Our tiny slice of heaven

Was talking with a friend recently and he said:

"I think that's our idea of heaven, a 24-hour safe and affordable bus system, local produce feeding a city-run no-questions warming/sleeping shelter, kinda a combo soup kitchen / youth hostel. Also, well funded libraries with late-night adult enrichment programming, possibly produced in conjunction with the local tech schools and high school granting credits for running programming. Oh, and grants for accessory dwelling units and urban ag so folks are incentivized to build/buy a tinyhome/above garage apartment and to keep a garden plot and maybe chickens, as long as the tinyhome houses LMI applicants and a healthy percentage of the produce goes to the soup kitchen."

He is so, so right.

The common thread.

"Every single vector of the jackpot was weaponized by the same disruptor: human nature. Now, it might have manifested itself as selfishness, or venality, or simple stupidity, but at the bottom, it all amounted to the same trait: our persistent, self-destructive resistance to acting for a collective good."

Plant Profile: Quinoa

Quinoa uses the same water ratio as rice (1:2), cooks in 15 minutes (1/2-1/3 time), and yields 4 cups cooked per dry cup of 'grain' (it's actually a seed). 2 cups per pound dry, same as rice, but double the volume for less energy. 

Yield: .5 ton/acre, or enough to give 20 people one pound a week for a year, just over a cup cooked every day.

Plant in April, drought resistant, needs little in the way of irrigation. Good drainage is needed to prevent waterlogging. A fall crop can be planted in warmer climates.

Harvest in 90-125 days, in June for early maturing varieties, which leaves the soil available for warm weather planting such as sweet potatoes.

Use as a replacement for rice.

Also makes an excellent Tabouli.

Communes and apples and bears, o my!

Just got back from the commune. Great stuff started coming out and I'm looking forward to going again.

There was a bear under the apple tree just past the wood shed.