Archive for the ‘Newsletter’ Category

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

Oh hello, There's really nothing cuter than a box full of ducklings, unless its a tiny flock of them roaming around your orchard weaving in and out of the motherwort forest under the protective scrutiny of mama duck. They're about ten days, maybe two weeks old. Takes about that long for the mom to let them out into the open. There are eleven of them and methinks more to come as there has been a whole lot of boinking going on through the late spring months. Why even now the hornyness continues in wild displays of porkitude characterized by things like over the back beak to wing stabilizing tactics and wild wing flappage while threading the needle. It all takes place in mere seconds which in duck time is the equivalent to how long it takes me to remember what a sex life was like. I called Doc Bebockboc and nurse Sally to have them come have a looksee. He said that if they're alive and well and out the nest, chances are that most will make it to maturity. Nurse Sally said to just approach them as though I was walkin' tippy toe on thin ice and talkin' in whispers like they was some biker nazi lookin' dude at a bar who's asking for my phone number. That actually happened to me once, so I knew exactly what she was talking about. Here's what passes for fun around the Rancho. Fill up a one by three foot seedling starter tray with water and pull up a chair. Before long those little ducklettes will find their way to the medium they were born to and hoist themselves up over the side of the tray to test the waters. Its not so deep as to keep them from standing up, but deep enough that they can retract their perfect little webbed feet and test their floatation and aquatic maneuvering skills. Roll up a phatty and take a couple of hits and accept the fact that you have nothing better to do and you've got yourself a perfectly fullfilling waste of time. Why nurse Cassie almost went into a swoon upon seeing them for the first time. I just looked at her and asked, "first ducklings?" "Oh my, yes", she said, fanning her face with her hand.. We've got a good crew on hand at the moment and getting a lot of work done. The jovial Jeremiah can't seem to help himself when it comes to being selflessly imbued and generous with his skills. Not for nothin' but if he keeps it up i'm gonna have to think of ways to piss him off just to make me appear less strident. The no till areas are looking great owing to the care and nurturing of "garden girl"  Noemie, newly arrived from France where she is attending agricultural college and is our latest prize on the wheel of fortune that is the w.w.o.o.f. program. She is tending to the chickens and ducks as well as watering and prettifying the vegetable gardens. Her english is weak but her joi de vivre is strong and what a lovely presence. Fortunately my pals over at Greenleaf Farm have a frenchy wwoofette on board as well, giving us limitless excuses to get together and swap lies over good food and drink. Having boxed my ears like the mercurial bantam weight that she is, nurse Lindsey has gotten through the inch of lead surrounding my common sense. Her web design ideas and skills have finally trumped my need to be the surly, insitant individualist, hell bent on building it My way which would have caused approximately 82% of the people who browse the world weird web to fall to the floor in paroxysms of laughter over viewing my messterpiece. "He used comic sans as a font fer' chrissake. What a maroon." We're respectable enough to be up on the web now with some spit and polish to come. There will be a slide show of my trip to Tiahuana in 73' because there's just no way to put such acts of animal husbandry into words. Go give us a hit at www.ranchorelaxzo.com . The mindorrhea will be archived under the blog tab and i'll probably be posting a page or two about this and that. We're working with vertical spaces these days. Comes a time when fencing takes on more tasks than just keeping the deer and pigs out. Putting down some eighteen inches of straw mulch about two feet out from the fence kills off the grass and weeds in about ten days. Takes a bit longer for the gnarlier roots to break down. Once a couple of weeks go by, we take our bean or pea starts and move away some of the mulch, dig a puka, plant the legume, water it and tuck it in with straw. Stays nice and moist, inhibits all but the most tenacious weeds, looks cool and lasts for many months at which time a cosmetic layer of four or five inches serves to keep the area weed free and damp. Looked like we were going to get a free mimi wheat crop out of some of the straw which was sprouting grain plants left and right from some residual seed, but the rodents had their own ideas about dealing with this unexpected gift. I'd enter one of the gardens anticipating that the plants i'd been watching for weeks would be swolen with wheat berries and every seed head was chopped off with a mini mulch pile of chaff surrounding the barren stem. Brash little fuckers. Then i got to thinking that they do about the same thing as me during the course of the day. Browse around spocking out the best grinds and harvesting them at their tender juiciest. I know for a fact that smartypantz was eyeballing the strawberries i picked today. She missed out because I got there first, had protected my territory and reigned in the bounty. Rats and mice are just better at it than me. Raticus Maximus, i slaughter thee with respect in my heart. We've also got lilikoi climbing the trees that can support their weight and beans climbing the papaya trees. Throw in a few melons and squash at the base of the papaya trees and you've got the trifecta. I am constantly reminded of how many layers of space there are to work with and how many plant guilds are begging to be tried. Lets see, what else? Oh yeah, we've got some Jatropha curcas seed coming in from India. It is a drought tolerant bush that produces seed very well suited to the extraction of bio diesel fuel. My thought was that it would be a good understory plant in the fruit tree orchards. We just got a 55lb. bag of organic cacao powder so the froozie crew will be in full swing pumping out the fruity treats as well as another batch of chocavopousse. Our first round of cocobanapousse should be coming up soon since we just cut a few stalks and are itchin' to try out this new treat on the unsuspecting public. And so it goes with nary a dull moment, routines that don't get old and a never ending series of natural soundings that speak in silence to the heart. Roger that. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, jp

Well howdy, Spoke with my good bud Grimes the other day and we decided that we weren't going to call our parties parties anymore. We're going to call them "Grimelocks". "Why?", you might ask. Well because we're really the only two guys we know who do this year in and year out for no particular reasons save the usual ones, i.e. desperate cry for attention, unyielding narcissism, free food, love of house cleaning and the ever present possibility that playing music for ourselves and our friends will somehow subdue the tide of unrelenting weirdness swirling about like smog from China and L.A. colliding over Haleakala. Music has that power to connect us in a place common and comforting. A place hopeful and in the groove. So, o.k. cool, second Grimelock of the season happening on July 5th, barring wicked bad rain, to be held at the Rancho from fourfiveish 'till I begin wielding a garbage bag, a broom and a scowl. Since it is fourth of July weekend, bring a pot luck dish that explodes, or bears the imprint of a patriot emptying his flintlock into some unsuspecting redcoat. Or just a flag will do. Woeful tales abound these days and I say rather than put on a happy face we should kvetch, kvetch, kvetch and then bllecchhcchhcchh some more.. It is catharsis, not optimism wandering blind that will move us toward dispersing the fog of fractured and fatuous consciousness masquerading as normal. It is empathy and dispassion that can both empty and fill our hearts with receptivity free of motive and virtuous in intent. Musicians worth their salt give freely, in the truest sense of the word. The joy is in the doing and the doing clings to nothing, like the blooming jasmine filling the night air and boldly going nowhere. So lets celebrate our tweensy little lives again and remind each other that truth is worth preserving and that kidding ourselves destroys all hope. When I was a kid, me and my bff's Reggie Logan and Tommy Whitmore had the great pleasure of spending some quality time on the links at Bethpage State Park out on long island. It's a beautiful spread of a couple of thousand acres carved out of abandoned potato farms. gently rolling hills and grazing land that got turned into five well maintained and increasingly difficult golf courses, four of which were eminently playable, especially if your prime directive was to goof off, smoke cigarettes, drink sodas, eat tuna sandwiches and those little cheesy crackers with peanut butter filling and pray for the one good shot that would bring you back with elevated norepinepherine levels. We had it made. Reggies older brother Bruno tended a string of vending machines and stocked them out of his garage at the hacienda del Logan. Talk about a score. He serviced every kind of machine known to modern man in the 50's and 60's. There were hot and cold drink machine stuffers, cigarettes of every cough, and the broadest selection of candy bar, cheesy poof, potato chip and packaged cookies in the known galaxy in case after case, stacked against the walls of the garage eight, ten feet high. Now Reg knew what the big sellers were and consequently knew that a few missing packs of unfiltered Kool menthols and Luckys would hardly be missed and that skimming the inventory was really doing Bruno a favor because hey, he was being a terrific big brother without even knowing it and Reg could kinda imagine liking him even though he was something of a schmuck. So we'd be cut loose at the clubhouse by a carpooling mom and walk the verdant fields armed with Arnold Palmer autographs, scuffed up golf balls and the luscious larcenous loot from the garage. We'd spend five or six hours wandering around in a nicotine fit hoping we had enough balls to last the round and enough matches to keep the chain of smoke going. Big fun. I can still remember some of the shots I hit. The courses are color coded and the yellow, red, green and blue courses had the least wait time in ascending order. We'd usually have to wait an hour or more to even get out on the yellow, which was considered the home of the hacker. Enter the legend, Bethpage Black. The hard core guys would come predawn to sign up for a three hour wait to tee it up on this masterpiece of a course. Designed by A.W.Tillinghast, it is the course on which the U.S. Open is being played this week. I played it in '01 when it was being groomed for the 02' Open. The rough was tall as Bobby Jones' nutsack and tees to greens seemed to span zip codes. I saw exactly where several of my balls disappeared into the primary rough and never found them. It is a brutal test of golf and even the worlds best will be left mumbling non sequiturs. The weather may be a factor as some rain is forecast. I will be couch bound and surrounded by a reminisence of garage goodies as I celebrate Long Island rowdy, course management, six hours a day of world class grimace and dismay and a few perfectly executed shots. Fairways and greens baby, fairways and greens. By the way, nicest greens i've ever seen. I've often thought about the notion of golf course retrofits or new buildouts that utilize the areas normally considered out of play and plant those areas with valuable tree crops and useful plant guilds. Water hazards could house and breed fish, fresh water shrimp, ducks and aquatic plants used for filtration and food. Foraging animals could be integrated slowly to provide weed control, fertilizer, eggs and meat. Communities that are planned around common park areas or golf courses or wooded lakes could easily plan for some measure of sustainability by simply choosing the right species of flora and fauna with which to work and then hiring a bunch of illegal aliens to take care of it. In many ways a move toward decentralizing giant industrialized systems of agriculture and energy is inevitable but the kicking and screaming is already evident and the firmly entrenched will not be easily moved. We're a culture of lip synching slogan slingers who rarely make moves designed to transcend self interest and who more often than not will take legitimate and urgent issues and turn them into t-shirts, coffee mugs, political slogans, bake sales, butt plugs, protest songs, wildass polemics and an upcoming movie of the week. I tawt I taw a puddytat. In the end its all the same, really. It's Humpty after the fall. Speaking of which, we've got nice eggs. Greens too as well as some fruits and a frozen foods section as big as Wyoming stocked with free range deer, turkey and pig which were flash frozen using the breath of a hundred ex girlfriends. They're just standing there, wide eyed and caught in mid thought as if its graduation day and the words to their speeches have gone begging. You'll find them to be great eating or lovely low maintenance pets. Also, in celebration of the U.S. Open we will be giving away t-shirts depicting a guy wearing a hat that says "I heart long island" and pointing at his balls with a caption that reads: "golf these." Nurse Lindsey is pounding away at the construction of our website and if one looks carefully , one can see the steam rising off her dimples, so intense is her effort. She sits there, hour after hour, pouring over layout, color scheme, pictures to import, links to create and ways to get me to quit changing my mind. While not actually saying it, she thinks "ohmygod, you are soooooo retarded". True enough. So, as I watch the crab spider who has spun its 3-d web in my office window wrap up a couple of morning gnats and then bite the head off an ant I bid you good day. Give us a call any old time for food or plants (878-6287), we'll check your credit rating and negotiate terms. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

Oh Halo, There's a bit of magic happening in the lower orchard. I am reminded each morning as i make the rounds feeding the knuckleheads and watching the ducks emerge from the underbrush or fly down at me from all sides and apply full flaps at the last minute to land in less than classic fashion. Note to self: get "Ducks at War" flight simulation software.

The magic begins when I get a whiff of the scent of the Malabar Chestnut flower. There is nothing tangible about scent. It's a molecular phenomenon and as such not something we can grab or hold on to, but my, oh my, oh my, can it ever stop us in our tracks. Malabar Chestnut (Pachira aquatica) is a water loving, palmate leafed and spreading tree that can reach thirty or forty feet in the tropics and produce pods full of seeds that are nutlike, yummy and full of good stuffs. The creamy white flower projects hundreds of golden tipped four or five inch stamens in a showy display of seduction to any flying insect passerby. Sort of like walking by the open door to a bakery with a craving for eclairs and a sawbuck in your pocket. The flower is very short lived, and here's why. I can pick up the scent released by the dawn sunlight and carried by a mild zephyr at upwards of a hundred feet away and because I've forgotten that i had the same experience the day before at dawn, it startles and enraptures me anew. So potent is the seduction that it need only express itself for a short time to accomplish its goal. Like a Lola Falana lap dance. Such is the nature of molecular matter to infuse us with inspiration, to envelop us without clinging and disappear without a trace. Springtime brings so many scents. It should be inherant to any "complete" design model that scent adorn the proceedings at every possible opportunity and make us turn our minds to the expansive and inclusive nature felt in these interfaces with the molecular world. Speaking of which, i had an o.o.b.ex. once. I have this old bud name of Curly Clamberok who had a house in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco, out La honda way. I'd go visit from time to time to escape the smog of Menlo Park and commune with the trees and the bees and the buds. Now one time i was up there and we had commenced to playing some music and burning some gage and quaffing some chianti. It was one of those nights where the border between bodies and the space between bodies began to blurrrrr. There was a fire going in the wood stove and Curlys dog Peabrain was lying there doing his fetal position impression and an inch away from burning his tail off, as usual. As the evening wound down with the glowing embers, we all drifted off to our cozy spaces, leaving the warmth of the fire for goosedown bags and foam softened floors. As I lay there like one of those embers, i sat upright in a body made of tingling energy. There was no mistaking the fact that this other body was having a bit of a stretch, and no mistaking the fact that it was made of much finer stuff than the meatsack. It was still "me" and still vaguely defined, but liberated from any and all sense of limitation, like a scent on the breeze. So of course i freaked and as quickly as "i" had sat up, i lay back down, but with the sure and certain knowledge that embedded in this fleshsickle resides a flashy new ride just itchin' to cruise the galaxy. Comfort food for the Fear. The late Spring heat is coming on like a histamine cascade after a pollen release. What little firmness imparted to the surface of the soil by the recent rains has turned to dust and things start looking droopy by ten, ten thirty. Most of the green gardens have trees or edible hibiscus planted that will eventually provide shade for the more delicate stuff, but for now it's hand watering and quiet encouragment. Have been grateful for the late morning cloud cover and the mild winds. The big news is that the naranjilla tree which has been flowering for quite some time now, is beginning to set fruit. Boooya. Indigenous to Peru and points south the fruit, which looks a bit like a small orange, is used mainly for its juice but also eaten out of hand. It is a remarkably beautiful plant with large fuzzy green leaves bordered with dark violet piping with midrib and veins accented purple and white. I'm looking forward to the first taste of yard juice made from naranjilla mixed with mango or white sapote or papaya or lemon or surinam cherry or jaboticaba or tangor or lilikoi or duck pond water. Nurse Lindsay, a.k.a. genius girl, has us on the verge of entering cyberspace with a brand spankin' new website. We're working out the details and hope to be up and strumming in a week or two @ www.ranchorelaxzo.com. We've had a changing of the guard here as the couple from Iceland has departed, leaving eleven of their bereft of money suitcases for the burn pile (they look so deflated and sad). If i had a nickle for every piece of brickabrack that the neo-hips leave in their wake, i'd have about three fitty. They've been replaced by some old timers pushin' forty. He's a moose of a man with bright eyed energy brimming over and she, a lovely refugee from the world of painted faces. Since they only have to put in four hours work a day, they walk around afterwards in what could be described as a dither over what to do next. I suggested the usual things: pickin' and grinnin', smokin' and jokin', snoozin' and cruisin'. Told them to give it two weeks and they'd be figuring ways to shave their hours when I wasn't looking. I'm nothing if not the kindly modern day feudal lord who treats his serfs well. I remember asking a history professor what he thought the best form of government would be and he said, "a benevolent dictatorship with me at the helm". Me likey. Nurse Lindsey has fashioned the perfect replacement for the chocavopousse when we're running short on avos and long on bananas. After hours of painstaking sampling, she's come up with the chocbananpousse. A marriage of flavors which in some ways surpasses even the scent of Pachira aquatica in sublime olfactory reverie. One of those combos so pleasing to the palate that a pile of it the size of a t-rex turd wouldn't phase you. You'd just ask for a bigger spoon. And so it is here at Rancho Relaxzo where brainstorming is the soup du jour and anything goes comes a la carte. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

Oh don't go, First off, I would like to issue an apology for getting some of the facts wrong in my letter of last week. My mom tells me that i started chasing ice cream trucks at the age of two and a half, not five. I'm not proud of it, I'm just saying. It's been looking like we were heading into one of those dry, brown, dusty summers, when three days of afternoon showers came to the rescue. The hills are greening up while i spend part of each day looking for the hidden containers that got filled with rain water and are now spawning hundreds of mosquitoes. There aren't too many things more irritating than a squadron of mosquitoes drillin' for the sweet red crude. They're little winged geologists, mining the gobs of viscous resources hidden just beneath the surface of our sparsely forested and pockmarked landscape. It's a matter of species security. Without blood, populations decline, the work force is decimated, depression and anger take hold, and nobody likes to do the zampoo-oogee angry and depressed. Populations decline further, water supplies dry up as global warming increases and eventually they're doomed. I dare say there's enough blood to power up the reproductive cycles of these frenzied flighted marauders for millenia to come. Question is, how to live in harmony, or is murderous rampage the only path worth pursuing when dealing with such a succubus? I will continue to seek out their source water and with one swift kick, end their tyranny. In the meantime, swatton. So me and nurse Lindsay did some shopping the other day and while walking around a certain downtown upscale hippy watering hole noticed a sign in the produce dept. that said, "tropical mango", blah blah a pound. So i checks it out with my " Nerdlingon Eye of Discrimination" and the liddle steeker on de fruit say, credido en Mexico. So i put two and two together and come up with the image of a field of Tommy Atkins mangos, maybe in Michoacan. The image expands to include a bunch of indonesian workers picking full but under ripe fruits. From there they get gassed to accelerate ripening and boxed up for cold storage and eventual shipment. Once shipped, they travel thousands of miles to put huge doofus grins on the people who overpaid bigtime for a mango that tastes a bit like crap if you've ever eaten one fresh picked and tree ripened . Now don't get me wrong, if you're some fruitophile from above the 43rd parallel and just have to have a "real" mango in the middle of winter, then what the hell, go down to Trader Joe's and see if they have any Kensington Prides in from Oz. If not, at least you can get some of the dried stuff from Thailand and soak it in Jaegermiester. These were fruits exported from Mexico to Maui where it's MANGO SEASON, fer' crisssake. How profoundly fucked up is that? Only thing I can figure is A: senseless commerce and the criminal insanity of "free" trade combine to befuddle the populace into the deepening illusion of endless growth and nonstop consumerism. B: The owners of said store are Mexican or C: half the cases of mangoes were injected with cocaine and heroin to be made into speedball juice for the local Yakuza and other government officials. There is a D. involving the implanting of alien spooge into a good portion of the populace (facilitated by the coca cola bottling company),imparting a state of indifferance to the truth so profound as to make people think that buying mexican mangos on Maui in June is really the bomb, but that one's a little far fetched. We are five percent of the worlds population, consuming twenty five percent of the worlds energy, made possible, at least in part by an infinitude of subliminal displays of uncompromising boneheadedness such as this. Worse yet, the world aspires to be like us. Lawwwd have moycie. Here's what i see. Same ol' rampaging political hyperbolic bullshit with the few deciding the fate of the many. Same ol' societal hypno/apathetic slumber from which awakening is the dream. Same ol' revelation that lemmings, according to ancient legend, can actually fly. Here's what i don't see. A "mainstream" definition of "sustainable" that makes even the slightest sense (permaculture theory and practice have provided this for decades but are far from mainstream). The collective will to move toward that illusive definition by reinventing ourselves in a fashion suitable to the powerdown to come, and a decent knish, i don't even need good, just decent. We've been planting the summer gardens and watching the late spring greens glow. The basil starts are woven in and around the seasonal greens and will be looking leafy good in a few weeks. We're planting enough to have steady supplies of pesto. The acorn squash is starting to set some fruit and I anticipate a good harvest to come. Bean starts are beginning to yield and melon runners are making a move. Almost past atemoya and cherimoya harvest and the avos are thinning out on the Sharwil tree with probably two or three weeks of yield left. We've got ten or twelve banana stalks filling out and good healthy looking papayas coming along. Our EGGS are smashing ( i like a two egg omelet with pesto, cheese and Mae Ploy drizzle) and if I can figure out how to keep Smartypantz off the deck where she reaches through the railing and steals the strawberries right out of the hanging baskets, we'll have a nice season coming up. Its funny to watch her manuevering around with her good eye, checking out the baskets, pecking at thin air, talking to herself. What a movie. Two clucks up. The nursery is freshly stocked with fruit, nut and spice trees sporting the best prices on the island and Jennifer will be happy to help you out (205-0430). We're open to food sales pretty much any time by appointment (878-6287), so if you need a full moon midnight salad with a side of avocado and a yard juice chaser, book it and don't forget to bring your bong. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

Oh hello, I was five and a half when I began chasing ice cream trucks. By the time I was six, my discontent at being disciplined for such acts led me to a confrontation with my father. I looked up and said, "Listen dad, I've thought this through and my feeling is that i'm not really a member of this family, but the abandoned child of an impoverished and drug addicted ice cream truck driver and that woman Louise who works the morning shift at Dunkin' Donut." I told him the information had come to me in a vivid waking dream and that if he would allow me to cross the street by myself, I was interested in running away. This infuriated him of course, but knowing it to be the truth he just railed at me for the ingrate that i was and told me not to forget to look both ways. Mom clad me in my warmest Doctor Dentons and allowed me to take my woobee since it was december in new york. She packed up a chicken salad sandwich with a couple kosher pickles, handed me a copy of Siddhartha and assured me that when i was able to read, i would dig it. She offered up my violin case and opened the front door. My dad sat in the barcolounger just shuffling a deck of cards over and over. My brother was playing with himself while glued to Howdy Doody. It was easy to hitch rides, being only three foot eleven and wearing red jammies with a tooshy flap. I was pretty cute back then. I got a lift from a trucker dude heading a haul down Florida way and spent three and a half days learning all about drunken whores and amphetamines. He dropped me off in Key West where this kindly old negro woman took a shine to me when she heard me playing "The Volga Boatmen" by the entrance to the Dew Drop Inn. "Why chiiile, you done shook my heart loose", she said. I just looked up, took the last bite of the last kosher pickle and said, "hungry". She took me home and introduced me to her family which numbered twenty something. There were kids and grandkids and uncles and cousins and a husband named Artemus who was mostly in his "workshop" all day fixing things and creating do-dads to stay sane.They lived helter skelter in five or six thrown together shacks that housed as many as seven, not including dogs,cats, goats and chickens. After a couple of months I'd learned every survival skill known to man, from skinnin' a cat to building a raft to growing food and cooking up gumbo. I could even navigate by the stars. Learned the navigating part from an old fisherman friend name of Rudolpho Mink who came by to play Parcheesi with Artemus most every evening. We'd go out to the front yard and lay on our backs looking up at the stars and Rudolpho would school me as to how it all works. So I built a raft and skinned a few cats and set sail (a sheet really) for Venezuela. Worked the oil rigs of Orinoco for the next few years, cutting my teeth (literally) on some of the grittiest work on earth. When I turned nine, my boss Hernando put me on to his cousin in Argentina who ran cattle in Patagonia. In Argentina i learned about fun. Everybody was loose and free. Eating, drinking, laughing. We'd tip cattle at night and drive them to pasture by day. I could have stayed there forever, but it was not to be my fate............. There's this one Keitt mango tree that set bunches of fruit in February. It happened to hit a pocket of time when it stayed still and calm enough for the fruit to take hold. Most of the other mangoes flowered a bit later and didn't hold much fruit as a result of winter rains and wind. I began to notice a few weeks back that there was damage being done to the fruits, as in being eaten by some unholy vermin. By the look of the fruit, i surmised that a rat was the culprit. Put a sticky trap at the base of the tree and banded the main stem and first two axillary branches with twelve inches of aluminium flashing. Didn't work. Saw a few of those pesky little Japonicus finches lurking and realized it was a lost cause. Unlesss, finger food. Too labor intensive. I commenced to harvesting early knowing that the Keitt mango actually gets pretty sweet when harvested green and that those little fuckers were NOT going to eat the only mangoes in the orchard. Its worked out well. Neo-hip Lindsay and i made some froozies the other day using mango, atemoya, banana and white sapote. Holy Moly. Lip smacking barely describes the momentary euphoria imparted by such things. Sad to say, there are bloodied tail feathers showing once again on some of the leghorns. Remind me to buy more brown colored birds next time. The blood doesn't show and i don't get wigged out. Doc Bebockboc concurs and assures me that nature will always move toward creating a balance and reveal solutions along the way. Nurse Sally says they should be dipped in Camphophenic and forced to watch "a clockwork orange" until they cease and desist. Neo hip Andy who has returned to Ohio reports that he is driving a produce truck powered by baby farts. He delivers produce to those deemed worthy. The profiling is simple, really. If you are old, poor, disabled, homeless or mentally unstable you are left to suffer evolutions inexorable fate. Extinction. If you can afford it and are Christian, you get your veggies delivered to your door by a guy wearing a hat made from a hollowed out watermelon. He's in it for the chicks. Life goes on. As for the farm, if you don't know what we're selling by now, you're not paying attention. The more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace out, Jp

Oh behave, Had a break-in the other day. I was sauntering down the stairs from my bedroom in the pinkish grey glow of dawn a couple of mornings ago, shaking off the sandman and grateful to feel the life force flowing through this ol' bag of bones when I saw what appeared to be one of the Aracaunas (blue egg layers) trying to fly out of Club Leghorn. She kept launching into flight only to be rebuffed by the deer netting that forms the roof of oll our chick domains. I thought, "thats weird". Thats when the real weirdness began. Turns out upon closer inspection it was a wild turkey caught inside. "No way", I thought. How's a feral turkey supposed to break into an escape proof chicken enclosure? Foregoing much of my usual morning ritual involving bathroom evacuations, yoga salutations, cacao preparations, doobage inhalations, premature injaculations, internet informations and standard prayers invoking generous monied people with a penchant for trickling down on the random visionary, I put on my work duds and my best tactical mindset and headed down the path to negotiate the release of this unwilling and apparently innocent detainee. Now unlike the cranky doofuses' bred for Thanksgiving and other non essential holidays the wild turkeys around here are pretty wiley and while not the type to actually pick a fight with a lumbering human will do their best to evade and defend. All of this is going through my mind as i'm walking and trying to figure out how best to approach this freaked out fowl. At this point, she's running head on into the chicken wire fence trying to fit through a two inch opening. I guess she figured that if her head fit through, the rest would follow. Poor geometry skills. I got into a kava kava mindset, you know, the one where whatever happens will be just another step toward a finite number of steps guiding us to a dirt nap, so might as well step lightly with open hearted acceptance and meet fate with a sardonic grin. It was with a measure of this acceptance that I entered Club Leghorn. The turkey had conveniently manuevered itself into a long narrow portion of the enclosure and didn't really sense my presence. She continued to test the fence as if any moment she would morph into a sawsall and fly free. I just stood there about ten feet away, watching this little slice play itself out. Figured if nothing else she'd get all tuckered out before long. I think she was about to take the flying approach again when she looked up and noticed me. I said, "hi there, you must be beat". I spread my arms out and hunkered down to guide her into the dead end. She trotted away toward no escape, all the while poking at the fence. When she got to the allys end I could tell she was breathing feverishly and not so much freaked out as exhausted. I still didn't have any real plan for this bird that stood as tall as my navel bearing claws that could snatch a small feral pig into a swoop and was trapped like a rat. Here comes the fun part. For some reason which will forever remain unknown , I recalled the prologue to Chaucers Canterbury Tales which I had learned from Mr. Curtis at Proctor Academy for the Horny,in 1963. So I started reciting Chaucer in the original middle english. "Wan that aprille with his shoures soote. The droght of marche hath perced to the roote, and bathed every veyne in swich licour, of which vertu engendred is the flour" and so on. I did it in kind of a singsongy way that seemed to calm her down. Long story short, I just walked up to her, mid recitation, picked her up from behind and carried her genlty out of the enclosure. When i put her down she took a couple of steps and looked back as if to say, "what the fuck just happened", trotted off and took flight. It got funnier when after freeing the turkey I remembered that the little Leghorns were kind of watching this whole thing go down, especially the part where I carried her out. They were huddled together like the peanut gallery at a Soupy Sales show and out of the corner of my eye I could see their little heads following the action as I passed by. Too cute. For everything else, there's master card (i get paid to say thet. Please forgive me). I did a thorough reconnoiter of the enclosure, inside and out, top to bottom and found NO WAY that that turkey could have gotten in there. Sweytagawd. I'm chalking it up to Natures way of telling me not to get too comfy in my routine and by all means, to expect the unexpected. In this case if I don't move on, its total brainfreeze. I love inexplicable moments. Anyway, she's still hanging around. I see her cruising the property. I know its her because she blushes when she sees me. Truth be told, she's kinda sexy. Hell, with gay marriage gaining widespread acceptance, the last great envelope to push would be acceptance of trans-species relationships, and I know she'd be loyal cause I'm the only one who knows how to take the top off the garbage can that holds the three way scratch, which as everyone knows, is bird world crack. If you came by today, you could get atemoya, cherimoya, papaya, avocado, eggs, some citrus, all kinds of greens, some beans and the usual House of Yumm lip smackers. I can say with some certainty that the same would be true tomorrow. Throw in a few culinary and medicinal herbs and a couple of live plants and you've had yourself a Green Moment. Hell, bring a friend. I've attached a picture of the turkey that I took right outside my kitchen door. She's getting a little forward, dontcha think? Went to my first rehearsal with the Hillbillys in three months tonite. Big gig on Friday. It was like a drive by shooting at Sam Goodys. Good times..................... Give us a call 878-6287, or 205-0430 for the nursery and come by for a shmooze. The more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace, jp

Olleh ho bruddahs and sistahs and hopelessly white people alike, So it's really quite a revelation on a number of different levels to witness a mongoose, and not a big one mind you, with jaws clamped around a large white egg scurrying with its teeny legs windmilling away to make its escape through the chicken wire and out to the egg "bone yard". There, one can see the cracked and bleached remains of would be omelets or aspiring benedict, never meant to experience the rush of hitting a hot, nonstick frypan. Pppssssssssssst. A mini greek tragic moment being played out before my eyes. I mean, all the "what ifs" rallied like some demented merry go round in my head. "That egg coulda Been somebody". But then I thought that in the end, one way or another that egg was gonna get eaten, digested and eliminated, contributing to the universal and apparently irreversible cyle turning food into dirt and dirt back into food. Burst my little existential bubble pretty darn quick there. Put a bunch of philosophical models right in their place too. You know, the ones which suggest that all the epileptics in the audience please stop fidgeting, and here's how. There's a time for calm and a time for action. Used an egg as bait, and set a couple of live catch traps. Drowned three of the little fuckers in the past four days but not before using nonlethal interrogation methods to gleen the whereabouts of the mongoose mastermind, Mergatroid chizzltooth (thats what they told us). We know where he's hole up and how to get there, but they all warned us that the place is boobytrapped like Oprahs chastity belt. Mostly army surplus claymores and rusty metal rakes with the prongs facing up. We're not sure what the mongeese use. We're working with computer models of the landscape to figure the best way in, or who amongst our limited cadre of friends we could convince to "scout" it out. We are, of course also dealing with having to cross foreign territory in a situation where time is of the essence and getting "permission" may mean sacrificing valuable and strategically critical moments. We have opened diplomatic channels with the leaders of these lands as well as a representative from the deer group, ironically named John, the pig consortium and the Partridge family. Will keep you posted as to the progress in bringing Chizzltooth to justice. Any idea how small a mongoose mouth is. Only way he could have carried it like that is if he took just enough of a bite out of the narrower end to hold it, but not break it. The egg was WAY bigger than his head. Amazing. Got a call from my pal Theodotious Latteh the other day telling me that he had spied a grunter on his property and chased it off in my direction. He asked if i'd seen it and I told him no, but that i'd be sure to burn some sulphur and puncture an effigy in his honor for sending it my way. Wellllllll, last night at about the time i get up to piss if i forgot to go before going to bed, I heard it grunting away under the Sharwil avocado tree having a merry ol' time. So I donned my hoody and tippytoed down to the living room,. snatched up my gun, turned on the flashlight strategically taped to the barrel and did my best Elmer Fudd impression. Keep in mind that my hoody was all i had on (too much info? not for Danielle). Let me interject here that you got your "oinkers" and you got your "grunters". The grunters are usually male, not necessarily bigger, but more aggressive. This was a grunter and he stayed a few steps too many ahead of me to put any bird shot in his hide, but by the time I gave up the prospect of tracking his grunts into the night, I found myself out at the pond, in the still silvery moonlight. Turned off the flashlight and tuned in the night sounds and sights and smells including the night blooming jasmine which never fails to give me a woody which then conveniently guided me, like a biological gps system around the orchard and back to my house. When I got into the house I mused, what if a heart attack had overcome me in that sweet and peaceful moment and the next day some knucklehead came driving in to find me clad in only a hoody, splayed out, flat on my back, the shiteatingest of grins on my face and "el Capitan" looking like some mushroom cloud frozen in time with nobody to contaminate. We've got atemoya, cherimoya, jaboticaba, papaya, banana, EGGS, beans, pepino dulce, greens of all kinds and a multitude of sarcastic remarks on most any subject. House of Yumm offerings include pesto, chocavopousse and froozies (plain or w/raw cacao swirls). I'd like to send o big huzzzzhuzzah to those of you who take the time to correct my spelling and comment on my shoddy writing style with all its run on sentences and nonsensical slang. I feel like i'm being loved by many mommies at once. Warm fuzzies back at ya. Might I suggest that an evolution of style itself is being birthed in these missives and that for wont of a better term we can call that style "Scream of Conciousmess", wherein only the limitations of ones perception inhibit the sublime and complete transmission and understanding of nonsense in its purest and most transparent form allowing the reader to cry "Feh, feh" and find fault, or simply give up, like that peak moment ablaze on some entheogen when the truth cannot be denied, and accept that the tree of writing has produced a chimera capable of unique expression and replete with transcendental coverage for all. Or somethin' lilke that. Read about a real sign of evolution and ultimately hope for mankind. Apparently there is an Orangutan at the Liepzig zoo that has taught himself how to whistle and has recently completed his first cd. Doesn't it just warm your heart to see signs of awakening? Does this not portend great things to come? We're naming a stalk of bananas in his honor. Soooo, as the middle aged spring feels the burn of summers approach, i wish you long cool nights and sweet dreamy siestas. Give us a call @ 8786287 and make a date to participate. The more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace, jp

Hmmmm, People, like cows are ruminants too, only people chew their thoughts and emotions over and over using a variety of "digestive" mechanisms in an attempt to come up with byproducts which nurture and nourish inner worth and outer connections in and attempt to create networks which envision and build models of behaviour that reflect that worth and grow those connections; hopefully in the direction of love, trust, wisdom, shit like that. Inner worth without outer connections wanders blind. Outer connections without inner worth are meaningless. We chew and chew the collective cud of our zietgiest, our raison d'etre and continue to come up a day late and a dollar short. At this point its not so much about getting behind the curve a bit, its more like missing the curve entirely going a buck sixty, careening through a guard rail and for one blissful, collective human moment thinking that the feeling of flying through space into an abyss of unknown depth and certain death is kinda cool. You know, you can shut the engine off and just feel the breeze blowin' and your tummy rise up to meet the free fall, and its so quiet and peaceful, and because you know you're doomed, you can finally relax. Now in the days of the somewhat sustainable family farms of the past it was good to be a cow. Maybe not worshipped like their bovine yogi cousins (western cows being too fat to sit lotus), but prized for their ability to provide so many things necessary to living well. Why there's milk and meat and butter and ghee and cheese and hides and manure and pasture management and the pipi's are so cute when they're not all freaked out by being crammed into paddocks too small for half their numbers, fed rendered animal parts, gmo grains, bovine growth hormone and antibiotics, stand around in their own feces and wait, either to be machine milked or stamped u.s. grade A. La vache qui rit. Not laughing so loud now, are ya? In the day of the sustainable family farm, keen observation served to unite all the necessary components needed to thrive. Components joined together in service to the whole and which, when cared for would produce surpluses galore while paying homage to the land. Now, we're all left out of the process. Compartmentalized like so many cuts of meat packaged and sealed with no sense of the whole animal in sight. Out of touch with the mostly gruesome realities of food supply and ecological degradation taking place on a massive scale worldwide. The collective political/financial brain trust of the world has, in large part done what some dreadspected they would do, which is to smile and then with a somewhat stern look say, "there there, be courageous, the banks will make everything better", and then go about looting lives like they were so many gun shops after a flood. Not fair, you say. Saturated with the slimey rancid sebacious stench of greed wearing Old Spice, you say. Don't worry, says I, there will be bigger and better superhero movies coming this summer to see us through the free fall and give us a sense of hope shimmering behind the selective seretonin reuptake inhibitors. Did I mention that we have eggs now? We do, and they're pretty. We got shades of white and brown and some with speckles and some that are blue (see pic). When Doc Bebockboc returned from Romania with what he told me would be the answer to all my prayers, I recieved the news with a certain skepticism. He said that this famous underground chemist guy name of Bi-lacho Bengalo, who writes a blog in code had given him the code in the town of Judetul Covasna after testing his trustworthyness in ways that he said would make a jaded longshoreman pass gas. He told the doc to go to the site and retrieve an article from the archives entitled: "Jesus, messiah or jewboytoy". So he did. He said that once the encryption was undone it revealed a formula made from readily available household chemicals that would render any animal totally receptive to suggestion. So we rigged up a device that we strapped on the smallest wwoofer on hand, stuck a bunch a feathers in her hair and clothing and after spiking their water with the hypnotic amalgm, sent her into the A.F.B.W.A. (asylum for birds with amnesia). She proceeded to strut around like the new sheriff in town and when she had their attention, squatted down and pulled a string on the device that gave the appearance of an egg isssuing forth from her ass. She did her best rendition of the bbbboooocccc bebocccbocc sound that they make passing an egg and continued to strut around "laying" eggs until the supply ran out. She then kicked up some dust with her rebocks and exited in a huff. Apparently they got the message. Within days we were getting more than a dozen colorful eggs a day. While not permitted to give you the proportions, the ingredients are lemon pledge, handi wipes, dr pepper and clearasil. I'm gonna try it on my imaginary girlfriend tonight. She's been kind of distant lately. We've got a fresh harvest of WWoofs headed our way. Two on board now (a lovely couple from Iceland who are traveling with twelve suitcases full of money so they can buy oatmeal and seaweed) and two more on the way (one from boulder where she's an environmental planner, and one from nocal without much experience, but she's 21, so heh). We'll be wailing on the summer vegetable gardens, laying down ferts and mulch, starting seed, pruning and prettifying. Firing up the Froozie maker sometime this week to lay in a fresh batch. Got a bunch of basil starts popping and intend to amp up the department of pesto to a cabinet position. What else.................oh, yeah, the more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp