Day Dream 2025
I have not slept and dreamed of our future, I have only those day dreams.
I brake a shovel and think of 2025 when shovels are not a quick cheap trip to Home Depot.
Being 66 years old, walking our perennial gardens, doing everything by hand or with limited electricity, and converting the solar heat panel for summer drying uses. Sharing our home with another family(s). Changing our tastes from modern sweets to blander foods. Canning and making pies with cherries, apples and all the fruits. Drying Beans, Squash and Corn. Tending to the nursery and greenhouse plants. Making the trips to the farmers market to trade and sell our surplus. Mostly to buy baking needs, fuel and cooking oil.
Spring and Fall means oiling the windmill that pumps water to the irrigation tank. We water by hand or old hoses. The drip system is long gone. We have large drinking water tanks in the basement that also buffer temperature changes. Gray water filters through the series of tiny wetland tanks we built and drips to the garden. Winter reduces our living space as we close off parts of the house. Two of three bathrooms are disconnected and used for cold storage. We take baths in winter and in the summer, solar showers outside in the garden. The lightly used septic system collapsed years ago. We built a compost toilet within days and carefully manage our waste. There is much less than I remember. All windows are shuttered. Storms are less frequent but extremely intense. Weeks of hot weather or dry cold are followed by high winds and inches of rain to be collected, filtered and stored.
Our yields spread out over all the months so we have something fresh every few week, be it meat, fruit or vegetable.
Everywhere we have things to tend. Bee hives out back. Chickens and a couple hogs, Rabbits and Koi. All needing their food so they can make us protein. More than full time, life is now all time, we work sunrise to sunset taking advantage of each days weather. Building stores of food, collecting seeds, planning the next years, weeks or months strategy. Adjusting constantly to opportunity and calamity. We learn to buffer extremes and gather any yields from those extremes. Nothing can go to waste. We have progressed into all corners of the property with some kind of food, fiber or wood. The Root Cellar we put in as a summer project twenty years ago now insures our winter survival.
The deer are gone. We hear of them up north, but have not seen one for at least ten years. Spring Lake was fished out the second summer after the Infracrash. We keep a good amount of Koi and minnows in our ponds.
The '02 and '04 hybrids are still running well for infrequent (expensive) car trips. We splurge and top off each tank each of gas for the year. About 1100 miles total and siphon fuel off to run the chainsaw and lawn tractor for fall harvesting. Solar panels are working well, I should have bought more deep cycle batteries when they were available.
We sleep well, eat well, and stand amazed at the excess of our past. Many others are not so blessed.
I brake a shovel and think of 2025 when shovels are not a quick cheap trip to Home Depot.
Being 66 years old, walking our perennial gardens, doing everything by hand or with limited electricity, and converting the solar heat panel for summer drying uses. Sharing our home with another family(s). Changing our tastes from modern sweets to blander foods. Canning and making pies with cherries, apples and all the fruits. Drying Beans, Squash and Corn. Tending to the nursery and greenhouse plants. Making the trips to the farmers market to trade and sell our surplus. Mostly to buy baking needs, fuel and cooking oil.
Spring and Fall means oiling the windmill that pumps water to the irrigation tank. We water by hand or old hoses. The drip system is long gone. We have large drinking water tanks in the basement that also buffer temperature changes. Gray water filters through the series of tiny wetland tanks we built and drips to the garden. Winter reduces our living space as we close off parts of the house. Two of three bathrooms are disconnected and used for cold storage. We take baths in winter and in the summer, solar showers outside in the garden. The lightly used septic system collapsed years ago. We built a compost toilet within days and carefully manage our waste. There is much less than I remember. All windows are shuttered. Storms are less frequent but extremely intense. Weeks of hot weather or dry cold are followed by high winds and inches of rain to be collected, filtered and stored.
Our yields spread out over all the months so we have something fresh every few week, be it meat, fruit or vegetable.
Everywhere we have things to tend. Bee hives out back. Chickens and a couple hogs, Rabbits and Koi. All needing their food so they can make us protein. More than full time, life is now all time, we work sunrise to sunset taking advantage of each days weather. Building stores of food, collecting seeds, planning the next years, weeks or months strategy. Adjusting constantly to opportunity and calamity. We learn to buffer extremes and gather any yields from those extremes. Nothing can go to waste. We have progressed into all corners of the property with some kind of food, fiber or wood. The Root Cellar we put in as a summer project twenty years ago now insures our winter survival.
The deer are gone. We hear of them up north, but have not seen one for at least ten years. Spring Lake was fished out the second summer after the Infracrash. We keep a good amount of Koi and minnows in our ponds.
The '02 and '04 hybrids are still running well for infrequent (expensive) car trips. We splurge and top off each tank each of gas for the year. About 1100 miles total and siphon fuel off to run the chainsaw and lawn tractor for fall harvesting. Solar panels are working well, I should have bought more deep cycle batteries when they were available.
We sleep well, eat well, and stand amazed at the excess of our past. Many others are not so blessed.
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