I have long wanted to learn how to prune and graft fruit trees and was delighted to join with other members of my permaculture guild yesterday to be taught by a master. It was a terrific class and I can’t wait to get busy on my trees. I have an old crab apple tree that should be perfect for grafting with some new stock. The only dilemma is that the crab apple tree is inside the bee fence. The warm weather has gotten all of the hives busy and I don’t expect they will be at all happy to share their space with me. I can’t really envision grafting in a bee suit but I may need to try. I will at least wear the hood.
The class took place in an eco village. It is a beautiful and remarkable place. I will confess to having a moment, talking with these people who are so committed to reducing their reliance on petroleum and further committed to growing food. I could see myself living in such a community but we are so established in our little niche right here and I am far too old to start over. These places are also expensive. By biggest complaint in fact is that most people are priced out of the big-ticket items that would do the most to reduce their carbon footprint. I had so hoped that some of the stimulus would address that. I know there are tax incentives but families who are struggling to make ends meet can’t come up with the upfront costs and many don’t make enough to itemize their taxes anyway so a tax credit doesn’t help. I guess we will keep on keeping on, doing the little things like weather-stripping and insulating as we can but it is really unfortunate that energy efficiency is not a priority.
I forgot about Cheap Food Friday. I will owe you a recipe.
Can I just tell you that my stupid cat has a mouse. We got a cat because we wanted a good mouser. I think old Rascal is trying to invite Mickey Mouse to over for a play date. He certainly isn’t planning to off the little bugger. They are literally sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor looking at each other.
March 22, 2010 at 4:07 pm
My indoor cats had no idea what to do with mice either. I think mostly because it did not come in a can with an orange Iams label on it. The stupid little mouse started popping up behind my toaster – I got it with a mouse trap, not a cat.
March 22, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I had a cat once who would do that with mice…she went to a farm soon after. lol We discovered this morning that we have a mouse in our car…happily enjoying anything left in there. I opened the glove compartment for a throat lozenge and found that he/she had eaten an entire package plus two packages of emergency ketchup!
I looed into an “intentional community”, they can be pretty cool…expensive, but cool.
March 22, 2010 at 6:25 pm
We have two apple trees that don’t produce much and would love to graft something new onto them! We don’t spray and the apples are extremely wormy – the few that the squirrels don’t eat. We might plant a plum tree and hope for better luck.
Too bad the eco-village is so expensive – sounds like a great idea.
March 22, 2010 at 8:09 pm
“By biggest complaint in fact is that most people are priced out of the big-ticket items that would do the most to reduce their carbon footprint. I had so hoped that some of the stimulus would address that.”
I second your lament. We’ve been having a discussion about solar water heater systems, and how they could help cut individual carbon footprints, plus, installing them would put people to work. All that’s need is a program to guarantee the $3000 loan it would cost to install them, replaying it with the resultant energy savings.
Seems that the government would rather focus on big ticket items. Such a shame, where so many other countries have such systems on 90% of the homes.
Nice blog btw.
March 22, 2010 at 8:21 pm
We once had a cat that was simply too lazy to do anything about mice. One time we saw a mouse walk past him, and he didn’t even bother to lift his head
Now we have BB King, who loves to catch mice, he really helps us in the hayshed. Cannonball (Adderley) takes the other surplus we have: He has a bunny a day which saves the trees in our orchard.