Archive for July, 2009

Oh howdy,
Mostly, things have been pretty stable here at the Rancho. The summer heat has made no bones about dominating the landscape. We're managing to sort of keep pace with the needs of the younger trees, whose water requirements exceed the old stand trees. The wwoof's have taken the cue and are up increasingly early to complete their chores before their skin starts blistering and the hallucinations get too strong. Noemie has taken to wearing a burkha made from old feed bags with eye slits cut out and Jeremiah told me that at around noon the other day he heard the flower of a Dragon Fruit cactus start singing "Wooly Bully". Nurse Cassie, who worked the West Wing for years said she just keeps seeing the face of Martin Sheen percolating up through the soil and whispering, "go to the light."

We are on the verge of re-establishing agricultural water rates here after a mere thirteen year transition to a delivery system that will allow us the potential for increased volume and greatly reduced cost, giving us the opportunity to farm this rat infested rock pile in a way hitherto in the realm of "don't think about it, it will drive you crazy". We've all gotten so burned out over this process that enthusiasm levels over meter installations were on par with going to get a root canal.

To say this has been a cluster fuck would be to seriously underestimate the reality. That having been said, here we are, application for ag rates submitted and accepted, inspector being assigned to the task, with the potential result being to pay one fourth the rate we currently pay and the odds coming in at about two to one that it will actually happen.

The meeting with the inspector will be a schmooze fest of monumental proportions with our ultimate ace in the hole in defense of the inevitable catch 22 ( "you want ag rates but you're not using enough land" or "don't have enough income" or "can't tell a chicken from a two by four"), being the fact that we have had insufficient and overly expensive water to farm the land to the extent that the current codes require and therefore, existing efforts along with our obvious zeal for playing creator on this rodent strewn heap of stone should give us every right to continue our attempts at making the desert bloom and show productivity curves previously reserved for Exxon Mobil and Jennifer Lopez.

The mindset that control of water should dominate rather than liberate peoples lives is the final assault on and insult to equitable and virtuous behavior. It is no less than wielding the power of life and death over those deemed unworthy of this common resource. "Tough talk there mo-fo, why so freaked over the h2o", you might ask if you had just finished chugging a quart of colt 45 at a local poetry slam.

Well, 'cause millions worldwide are looking into the precipice of survival due to starvation and dehydration and water borne disease. Because farmers world wide are taking the easy way out and just killing themselves rather than face the relentless realities imposed by privatized water and industrial agriculture to whom the starving hordes are merely collateral damage in the war for water.

Interesting stat courtesy of my pal J. Nay. "According to the Washington Post in '05, just one flush of a toilet in the west uses more water than most Africans have to perform an entire day's washing, cleaning, cooking and drinking." Not going on a rant, just saying. One of the other stats that says it all is the one about a billion people being under nourished and eight hundred million being obese (and thats just in Alabama). My oh my oh my. It appears as though common sense has gone fishing.

Here we have a case of invasive species, as in the movement of indigenous plants to geographic realms where their introduction could trigger trouble. Only in this case we're talking about areas of the brain, as in reptilian survival impulses making their way to the neo cortex and hunkering down, taking pot shots at passing impulses aimed at integrated and holarchic thought. It is an invasion of alien thinking into the realms of moral imperative and intellectual process as confounding as it is culturally denigrating. It segments us and separates us from nearly everything but the hyperbole of narcissism and power. We walk past the beauty of life while staring at a tiny lcd display, twittering away.

"Whoa, slow down there professor poopy pants, nobody wants a killjoy for a cellmate", you might say. And right you would be. I can rest content in the fact that my daily routine is fulfilling, that my smoke filled think tank will never fully grasp the complexity of the ridiculousness we move through and that around ten thirty a.m. on any particularly hot day, the faces of my chickens will morph into Newt Gingrich. Better, as they say, than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And yes, laughter is the best medicine.

I'm posting a list of available food and House of Yumm goodness under the C.S.A. tab on the website (www.ranchorelaxzo.com ). This will be a weekly post. Good way to keep you updated while saving space for writing about things of critical importance as well as broadening the participation in my quest for world wide domination of all things Permaculture. The people here at the "Institution" only allow me 15kbs of cyberspace before the keyboard locks down and surges with electric current. Probably best as i've usually eaten my t-shirt by now.

Not sure we can call it a "Grimelock", given that its not at my place and we won't be using Grimes' p.a., but its probably not too early to mention the thirteenth annual fiftieth b-day celebration. My auntie micro Dot, being 22 hours older than me has donned the mantle of hostess and is providing a great party space up at rainbow acres in olinda. Sahweet. The date is Sunday, the 23rd of August. Will fill in details as to time and directions in next weeks post. One thing's for sure, its pot luck with the theme being to bring something that makes you want to drop to your knees and shout hallelujah.

The more you show, the more we'll grow. Stay cool, Jp

Once upon a time in a land all but forgotten and lost in the vastness of
space lived a grizzled old coot and his mangy cat Rufus. Rufus mostly
slept all day and at sundown went lookin' for trouble. He'd come back in
the morning with a little piece of ear missing or a new patch of fur
torn away or leaking blood. The grizzled old coot would patch him up and
feed him the breakfast leftovers after which Rufus would curl up in a
ball and sleep it off, dreaming dreams of sashimi and retribution and
sashimi.

It was a barren and childless place, fit only for rodents, figs, stray
cats, olive trees, fire ants and hot dry winds. A few scrawny feral
chickens ran around in a dither pecking at rocks and thin air and on the
rare occasion dropping an egg. This would bring a frenzy of rats
forming what looked like a rugby scrum around the egg moving it here and
there until the shell started to ooze.

The grizzled old coot, having witnessed this national geographics moment
was at the ready with his favorite intervention technique. Piss on em'.
Thats right. Piss on em'. They scattered in horror as he lashed his
cooty hose this way and that, because the scent of human piss is their
kryptonite and to be stained by it is to be made an outcaste for life.
Might as well just go over to Rufus and start yankin' whiskers. The
grizzled old coot crouched down, and keeping the side with the puka up,
cradled the small egg in his palm and carried it in an unhurried manner
to his humble digs.

The land was his by right of passage. He had beaten the snot out of the
last old coot that lived there, peed in all the corners (to keep the
rats out) and closed escrow. It was a prized package in this rock and
scrub terrain because his stone house sat next to the only fresh water
spring for miles in any direction. His house was really just one big
room and big enough it was. The kitchen window looked out at the
anomaly. A bubbling spring which trickled water constantly fed both
irrigation systems and storage tanks and punctuated the landscape with a
riot of color and sustenance.

There was a meander of living fence made from mulberry and bamboo and
thick fruit bearing shrubs that kept this edenscape safe from the
occasional smarmy invader and defined the stark contrast with the
encroaching desert. The grizzled old coot, with egg in hand felt a tear
forming and his throat swelling as he looked into his outer life. He
cracked the egg and let it sit in the bowl while he warmed up the
skillet. Rufus cracked his eyelids, stretched like only a cat can, yawned
big and fell back to sleep. A solitary salty teardrop fell to the
counter.

As the egg hit the skillet it formed an almost perfect circle
surrounding the yolk, floating and bubbling there on the olive oil
coated surface. The grizzled old coot pulled some fresh picked greens
from the chill box and chopped them up. They hit the fry pan and danced
as they wilted around the egg. He sprinkled some spice and zested a
lime. His nose, the scent, dare I say sublime?

He carried his plate over to the thick wood slab table, sat down and
looked out at another view of his life's passion. Fruits and vegetables
grew everywhere. Herbs and spices crept and crawled. Trees crowded yet
content. They hung with passion fruit and grape vine and yielded all
manner of useful things. As he ate he recalled both heartache and joy in
his travels through life. It was as though each moment reminded him of
where he had been and how his future was thereby shaped.

But now, on this particular morning he finally knew that his work was
finished, that he need do no more or less than watch and listen with
focused attention and appreciation. That in his minds eye was the vision
of things perfected and in his heart, peace. No doubt he would find some
reason to kick the cat from time to time, or fly a few rocks at the
feral chickens invading his green garden, but this sense of completion
washed over him like the joy in the eyes of a baby who just figured out
that he could play with his own toes.

Life is routine wrapped in chaos, and the grizzled old coot had long
since understood that the holy trinity of working the land was: I make,
I break and I fix. He was centered in solitude and would follow this law
in order to give expression to something uniquely human, the growing of
a soul. As he forked the last of his meal from plate to mouth he watched
Rufus' hind legs kick out and twitch a bit as if re-living a chase
scene. The grizzled old coot just smiled down at his longtime friend and
stroked his patchwork coat. Rufus purred in his sleep.

And so, as the world moved along at breakneck speed, whizzing by Rufus
and his master like a hellhound riding a summer squall, they rested
content, awaiting the moment when some grizzled young coot would come
along, beat the living snot out of them, piss in all the corners (to keep the rats out)
and close escrow once again.

The more you show, the more we'll grow. peace, Jp

Hhhhmmmmm,
Whenever I see a group of three or more women together in a kind of huddle, talking with intensity I think there they go, creating the world as we know it. Because if the spoken word manifests reality and it is delivered by humankind's representative of the Yin principle on earth, it becomes part of our cultural tapestry sooner or later. In an ongoing attempt to grasp the Yin principle it is paramount for men and women alike to get a grip on giving in, tossing the towel, saying uncle....................

The lessons in giving in begin here every morning when a slightly deeper and broader understanding of daily insights manifest in say, the discovery of another dead duckling trampled by dada duck so eager to get to the food that he misses his offspring underfoot, or noticing that the finches are starting to eat the still green papayas or seeing that even after a week of afternoon showers, the hills are turning blond with the summer heat. This morning I sauntered down the path with the expectation of being greeted by little tail wagging ducklettes (that now eat out of my hand), to find that one of the "secure" garden enclosures had been visited by a pig or two.

Plants were uprooted and mulch tossed and turned. It didn't take long to restore the mulch to order, replant and move along, but. on the farm, there's a constant reminder that life is hundreds of trillions of interactions per second somehow managing to manifest a stable system within a framework that promises chaotic harmonics around every corner and exists within a universe thus far largely unknowable. These are the voyages of the Starship Relaxzo. Our mission, to seek out the best place to take a nap.

If Yin is all of manifest reality then Yang is the great unmanifest. The place quantum particles go when they blip out. I have to say that as a guy, I feel a little discriminated against. This is clearly a world in which women should by nature, feel very much at home. Guys are constantly overcompensating for feeling ill at ease with their complete immersion in all that is Yin. Whats the old saying? "Men love women, women love children and children love pets." If you're a lucky guy you get to be freaked out by Love a few times, and then get some closure with all of it while swinging in a hammock on your back porch watching a sunset and reminiscing with your sixty year old kid about Freckles the Cocker Spaniel. Sometimes what comes around doesn't go anywhere.

It doesn't help much to know that these two conjoined forces uphold and preserve each other when some of the normal side effects of their interactions may include sustained moments of profound confusion, a sense of being totally inadequate to whatever the task may be, a haunting voice inside ones head repeating the phrase, "make it stop" and a strong desire to eat enough twinkies to go into insulin shock. You go round the track enough times and the giving in option looks more and more like safe haven.

The prime directive of Permaculture methodology is impartial and inquisitive observation, leading to common sense questions, spurring on research into said questions, resulting in the backbone of any design. This is how the unmanifest is made manifest and more importantly, why. If its all random chaotic interfaces of cosmic energies run amok, well whoopteedoo, lets pop some corn and a bottle of charlie champers and watch the movie. If, on the other hand there is some kind of truth to be winnowed out of this harvest of methods and techniques that tend to support our life here and actually present a model for systems that limit dependency, then let the symposium on common sense, commence.

Like the great Chinese doctor who can look at your tongue and say, "sorry but that gall bladder is going to have to come out", training allows us to see the future by reckoning with the present. Personally, I think we're up it without a paddle. That having been said, i should also note that I've been wrong alot. Main thing is that there is real contentment residing in the workings of a complex organism like a farm and one need only step into the flow of things to clear the ol' noggin' and restore a sense of purpose where once there was South Park.

About ten twelve years ago we had a family of pigs move on to the property. It was an awful time with each day bringing a new destructive vision. Actually saw one on hind legs picking and eating mangoes. I had my rifle, but the Rabbi was still asleep.

Finally, a local friend came to the rescue with a trap. He put me on to some hunter guys who were more than willing to come by and take the pigs for luau or letum' go for hunt lat-ah. It worked and the property had been clear of pigs for many years. So rather than take mushrooms and stay up all night waiting for a pig to appear and hope that at that very moment I will have the presence of mind to actually ready, aim and fire, captain Jeremiah dusted off and repaired the old porker snare and made it ready with a slurry of mashed banana/with peal, avocado, ginger snaps and a tasty little Bordeaux. We anticipate one schnockered little piggy givin' us a cross eyed grin in the morning and chops at sunset.

I like the early a.m., predawn hours, which is why i've prepped myself for The Open Championship by visualizing myself doing yoga for six hours while watching the live from Turnberry broadcast of The Open Championship between 12:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. on Thursday and Friday. Just the thought of visualizing myself doing yoga makes me tired.

Big big week what with the opening of Harry Potter and the thrill of golfs best getting the crap kicked out of them by the grandaddy of all Open courses. In addition we have a newbie wwoof arriving on Friday at a time of day when i will be mostly incoherent from lack of sleep and she will be excited beyond measure to be here. Nice. Me likey garden fairies who do what me say.

What else? Oh yeah, we're working on a small c.s.a. type of marketing scheme which would include a rock solid base of customers willing to go with our shenanigans and grow with us in a beneficial synergy. Anyone interested in seeing whats up and signing on, give us a ping.

So as the summer heat kicks out the beat, stay cool, and grow some shade that has food hanging from it, 'cause it ain't gonna be any cooler next summer.

The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace be, Jp

Oh, who cares? So here's the new plan, we're going to scrap the idea of feeding people until we have been "discovered" (some tremors have been felt). Pending that taking place over time we're going to provide refuge and counseling to wayward and stressed out porn stars. Yes, they need love too and have gobs of dough. We've already gotten a call from Dick Hardlee asking if our hot tub could accommodate his ginormous erect penis. I explained to him that we take saunas around here and that if he were to lie down on the bench, his stiffened tallywhacker would probably only just barely touch the ceiling. Of course someone else would have to open the door for him upon exiting so as to allow him to swing the monstrous monolith through as he rolls off the bench. Frenchy Latoure's manager, Armand Phisther called and wanted to make sure that Frenchys Yabo's, which are insured for ten mill, would not have any encounter whatsoever with flying insects, cockroaches, whipped cream or spiders of any ilk. I told him she should seek refuge elsewhere as i have no control when it comes to whipped cream. We here at the Rancho consider this move to be simply getting in step with the Evangelical Christian sex revolution which councils abstinence until marriage and then hot wax, X-tenz, dildos with bumps, dirty talkn' and wild fornicatin' thereafter. Its a billion dollar industry and we're hitchin' our wagon to it. "But you're Jewish", you might quip. Exactly. Like so many things these days, you don't have to believe in it to profit from it. "Selling out", you say? I will go forth and do the lords work. Eateth my shorts. Amen . Nurse Lindsey spontaneously combusted a few days ago. Either that, or she left and I spaced out. There was a small pile of ashes on the floor of her room with her eyeglasses in the exact epicenter. I had this vision of a controlled demolition with her collapsing in a pile of blue flame as her glasses popped off her head and landed gently on the pile. She has that Hogwarts alumnus quality about her. Actually she's cruising, using the "way of the wwoofer" as her guide. On to Molokai where its yoga and mud baths, then to the mainland where she is entered in a competition to determine the fastest talking female on the planet. Contestants are judged on the basis of words per second, emotional content, intellectual grasp, dimples and cleavage. She's a shoe in. The gardens are popping with summer growth. The melons, recently planted are starting to crawl their way to flowering. We planted them no till style but used rock enclosures back filled with soil from under the chicken roosts. Very robust growth. They're planted along the fence line for the leghorn enclosure so we intend to run some peas and beans. Lazy days around here. About ready for a rest by ten, ten thirty, then back at it around five for an evening of watering and gathering eggs. Nice to hang out with the plants around sunset when they really appreciate a soaking before twilight. All in all, in the groove, five by five. I've posted some photo galleries on the web site www.ranchorelaxzo.com (still under construction) under the Organic Farming tab. It makes a nice slide show and will give you an idea of the diversity. I'm about to post about thirty five more pics. Check it out. So far, i've been spammed three times from Russia. Cool. Speaking of cool, I may be delusional but the party on the fifth had me all aflutter. From the sunset, to the food to the fine "core" group of musicians who have weathered just about everything together and come through yukkin' it up. Tanks eh, for the energy infused into this old termite infested home sweet home. To have been chosen host of these happenings resonates in my happy place. }:-} Some of you may not know this, but I like to burn a good doob from time to time. Now i've got this friend. Lets call him Affy Goolefe (to protect the innocent). He's one of those guys who oozes enthusiasm when the right idea at the right time rears its rosy cheeks. Seems that growing the good herb was that idea. Gave him a few wazza wazza's and lemme showyahs so he uses me as a beta tester 'cause hey, been there. So cool to see someone cozy up to the plant world and alter their mindset. So anyway, he comes by the other day and we shoot the shit and cruise the orchards and talk some nonsense and end up back at the house around sunset. He proceeds to whip out a bag of the recently grown and perfectly cured Kookamonga Mistral x Chinese Water Torture. "You're good at rolling, twist one up", he said. "K", I replied. "Just be careful because this stuff will rip your tip". I made one of those "phuuffffffuffff sort of sounds. As a joke, I went and got my old geiger counter (don't ask) out of the tool shed and set it next to the bag. I smiled in jest as I turned it on. We both hit the floor as it exploded. After that, I took only one hit, at a time. So plan B it is. When getting old gets old one only need invoke the Almighty Goobers one and only edict: " Embrace and transcend, don't ever stop, live the moment and bop till you drop."  Next week, The Open Championship. Who's the happy guy? I did, I did, I taw a puddytat. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace be, Jp

Oh (insert fireworks here) hello,

Wow, where to begin. I mean, independence! Is it the raucus celebration of bbq meat, chicken and shrimp with beers, cob corn, tater salad and token greens? Hell yeah. Is it a tribute to some hemp raisin', slave lovin'guys who had a smoke filled vision? Say again. Is it a chinese conspiracy designed to sell more fireworks? Fuckin' chinese. Could it be something we haven't quite grocked yet? "Freedom from dependence; self reliance; direction of ones own affairs without interference". So says the dictionary. Anyone out there feel that way?

Having stumbled into this Permaculture thing like a drunk getting lucky and finding his car after a bender, its main appeal has always been a focus on solution orientation. Deconstruct the problem and many solutions appear. Whining is easy; puzzling out and explaining takes a fortitude born of common sense. Are we independent if we can't explain our existance in terms that find common ground and cross all cultural borders? Can we say "I'm free" if everything in life requires external inputs to give it meaning? If selfless giving isn't part of day to day life, do we possess the virtue necessary to free ourselves?

Balderdash, you might say if you'd been drinking too much stout. There is no such thing as true independence. It is, in fact our very reliance on each other and the connection to our senses that gives meaning to life and allows us to dream the dream of independence. Poppycock, you say? It is a strictly intuitive phenomenon born of our innate fear of parents who eat their young, in one way or another, producing populations ranging in temperment from cowering whimps to all embracing ego maniacs passing on those qualities from generation to generation.

More than ever independence hasn't got much to do with anything but the money that buys it. Nice for those with oodles to spare or the guys at the federal reserve who spin it out of thin air. Not so nice for that vast majority of people whose overall condition might be described as enslaved servobots and whose mindset is pissed with two scoops of what the fuck on the side.

What to do, what to do? It is nothing if not a sense of helplessness that shrouds that inquiry because breaking out of the mould into which our lives are poured becomes increasingly difficult with the passing of time and the control of resources going increasingly to the few. The upside? Even small acts of civil disobediance bring a measure of satisfaction when these acts are aimed at breaking the cycle of dependence so vital to social control.

Permaculture constructs methods by which humans can learn to cope with life in ways that demand a deepening of purpose and meaning. Disciplines which reconnect us with the core of ourselves and whittle away at the whole "meaning of existance" fetootzmah. Got anything better to do? Seriously, lets party hardy, but let the revelation at the peak of whatever experience one manufactures be the insight that our independence relies entirely on our ability to evolve a future that has meaning globally and is woven into a set of priorities that find resonance in the heart, because the heart is the only common ground. All else resembles a brisk walk across a field of quicksand.

I screwed up yesterday and as a result got fired from my job as boss. Nurse Lindsey with her Betty Grable gams and snappy patter gave me the complete bootation after I tried to edit a caption to a picture on the "organic farm" page of the website. This, she warned me ahead of time, will not be tolerated as it messes with her HTML coding ( or some such gobbledegook) and causes a sort of rage to percolate up from the depths of childhood memories associated with abandonment and percieved inadequacy. I am now a blank space on her hard drive where a once vigorous cyberlife flourished. Like a plague infested village razed by a napalm flyby. I'm mortified of course, because i meant well and only failed for lack of skill and with no intent to heap her with additional work. She has freed herself of my senseless tyranny and walks around here with the feather infested grin of a Cheshire gone loony. I enjoy empowering women by my bufoonery.

Made up a batch of froozies with ms. Noemie. We used papaya, white sapote, mango and banana combined to create a taste sensation highlighting each of the flavors yet featuring the blend. A raw, dark cacao sauce was layed in double decker style so as to avoid the crime of being left without sauce for that last bite. We're serious about our chocolate around here. Been planting a few varieties of melon to see which ones can resist the fruit fly circus. There are a good many acorn squash coming in and more flowers opening by the day. We're planting flats of lettuce every couple of weeks to keep the supply up through the summer and fall while tending to the more perennial vegetables like chard and kale by pruning and feeding. The massive mango flowering of a few weeks back has produced a remarkable fruit set. The recent afternoon rains have served to plump the young fruits quickly.

I was once again amazed by the prices of food when cruising through the Superette the other day, i caught sight of some boxes of mangos from Yees in kihei. I looked at the price and thought it read a buck sixty nine a pound. "Cool", I thought. "A reasonable rate for a first rate product". I picked out a couple of beauties for the heck of it (they weighed about a pound apiece), put them in my green cloth shopping bag and walked around the boxes to inspect the potato/mac salad. I glanced down at the price again and saw that in fact, it read Four sixty nine a pound. Nearly ten bucks for two small local mangos. Tomorrow i'm going to count all the mangos on all of my trees, estimate the weight, multiply by four sixty nine a pound and determine whether or not i'll have enough kaching to buy that Lamborghini tractor i've always wanted. It does zero to sixty in four point six seconds. Now That, my friends is Independence.

Peace out, Jp