Still, the thought of going from four children to seven, eight or even nine has me curious about the logistics – how will all of this work for us?  Technically, I have a large family – in the US large families start at 3 or 4 kids.  I still remember, shortly after Isaiah (third child) was born, I went to a tea party held by a good friend for a group of women who had all had babies recently.  All of us had our second or third, and one woman, on her second, said to me “Well, you have all those children!”  I blinked, because it had never occurred to me that a family of three constituted “all those” but in fact it does.

Indeed, when I recently attended an event to receive an award in New York City, I was as much a curiosity as a three-headed bear because I was a professional writer of some minor note *with four children.*  In New York, where outside some ethnic and religious populations, one or two children is an absolute maximum, I found myself surrounded by women stunned that anyone could have multiple children and write books as well.  Everyone asked “how does she do it” as though accomplishment plus children were impossible – and perhaps it is if women have to do all the domestic work alone. I’m fortunate in that it is a shared project in our household.

But if mine is a technically large family (four kids, two adults, sometimes additional adults, as when Eric’s grandparents lived with us or our housemate Phil did), the shift from four to seven, eight or nine (probably in a matter of days)  is a pretty big one in this culture.  Ok, not just the culture – in our lives as well, and yes, I’m freaking out a little .   Besides that, however, there’s public perception too, however.  Despite the tv-show prominence of a few large families, most households in the US are 2.7 people – ours would be 11 if we took all five kids.

If four children is already a big family, what the heck is eight or nine kids?  As Melissa Fay Greene writes (she’s the bio and adoptive Mom of 9) in _No Biking in the House Without a Helmet_, that many kids marks you as weird and makes people put you in “…among the greats:  the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers and perhaps even Mrs. Vassilyev, who, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth century Russia.”  Now there’s a company I never thought to join.

Besides the fascination with sheer numbers,  everyone who writes and reads about large families is fascinated by the logistics – how many gallons of milk a week, how do they do the shopping, how much laundry and how many dishes?  I admit, I’m no different – I want to be able to envision how this all works, to try and have a set of strategies in my head that might make the transition doable if this – or some other – group of siblings joins my extant herd of boys.

So I googled – a bunch – about larger family logistics, and how do people do it.  Unfortunately, a lot of what I found didn’t really apply to us, in the same sense that a lot of standard american cultural assumptions don’t apply to us.  The advice offered to large families is centered on families that don’t seem terribly worried about their ecological impact.  Maybe they can’t worry about it, or maybe it isn’t part of their consciousness.

Whatever the reason, advice for parents of large families (ok, let’s actually admit it is almost always mothers of large families!) tends to emphasize big appliances at lots of them.  Get three fridges one family suggests – one just for the milk!  Two industrial washers and two matching industrial dryers as well – that’ll keep the laundry under control!  Use paper and plastic at every meal to minimize dishes!  Color code everything  - every kid gets a color, and everything they own – socks, underpants, towels, backpacks…it all comes in purple or green or puce (for the truly mega-families, what happens if you are the last kid and your color choices are puce and ashes-of-roses ).

I’m not sitting in judgement here – many of these families, particularly the large adoptive families with many kids with special needs, may simply not be able to add on energy reduction.  Indeed, for the families that keep large sibling groups from separation, or take in hard-to-place older and disabled kids, just giving the kids a family will probably reduce their energy and resource consumption considerably by reducing visitations, consolidating kids into one home instead of four, etc…, not to mention the other deep goods – the fact that kids get families.  My point isn’t that other families should do differently, but that it was hard to find role models, except by digging into the past.

I don’t have a working refrigerator – we use a small fridge as an icebox.  It is a side-by-side (inherited from Eric’s grandmother), so I might open up the other side, but I won’t be buying a plug-in model.  I will be buying milk when the kids come, because I’m not legally permitted to feed foster children our goat’s milk, but I don’t see myself with an infinite number of gallons of industrial milk in a fridge, as so many blog pictures show.

While when our present front loader washer meets its inevitable end, I do anticipate replacing it with a commercial model, that probably won’t be for quite a while –  who knows about things that far away?  My mother asked me recently if I would need to get a dryer to keep up with the laundry – my assumption is no, since generations of women raised large families without them, but I haven’t done the laundry for more than 7 people yet (although at one point I was doing laundry for a baby, a toddler and an autistic, non-toilet trained five years old, as we as an incontinent elder, plus others so I’ve got a faint sense of this).  The plastic and paper are not part of my plan, and where would I find that much color-matching stuff in my usual shopping haunts, Goodwill. Savers and various yard sales?  Besides, who wants to wear purple every day?

Some of the advice for large families is good – make lists, get organized, get rid of stuff you don’t need.  Organize the kids into buddies, with a bigger kid keeping an eye on a younger one.  Cook double and freeze.  Chore charts, calendars – all good advice.  Most of it is good advice for those of us with small-big families too, which is why a lot of it is already in place, and I have some doubts about my ability to do some of the other stuff.

Some things we are already doing – bulk purchasing, a large pantry, buying clothes for larger sizes in advance – I’ve just added girl things into the mix and am starting to accumulate a stash of clothing for potential daughters, if any. The kids already have chores.  I already have multiple calendars.  I’m just now sure how much new will be required of me as I scale up.

Then there’s the old-fashioned advice – wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, etc…  But I don’t iron, and I have to do laundry just about every day as it is – much of the year the limiting factor is drying space, so a “day” to wash is out.  I can imagine modifying it – preserve on Monday, bake on Tuesday, weed on Wednesday, mend on Thursday – but I haven’t quite pulled it together yet in my head, and I’m not clear that baking on Tuesday, rather than when we’re low on bread, will actually have me any time.

So those of you with large households, particularly trying to Riot or keep your energy use down in other ways, what do you do?  What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you for managing a large household?   How do you organize yourself? Keep up with the clothing and the washing, the cooking and shopping?  Do you use a full range of appliances?  Do without?  What’s worth having and what isn’t?  I want your advice!

Sharon

Well, let me start by saying that my schedule is also not compatible with milking twice a day on that schedule.  Once upon a time I was routinely up at 5am, and I still start my day between 5:30 and 6, but now that my children sleep later, I’m into sleeping too.  Moreover, I can’t face a warm goat until I’ve had one cup of hot tea.  I don’t milk twice a day.  I don’t milk 365 days a year, and I do go away on vacation.  In large measure, we have shifted our milking schedule so that it fits with our lives.

How is this possible? Well, it is not if you plan to run a goat or cow dairy for profit – in that case, you will be tied to the same schedule, because 12 hour, twice per day milkings are necessary to maximize production.  Most of us who want a couple of goats, however, do not have to maximize production – in fact, we may not want to.  It becomes pretty feasible to make milking work for you.

First of all, no goat milks 365 days a year, unless you choose not to breed her annually.  Generally speaking,  the last two months of a doe’s pregnancy, they are dry – ie, not milking so that they can put their energies into kid development.  If all your goats are dry at the same time, this is an excellent time of year to go on vacation, since they only need to be fed and watered.  If you don’t want kids, you can breed every other year, and in this case, you will have to milk all year ’round.

Generally, however, it is pretty feasible to work around goat biology.  We milk once per day, in the morning, at about 7am.  Because goats, like all mammals must have a kid in order to produce milk, we separate out their kids, starting at two weeks old, at night.  From 7pm to 7am (actually we start out with 10pm and gradually move backwards to adjust the kids), the kids are in their own pen or section of the pasture (depending on age of kids and season).  At 7am, we milk the does, and then let them out with their kids.  During the day, the kids have all the milk.

I could also milk once a day during the evenings, and keep the kids separate during the daytimes, but this works better for us – and I think is preferable for the kids as well, since goats are diurnal and do eat more during the daytime – a day separation would be feasible, however.  You can schedule your milking for whatever time is convenient to you.  I do try not to push milking much past 8am, since a full udder is uncomfortable for them, but I have no difficulty milking earlier than usual, if we need to be somewhere early, or occasionally even leaving the kids on their mothers overnight so that we don’t have to milk at all on a particularly rushed morning (say, if we have to leave at 5am – this is rare thing, however).

Left to themselves, the kids will nurse for 5-7 months after birth (actually, they’d do it a lot longer, but the Moms get annoyed after a while when a kid nearly as big as they are practically lifts them in the air).  So for the first six months (average) after birth, if you keep the kids that long, you can go away.  All you have to do is put the kids in the pasture with their Moms and they will be fine – no milking needed.

Some people worry about scours (diarrhea) if the goats were getting all their milk – we’ve never had a case of scours except in goats bought from other farms.  Our goats tend to do very well on free choice nursing – and this is, of course, what they’d do in nature.  No, the don’t get fat, either – they eat as much as is appropriate to them.   Indeed, we recently had a goat from another farm come to ours who had been bottle fed, and we got to see the dramatic difference in size and vitality between bottle and mother fed.

You cannot do this if you have CAE in your herd or are engaged in CAE prevention.  Our herd comes only from tested CAE negative herds, and we don’t show or otherwise bring our goats out into the world, so we feel very comfortable with dam-raised kids.  Some people will tell you that dam-raised kids are unfriendly and can’t be handled – ours are not.  They like to play with us, eat treats and be petted.  Indeed, again, our experience with bottle babies is that they don’t fully know how to work in the larger herd – they aren’t sure if they are goats or humans.  We like goats who are goats.  I would recommend that you purchase goats only from CAE negative herds if you want to be a lazy goatkeeper.

If you kid in springtime, a six month nursing cycle will coincide with the cycle of the grass in most northern areas that get summer moisture.  One thought is to milk only on this seasonal cycle – following the grass and drying the goats off during the winter, as they would naturally have dried off.  You can then eat your residual milk in the form of cheese that you made over the summer, and milk can be frozen if you have space for it.  You will, of course, get less milk in total, but the economics of this are pretty good, because goats need less grain during summers when pastures are lush and may well be able to do acceptably on grass alone.  This allows you to be flexible all year round – you can leave the kids on the does in spring, summer and fall and in winter, they will be dry.  The only time of year you won’t want to leave the farm is kidding season.

The main disadvantage of this situation is that it sets you to selling the goat’s offspring in late fall.  Now if you plan to butcher males and keep females, this works very well – your goats are mature at precisely the point at which you’d want to butcher them anyway.   If you plan to sell offspring, most people want their livestock earlier in the year, and more people don’t want to winter goats over, so prices fall – and most people prefer young goats when they are small and cute.  One option is to breed the doelings (if you have a breed that can be bred at 7months – some breeds wait longer) and sell them as bred does – which bring higher prices.  Another is to overwinter them yourself and sell them in the spring as milkers, after they have kidded, which also bring higher prices.  In many breeds, twins are the norm, and you can sell one of the goat’s babies at 8 weeks, so you can partially obviate this problem, if not wholly.  Do remember to wether your boys if you are doing this – by six months, they could easily impregnate Mom – in some breeds significantly earlier.

What if you want year ’round milk?  This is the case for us –  and the reason we have two kiddings a year, one in July and one in April.  In that case, actually going away becomes more complicated, and there are periods of the year in which it is necessary that someone be around to milk if you are going to leave.

Working on that schedule, we can go away and leave the kids with their Moms from May (after the first cycle of kidding) through June, come back in July (for the second cycle) and then are free from August to November.  Depending on how long the April babies nurse, we might even be able to get away with December (if you routinely travel for Christmas or other December holidays, it might make sense to have May babies – we do our travelling at Thanksgiving in general).  From December to May, if we want to leave the farm, we have to get help milking.

Which is where this thing comes in handy – the Maggidans Milker.  Essentially a manual breast pump for goats (the first one was, I believe a modified human breast pump), this takes the skill out of milking, and means that a competent 12 year old (I know this because we used one for several years) can handle the day-to-day ins and outs of goat care.  You will see some decline in production if you go away for an extended period and have someone milk with only this – the milker gets the majority of milk, but for maximum production, you want to strip the goats teats afterwards, to get the last of it (the hindmilk is also the richest).  But for a couple of days, we’ve seen no significant drops in production in a doe that is established, and you may find it worth it.  There’s another brand as well, the EZ Milker that is more expensive, but we have had a great experience with this one.  Given that I have carpal tunnel syndrome from too much time in front of the computer, the Maggidans is helpful – we’re milking 12 does right now, and while two or three are easy, after a point without the milker, it got painful.

If you are prepared to pump and dump for a few days, (ie, give the milk to other animals), you don’t even have to take the time to sterilize.  We had no trouble teaching a 12 year old to handle our goats for a few days – and it allowed us to go away and feel comfortable about it. Many more people could have goats if they could rely on a local teen, just as they do to walk their dogs.

The economics of this model work well for us – including the cost of hay, grain, fencing,  amortized goat cost (over 10 year breeding life), medical care, etc… my summer milk cost for organic raw milk is $3.11 per gallon.  My winter milk cost (where more hay and a bit more grain are involved) is about $4.00 – well below the price of a gallon of organic milk.  Besides this our milk has much higher butterfat (ie, more cheese = not all goats have the same butterfat ratios), tastes like sweet cow’s milk (no goaty taste) and we get manure, companionship and kids for sale, replacement or meat.  Because I have dwarf goats, two does can easily fit in many backyards, eating weeds and brush and garden wastes for part of their diet.  Larger breeds are more appropriate for larger lots.

Although you will not maximize milk production this way, generally speaking lower input (less grain, more flexibility) milking has good economics – yes, you could get more milk out of your doe, but with more concentrates that many of us do not grow.  Summer-only production probably has the lowest cost to production, but if you want year-round milk, the numbers still add up.

For many people, concerned with sources of good milk, and with the high (legitimately so – the cost of dairy certification adds a lot) cost of good milk, a couple of dairy goats and lazy goatkeeping could make it feasible.

Sharon

Stealing a great line from George Monbiot’s wonderful book _Heat_, in which he laments “no one has ever rioted for austerity” Miranda Edel and I, both mothers of children who would be living for this world, wondered if it was really so inconceivable that people could change their lives. After all, our grandparents had done so during WWII – was it really so alien, so far away? Frustrated at lack of political responsiveness, we decided we wouldn’t wait – we’d see if we could make the cuts in our own lives. Someone, we argued, had to model a way of life that was actually viable given the limits of our planet’s resources and pollution absorption capacity. So, why not us?

We set two goals. First, we would spend a year trying to get our emissions down by 90% over the American average. Second, we’d use this as part of a larger public strategy to point out that it can be done – that we don’t have to wait for political action – indeed, that we can’t wait.

What we didn’t expect was that the Riot would take on a life of its own – at its peak in 2008, several thousand people in 14 countries were rioting – and talking about it in a lively, sometimes contentious, often very funny discussion group. Wjat was most astonishing about it was how much fun all of us were having getting our emissions and impact down.

Or maybe that isn’t very surprising. The historian Timothy Breen has argued that during times of crisis, what he calls “rituals of non-consumption” arise in order to fill the gap created by the inability to consumer, for whatever reason. Those rituals – sharing recipes for homegrown teas during the American revolution, knitting socks for soldiers during WWI, etc… are as satisfying or more satisfying than the old rituals. People don’t miss what they give up – provided, of course, that they can fill the gap with community.

In 2007, while it was frustrating that the people had to lead the political discourse, it seemed possible we might do something, however inadequate, about climate change. In that sense, it seems like a good time to re-start the Riot. As our government has less and less to do with what our kids and grandkids actually need from governments, as all of us face a world where we’re losing control of the real essentials, it is more necessary than ever to build that way of life worth living, and more necessary than ever to not allow the political process to stand in the way of making change. The Riot was always political as well as personal (and y’all know I don’t think they can be separated) – there is nothing more powerful than saying to governments – we don’t need you to make change, we can do it ourselves. Strangely, that’s when governments tend to get involved – when enough ordinary people start transforming the world for themselves.

To me, this isn’t a rejection of the idea that there are some things governments do well – instead it is an affirmation that we can lead, rather than wait to be led. The Riot was set to point out – look, thousands of people can do what you have said is impossible, and we can do it without help. We can get to this point in our emissions production without waiting for the public transportation projects, for the renewable energy projects, for the subsidies for things that are worth having. How much more could we do with those things?

Moreover, there are practical reasons to join as well. As Dmitry Orlov points out, when the world is headed for a fall, and you have a choice of falling out of a fourth story window or a first story window, choosing the first-story window just plain makes sense. The lower we get our energy and resource consumption, the better prepared we are for our emergent future in which we are constrained by limits of climate, resources and wealth. If you recognize we cannot go on as we are, we must not wait for someone else to lead the way – it is time to make the changes that are needed ourselves.

If the only reasons were to change the world, make things better for your kids and grandkids and prepare yourself for the future, there’d probably be no reason to do it . The real reason to riot is this – it is a heck of a lot of fun. There’s an artistry in extracting the most from the least that offers a great deal of pleasure – the formal structures of the riot act, I think, like the framework of a sonnet or a the basic positions of dance, a discipline in which a new freedom and possibility emerges.

Ok, down to brass tacks. How does this work?

In its simplest terms, we’re going to spend the next year asking “how low can you go?” Think of it as the energy limbo! The first step is to figure out what the average American uses. For this, I’m using EIA statistics whenever possible. Sometimes it is easy to figure out what the data are – other times it is more complicated. Sometimes the data is readily and accurately available in per-person numbers, sometimes you have to work with household numbers, which is more complex. Sometimes there is comparative consistency across regions, other times wide ranges, and it is hard to know how to evaluate.

One of the things that we found the first time is that there’s a lot of debate and a lot of grey areas. How much does the energy you use at work count into your resources? Maybe you can affect that not at all – you don’t have any control over how resources are used in your workplace. Maybe you can control it entirely – perhaps you work at home? How should we calculate renewable energy in your state – should it count as a 0 if you can afford to pay extra, even though there isn’t enough renewable production to support everyone who might want to use it, even though the backups come from coal or diesel? What about wood heat? How do you could public transportation?
What about things that aren’t easy to calculate, like food? Do we average things? Does doing well on some of the categories get you out of some of the others?

Other people noticed that things weren’t necessarily fair. Was it fair to have to try and work around national averages when you live in a much hotter or colder place? Was it fair that single person households were at a disadvantage in some areas? Was it fair that larger households were at a disadvantage in others? City dwellers have public transport – should rural dwellers be held to the same standard? Rural dwellers can grow more food – that doesn’t seem fair!

What we found in the year and more we struggled with these questions was that in fact, life isn’t fair. I know that will be news to all of you . Ultimately, you can do whatever you want – we set up the rules, but there’s no one demanding any of us stick to them or interpret them one way. But I do know that I found the challenge of living on my energy budget to be most satisfying when I chose to calculate things in the way that seemed most in keeping with my principles. It was helpful to remember that this was a set of goals and ideals, and it isn’t a race, it isn’t a competition and there’s no olympic energy-use cutting event. This is a collaborative project, one in which ideally we’ll be proud of what we accomplish – that’s what I care most about.

There are complicated questions – the answers aren’t easy. Ultimately, at some point soon, we’re going to have to just decide how to answer them, so that people don’t get bogged down in the questions, but I do want your input. What do you think? How should we think about these things?

We’re starting over from scratch, because almost all the material dedicated to the prior Riot has now disappeared from the internet entirely – we had, among other things, a cool calculator that allowed you to plug in numbers and find out where you stand without getting out a pen and paper, and a useful FAQ. These have gone missing, so we’ll have to recreate them (note that “we” hint, hint ).

I should say upfront that this is not a one person project – yes, I’m going to take the lead on writing and publicizing this, yes, if the buck has to stop somewhere, it will stop with me, but I NEED YOUR HELP!!! I need your help in a number of ways. I need someone to help us set up an energy calculator, and someone to volunteer to do the research for the FAQ in each category, for how to calculate grey areas and less clear options. I need a few people to volunteer to moderate the two groups I’m setting up for discussion of Riot issues, one on Yahoogroups, the other on facebook (we’ll also be talking about it here on my blog, but that’s not enough – people need to be able to raise their own problems and get answers). And I need y’all to publicize the riot on your own sites, to tweet and blog about it, to call up your local newspapers and publicize it. The first Riot got a surprising amount of attention – the second Riot could blow the roof off with your help.

So please, in comments, tell me what you want to contribute to this. Want to do the math on the transportation section? Ready to use your skills to set up a new calculator? Want to give the Riot a webpage and discussion group all its own so you don’t have to use Facebook? Got an idea to share about cutting your usage? Want to have a meetup at your place for rioters in your area? Tell me! The part about this that is so much fun is the collaborative element!

Ok, let’s focus on what we’re talking about – the categories. There are still 7 of them.

1. Transportation Energy – here the average American uses 500 gallons of gas per person, per year. That makes it pretty easy to figure out – everyone gets 50 gallons per year. Then the questions begin to emerge. How do you calculate different public transport options? We really need someone to set up a calculator that covers diesel buses and hybrid buses, plane mileage, carpooling, and what have you.

2. Electricity – this is a big grey area as well. How do you calculate your share of your office’s energy use? Is it fair that people who live in the far north like me don’t consume as much electricity as folks who need a/c? Space cooling is the single largest use of electricity in the US, at 17%. How do you calculate hydro? What if it is environmentally damaging hydro power? Do peak and off-peak consumption matter? How do you count nuclear?

The average American uses 2,000 kwh per person *household* (not “per houseold” but “at home” as opposed to “at work and other places you go”) use – total use is 4,000kwh annually. So that part is fairly easy – each person gets 200kwh per year. And the great thing is that this is the easiest part to calculate, since for most people on-grid, the utility company will be sending you an analysis of your usage every month.

3. Other fuels – mostly used for heating and cooking, but sometimes for other things as well. Natural gas, heating oil and propane are the major fuels, but these also include various forms of biomass (wood, pellets, corn, etc…). In some cases, this won’t be a relevant category, if your home or apartment is all-electric, but most of us use some other heating fuel. Again, this is one of those places where a lot of grey areas emerge. Should wood be counted as carbon neutral all the time? Some of the time, depending on how it is harvested and used? How to calculate pellets or corn or biodiesel heating fuel? Which equivalencies do we want to use to allow people using heating oil to compare with those using biomass, natural gas or heating oil?

4. Water. Why include this? Well, because water resources use is a huge portion of the environmental picture. At 130 gallons *houseold* average (with an average household size of 2.6 people) that gives us 13 gallons per household per day.

Water is nice and clear in some areas, but almost no one actually made the 10% goal. I was almost tempted to take it off the list, but I think it is stands as a good goal, even if most of us don’t achieve it. Water is going to be a huge source of stress in the coming century in many parts of the US. Our family actually uses about 35% of the American average, and I’m content there – but we also did go down for several months to the lower level and we know we could do it – and still live comfortably, although I admit, I missed the showers. Still with water capture and storage, and greywater usage, we weren’t hurting. We live in a wet area, and I’ve become comfortable with this – maybe too comfortable – I’m looking forward to challenging ourselves again.

5. Garbage. Like water, there was a case to be made for leaving garbage out, but I do think it counts. Among other things, garbage is a significant source of methane emissions due to the inappropriate disposal of biodegradable material in landfills. Getting your garbage down really counts. The good news is that this is actually one of the areas where most households can do the most the fastest as well!

The average American household produces 40lbs of garbage per week – that gives you a limit of 4lbs per household.

6. Food. This is a hard one – there aren’t any really good figures for figuring out how to lower the impact of your food, so we kind of made it up. Our calculation was that no more than 10% of your food should be from the mainstream industrial food system. Everything else should be either local low-input (organic isn’t a very useful term most of the time because of the prevalence of industrial organic), or bulk purchased goods with minimal packaging, either organic or low-input, and fair trade if bought from the Global South.

There’s a lot of grey here. For example, even though the local hydroponic tomato farm is near me, it sure as heck isn’t low input – tomatoes from Florida would make more sense in March, and no tomatoes at all until tomato season still more sense. What do you do if you can’t transport bulk goods? What do you do in a food desert? What if you are on WIC or food stamps? What if you can’t afford these things? These are complicated questions – at the same time, every dollar we spend in the industrial food system constitutes an endorsement. Again, the fact that the goal is challenging, and perhaps impossible for some of us doesn’t make it wrong.

Finally, category 7 is consumer goods. Multiple studies have found that every dollar we spend in the US results in an average of 1.6-2.kg of atmospheric carbon being produced in the process of manufacture, transport of goods, etc…. Not addressing the problem of consumption seems like missing the point. We know that Americans spend almost 1.5 trillion dollars a year on things that can only be viewed as non-essentials – luxury boats, marshmallow peeps, jewelry, Johnny Walker, lottery tickets…and those are just the things that the US commerce department feels comfortable acknowledging that *no one* needs – lots of other luxury items count as “necessary” because someone thinks they are. They don’t include things like mansions (counting as housing) or $500 sneakers (clothing) or what have you. We spend almost 12% of our total household budgets on luxury items alone.

We also buy new when we could buy used 90% of the time. The average American spend 11,000 per year on items that don’t include food, insurance, energy, housing and other necessities. Much of that money is in the form of debt. So everyone gets 1,100 dollars for consumer purchases – but used goods count as only 10% of their asking price, because keeping used items out of the waste stream is awesome! So if you can afford it, you can have you full 11K as long as you buy used. (Unfortunately, we are unable to supply you with the cash to do so as part of your membership in the Riot ).

One important thing to know is that when numbers are for households, that the average American household size is 2.6 people, so you can get a rough estimate of the per-person usage by dividing by that. Different people have different takes on this – my family strove to meet the household averages even though we are more than double that size, other people chose to work with per-person averages.

What do you do if not everyone in your household wants to Riot? Well, you can try and persuade them, but honestly, maybe you’ll have to work only on per-person consumption, and there may well be things that you can’t control – if your spouse or parent wants the heat at 75 all winter or the a/c blasting, you may not be able to deal with those issues – or maybe not right away. Remember the power of benign example can do a lot.

This is a big challenge, and it would be easy to get overwhelmed. I got some criticism last time by seeing people say “wait a minute, don’t we need to take baby steps?” I admit, this is a critique that annoys me – the problem is that babies only take baby steps for a very short time. Pretty soon they are off and running. Yes, at first you may need to take it slow – particularly if this is all new and overwhelming to you. At the same time, however, baby steps can become an excuse for not making real change. Sure, take your time getting started, but the goal is to move faster and faster, just like any one growing in confidence and strength.

If last time is any measure, you are going to have a lot of company to share strategies with, complain with, to compare notes and figure out with. No one can riot alone – but riots have a life of their own, they start as a little buzz, and end up making a noise no one can silence. We’ve seen it in the middle east – now it is time to start a Riot of our own!

Please, post suggestions for how to do the calculations and volunteer to take on roles in comments. Or email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com, or at facebook. I’ve started the facebook group here under the “Riot for Austerity” name – drop me an email with your identity, and I’ll add you!

Can’t wait to get started!

Sharon

Here are some of my own observations about growing here, in zone 4/5 (5 official, 4 for elevation), on my wet, thin soil in my wet, cold climate  .  I had a good chance to experiment with varieties during the years we ran our CSA.

Best cold tolerant salad greens: Forellenschuss, Winter Density, Red Oakleaf  and Marvel of Four Seasons Lettuces, Mizuna (too bad I find the taste boring), all arugulas, vit and big seeded maches, beet greens (start a new crop since the little ones are best), sorrel, any mustard, pinky lettucy gene pool mustards, Fedco’s “ice bred” arugula and Collards.  Rainbow Collards, Prize Choy Bok Choy.

Best spinach: Vert and Bloomsdale Winter

Best cold tolerance in broccoli: Umpqua (OP) and Blue (Hybrid)

Best cold tolerant root varieties: Flat of Egypt and Lutz Longkeeper beet, all parsnips, Diamante Celeriac, Golden Ball and Purple Top White Globe Turnip, Oxheart and Meridia carrots (the latter are designed for overwintering – they didn’t quite for me, but did very well), any salsify and scorzonera, Gigante Kohlrabi.  Also Yellow Mangels lasted quite a long time in the ground for me – and I thought they were tasty, if a little mild.  Goats liked ‘em too.

Best fall producing pea varieties: Alderman (tall vine shelling) and Sugar Ann (snap)

Best cold tolerant leek: Blue de Solaize

Best cold tolerant favas: Lorraine

Best cold tolerant cabbages and kales – All kales  (red and white russian  are pretty hardy – red has even overwintered for me, but they do winterkill before the Tuscan and Siberians for me), Winterbor and Redbor are probably the hardiest.   Coeur de Blue, Glory of Enkhuizen, Stein’s Late Flat Dutch Cabbage, Even’star Collards, Vates Collards

Best Mustard: Osaka Purple and Green Wave

Brussels Sprouts: Oliver

Parsley – Curlys stand longer than flat, I find.

Best tomatoes for overwintering in pots: Red Robin, Balconi Yellow

Best hot peppers for overwintering in pots: Fish (this is the only one that doesn’t end the winter looking sad), Korean Dark Green, Thai Hot

Best basil for overwintering: African Blue

Best eggplant for overwintering – Pingtung Long, Fairy Tale

One important thing to do is talk to local farmers and extension agents about what they’ve tried – and check out local trials at universities.  Lots of good research going on there.

Ok, how about the rest of you?  Share your wisdom!

Sharon

The calves have moved from being wobbly babies to young cattle, busy at the important work of grazing.  Most of the summer crop of babies are born – seven so far, Midori, Amaretto, Margarita, Tequila, Kahlua, Grog and Stout.  Only Selene and Calendula are left to kid in the next week or two.  The pregnant goats waddle crankily in the summer heat, ready to be over with this nonsense, while the new moms call anxiously back and forth to their little ones.

The first crop of pickling cukes has turned to jars of pickles, the second is fermenting in buckets.  The blueberry jamming will start this weekend.  The raspberries have been coming in for weeks, but I never get any – the boys regard our plentiful canes as their own private snack bar.  Raspberries, what raspberries?

The boys grow lean and strong on summer the way goats fatten on browse.  Their knees are always scabbed, they are nearly always dirty, but it is rich, healthy dirt, like the best soil.  They grow like zucchini in wild excess.  The younger boys earned their pocketknives at the end of June, and I watch 7 year old Isaiah cut the twine on a bale of hay or carve a stick to a point.  Asher lifts a full water bucket and staggers to the goats with it.  Simon tells me airly that this year he can help me load hay, and is strong enough to lift a bale.  ”Feel my muscles!” they beg, and I do!  Eli cracks 5’5.  Simon masters lighting a fire with a flint and steel “I can show you how, Mom.”  He’ll have to – I never could do it without the magnesium.

Dinner makes itself.  Take some sweet corn and tomatoes (the farm stand in the valley has plenty already – they are always 10 days ahead of us or more), a sprinkle of basil, the last of the snap peas, some sliced zucchini… there’s so little that is needed after that.  Don’t know what to make?  A vast salad of mixed greens and herbs, into which go what you have – some new goat cheese, crumbled, a couple of handfuls of blueberries, a hardboiled egg,  tiny new carrots, cukes,  a fresh pulled beet…  Sprinkle with flower petals – sweet daylilies, cucumber flavorted borage, licoricey anise hyssop, bergamot flavored bee balm – and devour.

Ravenous boys and adults will eat anything fresh and delicious, particularly if they pick it themselves.  Asher gnaws on a raw zucchini – I wonder who taught him that, and taste it.  The Costata Romanesco zucchini are delicious raw!  The livin’ really is easy.

And not.  There’s so much work to do on the farm in summer.  Move fence and animals.  Barn the hay.  Pull the weeds, scythe the grass, put up the blueberries, ferment the cucumbers, fix the gate, make cheese, feed the calves, move the chicks, pull the bolting bok choy, dry the herbs, make the tinctures, cut back the tansy, move the rabbit tractor, side dress the kale, transplant the last broccoli crop, and always, always look ahead.  Because even though it seems on these long, hot days that it will always be summer, winter is coming – darkness and cold are on their way and the more summer we can contain in jars, the more growth we put on the animals with fresh grass, the better we prepare, the better the living will be when it isn’t quite as easy.

Everyone knows this, not just us.  There is a purposefulness in all this biology – or so it seems.  ”Eat, darling, winter is coming” say the mother goats.  ”Outside and scratch – the grasshoppers won’t always be here” calls Mama hen to her babies.  It is fanciful, of course, but true as well – they know, we know that these days can’t last.

The kids know it too – they revel in summer, and are mostly old enough to know that it won’t always be like this.  Brown like nuts, they hurry to make the lists of the things we want to do yet.  Can we build a tree house?  Can they climb to the top of the hill in the woods all by themselves to pick blackcaps?  Can they follow the creek back a whole mile?  When is the fair?  When is camp?  When are swimming lessons?  When does Daddy go back to work?  When does the pool close for summer?  Will there be time for everything?

We’re not there yet, of course and we mostly live in the present, but they know that August is close, and then as August winds down, so will the summer idyll.  Not into winter yet – fall is our favorite season with cooler weather and the delights of harvesting.  We’ll be ready for pumpkins and apples by then, for new backpacks (ok, well, new-to-them, anyway) and crayons, for days at the creek when you don’t want to be in the water, just nearby, for colored leaves and busier schedules.  There won’t be quite so much time to just pick berries or climb trees.  We’ll be ready for butchering and getting wood in and the rest.  But it is impossible to live on a farm without seeing the cycles of the year and nature come ’round and ’round and always be thinking about what’s next.

You have to.  The beets that will nourish us in the fall have been seeded.  I’m thinking about when the spinach and arugula crops for overwintering will go in, now that the turnips and kale are set.  When best to plant the broccoli for late fall – it doesn’t love the heat, but it has to go in at the end of July.  A fall pea crop is always a challenge – but hey, worth a shot!   The meat birds for fall arrive any day now, and we count weeks for butchering dates.  We must build more rabbit housing for growing out the young ones – they’ll be ready soon and will be butchered in September.  Time to think about breeding dates for next year and where the garlic will go.  Right now all is lush and abandoned with endless hours of light and infinite heat, but the hours and the heat will gradually decline – the thing about being at something’s peak is that the slide is downwards.

I don’t mind, though.  Autumn has never looked depressing to me, as it did to Keats.  The Jewish year begins in autumn, and that always seemed right to me – everything starts anew, refreshed by the cool breeze.  And in truth, who could keep up this pace all year ’round?  Almost all places have a quiet season, whether it is the heat of summer when little grows, too hot, too dry, or the cold of winter when the ground is frozen.  By the time the jars have been filled and the treehouse built, the salamanders caught and released a thousand times, by the time corn is no longer new and you long for pumpkin and hearty things, well, it is time.

We live looking forward.  We move on to the next season as the work we do now itself lays the groundwork for the fall, winter and spring crops that we will subsist upon.  We are watching the boys grow big and strong in summer, envisioning the next year and the they next as they mature.  We live looking back, remembering as I pull this crop of bolted lettuce the cold, wet spring day I transplanted it.   As each goat delivers, we recall the February day that I released does and bucks to their mutual delight, and always remember the summer farm childhood we all lived or dreamed of.  We live in the moment, delighting in the full milk pail, the first harvest, the sweetness of berries, the warmth of the sun, the cold beer in the shade, the first time the boys use their pocketknives or climb to new heights.  At high summer, more than at any other moment, past, present, future come together and simply are.   The days are so long, they seem to be infinite.  We know it is merely an illusion, but we revel in summer, stripped of limits, timeless and beautiful.

Sharon

Well, what we’ve mostly been doing is getting ready for the fall garden season, and getting ready for the family expansion project. As of this week, our house is open as a foster home, but of course, in our usual “doing at the last minute something we should have done weeks ago” fashion, we’re not quite there yet. Still awaiting the stair gate (I stupidly gave ours away when the kids got big), still awaiting one of the mattresses for the beds, etc… and most of all, we needed a larger vehicle.

For the last few years, our sole family vehicle has been the “farm truck” – which is our joking name for the 1994 Ford Taurus we inherited from Eric’s grandmother. When we got it, it was literally the car that the little old lady only drove to the supermarket on Sundays. Since then, it has carried six passengers regularly, and driven chickens, turkeys, ducks, goats, calves and bees in the back (and occasionally front) seat. It can carry four bales of hay if you really push it, and close to a ton of feed, if absolutely necessary. It has developed a permanent depression on the roof from where the goats have sat on it, and constantly has little baby goat hoofprints on it.

Grandma (whose memory is always a joy and a blessing) was a very tidy sort of person – she once confided gently to me that she could not sleep if she thought there was dust under her bed. I, as those of you who have been to my farm can attest, am not. There are way scarier things than dust under my bed, or would be if I didn’t sleep on a futon on the floor . We sometimes theorize that if there was a way to harness the energy created by Grandma spinning in her grave, we’d be able to run the farm on it, but she was also such a kind, loving and practical person that I know she’d be grateful her car went to good use.

It has been good use – it has been reliable and energy efficient. But we have outgrown it – we need a vehicle for going to market, and since we were certified to take up to four foster children (gack!), that means we need a vehicle that can seat 10 at least some of the time. Since that lets us out of the minivan category and firmly into the “big wonkin’ vans that if you are lucky get 18mpg” it will be interesting to see how we manage to hit our gas use targets (we have pretty consistently hovered at using 85% less gas than the US average, except for Eli, who is bused to a school for autistic children and runs about 75% less). We will still use the “truck” for Eric’s commute (on days he can’t carpool) and for any occasion when a subset of us can travel.

We looked at a selection of large passenger vans, including my favorite, the one that was a state prison transport van (they didn’t leave the logo on, sadly) and ended up with a 14 passenger vehicle – horribly and ironically, I am now the proud owner of something called a “suburban.”

Meanwhile, we’ve been trying to get our lives in order before 2-4 more people join in them and disrupt our managed chaos into less managed chaos. As much as we want to do this, it is a little like being pregnant for the first time, I think – the slow realization that this might be harder than you think kicks in. My husband deals with this by looking on the bright side. Discussing what we would do if we suddenly doubled the number of children in our household, Eric pointed out cheerfully that “hey, I could tune them to a full octave and use them as a muppaphone!”

(Just in case you don’t know what a muppaphone is. Simon has already claimed low C ).

This, of course, is the kind of thing that makes me adore my husband, and is also the kind of thing you probably don’t want to mention to social workers evaluating the merits of your family. Corporal punishment is absolutely forbidded in foster families – I’m pretty sure that includes musical performances as well .

Having the van does make it real. It also will make the Riot for Austerity more challenging – which is good. After all, just cutting your energy usage by 90% over the national norm is totally easy, right? Good – I’m adding a gas-guzzling tank and a few new household members to make it interesting. Remember, the Riot will re-start on August one.

Miranda Edel and I took the title of the Riot from George Monbiot’s book _Heat_ – in it he wrote “nobody ever rioted for austerity.” He argued no one will ever march saying “we want less!” – and that’s true. On the other hand a whole heck of a lot of us might march saying we want more for our kids and grandkids, to leave a better legacy, to honor and value what we have. There were more than a 1000 participating households around the world last time – I’m hoping to make it 5000 this time! Lots more information coming!

Also, if you wondering how to keep the garden produce coming into fall and winter, I’m teaching my Fall Gardening and Season Extension class, starting on Thursday 7/21, and running until mid-August. It will be a four week class focusing on everything from growing in containers to hoop houses, low tunnels, cold frames, timing your plantings, root cellaring, in garden storage and winter harvesting. You can take the class with a greenhouse or if you’ve just started your first garden and aren’t even sure what these words mean . Keeping the garden going – all year long or late in the season – is one of our keys to food security. Email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com. Cost of the class is $100 or equivalent barter. I also have five free spots for low income participants. Email for details.

Finally, on Sunday July 31, from 1-4pm, I’m running a class at my house in Knox, NY (about half an hour west of Albany) on growing, preserving and using herbs – from the culinary to the medicinal to the truly unusual. The class will involve a garden tour, tools for plant identification and both history and present uses, a snack of tasty herb-based treats and a demonstration of preservation techniques. Everyone will get herbs and herb products to take home as well. Cost of the class is $75 and includes all materials. Limited space available, so please register soon. Email for details, directions, etc…

On Sunday August 21, from 1-4, we’ll be having another class at our place – “mini goat camp.” Learn to milk a goat, trim hooves and the basics of goat care and housing including basic home vet work. Find out what it takes to keep dairy goats, including safe milk handling. Learn about feeding and kidding, and then do some basic cheesemaking and dairying. Sadly, in this case, everyone can not take home a goat , but you will get a valuable skill set. If you do want to get into dairy goats, I also have goats for sale -email for details. Cost of the class is $75, space is limited, so please email at jewishfarmer@gmail.com. Older children (10 and up) are welcome in both workshops at a reduced rate ($45).

Ok, hope you are all having adventures too! Please tell me about them if you are so inclined!

Cheers,

Sharon

I posted the statistics for food born illness from home canned food in the comments section but I will just add (for those that don’t read the comments) most botulism is infant botulism coming from feeding babies foods that adults can tolerate but are not good for babies (honey is one example). The second cause if wound infection as botulism occurs naturally. Take good care of even small injuries. The incidence of food born botulism is very small with only 21 cases being reported last year. You are far more likely to get ill from eating commercial spinach than from my home canned tomatoes. Here are the take home points. Use up-to-date recipes from approved sources, proper equipment and excellent hygiene and you will be fine.

I  couldn’t say it better.  Be *respectful* of the rules of canning, but don’t be fearful – you take your lives much more in your hands when you get in a car.

Sharon

First, let’s do a sunny border with a lot of general-purpose medicinals, useful in most households.  I’d suggest you throw in a handful of low-growing sunny annuals as well to add some brightness – calendula perks everything up, and german chamomile makes a great, cheerful understory plant.    This is for a site of ordinary soil, with ordinary moisture levels.

First, large backbone plants.  You’ll definitely want Valerian, which is a beautiful plant with vanilla-scented flowers in bloom.  It gets huge, so give it plenty of room.  Valerian is a reliable perennial, and can be dug and divided when you harvest the roots.  The roots smell like dirty socks, but tinctured they are one of the best relaxants out there, and a natural sleep aid.  Valerian does like some moisture, but will grow in ordinary garden soil.

All the mallows have roots with soothing properties – particularly good for coughs or irritated urinary tracts.  Marshmallow, above, is a beauty with pink flowers, but you can also use Malva sylvestris or garden hollyhock!

Angelicas are cool and weird looking.  They umbels with dark stems are odd, but beautiful.  Carrot family members, they attract insects like crazy and also attract visual attention.  If you have anyone female in your household, I’d recommend growing A. sinesis, also known as Dong Quai.  It is used for both menopause and menstrual cramps, as well as to gently help regulate high blood pressure.  It is not a safe herb for pregnancy, however, as it increases the risk of miscarriage.

You either love elecampanes or you hate them – I love them, huge and strange looking sunflowerish things that they are.  They were a common ornamental during Victorian times, but they’ve fallen out of favor – and I can understand, but I find them structural and cool.  Their roots are used for bronchitis and persistent coughs, but a grad student in Ireland has also found that extracts of elecampane in alcohol kill MRSA, which is certainly a non-trivial usage.

Moving up to the middle of the border, an obvious candidate, one that does well in almost all gardens, are the coneflowers.  Generally what you want are Echinacea purpurea or augustifola (shown) as the easiest to grow, but if you can grow one of the rarer species, please do – they are often endangered and very beautiful.  The medicinal qualities of the ornamental hybrids are probably lower, so stay away from those.

Meadowsweet is one of my absolute favorite herbs for its tidy foliage, beautiful sprays of creamy white flowers, wonderful fragrance and medicinal usage as both a painkiller (this is the plant from which salicytes were originally isolated) and a stomach soother.  It does cause hayfever in some people, however  and those with asprin-sensitive asthma should not use it, but unless I was terribly allergic, I’d have this plant around – it is just too useful. Its flower heads have also been used to flavor ales and jams – it imparts a slight sweet almondy taste!  The roots also produce a black dye.

You have to be careful with tansy – in some of the drier parts of the US it is an invasive pest and can become weedy.  You also have to be careful with internal use of tansy – not for kids, pregnant women and I personally wouldn’t take it internally unless the benefits outweighed the risks – but it is a great worm killer for internal parasites.  Best of all, however, are its natural insect repellent qualities, its delicious fragrance and those cheerful bright yellow buttons.  Tansy just begs to be mixed with reds and oranges, so it is a great companion to calendula!

Pretty mounds of tidy leaves with lovely wands of purple flowers – I’m surprised that Betony (stachys officinalis) doesn’t make it into more gardens.  It is great for headaches, and the leaves taste pretty much like black tea – and has similar antioxidant qualities.  This is a fond favorite plant in my garden, and you can never have too much of it!

I’d have feverfew in my garden even if it wasn’t a medicinal – but it is, with good documentation on its ability to affect migraines.  The flowers are just gorgeous – and they come in double forms as well.

Yarrow if a favorite of mine as well, and it tolerates almost any conditions, from dry as a bone roadsides to damp spots in my garden.   The flowers are used to treat hayfever and allergies, the aerial tops for colds and the leaves can be used as a styptic to stop bleeding.  Yarrow looks like a lot of umbelliferae, and some people have occasionally mistaken poisonous plants like water hemlock or cow parsnip for yarrow, which is all the more reason to grow your own!  You want the true white yarrow, not the ornamental colored species, although the chinese species A. asiatica, which has lovely pink flowers, is also extremely ornamental and used for fever pains and arthritis.

I can’t grow the traditional Arnica montana in my garden – elevations aren’t high enough and my soils aren’t naturally acidic enough – but A. Chamissonis grows well for me, and the bright, low growing flowers are easily tinctured or added to salves to ease sore muscles and bruising.  This is an external use only herb – but it is heavily overharvested in the wild, so growing your own becomes imperative.

Lady’s bedstraw is a lovely, low growing, incredibly fragrant plant that ought to be in more gardens.  Besides its use as a natural curdling agent for cheesemaking, a decoction is also used for urinary tract issues, and the roots produce a red dye, while the leaves produce a pretty yellow one.  But the honey scent and the way it flavors cheese would be enough for me!

Add in calendula, california poppy and german chamomile in the front of the garden, and you’ve got something no one will ever believe is useful!  If you are looking for more of my herbal writings, check them out here.

Ok, next time – the ornamental, medicinal shade garden!

Sharon