Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

> In a message dated 6/22/2007 7:07:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> billj AT harborside.com writes:
>
>
>  
>
> > Maybe you'll think that gardening is still fun after you have to raise 
> > all the water for your garden 100' with a hand pump. 
> >    
>
> Correct, not 100 feet in my case, more like 25.  I have an ancient pitcher 
> pump in the center of the garden and it lifts the water 25 feet from  a catch 
> basin in a creek some 120 feet away.
>
>
> If you calculate 
>
>  
>
> > the caloric expenditure involved with pumping that much water, it would 
> > add several hundred calories onto your day's total, after chopping wood 
> > and before all else.  
> >    
>
> Yes, if you raised water 100 feet by muscle power, it would take several 
> hundred calories of food.
>  
I don't find that to have any meaning without some reference to the 
number of gallons required.  My raised beds must be drenched each day in 
hot weather, to a much greater degree than if the plants were in the ground.

> > We opt not to do that, for obvious reasons. 
> >    
>
> Sorry, you're dealing with a dull luddite here.  It's not obvious at all to 
> me.
>  
My brother in Arizona has 3 times the lift and at least 3 times the 
water need, should he ever find a need to cultivate his own food.  So 
his need to expend calories arbitrarily jumps to 9 times mine, in 110 
degree heat for half the year.  At this point it becomes a question of 
whether there would even be enough hours in a day.

Our physical capacity for gardening in raised beds is way more ample 
than that needed to sustain ourselves.  With automated water lifting, 
the excess can be taken to market or to the Food Bank.  Without it, the 
work of talented gardeners will be substituted with work appropriate for 
donkeys.  We're happy to have the same freedom and advantage that 
someone who lived right next to a fast-flowing stream would take for 
granted, so that we can continue our happy, independent, and productive 
lifestyle well into our Golden Years.  Likewise, I guess gardening 
should just be off-limits to disabled people.

The main reason that people have become so dumbed down these days is 
precisely because there was no time left over for any education or 
parental involvement in everyday things like food production.  It's 
difficult to see how turning off your brain and your ingenuity so that 
you can do the work of donkeys and windmills will result in anything 
better (assuming that the parents are out earning a living too).

> >The 
>
>  
>
> > reason why these systems are possibly more valuable to us than to you is 
> > that we're 3 days away from a dead garden once the power goes out, since 
> > the electric pump we're stuck with now allows for no other options.
> >
> >    
>
> I have no idea how long my gardens would last this summer without irrigation. 
> We get a thunderstorm every ten days or so be we are  more than 11 inches 
> below he normal rainfall for the year so far.  Some things would have died for 
> sure, many more would never have germinated and transplanting would have been 
> impossible.
>
> I'm  don't disparage the use of electicity especially for such applications 
> as lifting water where you get a lot of return for the little expense that it 
> costs.
The pumps cost $500 a pop.  I honestly can't say whether we've run that 
much electricity through it yet, after 10 years.  The reason they're 
ridiculous is that we have a 1000 watt pump to do a 10W job.  Try to 
find something more appropriate to the job, and you'll pay much, much 
more, despite the much lower wattage.  I've had it with this game.

Besides, isn't it more fun and educational to tinker around with cool 
stuff like compressors, than to accept any form of devolution?

Bill
S. Oregon coast