Sustainable living – Page 13

Where have all the fairies gone?

The Enchanted Forest, John Anster Christian Fitzgerald, 1819-1906

Where have all the fairies gone?

We could ask this question two different ways, depending on how you see the world. If you believe that fairies exist (or used to exist), then the question is literal. If you don’t believe in fairies, then there is still a serious question here, a cultural question. Why were fairies once such an important part of human lore? When did we lose interest in fairies? Why?

A friend who lives in France and who knows about (and shares) my interest in the Celts recently sent me a book, The Celtic Twilight, by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. The book was first published in 1893. Yeats was a mystic, and I’m pretty sure he believed in fairies — or at least very much wanted to. In this book, he travels in rural Ireland and asks people to tell him what they know about fairies. Faeries were already fading then. But they were still very much a part of rural life and the Irish belief system.

I am certainly not the only person to wonder where the fairies have gone. I Googled for the words “where have all the fairies gone” and got a number of little articles. Most are like this. Those articles use words such as “spirit,” “vibration,” “devic,” and “plane.” Though it is harmless, this type of credulous, too-magical thinking makes me cringe. But I also found this, a much smarter and more thoughtful piece. The author thinks that we reached peak fairy around 1926. He thinks that it was the automobile that ruined the world for fairies. This is not just because cars are noisy and are made of metal (fairies hate iron), but because we stopped walking. In particular, we stopped walking in quiet places where nature is still unspoiled.

Though it’s bad manners to quote authors’ last paragraphs, I’ll make an exception here, because I think it’s important: “So, I’m pretty sure cars killed off the fairies and reduced the trove of local stories. And I’m also pretty sure of this: these could be revived if only we got out and about by foot more often, especially where the pavement ends.”

Rational as the author is, clearly he wants the fairies back. I do, too.

Often I stand in my upstairs windows, which face into the woods, downhill toward a little stream. Many times from those windows I have seen the white deer. I have seen an owl perched in the huge old beech tree that overhangs the big rock. The owl flew away on enormous wings when it saw me watching. The white deer, I believe, sleeps under the big rock sometimes. I have seen the trees crowded with hundreds of crows. The crows increasingly seem to like those woods — a positive sign, I think, of something. Noisy as the crows are (they come almost every day), I love the sound they make. The crows also nest in the woods. During the spring I watch them gliding in and out to their nests through holes in the heavy green canopy. One year, a mama fox raised two cubs in those woods. Out of the woods come squirrels, who sometimes get onto the roof of the house, and possums, for whom I leave snacks on the deck. In the spring, the bottom of the little valley is densely strewn with May apples. After a heavy rain, the stream almost roars as the water cascades over the rocks. The water, which at times has been cloudy, is remarkably clear and clean at present. These upstairs windows face west. The full moon sets in the woods, early in the morning. The wind in the trees sounds very different in the winter than in the summer. But particularly in the summer, the wind in the leaves sounds remarkably like the sea. The woods go on and on for miles. You’d have to cross some roads, but I’m pretty sure that one could walk all the way to Quebec from here, up the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, without really leaving the woods.

And so, reading W.B. Yeats’ carefully curated fairy stories from the 19th Century, I ask myself: Shouldn’t there be fairies in those woods? Should I hide the cars up the hill? Would I have to squint and look for them out of the edges of my eyes? Should I try taking naps on the big rock, under the beech tree? Would I have to eat some mushrooms? What sort of fairies might they be? Would they like me? Should I post a little sign, “Fairies welcome here”?

But seriously, the cultural loss is devastating. The 19th Century Irish country people whom Yeats interviewed about fairies were nominally Catholic, but I get the strong impression that Catholicism was a very weak force compared with the ancient folk beliefs. Priests were to be made fun of, but you’d better listen to what the fairies say. Whereas, if I hiked to the north and interviewed some neighbors, they’d know plenty of church talk, but they’d be utterly empty of imagination. And how many of them still walk in the woods?

There was a brilliant piece in last Sunday’s New York Times by E.O. Wilson, the biologist. He is arguing for the Half-Earth project, which he believes is necessary if the human species is to survive. The Half-Earth project calls for setting aside half of the earth as habitat for other species. Humans would keep to their own half, and in a sustainable way. That’s a brilliant idea. Maybe, then, there’d be room enough on earth for the fairies, too. Meanwhile I’ve got a little spot for them to help tide them over, if they’d like to have it.

If E.O. Wilson is right, and if we don’t make room for earth’s other creatures, then we’ll be next. It was just that the fairies went first.

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On par with driving a Tesla??

The Washington Post has a funny story this morning about how keeping chickens is now a status symbol in Silicon Valley. The status of having well-kept chickens, the story says, is “on par with driving a Tesla.” The story is “The Silicon Valley elite’s latest status symbol: Chickens.”

Spending $20,000 on a chicken coop is a bit extreme. Nor does one have to pay hundreds, or thousands, of dollars for fancy-bred hens. Ordinary chickens from a good farm supply store will be just fine. Still, despite the excess, I’m all for it. I’m all for anything that gives chickens better lives and raises awareness of how important chickens are to us — not to mention what sweet, highly conscious creatures they are.

Meanwhile, for some very sad reading, the Intercept has this: “Consumers Are Revolting Against Animal Cruelty — So the Poultry Industry Is Lobbying for Laws to Force Stores to Sell Their Eggs.”

The way chickens are treated by the chicken and egg industry is almost unimaginable in its cruelty. The whole point of it is to make eggs and chicken meat cheap, with no regard for the chickens.

I believe that everyone with a conscience should have a rule: Don’t eat chickens raised by the cheap-chicken industry, and don’t buy eggs from the cheap-eggs industry. Why not find a source that gives the chickens decent lives. Yes, it will cost more. But the reallocation of consumers’ egg dollars will force the industry to change. Every egg laid by a happy chicken is one less egg that has to be laid by a miserable chicken.

And for those whose living situation allows keeping chickens, do it! Keep as many hens as is practical, and sell or give away your egg surplus.

What the hens eat

There are many people who believe, ostensibly as a matter of science, that there is no nutritional or health advantage in organic foods. I beg to differ.

For years, I searched for organic chicken feed and couldn’t locate any. A horticulturist friend who helped with the search reported that a feed maker in Virginia said, “We could make organic chicken feed, but nobody would be able to afford to buy it.”

Then, a year ago, I discovered that Tractor Supply stores sell two types of organic chicken feed. I believe it was a relatively new product then, but I’m not sure when it became available. Last year’s new chickens also came from Tractor Supply. A sign near the baby-chicken area said that the chicks had been raised on organic feed. We continued to feed them organic baby feed until they were big enough for the adult laying mash. The abbey has never had a generation of such healthy, good-laying chickens.

It’s possible, of course, that it’s not just the organic ingredients that make the chickens thrive. It’s also possible that the feed is better and more expensively formulated, since it sells for twice the price of inorganic feeds. But here’s the thing. The abbey’s chickens never really used to like their inorganic feed. We tried several types. Always the chickens would pick through it, get the bits they wanted, and flick the rest on the ground for the voles to eat. I believe they wasted half their feed. It’s remarkable, but feeding the hens organic feed actually has ended up costing less, because they like the feed and don’t waste it. In particular, it was the corn in the inorganic feed that they didn’t like. That was certainly GMO corn. When the chickens were on inorganic feed, we also had a chronic problem with soft egg shells. Feeding the hens oyster shells helped. But the eggs shells on the organic feed are perfect — almost too strong — with no need for oyster shells as a supplement. There also are never any red spots in the eggs anymore, meaning, I’m sure, that their ovaries are healthy.

All four of last year’s new girls are going strong in spite of multiple unsuccessful hawk attacks. I’m hoping that the hawks will just learn to stay away, not least because I do my best to watch the chickens like a hawk.

All the chickens lay an egg a day. During a very cold spell in December, they slacked off a little. But after the weather warmed up they went right back to an egg a day. I give away the surplus eggs. They’re very much in demand. The girls have lots of pasture and get lots of greenery such as clover. Soon the new grass will be in. And of course all the abbey’s grounds are organically fertilized. So abbey eggs, for the last year, have been 100 percent organic. Even $8 organic, “free range” eggs from Whole Foods are nowhere near as good, with pale yolks and thinner shells. Every pound of organic food that comes in to feed the chickens ends up on the ground as chicken poop fertilizer. Year by year, the soils builds. I can’t imagine not having chickens.

The hen in the photo above, by the way, I call Fiona the Second. Like Fiona the First, who is now in chicken heaven, Fiona the Second is totally in love with me. She’s also the top chicken in the pecking order, though they never peck each other. I’m pretty sure that, when hens are not crowded and not stressed, they’re particularly nice to each other.

What can we learn from railway maps?

A coal train near Cotton Hill, West Virginia. Source: Jason Bostic, Flickr

As I mentioned recently, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to go on more hiking and picture-taking expeditions. When I made the resolution, I was vaguely aware that I wanted to focus on the Appalachian highlands. But I also wanted to get a bit more order and purpose into it — that is, to make a project out of it.

I think my plan is to follow the coal.

About 15 miles away, at Belews Creek, North Carolina, is the Belews Creek Steam Station, a coal-fired generating plant operated by Duke Energy. The plant burns massive amounts of coal and produces massive amounts of coal ash. The environmental consequences of this are a whole different story. But that whole different story also figures into my political and environmental activities in these parts. But back to the coal.

The coal that feeds the Belews Creek Steam Station comes from (where else?) West Virginia. The coal gets here from West Virginia on very long and very heavy coal trains. The route the coal trains follow is not hard to figure out using Google Earth and other online sources. The train line’s path from the steam station to West Virginia runs like this: Belews Creek (North Carolina), Madison, Stoneville, Martinsville (Virginia), Ferrum, Rocky Mount, Roanoke, Christiansburg, Ripplemead, Narrows, Princeton (West Virginia), and thence into a complex network of rail lines that bring coal out of the West Virginia mountains.

Railways (and trains) are remarkably photogenic. Most railway lines were built many decades ago. They tend to follow rivers, traveling through wild places to link old industrial cities. Their routes show us where industry was concentrated back in the days when the U.S. had industry.

So the photographic project I’m proposing for myself is to follow the coal train from Belews Creek (North Carolina) to Kopperston (West Virginia) or thereabouts. Such a project would take time — a couple of years, probably — with each segment requiring a separate road trip.

We’ll see!

If you’re interested in looking at railway lines in Google Earth (railway lines in the U.S., anyway) then with this link, you can find .kmz files for Google Earth. When loaded into Google Earth, the files draw the routes of the railways in Google Earth for most American railway lines. If you click on a railway, you can see who owns it, plus a bit of the railway’s history.

The Google Earth screen shot below shows the Belews Creek Steam Station (circled in red); the little town of Walnut Cove (circled in green); and the route the coal train follows toward Roanoke, Virginia (the red arrow). This train line dates back to 1889 and now belongs to Norfolk Southern Railway.

I plan to start shooting at Walnut Cove and the Belews Creek Steam Station and then, over time, work my way toward the coal mines of West Virginia. Following the train lines with Google Earth should help me zoom in on the most photogenic areas.

Architectural history: Some biodegradable, some not

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My county, Stokes County (North Carolina), is a county of rolling hills and forest, with a few small and picturesque mountains, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which of course are a part of the Appalachian chain. Stokes was never a prosperous county. There were a couple of big plantations (Hairstons and Daltons), but most people lived by subsistence farming, with tobacco as the cash crop. Though Stokes County now is in the middle of nowhere, during the American colonial days, and into the 19th Century, one of the most important roads in the colonies passed right through here, just over the southeast ridge near the abbey. That was the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to Georgia, used by armies and by George Washington. When I drive down Dodgetown Road on the way to Whole Foods in Winston-Salem, I am on the Great Wagon Road. Ken’s jogging circuit includes the Great Wagon Road.

The house in the top photo mystifies me. It sits on a hill just above the Dan River, very near the place where the Great Wagon Road crossed the river, two miles from the abbey. It’s too elegant to be a farmhouse. There were few, or no, rich farmers here other than the plantations. My theory is that this house was an inn on the Great Wagon Road. I may be deceiving myself, but I suspect that the house is that old. I’ve sent an email to a friend who is president of the county historical society. I’m guessing that she will know the house’s history.

What’s remarkable is that the house is still lived in. Most of the old wood-built farmhouses were long ago abandoned to rot and have fallen down, along with their beautiful old barns and outbuildings (which I remember from my childhood). But at this old house, there was smoke coming from one of the chimneys this afternoon. There are lace curtains in the upstairs windows. There are horse tracks on the unpaved road in front of the house, and the adjoining pastures are clearly in use. There are no no-trespassing signs, but there is a makeshift drop-down gate made of a hand-hewn log over the driveway. This fascinates me. Someone is still living the old lifestyle. I am determined to find out who they are and what their story is.

On the East Coast of the United States, timber was (and still is) plentiful. There was little reason to build with stone when wood was so much cheaper. The downside of that is that we lose our architectural history so much quicker. Buildings rot away soon after the roofs fail. The old house above has an old, and possibly its original, galvanized steel roof, but the roof looks to be in good shape. I believe galvanized steel was invented in 1836, though I don’t know when it became available in this area.

The stone construction in the lower photo is an iron furnace. It’s at Danbury, about five miles from the abbey, right beside the Dan River. It was in service during the Civil War days, casting munitions. It also produced iron bars and such for the use of blacksmiths. Not a stone has fallen, as far as I can tell. Early Americans knew how to work with stone, but usually they didn’t. Even when they eschewed wood as a building material, they used brick, as at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and in colonial towns such as Williamsburg (Virginia) and Salem (North Carolina). Still, wooden buildings can last a long time if their roofs don’t fail.

People who know some local history ask me how I (my last name is Dalton) am related to the Daltons of the Dalton plantations here. The answer is that I am not descended from those Daltons but that we are all descended from the same line of Virginia Daltons. (It always amuses me to type that, because my mother’s name was Virginia Dalton.)

My eighteen years in San Francisco were great. But I love living in the middle of nowhere, in the woods, as good a place as any in the U.S. that suburbanized modernity has passed by.

The kraken vine

Last year, a friend sent me a gift from his garden. He called it a squash, I called it a little pumpkin. Save the seeds, he said. Plant in early summer, he said, feed it well, give it lots of room, and it will become a kraken plant. The vine will spread like kudzu, and it will eat you alive if you don’t watch out, he said. They’re still blooming! The photo is of two baby kraken with a teacup for scale.

These little things are outrageously magical. They mature just before Hallowe’en. They’re probably winter squash. Like winter squash, they like to be cured, and they keep for ages. But in a pie they taste just like pumpkin.

Next year, I’d like to have a lot more of these things and do a better job of cultivating them. A good crop of them probably would last for most of the winter.

Update: The friend who sent me my first little pumpkin identifies these as “Long Island cheese pumpkins.” Here’s a link to some history. They’re an old variety, rescued by an heirloom seed project in the 1970s. He bought his first one at a farmer’s market, he says. Nothing could be easier than saving pumpkin seeds, by the way.

Wintertime table lighting

W.T. Kirkman No. 1 “Little Champ” oil lanterns

For many years, I have been weird about how the table is lit for supper. Electric light is not allowed. It’s not just an affectation for when there is company. It’s an everyday thing, even when I’m having supper alone. During the summer months, supper is over well before dark. But as the days get shorter, it was time to rethink table lighting yet again.

For years, my solution was ordinary tapers of the type that can be bought just about anywhere. But they’re too small. They don’t last long enough. And I don’t much like tapered candles. A year ago, I ordered a box of church candles. They’re very expensive, but they’re great candles. They’re 50 percent beeswax with a nice, straight, ecclesiastical shape. They’re 7/8 inch in diameter and 12 inches long. One box of 24 candles lasted all winter. But the price rose from $50 per box for the first box I ordered to $89 per box now. That’s just too much. All candles gutter and sometimes make a mess. Removing the drippings from the candleholders and replacing spent candles is an unpleasant chore.

My next idea was to try the little blown-glass oil candles made by Firefly. I thought about it for a long time before I ordered a pair, for safety reasons. Flammable liquid inside a glass vessel with a wick is the very definition of Molotov cocktail. What if one of them hit the floor and shattered? But eventually I ordered a pair and tried them out. I hated them. They produce a tiny little dot of light. I should have realized that before I bought them, because the wick is tiny. They are useless, except perhaps as votives, and I’m not a very votive person.

My next idea was an oil lamp, or chamber lamp, of the type that was very common in the days before electrification. They burn kerosene, and they’re easy to find today, both new and antique. But they, too, are usually made of glass. I made a new rule for myself: No glass oil lamps.

Then I admired the yacht lamps and miner’s lamps made of brass, often plated with stainless steel. But they are extremely expensive, and they’re often poorly reviewed as not being well-made enough to be worth the cost.

So then, the last option was oil lanterns.

Obviously there is still a thriving market for oil lanterns. Many people buy them, I believe, as backup lighting for power failures, which makes a lot of sense. They’re made of metal, and the larger lanterns have nice big wicks that are 1 inch wide. As I read reviews of lanterns on Amazon, I finally settled on lanterns made by W.T. Kirkman. Kirkman lanterns get the best reviews and were said to be better made. I ordered two of the Kirkman lanterns from Amazon. Here’s a link to the Kirkman web site. Kirkman sells several models and options in its lanterns, but not all of those models and options are available on Amazon.

I settled on the No. 1 “Little Champ” cold blast lantern. It’s 12 inches high with a 5/8-inch wick. So what does “cold blast” mean? It has to do with how the flame gets its air for combustion. It’s a clever bit of 19th Century technology. In a cold blast lantern, the air is taken in at the top of the lantern and travels down through the side tubes. This is said to give a whiter, brighter flame. Also, cold blast lanterns are said to self-extinguish if tipped over. I’m not going to try that out, but I’m glad to hear it.

The lanterns burn clean and aren’t affected by drafts or blasts of air. Once they’re lit and glowing, they look more domestic and less like something you’d see in a barn. They’re brighter than candles. And they give off a certain warmth (1,100 or 1,400 BTU per hour depending on the model) which should be very welcome in the wintertime.

Kirkman also makes a larger lantern, 15 inches tall with a 1-inch wick. I might just get myself one of those for outdoor use. All the lanterns are galvanized steel. Options include a black enamel finish, round shades that reflect the light downward, and globes in several colors of glass including red, yellow, green, blue, and frosted. Lantern technology is alive and well! You also can buy kits to electrify the lanterns, including with LED bulbs. But why would you want to do that?

When I was a young’un, my grandparents had an oil lantern that they had had since the days before rural electrification. I used to love to play with it. Though I suppose it’s a bit eccentric to have oil lanterns on the supper table, I’m pretty sure that will be my method hereafter. I’ll save the pricey church candles for special occasions.

My grandparents also always kept a 5-gallon tank of kerosene. These oil lanterns will, of course, burn kerosene. But these days most people use the newer lamp oils, which burn cleaner, make less odor, and are said to be safer.

A box of church candles

The new girls come on line

The easiest time of year to acquire chickens — at least in these parts — comes in the weeks before Easter. That’s when the local mills and Tractor Supply have chicks for sale. Spring chickens can be counted on to start laying in August. The new girls are right on time — maybe even a little early.

The abbey’s chickens are always beautiful and healthy, but 2017 has been a special year, I think. The rain and cooler weather have made for excellent pasturing and foraging. The chickens here have three fenced areas. During the day, when it’s hot, they have full shade in the woods. They love to spend mornings and evenings in the orchard. And when there are no young plants to damage, they have full run of the garden.

The first eggs are slightly smaller than the eggs of the mature chickens, about 52 grams vs. 62 grams. All the girls are laying superb eggs with good shells and golden yolks from all the grass and clover.

“It’s up to us, the people”

This is a brief new video with Ken from Signature Views / Signature Reads.

Amazon buys Whole Foods??

This morning we learned that Amazon has bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in cash. What’s up? Information on Amazon’s plans for Whole Foods is in short supply at present, except that it’s known that Amazon wants to get into the grocery business, that Amazon was interested in a brick-and-mortar presence, and that Whole Foods was hurting, chiefly because of cheaper competition.

I feel a very strong interest in this, because it happens that Whole Foods and Amazon are the two organizations that get most of the money I spend. Until we learn more, I’m forced to speculate about what’s going to change.

First of all, Whole Foods was starting to show (at least in the Winston-Salem store where I shop) alarming signs of money problems. Staff seemed increasingly spread thin. The coffee bins and bulk bins were sometimes empty and neglected, with no bags. The produce wasn’t as fresh and beautiful as it used to be. Basic perishables such as cream would be out of stock. The decline troubled me so much that I shopped one week at a competitor, Fresh Market, to investigate whether I should switch stores. I decided to stick with Whole Foods and hope for the best.

One of the sad things about Whole Foods is that much of the new competition has been coming from grossly inferior stores — Publix, Aldi, and a new one, Lidl. Aldi, as far as I could tell having only been in one once without buying anything, is what grocery stores would be like in hell. You had to deposit a quarter to get a grocery cart! The produce looked more like compost prewrapped in plastic. How such dreadful stores could give Whole Foods a hard time puzzles me, but apparently that was the case.

So then, Amazon could have seen its grocery future in an Aldi-like store, or even a Publix-like store, stores with a mass-market and warehouse feel to them. Certainly that’s what Amazon Pantry implied. Amazon Pantry sells only mass-market stuff that I would never buy. But instead Amazon chose Whole Foods, with its high-end, high-priced reputation, a chain that everybody knew was starting to get into trouble and that needs some repair to its reputation. Surely this tells us something about Amazon’s intentions for Whole Foods. Until I find out otherwise, I’m going to take the optimistic view: That Amazon will spend heavily to spiff up Whole Foods stores that were starting to show signs of hardship, and that Amazon is aiming at the high end and leaving the low end to a now crowded low-end market. Also, there is bound to be some kind of integration between online grocery shopping and going to the local Whole Foods.

This could be great! For a while, it looked as though bottom-feeder stores like Aldi were going to make life harder for high-end shoppers like me by driving high-end stores like Whole Foods into poverty. Now suddenly the prospects have turned. With Amazon aligned with Whole Foods, we may soon see the bottom-feeder stores starting to look shabby.

Update:

Grocery stocks tank on news that Amazon is buying Whole Foods