Sorry for my absence of late, but I’ve been busy. We’ve been pushing on developing our new product at InfoEther and I’m going to be moving out west of Dulles Airport to a place (pictured above) next to Oatlands Plantation.

We (myself and some friends) have been working on a 1200 sq ft garden and we’re going to be firing up the grill and enjoying the summer. I’ll be out that way in July.

Many of you know my somewhat unhealthy obsession with wanting to have a farm. I think it’s a mix of growing up visiting my Grandfather’s California farm and vegetable gardening. Regardless, It might be time to take that more seriously as an occupation. Jim Rogers, who started the Quantum Fund with George Soros, was recently interviewed in Business Week and said:

I really think agriculture is going to be the best place to be. Agriculture’s been a horrible business for 30 years. For decades the money shufflers, the paper shufflers, have been the captains of the universe. That is now changing. The people who produce real things [will be on top]. You’re going to see stockbrokers driving taxis. The smart ones will learn to drive tractors, because they’ll be working for the farmers. It’s going to be the 29-year-old farmers who have the Lamborghinis. So you should find yourself a nice farmer and hook up with him or her, because that’s where the money’s going to be in the next couple of decades.

Now if I only had 7 figures to buy the acreage…

My Dad sent me an op-ed from the New York Times entitled Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave this morning and asked my opinion on it. I agree with a lot of what the author says, but I think that we’re missing the boat entirely on this stuff. People are thinking about this as “how do we replace oil?” The real question they should be asking is “How do I live without oil?”

Not radically different, but if we only look at how to replace oil, we limit the potential of what can happen. Everyone scrambling for a piece of the pie too. “Clean Coal” — which I believe to be the biggest oxymoron since “slightly racist” — sponsored most of the Presidential debates. You know what that got us? Very few questions or discussion about a real energy policy.

Anyway, here’s my reply, in whole, to my father. It was written quickly, not proofread, and is missing links. I’ve tried to add them where appropriate to fill in the context of conversations not shared, but the idea is there. The bold paragraph at the end is the most important thing.

— Begin —

Oh, where do I begin?! :)

deeep breath

Basically, even if we found new reserves in US Territory and sucked them dry, that would only account for something like 8 Billion barrels (gotta find where I read that). At 120 million barrels of world consumption a day, that’s a little more than two months supply.

Two months

Those reserves would take years to find and even longer to bring online, and then we don’t have the transportation in place to get most of that to refineries (well, the coastal shelf stuff we do, but not the ANWR). Also, it’s a reserve. Regardless of what you think might be there, it was set aside for a reason. Is Bush’s next element of the energy policy to open Yosemite to geothermal companies and The George Washington Forest to loggers?

It’s basic macroeconomics: The problem is a combination of an increase in demand without an increase in supply. And there really isn’t any more supply. The OPEC guys can’t get it out of the ground fast enough to keep up with China and India’s demand. And we can’t tell them to not develop. Their people see American culture and want to live that way. Problem is, that culture was built on sixty years of cheap oil.

Alternate energy isn’t much better at this point because all of it – every single thing that’s out there today, relies on an underlying fossil fuel economy in order for it’s manufacture, delivery, marketing, etc. Yes we’ve been losing research jobs in alt energy overseas, but that’s as much to blame on bad policy since 1970. All nuclear engineers go to France or China because we’ve not launched a new plant since Three Mile Island. “Nuclear power is great! except… um… put it in HIS backyard” – that’s the problem.

Geothermal is great too. This would work well in the Northern central plains where heating is critical more so than anything else. But how do you tell an out of work auto worker or small family farmer that they need to drop thousands of dollars on a new geothermal heat pump? Only if it’s cheaper than their heating bill from oil. Wave energy looks cool too, and would be quite successful in our area I feel (with the sheer area covered by the massively tidal Chesapeake, it could be quite a boon) and is also working 24-7. But that’s a lot of investment and maintenance (corrosive salt water).

Solar? Cool stuff. We have a massive desert in the southwest, the majority of which is still federally held land. Smack some arrays down there and make a combo solar/wind farm. Or do Algae. Some big Texas oil men are already dumping money into wind to take advantage of the free stuff they get on the plains. Again, manufacture and transportation rely on oil. Photovalactic cells have come a long way, and are still progressing. Same with battery banks. They all have a shelf life as well.

Another issue with solar is cost. In the state of Virginia, I can’t make back my investment because of the way that Dominion power doesn’t really pay you for the power you generate back to the grid. Waldo has an excellent article on this from last year. With energy starting to skyrocket tho, it might become cost effective in the math.

On a smaller scale, you can do what they did at Gaviotas in Columbia. A solar reflector (basically aluminum) heats water and creates a turbine. It’s like a coal fired engine but with the sun. Now that is renewable and not oil dependent (except maybe for milling of pipe, etc). That can also be used as just a water heater for showers and for distilling water.

Ethanol? Corn is such a crappy fuel. We put almost as much into it via petrochemicals (that also pollute the crap out of the Mississippi and turn the Gulf of Mexico into an algae bloom, killing off other species) that it’s a zero gain situation. And with world grain consumption and crop failures up (3 million acres of corn lost from these recent floods) you’re going to have food riots (already happening overseas) and all food prices are going to increase and stay high (see this article about the CEO of Nestle ). We could use switchgrass, but you’ve got farmers paid to raise corn, not switchgrass. Brazil is all ethanol based, and look what sugar production is doing to the Amazon.

That algae based idea would be great if they could get it into production. The return per acre would make the american southwest the algae ethanol king. Heck, Mexico could even be better than us in the Sonora states.

The author, James Howard Kunstler, writes about a lot of these technologies in his book “The Long Emergency”, which, while quite dour, is a potential vision of what we’re up against. I’ve already seen many of the ideas he espoused years ago in main stream media outlets (McMansions are the new ghettos, etc). (See his article in the Washington Post from May.)

I agree that a real President would get up and do a Kennedy-esque speech of energy independence before the next decade is out. Seeing as I don’t foresee Sen. McCain making it through the next decade, that leaves the only logical choice :) But it’s not just energy. It’s about sustainable human settlement patterns. It’s about bringing back victory gardens. It’s about effective mass transit. It’s about tearing down the temples of commerce sitting in seas of asphalt (e.g. malls, strip malls, etc) and building livable, walkable communities. It’s about reverting the way america lives to pre-WWII. It’s about family farming. It’s about sustainable agriculture.

I expect to see replays of the 1970s sooner rather than later, regardless of the direction taken by any President or Congress. We’ve already had rice rationing in some states. It’s like getting prepared for a massive hurricane that will leave you without power, food, or gas for years.

Man. I want a farm.

— End —

So yeah. Um. Discuss?

Last spring, after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which came recommended by way of a blog post by Waldo Jaquith, I decided to join a community supported agriculture program here in Northern Virginia run by the Hauter family at Bull Run Farm. Learning to cook with the seasons and trying a variety of new vegetables I’d not had before was quite a rewarding experience.

I had a basil plant that grew to be quite large (3’ tall) and some sage but nothing of a real garden. I decided that this year, it needed to be done up a bit more properly. But lacking more than the 5’x8’ concrete balcony floating 80’ off the ground, I am limited as to how extensive I can make it. But I’m going ot give it a good run for the summer and see how it progresses. I plan to keep extensive track of it via the blog, so apologies to those expecting some wonderful insight to usability or design on a regular basis. For the next few months, the order of the day is… dirt.

The basics were laid last week: an onion that had taken to sprouting on my counter was put into a pot, the Aloe Vera plant transplanted to a larger container, the sage given it’s own pot proper. And today, with the arrival of a variety of heirloom sees, the mini greenhouses have been sown with arugula, basil, lavender, thyme, and carrots. Tomorrow, I’ll plant some various lettuces, radishes, and beans in their pots outside.

I plan to put in tomatoes, lettuce, white eggplant, and squash by next Monday. I have also ordered a dehyhdrator and plan to attempt to do some pressure canning as well (with much direction from Lisa King, I’m sure!)

So, does anyone know of any good self-watering drip irrigation systems that would be deployable on a balcony?