I spent a lot of time today with Gerry working on our old house.  We spent hours doing what were apparently simple tasks.  And yet nothing is as simple as it seems, especially when working on an old home.  You never know the sort of problems you'll encounter.  Our tools and supplies  were mined and manufactured from somewhere else.  Would I ever be able to replace this stuff if it broke and we were in some possible future when economic localization was a reality and not an ideal? 

It reminded me of Tainter's thesis about how complex societies can get into trouble from simple maintenance costs.  When infrastructure gets large and complex, just the act of keeping it functioning can be a huge burden when resources become constrained.  A young civilization going through a growth phase with abundant resources can easily overbuild, confident it can always solve its problems.  Afterall, look at how great it is!  

How delusional are we now, building more and more freeways, office parks and subdivisions while oil is peaking?  More folks ought to read Tainter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter) and Jared Diamond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond) and then think about what investments we make.  I don't see any shift happening yet and it scares me.  We don't have much time.  

Breakfast

I was a good boy today.

Oct 18 Breakfast

That's our homemade zucchini bread again, with Petaluma butter.  Those watermelon bits come from Covelo and Sebastapol yogurt is drizzled on top.  The drink is our neighborhood sourced apple-pear juice.

Lunch

I raided the garden again.

Oct 18 Lunch

Same watermelon and juice as breakfast.  Sandwich bread from Pheonix bakery using non-local flour.  The innards consist of lettuce, cucumber, sweet pepper and tomato from garden.  Also included is a soft jack cheese from Santa Rosa area and a Mendocino Mustard spread using non-local ingredients I am almost certain.

Dinner

About the same time I made lunch I got the dinner stew going.  It was cooked in the solar oven.  I highly recommend the solar oven I own.  I ordered it from here and got a great price:   http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/IndividualItemPages/SunOven.html

The fact is, one of the most energy intensive parts of our food system is cooking.   

Oct 18 Dinner

This was a great meal.  More local lamb, in a stew with carrots and parsely from Covelo, and barley, garlic, sweet and hot peppers, tomato paste and tomatillos from our own garden.  Oh, and a bay leaf from the tree at the junction of North St. and Redwood Ave.  The mashed potatoes are from our garden and many were blue so that's really the right color.  I added Petaluma milk and butter to these.  The salad is from our garden and has four kinds of lettuce, tomatoes, and sweet pepper. The beer is what we made with Hale.