As the days tick rapidly toward the day Hunky Husband and I will blissfully drop out of society this hedonistic wasteland, I have been dusting off my farm girl skill set. In addition to a (fabulous birthday gift, Hunkster!) Magpul Masada , I hope to add a few books on organic vegetable gardening to the list of must haves before I take a final header off the grid.
There is nothing in any of these books that I did not grow up learning at the knee of my agrarian grandparents, though as I re-read my tattered copy of The Victory Garden Companion, I was reminded that my favorite cultivar of corn, Silver Queen, is a heavy feeder. (To remedy this, I intend on farming meat rabbits for their "brown gold" by-products. Plus they are just damned tasty.) That started me thinking in the circuitous manner of most adults riddled with A.D.D.
Since all corn is a "heavy feeder" that means that it must be heavily fertilized. This is not to be confused with the corn farmers themselves. They are heavily subsidized.
Since most fertilizer is petroleum based, then the corn used for Ethanol relies on the very oil that it is grown to replace. Washington logic if ever there was.
When I asked a truly good friend and loyal acolyte of The Goracle about that whole "butt smooching Iowa corn farmers/ Primary voting block" thing with regards to Ethanol, she was speechless.
It had never occurred to her that there was ANY CONNECTION WHATSOEVER with Iowa corn farmers, Washington power wonks, Iowa Primaries, petroleum based fertilizers, corn, Ethanol, and the exploding price of everything from the gas it takes her to go buy her Crack priced Cheerios to the milk she pours on them.
We haven't been truly free in this country since the days before FDR crunched some statistics and realized he could personally create an endowment of social programs that would return an exponential voting block of dependent sluggards on which the Democrat party could build their power base and, over time, steadily marginalize hard working, freedom loving THINKERS.
Emperically, his was a brilliant political move from which America will never recover. Ever.
"The dignity of man is not shattered in a single blow, but slowly softened, bent, and eventually neutered. Men are seldom forced to act, but are constantly restrained from acting. Such power does not destroy outright, but prevents genuine existence. It does not tyrannize immediately, but it dampens, weakens, and ultimately suffocates, until the entire population is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid, uninspired animals, of which the government is shepherd."
- Alexis de Tocqueville
