The Deliberate Agrarian Blogazine September 2012

Dateline: 30 September 2012

Life After Wheat
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First, as a followup to last month’s Deliberate Agrarian blogazine, wherein I discussed modern, industrialized, dwarf wheat (as opposed to ancient wheat), and told you that I had stopped eating modern wheat, because I was concerned that it is not good for a body, I can tell you that, now, after over five weeks without wheat in my diet, I feel healthier than I’ve felt in years.

I haven’t lost any weight to speak of, but that’s beside the point. The great thing about this no-wheat lifestyle is that I have more energy, which means I am getting more work done in a day, and I’m feeling a whole lot better at the end of the day. I’m not leaping tall buildings in a single bound, yet, but compared to when wheat products were a big part of my diet, I feel super.
But, yes, I miss those most delightful of wheat carbs.... homemade bread and Ritz crackers. 
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Me & Pistol Pete

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Telling you that I feel great after forswearing modern wheat products brings Pete Maravich to mind. "Pistol Pete" Maravich was, without a doubt, one of the greatest basketball players of all time (that's what I've read).

I was never good at basketball, or any sport for that matter. I was not into sports in school. I'm not a watcher or an avid fan of any sports or sports teams (I didn't see any of the last Olympic games). So I almost never mention sports or sports personalities on this blog.

But I have recently watched some of the Pete Maravich YouTube videos, and I watched the Pistol Pete movie several years ago, and I've listened to Pete Maravich's Christian Testimony. So Pete Maravich is a person who has captured my interest. I'm especially intrigued by his last words...

In 1988, during a game of basketball with some friends, the 40-year-old, retired basketball phenom was asked how he felt. He said, “I feel great,” and then he dropped dead of a heart attack. “I feel great,” were Pete Maravich's last words.

Pete Maravich was a blessed man to feel great right to the end, and to then be taken so quickly and easily. That’s what I think.

It turns out that Pete had an undiagnosed heart abnormality from birth, and this is where Pete Maravich and I have something in common. I myself have a heart murmur. A heart murmur is defined as “an abnormal sound heard through a stethoscope over the region of the heart.” I’ve had it since I was a kid. 

Doctors used to listen to my chest for a long time. The last time I had a physical examination I was 18 years old and going off to school in Vermont. As usual, the doctor listened to my heart for some time before asking, “Do you know you have a heart murmur?”  I asked, “What’s a heart murmur?” He told me it was a leaky valve.

So maybe I’ll go like Pete, feeling great one second, and gone the next—just like that. That sure would be nice. I’m in no hurry to leave, mind you, but going in such a way would certainly be my preference. A man starts thinking more and more of how his end will come when he crosses the half-century mark in his life.
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Coincidence?
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It was a s sun like that.

One thing I am anxiously looking forward to is my upcoming change of jobs. Four months remain before the planned escape from my factory job in the city to freedom—freedom from the drudgery of a sedentary, wage-slave job. The end is near, so to speak. It will be a dream come true, and a prayer answered.

Which brings me to a subtle and amazing event that happened in my life this past month. Many people would dismiss it as coincidence. But those who believe in the total sovereignty of God (as I do) don’t really believe in chance or coincidence....

I was driving to my job one morning. I typically pray during my morning travel time. The roads are mostly empty (until I get near the city) and praying is better than anything the radio has to offer. Anyway, I was driving down the road and praying and I remember thanking God for giving a measure of success to my home business because, in so doing, He has provided a way for me to leave my factory job and still provide for my family.

I remember saying something like, “Lord, I’m only a short way from leaving, and I think I can see light at the end of the tunnel.” 

Immediately after saying that I glanced in my rearview mirror and did a double-take. What I saw astonished me.

The road was empty and straight behind me. On either side, branching over the road, were tall trees. It looked like I had driven through a tunnel. And at the end of the road, at the end of the tree tunnel, way behind me, perfectly framed by road underneath and trees all around, the morning sun stood as a shining golden orb in the sky. It was clearly and unmistakably a light at the end of a tunnel.

The image didn’t last long. As I kept driving, and headed up a hill, the sun climbed above the trees.

I can’t help but think that God orchestrated that picture for me. It remains in my mind, and I marvel at the thought of it.
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Wheat Berry 

Chewing Gum

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I have told you that I ate no modern wheat last month and that’s true. But I did consume some of my small stash of ancient einkorn wheat in the form of “homemade” wheat berry chewing gum.

It's been decades since I even thought of wheat berry chewing gum, and it was a nice re-discovery. I’m not a chewer of store-bought gum, but wheat berry gum is another story. It’s fun gum, and a lot better than anything you’ll find in a store.  If you’ve never tried it, get yourself some berries (kernels) and follow the directions at This Link. 

Chewing wheat berries into gum takes a little practice to master. I keep the berries in between my lower lip and gum, and chew them, a few at a time, with my front teeth until the gluten gum forms. It takes time. If you chew with your back teeth at the start, the tendency is to swallow before you get the gum.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you. 

Miracles From Agriculture
(1960)

Kire in Macedonia occasionally sends me links to YouTube movies that he thinks I’ll appreciate. Such was the case with the 1960 U.S. Department of Industrialized Agriculture propaganda flick above. It begins with the narrator saying...

“Today, agriculture is going far beyond nature to produce new miracles for an even better, more abundant life.”

Later the narrator proclaims:

“One of the most remarkable food miracles is the story of chicken, a triumph of research on the farm and in the marketing system. Once something special for Sunday dinner, chicken, inspected and graded, is now thrifty every day. Yes, in one generation people of this country have doubled their consumption of poultry.”

My ears really perked up with this comment:

“Scientists have fixed the glutens in flour so that industry cooks can make your favorite bake-and-serve products.”

This movie is an example of the arrogance of the industrial mindset. The working of miracles is something that God does, not scientists and marketing experts, as the movie says.

And to assert that scientists “fixed” wheat flour implies that wheat as God created it was not good enough. This brings to mind a paragraph in my book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian:

“This fare of the industrial providers is food foolishness. These people, these companies, these forces, exalt themselves and their fake products, boldly proclaiming that their creations are better than the unadulterated bounty created and provided by the Sovereign God of all creation. What gall!”

An Awesome

 Garden Digging Tool

Kire in Macedonia also sent me the above YouTube movie. It shows a garden digging tool from Russia (I think). I tried to figure out how to order one of those things but couldn’t surmount the language barrier.

Somebody needs to import that tool to the US or make an American version!
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"Classic American"

Clothespin Update
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Classic American clothespin prototypes (all rejects)

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In December of 2002 the Penley Clothespin company in West Paris, Maine shut down its wooden clothespin manufacturing factory. Five years later, National Clothes Pin Company of Montpelier, Vermont, shut down their manufacturing operation and sold the machinery for scrap. That was the end of American-made clothespins.

But, as many of you already know, I am on a one-man mission to bring back American-made clothespins. 

My goal is not to have a centralized clothespin factory with a thousand employees. It is, instead, to encourage a thousand people across America to craft “Classic American” clothespins and have their own small clothespin-making businesses. It is a decentralized dream of a nationwide “guild” of home-based clothespin crafters, and shared success. Oh, and I’ll make and sell Classic American clothespins too.

With that in mind I spent a great deal of time fine-tuning my Classic American clothespin design this past month. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to design a clothespin, but there is a lot to it. The good news is that I think I’ve finally got a clothespin design that I’m pleased with. I will be making more clothespins in October to ensure that the design is just right.

I hope to have made more progress towards the goal next month. Stay tuned.
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A Quote From The 

1868 

Maine Farmer’s Almanac
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Cities, and even suburbs (extensions of cities), have always been a "rude atmosphere" for raising children.

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"God made the first garden while Cain’s red hands built the first city. Alas the day, that ever Cain’s coquetting mother found it so pleasant to hold the memorable conversation with the gentleman of fascinating address and sibilant accent from a subterranean metropolis. But for that men might live in gardens still, and not feel constrained to shut themselves up, on two sides with brick and one with stone, enveloped all the while in an atmosphere which a rude analysis finds composed of dust, smoke and many well defined and several savory odors. Yet men acquire a morbid taste for city life, and finally, regard the country almost with dislike. A similar unhealthy state of feeling is that of the convict who, released after a long term of imprisonment, would return of his own accord to the gloom of his dungeon."

My Garlic Powder Resources

Are Now Available 

on e-Junkie

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I once made and sold garlic powder. It was a nice little home business.

I have finally succeeded in getting my Garlic Powder Profits Report back in print as a downloadable pdf file. I now offer three inexpensive downloadable pdf files at the Planet Whizbang “store” at  E-Junkie.com.

Figuring out how to make this information available online was a major hurdle for me because I’m a computer ignoramus. E-Junkie certainly makes it easy and inexpensive to do. They charge a flat rate of five bucks a month for hosting your pdf file and taking care of the transactions. Payments are made directly into my PayPal account. It’s downright simple, and it seems to be working just fine.

If you know how to do something that other people want to learn, or you develop a plan to make something that people will want to know about, I suggest that you compile the information into a pdf file and sell it through e-Junkie. For an example of what I mean, check out my $1.50 photo tutorial that shows how I turn garlic bulbs into garlic powder. The information in that tutorial was on this blog for several years and I "repackaged" it for e-Junkie.

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Something New 

From Planet Whizbang

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The new Planet Whizbang mystery product will be revealed next month.

I was hoping to unveil a new Planet Whizbang product for gardeners this month, but it’s not quite ready for release. I would categorize it as a tool. It is smaller than a bread box. Very  low-tech. Very useful. 

This new product was inspired by Steve Solomon’s excellent book, Gardening When It Counts. I looked long and hard to see if someone else has already come up with this product idea and was surprised that I couldn’t find it. My version will be made exceptionally well and should last a lifetime (a contra-industrial concept for sure). 

As for what it does, well, it helps you be a better, more successful gardener! That’s all I can say for now.  


I tested this new product in my garden this year and was so pleased that I determined to get it into production so it is available in time to be utilized by gardeners across America (and around the world) before the 2013 growing season. I hope I can get a seed catalog or two to offer it in their 2014 catalog.


If you’re on the Planet Whizbang e-mail list, you will be among the first to know what this mystery tool is, how it works, and where you can get one (or two or three).
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The Intelligent Gardener:
By: Steve Solomon
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I haven’t read Steve Solomon’s newest book, The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient Dense Food, because it hasn’t been published yet. But I’ve pre-purchased a copy and am looking forward to what the author of my favorite gardening book has to say about this important subject of growing nutrient-dense food.

I suspect that he will elaborate on what he’s written in the past about the need to remineralize garden soil in order to grow more nutritious food. He will probably talk about his Complete Organic Fertilizer, which includes numerous rock powders. I further expect that Solomon will explain why organically-grown food is, in many instances, no more nutritious than food grown by industrial farming methods. And, believe it or not, sometimes industrial food is actually more nutritious than organically-grown food.

This subject of nutrient density in food is critically important and you will be hearing more about it. I’ve already written two chapters for my upcoming book, The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners, that present ideas and information about growing food with high nutrient density.

A Useful Tool 

For Gardeners

Refractometer and heirloom tomato (photo link)

With the subject of growing nutrient-dense food in mind, I bought myself a refractometer. You can get one of these simple instruments for around $50 and use it to test the nutritional density of the food you grow in your home garden, your market garden, or that you buy from a farmer's market. 

I'll save any further comments about the refractometer for my book, and the book's blog after it is published (next spring). But, for now, I just want to say that this is a tool and a subject that you might want to research online. A refractometer will be utilized more and more by health-conscious gardeners and consumers in the years ahead.

My Wife The Stonemason

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Marlene's stone-walled flower bed (click the picture to see an enlarged view)

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Our new land has an abundance of stones. There are piles of them along the edge of the woods. They have been picked from the field for more than a century, and there are plenty still in the field. Before I die, I'd love to build a section of stone wall with those stones. Building a stone wall is something I've wanted to do for a very long time. But my wife, Marlene, has plans for those stones too.

This last month I showed Marlene how to drive our little tractor (Leland). She took 12A (Leland's wagon) up along the woods, gathered stones, and made the stone-lined garden bed shown above. I wish I had a "before" picture to show you. Just picture the big round rock on the left corner next to the post, and a mass of weeds.

My aspirations for building a stone wall are much more ambitious (I want to build a real stone wall), but they are just aspirations. Marlene's little stone wall is a reality. She's right pleased with it, and so am I. 

A neighbor stopped by and commented to me that I had done a nice job with the garden bed by the mailbox (she knew what it looked like before). I informed her that Marlene did that all by herself.  

It's beautiful, Marlene, just like you are.  

;-)

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That's all for now. See y'all here next month.

Before Joel, There Was Louis

Dateline: 21 September 2012

Joel Salatin

Most people reading this blog have heard of Joel Salatin. He is probably the most famous farmer in America, if not the world. Joel is popular because the books he has written, and the farm he operates espouse many counter-industrial agricultural practices. More than that, Joel Salatin is a successful counter-industrial farmer. People from all over flock to Polyface Farm to meet Joel, see his operation, and learn from his approach to farming.

The current popularity of Joel Salatin and his farm came to mind when I read a very unusual book review (which follows) by E.B. White of Louis Bromfield’s book, Malabar Farm (published in 1945). Bromfield was the most famous counter-industrial farmer of his day. People from all over the world flocked to Bromfield’s Malabar Farm to see what he was doing and learn about his methods.

Louis Bromfield

Both Bromfield and Salatin started with severely impoverished farms and did a remarkable job of bringing them back to fertility and production. And I’m sure that they shared common methods in their farming. But as I read various internet stories about Bromfield, I realized that he and Joel were very different people.

Louis Bromfield was a financially successful novelist and screenwriter, who was friends with a lot of famous people before taking up farming. Joel started out as a simple dirt farmer, went into writing about farming and, one would assume, has done well financially at it. Bromfield was, as I understand it, a dour man, while Salatin is ebullient. Bromfield was not the best of fathers to his three daughters, but Joel’s approach to farming is family-centered (his book, Family Friendly Farming, is, in  my opinion, one of his best). Joel is a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer." I’ll bet Mr. Bromfield would not have described himself as such.

Nevertheless, the two men, Bromfield and Salatin, share a common place in American history as the preeminent voice of their day for alternative agriculture. 

E. B. White’s book review, as follows, is a clever and entertaining  glimpse into Louis Bromfield’s story—a story that was once well known but is now little known and largely forgotten.

Louis Bromfield and one of his Boxers

Book Review of

Louis Bromfield's 
"Malabar Farm"

By: E.B. White

Malabar Farm is the farm for me,

It's got what it takes, to a large degree:

Beauty, alfalfa, constant movement,

And a terrible rash of soil improvement.

Far from orthodox in its tillage,

Populous as many a village,

Stuff being planted and stuff being written,

Fields growing lush that were once unfitten,

Bromfield land, whether low or high land,

Has more going on that Coney Island.

When Bromfield went to Pleasant Valley

The soil was as hard as a bowling alley;

He sprinkled lime and he seeded clover,

And when it came up he turned it over.

From far and wide folks came to view

The things that a writing man will do.

The more he'd fertilize the fields

The more impressive were his yields,

And every time fields grew fitter

Bromfield would add another critter,

The critter would add manure despite 'im,

And so it went ad infinitum.

It proves that a novelist on his toes

Can make a valley bloom like a rose

Malabar Farm is the farm for me,

A place of unbridled activity.

A farm is always in some kind of tizzy

But Bromfield's farm is really busy.

Strangers arriving by every train,

Bromfield terracing against the rain,

Catamounts crying, mowers mowing,

Guest rooms full to overflowing.

Boxers in every room of the house,

Cows being milked to Brahms and Strauss.

Kids arriving by van and pung,

Bromfield up to his eyes in dung,

Sailors, trumpeters, mystics, actors,

All of them wanting to drive the tractors,

All of them eager to husk the corn,

Some of them sipping their drinks till morn;

Bulls in the bull pen, bulls on the loose,

Everyone bottling vegetable juice,

Play producers jousting the bards,

Boxers fighting with Saint Bernards,

Boxers fooling with auto brakes, 

Runaway cars at the bottom of lakes,

Broomfield diving to save the Boxers,

Moving vans full of bobby-soxers,

People coming and people going,

Everything fertile, everything growing, 

Fish in the ponds other fish seducing, 

Thrashing around and reproducing, 

Whole place teeming with men and pets,

Field mice nesting in radio sets,

Cats in the manger, rats in the nooks,

Publishers scanning the sky for books,

Harvested royalties, harvested grain, 

Broomfield scanning the sky for rain,

Broomfield’s system proving reliable,

Soil getting rich and deep and friable,

Broomfield phoning, Broomfield haying,

Broomfield watching mulch decaying, 

Women folks busy shelling peas, 

Guinea fowl up in catalpa trees.

Oh, Broomfield’s valley is plenty pleasant—

Quail and rabbit, Boxers, pheasant.

Almost every Malabar day

Sees birth and growth, sees death, decay;

Summer ending, leaves a-falling,

Lecture dates, long-distance calling.

Malabar Farm is the farm for me,

It’s the proving ground of vivacity.

A soil that’s worn out, poor, or lazy

Drives L. Bromfield almost crazy;

Whether it’s raining or whether it’s pouring,

Bromfield’s busy with soil restoring;

From the Hog Lot Field to the Lower Bottom

The things a soil should have, he’s got ‘em;

Foe of timothy, friend of clover, 

Bromfield gives it a going over,

Adds some cobalt, adds some boron.

Not enough? He puts some more on.

Never anything too much trouble,

Almost everything paying double:

Nice fat calves being sold to the sharper,

Nice fat checks coming in from Harper.

Most men cut and cure their hay,

Bromfield cuts it and leaves it lay;

Whenever he gets impatient for rain

He turns his steers in to standing grain; 

Whenever he gets in the least depressed

He sees that another field gets dressed;

He never dusts and he never sprays,

His soil holds water for days and days,

And now when a garden piece is hoed

You’ll find neither bug nor nematode,

You’ll find how the good earth holds the rain.

Up at the house you’ll find Joan Fontaine.

Malabar Farm is the farm for me,

It’s the greenest place in the whole countree,

It builds its soil with stuff organic,

It’s the nearest thing to a planned panic.

Broomfield mows by any old light,

The sun in the morning and the moon at night;

Most tireless of all our writing men,

He sometimes mows until half past ten;

With a solid program of good trash mulch

He stops the gully and he stops the gulch.

I think the world might well have a look

at Louis Bromfield’s latest book;

A man doesn't have to be omniscient

To see that he's right—our soil's deficient.

We've robbed and plundered this lovely earth

Of elements of immeasurable worth,

And darned few men have applied their talents

Harder than Louis to restore the balance;

And though his husbandry's far from quiet

Bromfield had the guts to try it.

A book like his is a very great boon,

And what he's done, I'd like to be doon. 

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That last word, "doon," kind of threw me when I first read it. Then I realized that it was a play on doin' or doing. E.B. White was a writer-farmer too. I've written about him Here and Here

The Deliberate Agrarian Blogazine August 2012

Dateline: 31 August 2012

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How to Harvest Lettuce Seeds: Step 1) Let your lettuce plants grow tall and go to seed (visible in background). Step 2) Pinch a downy tuft of dried blossom. Step 3: Pull. Then save the seeds. Plant next spring, and repeat the process next August.

Bringing A New Idea 

Back To Life

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What a fine looking wagon, eh?

Last month I wrote about Leland, my new/old tractor, and I mentioned that I was going to get an old manure spreader and maybe make it into a wagon for Leyland. Well, that’s the spreader in the picture above.

My son pulled it out of the weeds at my parent’s place, which I bought a couple years ago. He hooked his pickup to it with a nylon strap and towed it three miles to our place. The tires were no good. By the time he parked it in our driveway one tire was shredded. But the rims appeared to be undamaged.

The spreader was literally covered with weeds, most of which were bindweed, the most hellish weed I’ve ever had the displeasure to know. Look close and you’ll see some bindweed still clinging to the rusty frame.

When I was a teenager back in the mid 1970s someone gave the spreader to my stepfather. We took most of the spreading mechanism off back then and used the wagon to bring firewood in from the woods. An old Farmall F-20 tractor came with the house when my parents bought it in 1972. It started by turning a crank handle in the front. When Marlene and I were dating in our Senior year of high school, she and I cut and hauled firewood with that wagon. Back then it had a wood floor and sides. It was a good wagon. But it has sat in the weeds, neglected and pretty much forgotten for all these years.

So I had myself a free wagon, and a project.

This picture gives you a better idea of what my New Idea spreader once looked like.

Most people would see my rusted hunk of wagon from the weeds as valuable only for its scrap steel. It’s hard to imagine it was once a fine-looking New Idea 12A manure spreader, made in Coldwater, Ohio. That’s what it says on a little brass plate riveted to the frame. Serial number B39800. Can anyone tell me how old it might be? I figure it must be around 60 years since it rolled off the assembly line in Coldwater.

As rusty and decrepit as that old spreader looks, it is still solid.  That is a testament to the quality of steel, the design, and the workmanship that went into it. My concern was the wheel bearings. If they were still good, or repairable, and I could find new tires, I was confident that the old 12A could be revived and put to good use again.

This picture shows the tire axle on the left, a grease gun is on a grease zerk in the foreground, the grease is going down the tube to an inner bearing, and there is a bit of grease oozing out onto the rusty inner axle shaft. It's all good. (Click picture to see enlarged view)

I jacked the back of 12A up on blocks, knocked a pin out of the axle, and removed one wheel rim. It slid off easily and I was amazed to see a shiny axle under a very thin coating of grease.

There are no ball bearings or roller bearings that keep the tire spinning—just a steel axle inside a steel busing on the tire rim, and it is lubricated by a grease zerk in the rim. I could see no indication of any wear or corrosion in the axle or bushing. The axle and bushing on the other tire were the same. 

There are inner bearings on the axle, similar to the bearings that I had exposed. A grease fitting with a long copper tube went from a spot on the frame, down under where the floor had once been, to the bearing area. Fifteen pumps of a grease gun later and I had fresh lubricant oozing out onto the axle. Those bearings were thirsty but the lubrication system was still working and when I gave the jacked-up axle a spin, it turned smoothly. I concluded that the original bearings would easily last another 60 years if given a periodic shot of grease.

I had to burn and chip the old rubber tire bead away to get to the wire cords, then cut them to free what remained of the tires on the rims.

My next concern was removing the old tires (what was left of them) from the rusted rims. As you can see in the picture above I had to get to the multi-stranded steel cable inside the rubber tire bead and cut the wires. Once that was done, the tire beads came right off. 

I took the rims to a garage up the road—a place where they are familiar with farm equipment. They looked up the tire size (7.50 x 24) in their catalog and informed me that the tires are unavailable—they’re obsolete. I asked it they would mount the tires if I found some somewhere else and they said they would. Then I asked John, the mechanic, who is also a neighbor, if he would check the rims to make sure they were still in good enough condition to be used.

The tire rims were rusty and pitted.

John looked them over pretty good and picked at some bubbled up rust with his pocket knife before saying that they would work just fine. But he told me I would have to remove the rust out of the inside, where the tire tubes would be.

I asked if he knew of someone who could sandblast them for me. He said it would take hours to sandblast the rust away. Then he told me about The Wheelabrator

This is a Wheelabrator

John told me about a Wheelabrator in Moravia, the small town we live near. It’s in a metal fabrication shop on a sidestreet. He said the Wheelabrator uses tiny stainless steel balls to blast away rust, and that my rims would come out shiny after just a few minutes in the device.

The next day I went to the shop with the Wheelabrator and asked them about cleaning up my rims. The man in charge instructed me to drive around to a door in the back and wait while they put the rims in the Wheelabrator.

They put both rims on the turntable, closed the door and fired it up. Five minutes later, they opened the door, flipped the rims over and set the machine for five more minutes. When they opened the door, the rims were clean. No rust. Just shiny steel. I paid the man in charge thirty bucks and was off to the lumberyard for a couple cans of primer.

That's Not Paint! The rims in this picture look like they've been painted silver but they don't have a speck of paint on them. They have been blasted down to bare metal. That's what a Wheelabrator will do for you.

If you have something that’s rusty, and you want it cleaned down to bare metal, fast and easy, find yourself a Wheelabrator. 

Next, I went to the internet looking for tires. I found them at the M. E. Miller web site and ordered two, with tubes. Total cost (with shipping): $600.05   Ouch!

An angle grinder with a cutoff blade easily and quickly cut away all the metal I wanted to remove.

While I waited for the tires to arrive there were lots of bolts and other unnecessary metal pieces that needed to be removed from the wagon frame. I started cutting with a bimetal blade in a Sawzall. My son, James, told me I needed to use a cutoff blade in an angle grinder, and offered me his. Six cutoff blades later I had every part I didn’t want cut off, and I knew for sure that the rusty old steel was still plenty strong enough for the job.

12A's New Tires!

I painted the rims blue and got the tires mounted, then I greased everything up real well and put the tires in place.

12A Gets a new floor.

For the floor, I used 5/4” pressure treated decking boards, and bolted them to the bottom frame.

Something twisted the end of 12A's hitch

The old hitch was mangled, and the center of the hitch was bent 1.5” off center. A mighty powerful force bent that heavy steel and I sure wasn’t going to bend it back. So I cut off the mangled end and drilled a new off-center hitch pin hole. 

Fixed.

The last bit of reconstruction work to be done is to bolt the wood sides in place. I still have that to do. So I can’t show you a finished wagon yet. But it should be all together soon, and by the time of next month’s blogazine report 12A should be at work hauling firewood. I'll have a finished picture next month.

When all is said and done, my "new" wagon will  have cost me around $1,000. That's a whole lot more than I expected. But it was a fun project and this is a tool that should serve us very well for a lot of years.

Preservation & Agrarianism

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An old log barn being restored (photo link)

Agrarians are, at heart, preservationists. We want to preserve things that are solid and dependable and worth preserving, whether they be old tools, old ways of life, or old virtues, like self reliance and personal responsibility. 

This inclination to preserve things that have stood the test of time is contrary to the industrial impulse. Industrialism encourages people to continually toss the old aside and to pursue the new. The industrial mindset believes that all new things are better and preferable to the old. New products. New ideas. New ways of life. 

It isn’t that agrarians are stuck in the past and don’t like anything new. The agrarian mind is just cautious, and careful about the claims and promises of our industrialized culture. Take, for example, the matter of wheat....

Rethinking Wheat

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Dr. William Davis says modern wheat is not good for you.

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Something significant has to happen for me, an avowed agrarian (and the inventor of granola bars), to start thinking that wheat is bad. But something significant has happened. It started to happen decades ago when BigAg plant breeders took up the task of “improving” traditional wheat varieties.

To “improve” wheat, the industrial manipulators  focused on increasing yield through hybridization. This crossbreeding resulted in much shorter (dwarf) wheat stalks with fuller heads of grain. And the new wheat grew faster too. As a result, the per-acre wheat yield of modern wheat far exceeds the yield of old wheat varieties. 

That wheat has been hybridized is not, in itself, a reason to think that wheat is bad. The bad part comes by way of a little-known situation that resulted when wheat was hybridized. Unlike with most other plants, when wheat is hybridized it is genetically altered by the addition of chromosomes. New genes that were never present in either parent were created. As a result, modern wheat varieties are profoundly different from the wheat that mankind ate for centuries prior to our industrial age. For example, the wheat mentioned in the Bible is most likely emmer wheat, which has 28 chromosomes, while modern wheat varieties have 42 chromosomes.

As is so often the case, the industrial manipulators focused on improving yield and profit (improving their bottom line) while totally neglecting to research and understand the human health ramifications of what they were doing. And now there is evidence to indicate that modern wheat is a likely suspect in numerous health problems.

My wife, Marlene (who buys books about healthy diet like I buy gardening books), told me about all this. She's been reading about industrialized wheat and its impact on human health from the book, Wheat Belly, by Dr. William Davis. Doctor Davis is a cardiologist, but his book goes way beyond just the negative impact of modern wheat on cardiac health.

According to Dr. Davis, modern wheat, with its new genetic code, and the newly-created constituents that came with cross breeding, is largely responsible for widespread obesity (wheat bellies), but it is also doing damage to people’s bodies in other serious ways. Dr. Davis provides convincing evidence to suggest that, in addition to heart disease, modern wheat is a player in such diseases as diabetes, bowel cancer, asthma, schizophrenia, autism, hypothyroidism, and dementia, not to mention Chron’s disease. 

When wheat is removed from people’s diets, they lose weight and their health improves. Sometimes the improvement is dramatic.

At 54 years of age I’ve never been a hospital patient and have no known health problems. I am, however, overweight. I’m 5’9” tall and I weigh 185 pounds. I weighted 145 pounds when I got married at 22 years old. I’m sure I’d feel better if I lost 20 pounds.

Doctor Davis’s book has me rethinking wheat in my diet. After discovering that the industrial manipulators have changed the wheat, and in changing it they have turned it into a food that may be harmful, I’ve decided to stop eating wheat.... for thirty days.

Thus far, it has been ten days of no wheat for me. No bread. No crackers. No pasta. I won’t say it’s easy to cut out wheat, but it hasn’t been all that hard. I have a technique for cold-turkey-quitting wheat that I used to quit drinking soda. This technique evolved from a comment my friend, John Flemming, made at breakfast 35+ years ago.......

What John Flemming Said

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Memory is a funny thing. None of us has total memory recall. For example, do you remember any of the obscure conversations you had during breakfast 35 years ago? Of course you don’t. But you might recall one bit of conversation if, for some odd reason, it stuck in your brain. That’s the case with me and the following incident which has replayed itself in my mind numerous times in the decades since it happened.

It was 1977. I was a student at The Grassroots Project in Vermont. Me and some of my friends were sitting around a circular table in the dining room for breakfast.

I recall that Randall Blank was there. Randall had been a vegetarian from birth. He had never eaten meat in his life. And cow milk was off limits too. Randall poured orange juice on his bowl of Cheerios.

John Flemming was sitting across the table from me. John was a skinny kid with glasses and long blonde hair (we all had long, or longish, hair back then). I remember that John was wearing a blue and black buffalo-plaid shirt. He had a canning jar of goat milk that he poured on his cereal. The goat was a school project and John milked it every day.

I don’t remember who the other guys at the table were. But whoever was sitting next to John had a bowl of cereal too, and he was adding one spoonful of sugar after another to it. John was watching. As the number of spoons of sugar going into the bowl increased, the look of utter disgust on John’s face increased.

The sugar shoveler realized that we were watching him. I think everyone at the table was watching. He stopped, and may have said something like, “What?” To which John Flemming exclaimed: “That’s poison, you know!”

That’s it. That’s the memory. That’s all. But the picture of that little event so long ago lodged itself into my craw. And I think it taught me something. If you are truly persuaded that something is poison, you will not eat it. John Flemming was convinced that refined white sugar was poisonous, and he was careful not to eat it, at least not to excess. To John Flemming, I suppose that white sugar was akin to rat poison. And who in their right mind would eat rat poison?

I firmly made that association in my mind with soda several years ago. I consider all sugared soda as akin to poison . I won’t drink soda unless I’m powerfully thirsty and there is nothing else to drink (the only exception  might be Moxie, which, as noted here in a previous blogazine, I will try if the opportunity ever  presents itself).

And now, after learning about how wheat has been altered in recent decades by the industrial manipulators, and how it may even be unhealthy to a body, I have mentally placed it in the soda category. When confronted with a box of Ritz crackers, I think, “That’s poison, you know!” It works for me. Thank you John Flemming wherever you are.

Pre-Industrial Wheat

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Einkorn wheat is on the left. Modern "dwarf" wheat is on the right. Click Here to watch the  movie this photo came from.

All this messing around with the genetics of wheat, and the dawning reality of just how deleterious it may be to human health, has created a renewed interest in ancient wheat varieties. It turns out that we can have wheat and eat it too if the wheat is of the einkorn or emmer variety. The old wheat's are still “carbs,” and they still have some primitive gluten, but they are not modern wheat, and are supposed to taste different. 

Einkorn (with 14 chromosomes) is said to be the most ancient of wheat's. Then, according to Dr. Davis, einkorn naturally crossed with wild goat grass to make emmer wheat (with 28 chromosomes). Both of these wheat's are still grown and available, though they are very expensive.

I bought two pounds of einkorn wheat, grown in Italy and sold by Jovial Foods. With shipping, it cost me nearly $20. I intend to try sprouting the seeds to see if they are alive. I expect that is the case. Then I’ll be planting a very small test plot next month. When I say small, I mean a clump in my garden. I’ll also plant some seeds in the spring. And I’ll get some emmer seed to do the same thing. I’d be curious to know if anyone reading this has planted emmer or einkorn wheat. Any tips you can give would be appreciated.

Don’t Miss The 

Howard Douglas King Interview

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Scott Terry farms, traps, keeps bees, and hosts the Christian Farm & Homestead online radio program.

I was introduced to the whole idea of Christian agrarianism when I attended a Promise Keepers event at RFK stadium in Washington, D.C. over fifteen years ago. The numerous speakers were certainly not talking about Christian agrarianism. My introduction came by way of an issue of Patriarch magazine that was handed to me outside the stadium. 

I think that issue had an article by Howard Douglas King in it. Or maybe the issue led me to a web site where I read his articles. In any event, it was several Patriarch magazine articles by Howard King ( The Biblical Basis For Christian Agrarianism, in particular) that resonated with me in a powerful way. In retrospect, I believe those articles served to lay the foundation for the revival of Christian-agrarian thought and life that has become much more widespread in recent years.

With that in mind, I’m looking forward to hearing Scott Terry’s radio interview with Howard Douglas King that is scheduled for the evening of August 31. If you read this after the 31st, you will still be able to hear the interview online. Here is the link: Christian Agrarianism With Howard King at Christian Farm and Homestead Radio.

Only So Much

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“In any consideration of agrarianism, this issue of limitation is critical. Agrarian farmers see, accept, and live within their limits. They understand and agree to the proposition that there is “this much and no more.” Everything that happens on an agrarian farm is determined or conditioned by the understanding that there is only so much land, so much water in the cistern, so much hay in the barn, so much corn in the crib, so much firewood in the shed, so much food in the cellar or freezer, so much strength in the back and arms—and no more. This is the understanding that induces thrift, family coherence, neighborliness, local economies. Within accepted limits, these virtues become necessities. The agrarian sense of abundance comes from the experienced possibility of frugality and renewal within limits.

This is exactly opposite to the industrial idea that abundance comes from the violation of limits by personal mobility, extractive machinery, long-distance transport, and scientific or technological breakthroughs. If we use up the good possibilities in this place, we will import goods from some other place, or we will go to some other place. If nature releases her wealth too slowly, we will take it by force. If we make the world too toxic for honeybees, some compound brain, Monsanto perhaps, will invent tiny robots that will fly about, pollinating flowers and making honey.”

Wendell Berry, The Agrarian Standard

Getting The Worker 

Away From Home
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“To the corporate and political and academic servants of global industrialism, the small family farm and the small farming community are not known, are not imaginable, and are therefore unthinkable, except as damaging stereotypes. The people of “the cutting edge” in science, business, education, and politics have no patience with the local love, local loyalty, and local knowledge that makes people truly native to their places and therefore good caretakers of their places. This is why one of the primary principles in industrialism has always been to get the worker away from home. From the beginning it has been destructive of home employment and home economies. The office or the factory or the institution is the place for work. The economic function of the household has been increasingly the consumption of purchased goods. Under industrialism, the farm too has become increasingly consumptive, and farms fail as the costs of consumption overpower the income from production.

The idea of people working at home, as family members, as neighbors, as natives and citizens of their places, is as repugnant to the industrial mind as the idea of self-employment. The industrial mind is an organizational mind, and I think this mind is deeply disturbed and threatened by the existence of people who have no boss. This may be why people with such minds, as they approach the top of the political hierarchy, so readily sell themselves to “special interests.” They cannot bear to be unbossed. They cannot stand the lonely work of making up their own minds.”

Wendell Berry, The Agrarian Standard

Landless 

In an Industrial Society

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“To be landless in an industrial society is not at all times to be jobless and homeless. But the ability of the industrial economy to provide jobs and homes depends on prosperity, and on a very shaky kind of prosperity  too. It depends on “growth” of the wrong things such as roads and dumps and poisons—on what Edward Abbey called  “the ideology of the cancer cell”—and on greed with purchasing power. In the absence of growth, greed, and affluence, the dependents of an industrial economy too easily suffer the consequences of having no land: joblessness, homelessness, and want. This is not a theory. We have seen it happen.”

Wendell Berry, The Agrarian Standard

George Orwell,

Agrarian

Well, he did write Animal Farm, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that George Orwell was an agrarian. His Diaries have just been published and you can read a very interesting New York Times review at This Link. Here's a quote from the review...

"About Orwell’s gardening and fishing and rabbit skinning and bird-watching, however, clearly not enough scholarly work has been done. We find him here tending to dozens of types of flowers, fruit trees and vegetables. He dilates on how best to hobble cows, to cook rabbits, to make charcoal, to preserve eggs and to tie lobster claws. On Sept. 11, 1946, he wrote: “Made mustard spoon out of deer’s bone.”

There are drawings by Orwell in “Diaries” of lathes, plows, drills, scythes, fishing nets, stirrups and charcoal braziers. He cures pelts, shoots rabbits and makes apple jelly from windfall fruit. A not untypical entry (amusing from a man who composed the line “Four legs good, two legs bad” in “Animal Farm”) is: “Spent about two hours trying to get a cow out of a bog.”    

    

News From Planet Whizbang

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"The shrink bags we bought from you worked great and the birds look professionally packaged, even with my hand-written labels." Todd Stevens, Portland, Oregon. 

Planet Whizbang is my home business. My wife and I run it. We sell poultry shrink bags, chicken plucker parts, wheel hoe kits, books and more. I've been working for many years to develop a home business that will provide sufficient income to allow me to leave my factory job in the city. I'm almost there. It'll be a dream come true. I am in countdown mode. T-minus five months....

My next book, The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners, due out in the spring of 2103, is on my mind daily. I am working at final touches in the refinement of various ideas.

The Planet Whizbang shoulder yoke is one such idea. I have four prototype shoulder yolks that I’ve made over the past few years. Every one was an improvement over the one before it, but I eventually concluded that each was not good enough. Now, however, I finally have a design that makes the grade. A person will be able to make this shoulder yoke for around $30 using basic 3/4” pine boards and some common hardware parts. It will be cheaper and I'm pretty sure it will be more comfortable than this shoulder yoke.

What does a gardener need a shoulder yoke for? Well some gardeners will find it useful for hauling water or compost. Things like that. I use a shoulder yoke to haul pails of maple sap out of the woods during syrup season. Shoulder yokes were common on pre-industrial homesteads. They will be common again on post-industrial homesteads. 

A friend of mine has an idea for rain barrel water storage that is simple, inexpensive, and borders on genius. You'll be amazed. I've never seen anything like it, and I've searched the internet to see if anyone else has done it. He gave me permission to put it in the book.

The book will also contain a lot of old ideas and advice about gardening from over 100 years ago. I've been gleaning interesting tidbits from my old farm almanac collection, and  from the many pre-1900 bound years of Cultivator & Country Gentleman newspaper that I have collected.

In other news, my 2003 book, Making Great Garlic Powder, has been out of print, but is now available as an inexpensive pdf download. Details are HERE. I expect to soon have the Garlic Powder Profits Report available once again, also  as an inexpensive pdf download. It will be available at This Web Page.

Next month is “clothespin month.” I will be setting aside a few days to make some Classic American clothespins, as discussed in previous blogazines, and to chronical the how-to process in pictures. Before I offer clothespins for sale, I plan to offer a sample clothespin and clothespin springs to woodworkers.  They will then be able to use my free online clothespin-making photo tutorial to craft their own heirloom clothespins.

My  Mother

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I found the snapshot above among some old papers and remembered that my mother’s birthday was this month. She died nine years ago. Had she lived, she would be seventy-six.

My mother is probably around 10 years old in the picture. My Aunt Irene’s handwriting on the back says, “Mary Ann at Grandfather Elias Moses Philbrick’s farm in Easton.” That would be Easton, Maine. 

The old picture, showing my mother as a happy young girl, with a lifetime ahead of her, and her lifetime now passed, reminds me of the brevity of life. To borrow a couple of biblical metaphors, life is like a vapor, like the flower of the field—here for a short season, and gone. 

Then what? Then eternity. Where is eternity? It’s somewhere not here. 

My mother believed that the human soul is eternal. She believed she was a sinner saved by the grace of God through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ when He gave His life on the cross. And she believed that as a result of her faith in Christ she would spend eternity with Him. 

I believe that too. My mother’s love for me, and the godly example I saw in her life, were used by God to draw me to Himself when I was a teenager. I am both mindful and thankful for that this month.