruction of rural places, though many no doubt consider themselves conservationists. Climate fundamentalism demands that sacrifices be made. It says if we're going to make the omelet of solving climate change, we’ll need to break some eggs. Sacrificing things that we love will be necessary, but it won't be SUVs and vacations in Mallorca that are given up, at least not yet. It will be rural land.

Zabulon skipper

How much easier it is for a distant urban population to sacrifice the faraway fields of flyover country! It's only empty land after all, where domesticated animals are no doubt tortured and exploited for human profit. How much better a use for this wasteland is transforming it into acres of clean, renewable energy, where sheep photogenically graze in the shade of solar panels and return at the end of the day to their spacious sanctuary barns to live out their natural lives in peace and harmony.

Perhaps believers in the promise of renewable energy engage in this type of fantasy, or perhaps not. There is an obvious and extremely dangerous fantasy that our so-called leaders treat as reality: the belief in infinite growth. Just as I knew as a kid watching neighborhoods spread like petri dish cultures, we all understand that growth cannot be endless, but live as if it can be. It will end someday, but meanwhile there are many square miles of rural land still to be filled with frack pads and solar arrays, turbines and lithium mines, pipeline right-of-ways and battery energy storage systems. Will it end before every square inch of space has been spoiled? I've arrived at the belief that the only sane response to the situation is wishing for the collapse of industrial society while there is still something left unruined.

Monarch

I hope this doesn't come across as boastful, but my garden this year is the absolute best it has ever been. This has come about not because I am a gardening genius or professionally trained, but as the result of nearly a quarter century of hard work.

A serious gardener should be able to state truthfully every year that she has the best garden she’s ever had. Absent catastrophic events that seriouly damage a garden, each year should be better than the last. As soil improves, plants mature, and knowledge grows, a garden just naturally and gradually gets better each year.

It's easy for me to believe that in the past peasants had a much easier time than present day gardeners. Things just didn't change as quickly. People on the same piece of land for generations were able to set things up in ways that worked and then just tweak the details year by year. As long as it wasn't a year of drought and the armies of rival warlords didn't sweep through and burn everything, their work lives were probably pretty easy.

Stable, long-term inhabitation on the land leads to things like:

• ancient olive trees that provide food for generations

• stacked stone walls that act as fencing

• hedgerows that double as livestock enclosures and havens for wildlife

• landrace plants and animals perfectly suited to their environment

These elements weren’t permanent, but they provided a hefty return on investment that was spread out over multiple generations. Because the system was never fully reset, benefits were cumulative and people got a yield from work done by their grandparents and great grandparents.

Rather than Progress, in which all aspects of the system must be continually replaced with the bigger, the better, and the latest technology, they had progress. Small ‘p’ progress meant things like figuring out a slightly more efficient way to irrigate your almond grove, rather than bulldozing it for a strip mall.

These days most people interested in sustainable food production must start from scratch when they are finally able to move to a piece of land. There is usually no infrastructure in place except perhaps a storage shed or a barn and a few fruit trees if they are lucky. No hedgerows or even wire fencing, no greenhouses, no root cellars. Rather than being built into the culture, such things have been removed as people were freed from the “drudgery” of farming. Houses are now constructed with two car garages, walk-in closets, and front porches where no one sits because of traffic noise, instead of pantries, small attached greenhouses, and walled gardens. How much different things would be if the latter group was culturally de rigueur.

Now enormous amounts of energy must be put into recreating infrastructure to support household food production, processing, and preservation. Labor and resources that in the past could have gone toward maintenance and gradual, innovative upgrades now must go into land and equipment acquisition, fencing and livestock housing, clearing land, and establishing gardens and orchards. In other words, all the stuff you need just to get started. Then the maintenance work begins, and hopefully you've planned well or you'll be constantly modifying your original designs.

We are always starting over because the needful elements of non-industrial, small-scale agriculture have disappeared for the most part from our built environment. Chances are, if you install such things and then have to move houses, the next owner will do away with them because they aren't valued. The number one consideration is aesthetics, and whatever replaces your precious food forest and chicken coop will itself be replaced again as soon as fashion trends move on. New homeowners will rip out perfectly serviceable and up-to-date bathrooms, kitchens, and entire landscape installations because the style isn't right. They won't blink at trashing the native pollinator garden you left behind and cutting down your fruit trees.

I've become cynical from working in the landscaping industry for many years and witnessing the insouciance of customers who have healthy and thriving plants dug out and whose entire focus is on appearance. Many have no concept that the landscape functions and simply crank up the AC after the shade tree comes down and spray indiscriminately because they noticed some bugs in their yard.

It is this personal experience rather than doomscrolling that has made me jaded. But despite the negativity I've been expressing so far, I think there are real positives to be taken from the situation. The first is that once a larger percentage of the population becomes involved in food production by necessity, it will become apparent that it is less difficult than expected. When existing systems are retained from generation to generation and owner to owner, labor previously poured into starting from scratch again and again can be redirected into maintenance.

More people getting involved in food production will also mean that more cooperation can take place. There is nothing more discouraging than going it alone where no one else is doing what you're doing. Once a critical mass of involvement is reached, locals working on agricultural projects can come together for big jobs like haying or barn-raisings as they did in the past. Expertise and equipment can be shared. The benefits of working within a community cannot be underestimated. If you have doubts about this, look to the Amish.

Farm land around my town is being gradually eaten up as exurbia creeps ever outward. I curse the McMansions as I drive by because they ruin the bucolic view and advertise the loss of farmland, but the only land truly lost is the footprint of the house and paved driveway. There's no reason that the multi-acre lawns couldn't be used for growing food. In fact, home-scale, diversified food production would represent an improvement for the places where commodity corn and soybeans were raised previously .

In a world that valued and prioritized non-industrial food production, these low density areas outside of town could be converted fairly easily to micro-farms. The homes are designed to rely on enormous amounts of energy but could possibly be modified. The main problem is that people aren't going to make changes until they are forced to. As long as there is cheap food at the supermarket, most people will carry on with their lives as usual. They will continue to think of their yards as status-signaling spaces rather than food-growing spaces. The people who are interested in creating small farms or homesteads will remain priced out of these areas.

We are often warned that small farmers/producers can't “feed the world” and we need the efficiency of industrial ag to ward off starvation. I don't intend to dive into this debate here, but it needs to be said that industrial agriculture is effective precisely because it is embedded in a massive, subsidized support system that includes transportation and processing infrastructure and established markets that we've been building for generations. In short, it has exactly the structures that small-scale food production lacks. This fact more than any intrinsic efficiency is what keeps it chugging along.

The systems that support industrial food production aren't any more permanent than the systems that supported our peasant ancestors, and they will replaced one way or another if people want to eat. Cheap diesel won't last forever, nor will topsoil or the Ogallala Aquifer. How fast the current system will collapse is unknown. What will replace it also remains to be seen, and we should all do what we can to ease and shape the transition.

Tomatoes and beans love the heat

Mid-July arrives with dry spells, severe thunderstorms, and soaring temperatures. The specifics vary year to year, but we can always expect some sort of extreme weather this time of the season. On many days it has been too hot to spend time in the garden midday, so I've tried to squeeze all the tasks into early morning and evening. Oppressive heat was followed by two evenings of downpour that tragically arrived just when I got home from work and lasted until after dark.

A quick walk under the umbrella at dusk revealed a lush carpet of crabgrass on the paths, but also lots of veg ready to be picked. The garden might not look as tidy as I would like, but plants are surviving and producing. With planning and preparation I’ve succeeded in creating a garden tough enough to get through the second half of summer without lots of attention from me. Here are my tactics.

Build better soil with organic matter

Constantly improving your soil with the addition of compost and mulch is probably the most important action you can take to create a resilent garden. A healthy, living soil rich in organic life makes plants better able to deal all challenges, including the ability to withstand both drought and downpour. Soil organic matter magically improves both moisture retention and drainage, and generous layer of mulch protects from pounding rain.

Conveniently, spreading mulch and compost can be done any time, even in the off-season when there are few garden chores. I spend time from late fall to early spring mining garden paths for topsoil to spread on beds, renewing the wood chip mulch in paths, and digging up finished compost beds for spreading.

The compost is more of a windrow than a pile

Recently a video caught my eye of a woman sifting compost with the caption, “Work smarter, not harder.” She was indeed working quite hard, but ironically the intended message was that you should buy the sifter to save work, rather than simply stop sifting. This raises the question, why sift at all unless you need a very fine soil for tiny seeds? Sifting compost is totally unnecessary otherwise, and it's perfectly okay to use compost that is still a bit chunky and not totally finished. Right now I'm spreading just such a product on my tomato and eggplant beds where it acts as a very nutritious mulch.

The sifter video is a reminder that there are legions of vendors out there trying to sell nifty gadgets to novice gardeners. These gizmos can be fun and occasionally useful, but are rarely absolutely necessary and are mainly designed to separate you from your money.

Grow from hybrid seed

This suggestion runs counter to gardening wisdom that advises growing heirloom plants. These older varieties have been passed down through generations and often have superior flavor or texture. Growing such plants allows you to save seeds, knowing they will reliably produce similar plants next year. I'm certainly not advising anyone to give up on heirloom plants. To the contrary, I believe it is important to preserve the genetic diversity embodied in these plants and to reduce being dependent on yearly seed purchases.

That being said, I also feel there is no shame in buying hybrid seeds or plants, especially for novice gardeners. Hybrid plants are often bred with disease resistance in mind, especially the blights and wilts that strike this time of year. Hybrid plants sail on unscathed while heirlooms succumb. My heirloom zucchini ‘Costata Romanesco’ has produced a total of one edible fruit, the others rotting on the vine, while the hybrid summer squash ‘Smooth Criminal’ pumps out fruit like there is no tomorrow.

‘Patio Baby’ eggplant, one of my favorite hybrids

Heirlooms can gradually be worked in after experimentaton to discover which ones perform well under local conditions. Meanwhile, there is nothing wrong with growing hybrids. This allows you to obtain a yield while gaining knowledge and experience.

Stop growing in pots

Obviously this advice isn't for those whose only option is container growing. A patio or balcony container garden can provide beauty, a peaceful hangout spot, and of course herbs and veg. If I had limited space you can bet I would fill it with pots of all sorts.

There seems to be a trend even among gardeners with plenty of space to use pots or large containers, however, ostensibly to cut down on maintenance tasks like weeding. Keeping containers weed-free is easier than maintaining a garden in-ground, but pots create other problems, mainly the need for supplemental water and fertilizer.

After weeks of steeling myself at work before walking past tables full of gorgeous annuals, I finally succumbed to temptation and went home with a flat of petunias, gazania, and dwarf zinnias. Now I have pots that must be watered daily or they will wither in summer's heat. Not only water but regular inputs of fertilizer are necessary to keep them at their peak.

I fell hard for these petunias

Currently I have tomatoes, green beans, and eggplants in the ground that have never been watered or fertilized since their planting. They are sustained by rainwater and the rich soil in which they grow, plus some top-dressing with compost as described above. These in-ground beds just need to be checked now and then and harvested when necessary, but otherwise they do fine on their own because they are free to develop large root systems. In case of an emergency preventing me from visiting the garden for several days, these plants would do fine.

Integrate perennials when possible

Some of the advice I regularly come across says to plant perennials to save the time and effort of yearly planting, claiming that in a cost/benefit analysis, perennials outperform annuals by delivering more produce with less work. After spending the week trying to get my black raspberries under control, I tend to question this wisdom. I've also spent an inordinate amount of time over the years pruning fruit trees and hauling away the brush, and can attest that perennial crops often require lots of labor.

Space is another consideration. Perennial crops like asparagus, berry canes and bushes, and small fruit trees do indeed only need to be planted once, but they usually produce one big harvest (“everbearing” berries can provide a second one) then just take up space for the remainder of the season. If you include the large amount of space required in the ratio, the benefit side goes south.

Despite perennials not being the panacea they are often made out to be, they have huge benefits and I heartily recommend them, especially smaller ones that can be tucked here and there. Planted between annual crops they can help hold soil in place and act as windbreaks, mitigating the effects of violent storms. The shade they provide makes working in the garden bearable on sunny days, as long as I stay in certain areas.

Perennials attract all manner of wildlife including pollinating insects and many species of birds and butterflies. Snakes and toads find homes in the season-long cover they provide. By nurturing these members of the animal kingdom, perennial plants creat a diverse and healthy garden ecosystem that keeps less benign insects in check.

Perennials in April

While perennial plants — at least in my temperate region — don't usually have a long harvest period, they vastly extend the growing season as far as greenery and flowers are concerned. Ornamentals and herbs pop up in early spring and grow quickly, breaking up what would otherwise be a boring expanse until late spring and making the garden an exciting place to visit. If I relied exclusively on annuals I would wait weeks before much happened out there, so for me there is distinct psychological advantage to growing perennials. I spend many hours in April and May enjoying their progress.

Later in the season when the annuals catch up and begin pumping out food, the perennials are still there blooming, attracting bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, and in general making it a place where I want to spend as much time as possible. Each time I visit the garden I do small chores that make for a healthier garden such as pruning dead or diseased plant matter, cleaning up debris, and harvesting mature vegetables so plants keep producing.

Spending maximum time when conditions allow means a more resilient garden when little time can be spent. In fact, my garden wouldn't be anything near what it is is if I didn't spend so much time there in the off-season pruning and prepping and mulching. If perennials did nothing but entice me to the garden they would be well worth it.

For everyone who has made it this far, here's a video of insects on cup plant. It garnered not a single like on Notes, which as everyone knows is full of philistines. I'm sure my readers will appreciate it.

Tomatoes practically grow themselves in southern Ohio

It is hot now, over 90 degrees with humidity to match. It is time to drink cold brew coffee and sit with our feet in the kiddie pool. It is time to avoid the garden until after 7 pm and spend as much time there as possible in the morning.

For me, it is not a time to be in a hot kitchen processing excess produce, although of course many gardeners are doing just that or will be soon. Canning, freezing, and dehydrating are all solutions gardeners turn to when preserving the summer glut of food for winter eating.

These methods work, but they are labor and energy intensive. Canning usually involves lots of chopping and heating using specialized equipment. Freezing is slightly less complicated, but most vegetables must be blanched to deactivate enzymes or they will taste terrible when they are thawed. Dehydrated food takes up little storage space, but uses large amounts of electricity as it dries. All these projects must be timed correctly, undertaken when produce is at its peak both in quality and quantity. You must be able to make time during the window of opportunity or risk missing it.

Volunteer pole bean uses volunteer chicory for support

These methods are often worth the effort because they spread the edible results of gardening throughout the year, but some of us simply don't have the time for preserving. When I began the garden 25 years ago, it became obvious to me that trying to do it all was not feasible. Taking care of small children, then eventually returning to paid work while homeschooling, meant I was constantly busy. I rarely use traditional preserving methods, but over the years I've found other ways to get the most out of my harvest that require less time.

The obvious way to to get maximum nutrition from the garden and orchard without preserving is seasonal eating, making full use what is available at any given time. Many people try to avoid food that is trucked in from far away to cut down on the energy footprint of their food, but even local food that has been preserved can hold a high level of embodied energy and I don't want it to be my energy. I save time and labor by eating food as it becomes available.

French horticultural beans are an old standby shelling bean

Daily harvesting and cooking are a large commitment in themselves, but the payoff is immediate. In the last few months we have eaten our way through the broccoli, cauliflower, and snap peas. These are cool weather vegetables that grow well through spring and then deteriorate when hot weather arrives, so they must be consumed as they become mature. I suffered a bit of palate fatigue with cauliflower, but nevertheless the harvest was entirely eaten.

Soon summer squash season will be upon us, with all its pressure to make use of the explosion of zucchini fecundity. This is made easier by picking the fruits before they grow longer than eight inches, and by planting in succession so there are never too many coming on at once. Cucumbers are the same as they can’t be left on the vine and must be eaten as they ripen, but they can be sown several times through the season.

‘Smooth Criminal’ yellow squash of nearly pickable size

Other vegetables such as carrots, onions, and potatoes can be left in the ground and picked as needed, since they obligingly grow to edible size then just hang out for a while with little deterioration. Individual eggplants and peppers also have a fairly large window of time in which they can be picked, tomatoes not so much. They begin rotting if left overlong, but luckily chickens love them and take care of the excess.

Seasonal eating makes sense, but I want to be able to enjoy the fruits of the garden in the off-season as well and so I’ve been on the lookout for vegetables that store well with little or no processing. Below is a non-exhaustive list of the ones that last with minimal work.

1. Winter squash — absolutely no work involved beyond brushing off dirt at harvest and bringing inside to store.

2. Garlic — very little processing beyond making sure it is properly dried, and trimming leaves and stems.

3. Berries — as far as I know know, all berries can simply be frozen with no prep. Enzyme activity doesn't cause them to deteriorate in the freezer.

4. Peppers, sweet and hot — one of the only vegetables I know of that does not require blanching before freezing. Remove seeds and chop according to preference, place in freezer bags.

These are my favorite crops to grow for saving because of the very low labor involved. Some gardeners have success with onions too, certain varieties of which reputedly keep well. I find it difficult to get them to dry properly in our wet climate, so I simply leave them in the ground as pick them as needed.

Globe and Genovese basil await pesto season

Another underutilized storage vegetable in my opinion is dried beans. Although removing them from their pods can be tedious, the task can be done a little at a time since they dry on the vine and are essentially already preserved when picked. They are ridiculously easy to grow, and the work of shelling them can be spread out over many weeks, so I include them in my inventory of veggies worth growing for winter keeping.

Inevitably there will be excess produce that simply cannot be eaten up before it spoils. Chickens as living garbage disposals help prevent food from going totally to waste, and composting as a last resort is better than landfilling. Donating extra produce to a food pantry is also a good option if one is nearby and will accept perishable food. Or simply give it away to neighbors. If you have neighbors who also raise food, you might be able to trade for produce you can't or don't like to grow or for excess eggs from nearby chicken keepers.

From my observations, the current trend in homesteading circles leans heavily toward canning, pickling, and dehydrating. These are good preservation methods for those with time and inclination, and also tasks that usually fall to women. The much sought after “simpler” life can quickly become dismayingly hectic for those trying to do it all. I'm advocating instead for doing what you can without killing yourself. With a little planning you can maximize the healthy calories obtained from the garden and still be able to enjoy the process. The best tomato is still warm from the sun when it is sliced, and if a few go to waste it's not the end of the world.