Unk Eats A Garden And Thrives; Disruption: Resilience> Well-Being; Change: Adapt> Prosper: Enjoy Ideal Vegetable Food

Unk Eats A Garden And Thrives

Disruption: Resilience> Well-Being;

Change: Adapt> Prosper

By Alan Detwiler

Smashwords addition

Copyright 2018 Alan Detwiler

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment and for enjoyment by family members. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for encouraging the hard work of ebook authors.

Unk and his huge broccoli plants in a year when there was plenty of rain.

Table of Contents

Introduction Unk's character

The world has changed 2024

People have changed 2026

3 Innovation flourishes

4 Gardening becomes popular 2029

5 Unk's home

6 Why Unk has a garden

7 Burying wood

8 Unk stays healthy

9 Improvise

10 Church hiking

11 Swamp walking

12 Arthritis cure

13 Unk's job

14 Fractionalization of culture

15 Why prep

16 USDA food improvements

17 Why prep transistioning to resilience

18 Ubiquitous dichotomy

19 New is not always better

20 Maintaining immunity

21 Unk's diet

22 Unk's reward

23 Vegetables in winter

24 Storytelling

25 Recipes 2018

26 Neighbors

27 Jessica Calais hibernator

28 Bioengineering delivers 2024

29 Some philosophy

30 Wishful thinking

31 Extraterrestrials

32 Ilium fermentation prevention

33 Changes and new abilities

34 The Bond Fire

35 Human health in 2020

36 April 14 2020

37 Staying comfortable

38 In the woods

39 Fertile soil

40 Unk's website

41 Consumerism

42 Unk's medical genetic analysis

43 Unk's childhood

44 Pickles in the basement

45 Transition to resilience

46 Plants are evolving

47 Unk's garden-good bad great

48 Dried vegetables

49 Mood food

50 September 2034(84 and fit)

51 Family get together

52 Videoholics

53 City ways

54 Unk's tools

55 Gadgets and gizmos

56 Daily walk

57 Diet for health

58 Gardening and science- satisfaction

59 Change and party on

60 Short cut syndrome

61 Being more thoughtful

62 Change the world

Conclusion

Unk's recipes

Bibliography

Introduction

Unk's character

There is no such thing as a wizard. But people are capable of amazing things. Especially the people who are not afraid to fail, or at least, not afraid enough to stop them. In a broad sense, some people could be called wizards. Wizards feel compelled to try ideas that imagination suggests maybe, just maybe, could make things better. Maybe much better. They do not let failure after failure stop them. When attempting amazing things failure is to be expected.

Unk is one such person, aka Winslow Orion Green. He was given the nickname Unk in high school. Somehow the name fit his character. Winslow was particularly compelled to try to make improvements to anything and everything. His imagination seemed to automatically conjure up ideas about how this or that could be better, better than ordinary. To Unk, plain everyday ordinary was not something to stir elation. To improvise an improvement on something that had been ordinary - that was inspiration for elation, and Unk wanted very much to feel the wonderful pleasure that from time to time overcame him when success was granted to him by some combination of circumstance and perseverance.

Unk is fortunate in many ways. Many of the circumstances of his upbringing pushed him in the direction of being creative. Most people are under the influence of a few creativity enhancing influences - maybe a parent who offers encouragement, friends and acquaintances who are also inspired to create, or easy access to tools and materials. Unk grew up on a small farm. Life on a farm is all about creating.

The goal of a farmer is to create food using the materials that nature provides and various tools. Farming, especially on a small farm, is a continual process of improvising according to changing conditions - variable weather, the changing seasons, the stages of development of crop plants, and the occasional, but seemingly all too often, equipment failures that often challenge the farmer's skill to improvise repairs or change agenda.

To the farmer it sometimes seems that unusual circumstances are a more common state of affairs than average circumstances. Mother nature has many surprises... the unusually early, warm spring, the extra hot, dry summer, the early frost or freeze near the end of the growing season, the unexpected late frost in the spring. All those and many more can very much affect farm crops and the farmer must respond appropriately, sometimes with an outside-the-box fix. The farmer becomes well exercised in creativity by necessity. New circumstances arise that require adaptation. New ways must often replace what was familiar, what had been well shorn, and what had been successful, but then, gradually or suddenly, no longer applies.

It had become second nature for Unk to regard processes and circumstances as fluid, always at risk of changing. Necessity requires adaptation. Unexpected situations arise often and require inventing new strategies. Unk became adept at imagining and applying fixes and adaptations. He felt a deep sense of accomplishment from his many successes.

Elation wells up within Unk when he realizes how this or that situation has been made better through the human ability to imagine a better way and to conjure up procedures to implement the new way forward.

It almost goes without saying. Unk is generally happy and often feels good just thinking about how this or that circumstance makes life easier, more comfortable, or more interesting or pleasurable. Unk is happy because he has an understanding and awareness of what is good. What is good can be reduced to a simple principle. What most consistently produces enjoyment and pleasure is good and should be encouraged and should be savored.

Unk feels the rightness of working in his garden. He is using his physical strength to produce the necessary nourishment and energy that is the fuel for his body. The garden's produce gives him the strength, the power, to control his life. Sure, food could come from the supermarket. But food that comes from his garden is more than supermarket food. Garden food means getting all the advantages of producing the food by ones own efforts.

Those advantages are many... exercise that keeps up his health, reducing resource depletion and pollution, a feeling of doing something worthwhile and important, having the self-sufficiency that can be vital in an emergency, and, of course, an abundance of health encouraging food. An awareness of the benefits of gardening is what makes Unk an ardent gardener. He thinks about such things when he adds organic materials to the garden soil, when he lays out the soaker hoses that drip water into the soil around brassica plants, and when he pulls the stirrup hoe through soil alongside a row of vegetables to break up the top inch of soil, breaking free the roots of inch-high weeds from their connection to the soil, separating the weeds from their source of water causing them to dehydrate and die. His efforts are all part of the good things about gardening. He knows what good he is accomplishing and feels satisfaction when working in his garden.

Of course, there is another side to Unk. He has all the uncomfortable feelings that have always plagued human beings. The power of logic gives humans the ability to see what is right with the world. We also see what is wrong. We know the good and feel satisfaction. We behold what is wrong and disappointing and feel regret and pain.

Unk has a simple solution to the dilemma. You put priorities on what enriches your life... pay more attention to what gives satisfaction and pleasure. The other things, the little and big beasties, are less important. Good is intrinsically more important than bad. That elegant principle makes life good.

1. The World Has Changed

2024

Fifty years ago the price of oil was around $30 a barrel. One could say that the world ran on oil. Food was grown on huge farms. Each crop was grown in the geographical area most suited to each particular food crop. In the United States strawberries were grown almost exclusively in California's central valley. Strawberries and twenty or so other food crops grown in the central valley were shipped by petroleum powered cargo trucks to groceries stores throughout the country. Another ten or so crops grown on large farms in Florida supplied citrus and other crops and were shipped across the US by petroleum-powered cargo trucks then commonly referred to as tractor-trailer rigs. Potatoes mostly were grown in Idaho. Corn came from the Midwest, wheat from Kansas and from other states in the Great Plains area. Apples were grown in the Northwest and Upper Midwest. Many tropical fruits and some vegetables were grown in distant countries and flown to distribution facilities in the US and other countries. The system worked well while the price of petroleum was low.

In 2020 where a product was manufactured was often determined by where labor costs were lowest. The developing countries supplied the world with low-priced consumer goods. Raw materials were shipped from around the world to manufacturing facilities in other countries and finished products were shipped out, often to far away destinations

As oil prices rose throughout the 2020s, the rise in shipping costs led to a higher priority of locating manufacturing plants near raw material sources. Now, workers live in residences near the factories. If the factories are located away from urban areas, those residences are built at the same time as the factories. The corporations building the factories finance and often own the residences. Workers pay rent to their employers. Private retail companies build grocery stores nearby and professional service companies build their facilities close by. Sizable towns are sometimes created in just a few years near oil and gas fields, coal fields, and mineral deposits. In agricultural areas migrant workers are housed near where the crops are grown. When work is finished with one particular crop, the workers move on to the housing near the next crop to be worked. Workers harvesting trees for lumber and other products live in movable housing. When the trees in one area have been harvested. The housing and the workers move on to the next area to be harvested.

In the era of cheap oil, raw materials were transported to factories in urban areas. Now, processing facilities are built near the resources and workers move to where the factories are. With the very much higher price of petroleum, transportation costs are too great to continue the old shipping-intensive methods of doing business.

About one-quarter of the world's workforce is migrant or semi-permanent, moving from location to location as required by the life cycles of agricultural crops or the local depletion of resources.

Consumer goods are no longer so casually purchased as they were in the era of cheap oil and cheap energy. The big retail stores are still with us. But Walmart and other big retailers are no longer leading employers. Purchases at Walmart are no longer a weekly, archetypical feature of modern living. In the era of cheap energy, a blender could be purchased at a price equivalent to a couple of hours worth of wages. It did not matter so much that the blender wore out soon after the warranty expired. You just bought another one. Now, you research the ratings of food processors and carefully choose one with a good durability rating and a long warranty. Spending a day's wages or more on the purchase of a blender results in far fewer blender purchases. So it is with purchases of other such consumer goods. Our culture changed fundamentally. Now we are expert at conservation and frugality..., at least, when it comes to the manufactured merchandise that takes energy and raw materials to produce.

Spending on manufactured hardware is part of a more general trend. Our culture has progressed toward self-sufficiency. Now, we more often rely on what is readily at hand to provide our physical needs. We have modified our expectations and desires. Now, satisfaction comes from applying our talents for improvising, conserving, and creating instead of earning wages and choosing off-the-shelf items from Walmart et al.

Crafts and improvisation of practical items is the theme of many websites. Retail businesses provide tools and supplies to enable the modern citizen to produce many of the items needed in day to day living. Thousands of websites offer instructional material showing how to accomplish various tasks that for the previous generation would have been accomplished by merely making a purchase of a product or service at a retailer.

Television and video watching have declined as more of a person's time goes to tending of basic needs. Shopping is no longer a common leisure pastime. Restaurant meals are no longer a significant part of a typical person's diet. Tidiness in the appearance of ones home is no longer of such concern. Now it is frugality and self-sufficiency that is of primary concern.

Home and building construction, in general, use super insulation techniques to keep heating costs at reasonable levels. Seven-inch wall cavities are standard. Designs incorporating foam insulation are common. Dome homes are built using formed-in-place, room-sized bubbles of plastic foam, inflated on-site using air compressors. Super insulation is very economical. With the very high natural gas, oil, and electricity prices, the savings in heating costs are much greater than the cost of super insulation.

Many vehicles, including both automobiles and light and heavy trucks, are powered by hydrogen. The hydrogen is produced primarily by electricity generated by wind turbines. The hydrogen fuel is produced mainly during times of peak wind when electricity production exceeds demand. The stronger the wind, the greater the rate of hydrogen production. The rate of hydrogen production is easily matched to how fast the wind is blowing. Using wind power to make hydrogen fuel makes wind power more economical than using petroleum based fuel for transportation.

Electricity generation is now 40 percent wind, 30 percent solar, 10 percent coal, 10 percent nuclear, and 10 percent hydroelectric.

Because of the high prices of energy, fuel, water, and land, food prices rise as a percentage of income. For many families food prices now take more than fifty percent of the family's income.

Satisfaction comes from fundamental aspects of living

With a large portion of income going to food and practical items, not much is left for spending on entertainment and less practical matters. We have become a culture dominated by practicality. The matters of everyday living are of most concern. Life is meaningful because of our innate abilities to provide for ourselves. We feel rewarded by success in obtaining practical needs. Longing for luxury and indulgence is more a part of the era of cheap energy.

Manufacturing jobs and manual labor jobs continue to decline as machines take over more and more repetitive tasks. Very few jobs involve physical activity. Increasingly, a person's job is done using a computer or talking to people. The percentage of the population employed in many areas increase: equipment design and development, engineering, agricultural research and biotechnology, the medical profession, education, health care, legal services, law enforcement, advertising, insurance, government, and other service jobs.

Due to a decline in physical activity, obesity, diabetes, and related health problems continue to rise. Physical fitness declines. Lifespan makes only slight gains.

Resource depletion is a serious concern as shortages continue to drive the price of retail products ever higher. A consensus forms that it should be everyones goal to reduce their own consumption and encourage others toward the same goal. The culture of economically advanced nations recharacterizes from consumptive to conservative. Unnecessary purchases and consumption gives the consumer little benefit, and is burdensome rather than empowering. Owning a late model car takes a sizable part of the income that could be used for more rewarding purposes. A new house is no more practical than a well maintained and upgraded older home. The older home is likely to have a much lower purchase price, freeing income for other purposes. New clothes purchased which have had no previous owner/user give less bang for the buck than those purchased from a second-hand store such as Goodwill. Processed and prepared and restaurant food is more costly financially and healthwise and expends much more resources and its packaging contributes much more to landfills than bulk and whole foods. Most cleaning products do little or nothing to improve a person's health and well being. A damp cloth or just a brush usually cleans sufficiently. There is no real benefit to using detergents, scents, and gloss agents when cleaning furniture, table tops, and most surfaces. Is static guard in your clothes drier worth the price and effort? Do you need to use detergent when just rinsing would do to clean a kitchen utensil? Is toothpaste any more effective than a toothbrush and some water?

Practical approaches to reducing use and consumption no longer seem extreme. Ignoring the ill-consequences of resource depletion now seems like the foolishness of a previous age. It is better (easier, less costly, more empowering) to cut ones hair to as short a length as practical than to continue using more shampoo, more time and expense washing, drying and grooming longer hair. Conspicuous over-consumption and indulgence by spending are disabling. Excessive consumption is recognized as a burden that diverts resources away from more rewarding goals. Your choice of conservation is enabling and is making your life more enjoyable. More can be accomplished when resources are used efficiently. Following more practical and empowering routines is now a source of pride and satisfaction. It just feels good to think that you are making wise choices.

As global warming heats up the earth's atmosphere, the added energy causes more variation in normal air circulation patterns. Huge low pressure systems that normally form in winter over the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans are now sometimes much larger, stronger, and longer lasting. When the low pressure system over the North Atlantic is strong, winter in eastern North America is unusually cold; winter in western Europe is mild. When the low pressure system over the North Pacific Ocean is strong, eastern Asia is unusually cold while western North America has warmer than usual winters.

The cold is sometimes extreme. Temperatures can be up to 30 degrees F. colder than normal for weeks at a time. Periods of unusual cold are becoming more severe as global warming increases.

The very hot summers from global warming will continue to get even hotter. The colder winters will likely get even colder.

Oppressively hot summers and punishingly cold winters may be the trend for a very long time.

2. People have changed

2026

People today are strikingly different from the people of a few generations ago. Most people two hundred years ago were used to hard, physical work. They did a lot of it. Growing food and preparing food was not done with the machines available today. It was done using a lot of physical exertion.

Firewood was used for cooking and heating homes. There were no chainsaws. Saws were muscle powered. It took a lot of physical work to saw enough wood to cook meals and heat a house.

When families tended gardens to get food to eat, that work was also muscle powered. Shovels, wheelbarrows, hoes, sickles, and other muscle-powered tools were used extensively. Skin on the hands became tough and thick. Having sore muscles was accepted as part of everyday living. People knew the soreness was a sign the muscles were healing and strengthening. Every spring back muscles and biceps were sore from using the shovel in the garden. Every fall the arms and shoulders were sore from using the crosscut and crossbuck saw when cutting firewood. As the season progressed the soreness at first increased, then very gradually, over a period of weeks or months, the soreness lessened as the muscles gained strength and endurance. Most people did such work often and had been through the cycles many times of adapting to the seasonally varying demands on their bodies. They understood that exercise damaged the body but they also understood that exercise strengthened the body.

Doing hard physical work was what made them able to do hard physical work. Physically moving around was what made them be able to physically move around.

Today that understanding is largely lost to all except the athletes and the few fitness enthusiasts.

The majority of people in the modern world do mental work. They have developed their abilities using their minds. Our modern intellects develop from life's experiences, schooling, and on-the-job learning. Now, people in general understand that their mental abilities develop as you learn by doing. You want to learn to play a musical instrument? You pick up the instrument and use it as best you can, repeatedly and often. The more you use the instrument the greater your proficiency. The great advances in science, medicine, technology, and the other mentally intensive endeavors of our culture are largely the results of people studying, learning, analyzing, and otherwise using their minds repeatedly and often. The same use-it to improve-it concept is commonly recognized as the way to best develop any mental ability.

Modern living is more a mental experience than the physical experience that was the norm of centuries past. This change in behavior has produced some dramatic changes in people, both good and bad. Advances in sciences and technology are tremendously beneficial. Diabetes and circulatory ailments are perhaps the leading maladies largely caused by our lack of physical exercise. Together those two ailments produce a myriad of infirmaries.

Where do we go from here? It seems obvious. We learn from lessons of both the past and the present. We develop new insights that enlighten new strategies to live better and longer. Better technology together with better understanding promise many changes for the better.

Of course, we had better escape the pitfalls. Some could be tragic. Even cursory examination of past history informs us that we are prone to misfortune, minor and major, much of which is self-inflicted. It seems prudent that we include in our general rules of operation strategies that minimize as much as practical the damages that seem destined to befall upon us. Hang on tight and brace yourself. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

3. Innovation flourishes

Because of the extremely high price of retail items, it is no longer common practice to casually discard broken down or worn out appliances and consumer goods. A typical, basic food processor has a purchase price of more than a day's wages. Large and more featured food processors can have a price of three days' wages or more. When the processor or another appliance fails an autopsy of sorts is performed. Its failure is analyzed. Why did it fail? Can it be repaired? How long will it last if it is repaired? Is it worth buying a new one? The failed appliance or other item tends to be repaired or repurposed whenever possible.

In the process of analyzing and repairing, a great deal of expertise is developed about how things work and how they might be better made. Our culture is becoming more one of repairers, crafters, tinkers, do-it-yourselfers, and inventors. Innovation is becoming the norm. Instead of making a purchase to provide a solution, now, improvising and innovation are needed. We are becoming more accomplished tool users and manipulators of the physical materials and objects that are so much involved in the everyday things that people do.

Spare rooms have been converted to storage and work areas where repairs and alterations are performed, where needed gadgets are created, and where a range of tools and useful materials are stored.

Such resourcefulness in material items is being paralleled by resourcefulness and innovation in other domains. Health consciousness is higher than ever. Preventive health care, healthy diet, and exercise are more popular than ever. People are more proactive in maintaining their health. The physical demands of being self-sufficient make it obvious that good health is fundamental.

I think, said Unk, we may be evolving. It's a kind of cultural evolution. Our genes can't change that fast. But our culture can. Humanity has a big advantage over the rest of nature. The way we interact with our environment can change quickly. Our culture is like our software. Just change the rules of operation, the algorithms, so to speak. The hardware can handle it.

So, says Junior, Unk's neighbor and friend, eventually, the hardware has to be upgraded, too... to handle more advanced software.

Yeah, says Unk, but the hardware is pretty darn good. It has evolved for millions of years, or many millions, depending on when you want to call the start of our lineage. An individual carrying genes that do not enhance ability to survive tends not to pass those genes on to progeny. We have the genes we have because they have enabled us to survive under a large set of varied circumstances. A lot has happened in those millions of years. Survivors have passed on genes that create abilities needed to survive. Nature has rewarded the survivors with many fantastic abilities.

You're good, said Junior, philosophy must be one of nature's endowments that's in your genes.

Unk continues, We humans run on philosophy. It's what inspires culture and culture along with good hardware makes us survivors.

And thrivers, says Junior.

Unk says, And thriving requires happiness. Seems to me, happiness and satisfaction have a lot to do with conscious thought. You think of a reason to enjoy something and that causes you to enjoy it. Happiness doesn't just happen.

Junior says, That's really quite uplifting. There's hope for us all.

4. Gardening becomes popular

2029

The large increases in the price of fossil fuels since the early 2020s have caused large increases in the price of food. Subsidies for food purchases in most countries lessen the impact on low income people. In countries with insufficient subsidies, hunger and malnutrition are major problems. When worldwide food production is insufficient, widespread famine kills and causes great suffering for millions of low income people.

When regional conditions cause drops in food production, food aid distribution can partially lessen the suffering. In some areas, political conflicts prevent food aid distribution and people suffer greatly.

So called food riots are frequent. Dissatisfaction with food availability and other issues are frequently inciting masses of people to loot, burn, and otherwise destroy property and commit acts of violence. The United States and European Union countries are not spared. Liverpool, UK, and major cities of the U.S. have seen unprecedented riots.

The riots peak in the late 2020s when energy and food prices are highest.

In the U.S. the growing season of 2028 is much colder and drier than normal. Most of the western U.S. is severely affected. Midwest corn production declines by twenty-percent. Total national agricultural output for the 2028 season falls by one-third.

Food shortages drive food prices to record levels, first in 2028 and then a new record in 2029. In the U.S. 2028 food prices are fourteen percent higher than the previous year. 2029's food prices increase again, twenty-three percent above 2028 prices. Reserves in grain storage facilities go to zero.

In 2029, U.S. food imports increase greatly and exports fall greatly. Imports exceed exports for the first time in over a century. U.S. food exports fall to a record low. Many countries depend on food grown in the United States. In many countries, food supply shortages and high prices cause widespread protests and riots.

After 2028 crop failures, U.S. political leaders strongly advocate home gardening as a way to alleviate food shortages which are predicted to crest the following year. The Department of Agriculture presents television programming instructing beginners with how-to information on establishing and caring for a home garden. Many gardening programs produced in previous years are rerun on the Public Broadcasting System as well as on local and network broadcasting and cable stations. Gardening.gov posts publications encouraging gardening and providing how-to information.

USDA programming is particularly effective. Live programming and recently produced programming by USDA experts present instruction on what to do now to implement a home garden.

Many people respond to media and government programming encouraging gardening. In the spring of 1929, inventories of tools and supplies at garden centers and other retail outlets run out quickly. Many people improvise and make do with what is available, start their gardens, and produce significant amounts of food for the summer of 2029.

The popularity of gardening soars. By the end of 2029 most people have a garden or are starting one. High food prices and quality issues with supermarket food are strong incentive for starting a garden. After 2029, it seems a kind of cultural craze takes over, greatly surpassing previous popular crazes in fashion, diet, and bling-bling consumer products. It seems just about everyone has a garden. Gardening clubs and discussion groups form. Gardening becomes a common topic of conversation wherever people met socially. Many recipes for homegrown vegetables are traded. It seems everyone has advice to give and questions that need answered.

Most retired persons grow most of their own fruit and vegetables in a home garden. For the first time in eighty years, one income families become the norm with one member of a couple assuming the bulk of the food production and preparation work. For the first time in eighty years the use of processed and fast food declines.

5. Unk's home

Unk's house has interior furnishings that could be described as a combination of retro and shabby chic. A semi truck mud flap is a door mat just inside the kitchen door. All four walls of the kitchen have shelves made of reused lumber - siding boards, 2 by 4s, plywood, and such. Two walls have a single shelf down about sixteen inches from the ceiling. One wall is mostly covered by four shelves. Almost half of the fourth wall is covered by two side-by-side pre-made multi-shelf units screwed to the wall, up about sixteen inches from the floor allowing baseboard electric heaters to run horizontally just below the bottoms of the shelf units. All shelves are full to capacity with jars of food, mostly, dry grain, beans, vegetables, and fruit.

All windows on the north side of the house and most of the other windows are covered on the inside with sheets of half-inch thick insulation sheeting. Most rooms have one uncovered south-facing window to provide lighting. Several rooms with no uncovered windows have LED lighting. One or more large baskets of sweet potatoes