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Page added on May 4, 2014
‘Oil war’ is brewing
In the ongoing battle of wits, Russia and the West are out – oiling their energy arsenals – to achieve strategic objectives. In this rather crowded geopolitical chess board, with both sides bent upon using their energy assets, who is going to have the last hurrah remains a big if.
The West seems to be working overtime to somehow constrain energy exports of Moscow – the lifeline of the Russian economy. A conscious effort to deprive Russia of its energy markets – by diversifying its major customers away – is definitely on. There has also been speculation that Washington has been conniving its allies in the OPEC – once again – to unleash a flood of oil into the market, so as to drive the markets down and bring Putin to his knees.
Way back in the mid 80′s too, reports say, while the Afghan ‘jihad’ was at its peak, Washington deployed the same strategy, forcing Riyadh to open its taps and send the oil market prices to the floor. This made the war economically unbearable for Moscow. The once mighty superpower USSR, dependent on its oil income, could not sustain the sharp fall in market prices – and simply melted away.
Some strategists are also envisaging for Canada to play an increasingly important role in meeting European energy needs, so as to free it from the clutches of Moscow. Alberta’s oil and gas is becoming more attractive in Europeans capitals, the Polish ambassador in Ottawa recently said. Marcin Piatkowski, a senior Polish economist with the World Bank says that 60 percent of the Polish gas requirements are met by imports from Russia. However, some other countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia are almost 100 percent dependent on Russian gas.
Poland hence appears supporting the very idea of importing Canadian oil and gas, Polish envoy in Ottawa Marcin Bosacki said last week prior to the start of a two-day visit to his country by the Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. “This point of view is being shared in a growing number of European capitals in the last two months since the Crimea invasion,” Bosacki said. “Of course, we are absolutely in favor of increasing the abilities of … western Canada oil and gas to be exported also to Europe.”
Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk too argued in an article in the Financial Times that the European Union should become less dependent on Russian energy sources. Yet the objective is not simple. The required infrastructure is simply not there.
On the other hand, Russia, under Putin, is not ready to take all this lightly. Moscow seems prepared to mount an oil war – if antagonized further by Washington and its allies. Aware of the endeavors to diversify Europe away from Moscow for meeting its energy needs, Russia is tapping other markets – rather aggressively.
China remains a big market for Russian energy resources and Moscow is keen to expand it further. End of April, Russian energy company Gazprom said it hosted a Chinese delegation to discuss contracts for a pipeline to feed growing Asian demands. “The parties addressed the state of the contract for pipeline gas supply from Russia to China via the eastern route,” Gazprom later said in a statement. A 2009 framework agreement between Gazprom and CNPC calls for up to 2.4 trillion cubic feet worth of natural gas exports per year. In September, both sides signed an agreement outlining the conditions for Russian gas supplies to China.
In order to counter the immediate threat of Western sanctions on its energy exports, accounting for almost 41 percent of the state budget revenue – $167 billion this year alone, President Putin seems intent on playing hard ball.
“We would very much wish not to resort to any measures in response,” Putin said on April 29. “I hope we won’t get to that point. But if something like that continues, we will of course have to think about who is working in the key sectors of the Russian economy, including the energy sector, and how.”
Putin was definitely hinting at the long-term interests of Western oil majors in the Russian energy sector. Warning the West not to squeeze further, Putin underlined that the interests of Western oil majors – BP, Shell, France’s Total and ExxonMobil – already active in the Russian energy sector with major investments, could be in jeopardy too. In the ongoing geopolitical skirmishes, this is a big leverage in the hands of Putin.
Big oil has considerable stakes in Russia. Way back in 2011, ExxonMobil sealed the half-trillion-dollar deal with the mostly state-owned Russian firm Rosneft, to frack in Siberia, drill parcels of the Arctic Ocean and to build a huge natural gas terminal in Russia’s far east, Rachel Maddow reported in Washington Post. In North America, Rosneft and its subsidiaries got big stakes in Exxon parcels in west Texas, the Alberta oil fields, deep-water drilling sites in the Gulf of Mexico and a huge stake in Alaskan natural gas.
And while Ukraine continues to be the sore point between the West and Russia, only mid-April, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell went to Putin’s residence, underlining, “we are very keen to grow our position in the Russian Federation.”
The British company BP too had a love-hate relationship with Russia. Although its American chief executive had to flee Russia in 2008, yet the fact remains that, more than a third of BP’s oil and gas reserves were in Russia. No wonder then that the same BP executive has been assuring stockholders early last month that the company’s Russian exposure was so large that BP could “play an important role as a bridge” between Russia and the West in the Ukraine crisis. “The mutual dependency between Russia as an energy supplier and Europe as an energy consumer has been an important source of security and engagement for both parties,” he said. “That has got to continue.”
With stakes in Moscow far spread out, if Europe and the United States decide to pressure Russia with sanctions targeting the energy sector, which accounts for more than 50 percent of the Russian economy, will the big American and Western oil companies stand in the way, Maddow counterposed?
The ongoing game is not simple, straight and easy. A conflagration does not suit Western oil majors too. Will that hold the West back remains, though, a big if.
The Saudi Gazette.
44 Comments on "‘Oil war’ is brewing"
Plantagenet on Sun, 4th May 2014 5:18 pm
Putin is the one making threats to withhold Russian energy exports from going to Ukraine and the EU.
Trying to blame the US for something Putin is doing is silly.
Makati1 on Sun, 4th May 2014 9:06 pm
Plant….are you deliberately trying to look stupid? If so, you are succeeding beyond your wildest dreams!
GregT on Mon, 5th May 2014 12:54 am
Maybe TPTB in DC, are hoping to test out the missile defence shield. Or maybe NWR is correct, and they are doing their best to collapse BAU.
Whatever it is they are up to, it will not benefit the rest of us. The average person is nothing more than a source of income, amusement, or cannon fodder.
Kenz300 on Mon, 5th May 2014 5:05 am
Wind and solar can be produced LOCALLY and do not need to be IMPORTED.
It is time for countries to become more self sufficient in their energy use and less vulnerable to disruptions.
islander on Mon, 5th May 2014 5:17 am
Plant is right, Putin is trying to cause problems so he can annex Ukraine and make it part of the new Russian empire.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 5th May 2014 7:00 am
I may be arrogant and say that we here are so much ahead on the reality of PO and energy. It amazes me the people that run the show on both sides are inept in the systematic variables at play. I know that some of them are aware of these variables but I firmly believe there are so many competing issues, ideologies, and political positions that a coherent understanding of the vital-ness of oil to a global interconnect economic system is missed. Maybe this is the end game like our NR here preaches. Maybe TPTB are aware of the predicaments of overpopulation, carrying capacity overshoot, food/water stress, PO, NUK monster, and the final industrial man great political game. Maybe knowing all these issues has given a select few the motivation to crash the ship and jump off in a pre-arranged location of survival….Naa..that would be too smart and too long term in thinking and planning. I guess it is just more stupidity and ignorance that is an example of entropic decay of a system that is greatly extended beyond its equilibrium. A system ready for a huge reset with a decent and hard landing leading to a bottleneck of disasters. We probably need this folks. Fire is the devils only friend and fire makes pure. The system is so mechanized and brittle that it must break up and be burned to the ground so humans in some small band of survivors can find our true nature in a new innocence of hunter gatherers eking out survival on the fringes of a sterilized world.
Boat on Mon, 5th May 2014 7:54 am
Darn Davy,
Even presidents/leaders have little power in a system this large. Populations have to lead and then the politicians will follow. Even poor China is now starting to address pollution because they have to live in it and want change.
Change actually happens very fast if you think in terms of generations.
eugene on Mon, 5th May 2014 9:03 am
I have a very strong hunch the US has played a major role in getting the Ukraine thing going. There’s evidence we have been funding groups there for some time. To think this is all Putin is naïve. For the US, the cold war never ended. We have an out of control military we have to keep convincing Americans they absolutely must fund. It can’t be some minor, powerless country like we’ve been invading. Those enormously expensive pieces of military equipment look ridiculous chasing “terrorists” so we need a major power like Russia. Decades ago, I realized we are the problem not those “others”. Who else has overt/covert military activity in a 100 countries?
As far as leadership, I have, finally, realized we have always been led by immature power seekers who could care less about anything or anyone. Often all I have to do is read comments and realize the writers are voters. And simplistic minded voters are so easy to manipulate. But if you want to think “you vote in a legitimate democracy” so be it.
GregT on Mon, 5th May 2014 9:57 am
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
“Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
Eisenhower was right, we all should have listened to him.
Northwest Resident on Mon, 5th May 2014 10:27 am
Billionaire George Soros gave an extensive interview last year where he predicted global economic collapse and used the word “evil” several times to describe the forces that are currently in play in the financial world and that will come into play once the global economy crashes.
He specifically addressed the potential for European peoples returning to their old ways of warring against each other, together with targeting specific ethnic groups for persecution.
Now, here we are on the very edge of the peak oil cliff (or actually already on the downhill slide picking up speed). The global economy is a bubble about to burst. The shit is about to hit the fan big time, and here we have this Ukraine situation.
The Ukraine ordeal is complicated and nobody can pretend to know exactly what is going on there. Yeah yeah — the Nuland tape. But maybe that tape was “accidentally” released on purpose. There are so many plots and sub-plots crossing wires in Ukraine, it just doesn’t make sense. Except it DOES make sense, if you look at it in the context of TPTB getting ready for the big collapse.
When that collapse hits, Europe — Eastern and Western — will blow up like the powder keg that is has always been. What the Ukraine situation does is it provides sufficient cause for the USA, NATO and Russia to maneuver forces into position. I believe that is the primary driver in the Ukraine “crisis” — the need for USA, NATO and Russia to mobilize troops, move them into position and Get Ready for the big collapse. Ultimately, as I speculated a few months or so ago as the Ukraine situation first got going, the goal is to split East Ukraine from Western Ukraine regions, with Russia moving to take direct control over East Ukraine and the Western Ukraine regions falling under the control of as-yet-to-be-determined European countries. And the military powers will be there to suppress riots and revolution and ethnic attacks once TSHTF.
The Big Story is the coming collapse. Everything you see and read about in the news is a sub-plot in that Big Story — Ukraine included.
IMO.
Northwest Resident on Mon, 5th May 2014 12:05 pm
GregT — BTW, I think we can all agree that it is too late. Democracy in America did not survive, not at the national level, at least. At the national level (which is the one that really counts), Democracy has already become the “insolvent phantom” of TODAY. Insolvent being the key word here…
Also, BTW, blackberry transplants are thriving along the back fence. They should take off once the warmer weather hits. I’m going BIG on corn and wheat planting — already sown and starting to grow (a beautiful sight!).
Has anybody else here read about the history of corn in America, and how dependent the native indian tribes were on that crop, and how dependent the settlers became on it. Mountain men took big bags of corn meal with them so they always had something to eat. The ability to store corn for long term usage, the many things you can cook with corn and its nutritional value make it a KEY crop. Just about the same is true with wheat. Corn, wheat and a few blackberries and assorted veggies — that’s all you need.
GregT on Mon, 5th May 2014 4:34 pm
NWR,
Our plan B is waiting for us to sell our other home in the city, and to make the move. The wife is out of here June 1st. I won’t be far behind. She has a job in a small community hospital. I’m about to quit my job of 28 years, and become a farmer. Fresh air, dark skies at night, the sound of the ocean, and a ton of hard work. We’re both really looking forward to a new chapter in our lives.
Northwest Resident on Mon, 5th May 2014 5:15 pm
I’m glad for you, GregT. But aren’t you going to miss those menacing dog-kicking cat-harassing deer? Or, more likely, you’ll see even more of them a little further out in the country where you’re going.
I can testify that being a farmer is a ton of hard work. I hope you’re still in shape for it, or have the stamina and endurance and resolve to whip yourself into shape. I’ve always been a work-out fanatic, and I’m finding that digging and chopping up sod is a lot harder than I remember it. Maybe you’ll have the benefit of a tractor and/or other fuel-driven machinery to get your ground in shape. Since I’m converting my backyard into a food production center and my neighborhood backyard is entirely fenced in, I don’t have that option. So it is dig, dig, dig! Counting the scratches and dings on my hands this morning while computer programming, I came up with 17 total “oweis”. Got a few on my face too, not to mention all the other ones. Building chicken coups, green houses, digging and chopping turf, planting seeds, lugging around bags of fertilizer and soil amendments — you better be tough!! I’m sure you are. Or just crazy — that helps too.
I look forward to hearing how your project is going once you get it started.
Davey on Mon, 5th May 2014 5:38 pm
N/R, I am planting 8 kinds of corn this year. Ground temp is just about right to start. I am going to stagger plantings with the sweet corn. My prize is some special Hopi blue I found!
GregT on Mon, 5th May 2014 6:09 pm
NWR,
The deer are at the plan B residence. Fences are already in place. I have a compound bow and a crossbow, if needed. Could use a little more practice with the compound.
I’m in pretty good shape, but I can’t fool myself. I’m not as young as I used to be. Aches and pains tend to hang around a bit longer than they used to. I’m up for the challenge though, and so is the wife. She’s small, but really tough, and stubborn.
Davey on Mon, 5th May 2014 6:52 pm
Greg, premier1 has great electric fence for deer 5ft mesh. The also have shorter fence for raccoon, rabbits, and other vermits. I got a hot charger putting out 6000volts. The combination of the two has worked wonders for my garden. The only problem I have yet to fix is blackbirds. Purchased bird netting and some traps I will try this year. Last year the blackbirds were hell on my corn!
GregT on Mon, 5th May 2014 7:29 pm
Thanks Davey,
Mental note made.
What do coons get into. Never had any problems with them here, other than in the pond.
Northwest Resident on Mon, 5th May 2014 9:35 pm
Davey — 8 types of corn!!? You’re a farming maniac. Why 8 instead of just one or two? I’m curious…
GregT — I’m a firm believer in mind over matter. Where your brain leads, your body will follow. If you’re not in great shape to start, take it slow and easy until you develop some strength and wind. Nothing you don’t already know, but just putting my two cents worth in. Crossbow? That’s cheating! I want one too….
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 5th May 2014 9:40 pm
Greg, coons are hell on the corn most of all. They love sweet corn. Last year first the black birds did their daily number on the ripening corn. This is a good way to know when the corn is getting ready. Then one night a group of coons got in and wiped out a good portion of the remaining corn. This year I got the 26 inch mesh electric fence to go along with the 5 foot deer fence. I also bought a big box trap. I already caught one coon and a rabbit. I do not kill animals for spiritual karma reasons so I drove them a mile away and let it go.
GregT on Mon, 5th May 2014 9:44 pm
Thanks for the encouragement NWR.
I bought the crossbow at Cabelas in Lacey WA, on the return from a trip to Seaside OR. It’s also compound, and it packs some serious punch. Very accurate as well.
GregT on Mon, 5th May 2014 9:51 pm
Davy,
I hear you on the karma. I’m not big on killing anything at all. Except for mosquitos, wasps, and biting flies. I am prepared to do so however, if the need presents itself.
I’m pretty sure that raccoons travel far further than a mile. Your buddy could be back for more.
Danlxyz on Mon, 5th May 2014 9:58 pm
If the USA was to organize the release of a flood of oil on the markets and crash the price down to $10 like they did in the 80’s, it might bankrupt Russia but it would destroy the US producers too.
I don’t think the Koch Brothers or Rockman would like that. 🙂
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 5th May 2014 10:20 pm
N/R, I got my corn from Territorial seed out your way in Oregon. Great company: http://www.territorialseed.com/category/corn_seed
Well N/R, I am in a great corn growing area. I love grilling sweet corn. The girlfriend and I are going to start canning. There are many great corn recipes. I purchased a grain mill I plan on making flour for corn bread and polenta. My girlfriend is Italian and Italians are big on polenta:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polenta.
One issue we are going to have in the decent is the requirements for nutrition from the garden. We are going to need more than just vegies and fruit. That is where corn comes in for me. I would also like to plant wheat eventually. I am going to build a bread oven similar to an Italian pizza oven to make bread with wood heat. So many things to do and so little time. Do you see why I am hoping for a couple of more years of status quo BAU!!
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 5th May 2014 10:28 pm
Greg, I have no issues with hunting. Part of the family business indoctrination was hunting, golf, and drinking. I have been out of the business for 11 years so I don’t have to hunt, golf, and I gave up drinking. I will teach my boys how to hunt someday. I will also go out and hunt if my family is hungry if BAU collapses. I am just not into the sport of hunting. For 30 years I killed many animals and I got to a point where it disgusted me. It is a personal thing. Someone who hunts for sport and respects the animal and eats it I have no problem with. The farm I manage here is full of wildlife. Part of my management practices are for wildlife. Spiritually I have notices animals know me and they do not fear me like other people. They see me every day and I don’t attempt to kill them.
MKohnen on Mon, 5th May 2014 11:48 pm
Davy, NW, GregT,
Fascinating to hear what you guys are doing. I live out in the interlakes of frozen Manitoba. Here, many people still talk of the best way to boil beaver-tails and skin a muskrat. We get droves of suckers swimming up ditches in the spring, and very large lakes with a wide variety of fish.
We moved here specifically to go off-grid. The town we live in has a population of approx. 30 people. We’ve been struggling to find a way to make a living out here. It’s tough, but we keep struggling. This year I want to put grow units in place for year-round cropping. Being raised “old school” on the farm, I’ve always been up to my elbows in animal blood, but we’ve always raised them organically. Hopefully we can find ways to go more veggie, since I really am kind of tired of the killing.
Anyway, it’s really good to hear about people who don’t just talk about all the problems but actually try to change the reality of it.
GregT on Tue, 6th May 2014 12:48 am
MKohnen,
I’m curious. What do you mean by grow units?
GregT on Tue, 6th May 2014 1:00 am
Do any of you guys keep chickens? I’m thinking about building a coop like this one:
http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/the-palace
Any thoughts?
DC on Tue, 6th May 2014 1:14 am
Are you suggesting that a bird-backed currency may be more flexible than say, a cow-backed one?
MKohnen on Tue, 6th May 2014 1:21 am
They’re essentially a sealed unit made out of polystyrene insulation that are heated either by direct sunlight (spring, summer, fall) or by the exhaust gases from a gasification unit (winter.) The units will be entirely managed using microcontrollers, though not completely autonomously – unless my mad skills go way up 🙂 We get a lot of winter sun here, so the sunshine supplement should be fairly low, just enough to make up for the short days. The general premise is to isolate the plants from the general environment as much as possible to reduce contamination. I’m not planning on hydroponics at this point, just steam treated soil, but we’ll see how that works out. Turns out that the same enclosure and general control system can be used for incubating eggs, germinating plants, drying plants, and even making different cheeses (my neighbour owns a cow: he milks her in the morning, and I milk her in the evening.) For that reason, we have dubbed this growing unit the “Germincahydrator.” We’ll see how it all works out. The first build starts this month.
MKohnen on Tue, 6th May 2014 1:25 am
Greg,
BTW, re the chicken pen. That is an amazing chicken house. Personally I prefer walking pens, if one has the room. We built a dome pen a few years ago that was easy to move. During the spring and summer here, we have a big problem with wood ticks. There is nothing like chickens to clean this problem up! Unfortunately an over-enthusiastic thunder storm decided to play with it, and I’m back to the drawing board.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 6th May 2014 5:39 am
MK, been to Winnipeg. At one point in my life when I was a private pilot I was actively seeking employment as a bush pilot in Alaska. I know the feeling of the Great North. I admire you up in the thinly populated North. Must be wonderful without the crush of people. Not many people here but not like there. I am going to look at a greenhouse here for year round farming. It is on the long list. I can heat with wood in the winter.
Greg, I want to move in to that chicken palace…talk about luxury! I am planning on this for chicken to follow my cattle paddocks to work the cattle manure into the soil. I plan on a chicken electric fence to discourage predators and keep the chickens confined:
http://okiecritters.com/
R1verat on Tue, 6th May 2014 7:54 am
GregT~As a very long standing caretaker of chickens, I would recommend you get a more practical housing unit. This one has no floor. Many creatures will dig under the foundation or claw thru the wire around the base of this housing unit. Don’t know if you free range your birds or how many residents will occupy this area but they will need more ‘real estate’. I would recommend constructing a simple building with multiple doors to as many individual accessible fenced areas as your area permits, preferably in a circular pattern around the building, so you can rotate your birds around the housing unit. You can let the birds fertilize & scratch up the dirt in a specific area one year, then moved them to the next area the following. Chickens are so very easy to raise but finding a chicken sitter (& farm) when one needs a break is the hardest part!Good luck!
Northwest Resident on Tue, 6th May 2014 9:39 am
It is great to read about all the self-sufficiency activities posted here. If you ask me, guys like us are leading the way into that post-collapse low-energy future that is coming on fast. Learn how to raise crops and poultry/livestock in your area now and one day you might find yourself in a position to teach others what you know and what you’ve learned.
GregT — I am a first year chicken raiser. I got four layer hen chicks and it is a lot of fun watching them grow. I built an elaborate house for them of my own design and it is attached to a nice fenced-in area where they can go out and eat grass and bugs and peck at the ground. Eventually, once they get a little older and bigger, I’m going to just give them free range to my back yard — I’ll be thinking of it as “slug patrol” duty. And of course they’ll be free to nip at the various veggies/grains I’m growing too. In about four months or so, they’ll start laying — 2 to 3 eggs per day per chicken, which is a lot of eggs! A big part of the reason I am growing a lot of grains is to be able to grow my own feed for the chickens. Total self-sufficiency, that’s the plan. I hope to be able to post some photos a little later this summer, after I have all the digging/sod-busting done and all the crops going. Before the end of the year another big project is going to be building a nice-sized root cellar, very well insulated, to store a lot of the harvested crops in. I could use a couple more years no doubt just like Davy, but I’m on a mission to get it all done before the end of the year because I’m still hanging my hat on the “big reset” starting off with a bang some time in 2015. Gotta get ready. If it comes later, well, that’s okay too.
Davey on Tue, 6th May 2014 9:53 am
Kinda like getting prepared for that first hot date ehh N/R at some point you have to make that 1st kiss and hope for more bases! Like the old nike saying “just do it”
GregT on Tue, 6th May 2014 9:56 am
Thanks for the info guys. Sounds like I have some decisions to make. We had chickens on the farm when I was a kid, but not my doing. My only responsibility was to collect eggs in the morning. I guess they would have been considered free range. There was usually a fair amount of spilled grain on the ground around all of the grain silos, and always vegetable scraps from the kitchen. We had a huge garden.
MKohnen,
Your ‘germincahydrator’ sounds interesting, photos or drawings of the concept would be appreciated. We don’t get the ‘extreme’ winters here in BC that you do, but I’d like to extend the growing season as much as possible. Year round would be great.
GregT on Tue, 6th May 2014 10:01 am
NWR,
Looking forward to the photos. How big of an area are you growing grains in, and which grains are you growing?
Northwest Resident on Tue, 6th May 2014 10:42 am
GregT — All of my raised planters are 4′ x 12′, 4′ x 16′ or 4′ x 4′. I have hard red wheat in 3 of the 4×12 planters and also in one of the 4’x4′ planters. I dig down and mix soil amendments to about twelve inches in all the planter areas. I slay many worms in the process, but hey, the ones that survive will find a new underground world of vast nutritional opportunities.
I will sow timothy grass this week (forage/grazing hay — mostly for the meat rabbits I will start raising later this year if everything goes right). Today my mission is to complete digging/chopping up two more of the 4×4 planters and I will put barley there. Then, I have an area where I’m not going to put raised planters because of too many tree roots, but I’m going to plant rye there and see how it does. I also have alfalfa and crimson clover — great cover crops which will just be plowed back into the dirt, but those will be planted later this summer to “overwinter” a few or more of the planting areas. One of the big challenges for me is to figure out my crop rotation and cover cropping system. There are plenty of crops that will grow through the winter or at least will take hold during the winter and be ready to harvest in early spring. The idea is to NEVER let a growing area just lay fallow for any length of time. Growing the right cover crop or second-season summer crop or over-wintering crop in preparation for that main summer crop — gotta figure it all out… I’m enjoying the challenge!
Northwest Resident on Tue, 6th May 2014 11:02 am
Hey Davy, I just wanted to mention that I checked out that Territorial Seed company a while back but ended up finding a different place to order my seeds from primarily because as far as I can tell Territorial Seed company only has vegetables — where I also wanted grains and some other seeds they didn’t have. I get almost all of my seeds from this place — http://www.johnnyseeds.com/. They promptly deliver, no problems yet after ordering several or more times. And they seem to have just about everything.
Also — one note on growing all those varieties of corn at the same time. As you already know I am quite sure, corn is a self-pollinating variety, so you have to grow the corn close together so the wind/air movement will cross-pollinate. If one of your goals is to not only grow your own food/animal feed, but also to grow enough surplus to save SEED for the next planting, then growing all those corn varieties together could end up giving you a lot of weird knock-off hybrid varieties with unknown qualities. Being an experienced farmer, you already know that. So, my question is, are you keeping all those varieties separate from all the others somehow??? Or do you just not care about growing enough to be able to lay aside seed?
Davey on Tue, 6th May 2014 12:40 pm
N/R thanks for update on seed co. Corn is separated and planting dates staggered.
Boat on Tue, 6th May 2014 2:39 pm
As a kid we detasseled corn. 4 rows we would pull the tassels and two rows were left of another variety to pollinate. There were about 30 of us every day in some big field. The girls were always slower so when we were done with our rows we would have to “dig” the girls out. Many times rewarded with a kiss and a hug. Ahhh the memories of youth.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 6th May 2014 2:45 pm
Boat, that definitely sounds like the Good Old Days!
Davey on Tue, 6th May 2014 4:01 pm
Boat/ N/R, let us hope some of the good old days are what is ahead at least for some of us that end up in corn fields, gardens, and hay fields.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 6th May 2014 4:13 pm
Anybody ever read “Candide” by Voltaire? The story of an optimist who set out to “conquer” the world, to do it all, but at the very end of the novel he returns to his small plot of land and his garden, having suffered from so many evils in the world, he determines that minding his own small garden is the best of all worlds.
The novel can be seen as an allegory for human civilization. With the aid of fossil fuel, human civilization set out to conquer nature, to bend the laws of physics, to reach the stars, to conquer evil and to replace nature with a glossy plastic existence. It turned out badly for almost everybody, and the worst is yet to come.
In the end, those of us remaining will probably also be very glad to just return to our small plot of land and our gardens, content with that infinitely small but satisfying role to play in this amazing universe.
Davey on Tue, 6th May 2014 6:08 pm
Amen to that N/R