Tell me something: Why did Kerry fold so fast? Why, after collecting millions for legal ammo, after promising to make sure every vote was counted, after the shit that went down in Ohio and Florida, did Kerry concede so damned fast?

Right after the Democrats got control of Congress, why did Nancy Pelosi re-assure the media that impeaching the worst president ever was not a primary goal for the new leadership? Why after angry voters had spoken were they told that there were more important issues to be dealt with first? Raising the minimum wage is good but is it really more important than getting out of Iraq? Re-writing ethics rules is good but is that more important than stopping the neo-cons from bombing Iran? What basement has John Conyers been hidden in now and why has he gone quietly?

Why are they eating up time debating about debating over a toothless resolution to slap the president's wrist instead of censure, instead of Articles of Impeachment? Why are they waffling and posing while the clock on the preparations to bomb Iran tick, tick, ticks?

And why was Dennis Kucinach - supposedly one of the most "liberal" members of Congress - grinning and clapping after Bush's State of the Union? Why did he lean over, shake hands, back slap and keep on grinning into the face of the worst president ever?

Just to let everyone know what a bored (and boring) person I am... I'm actually excited about the start of the new fall tv season. At the end of the day, I need to lay my tired old body down in my comfy recliner, take the remote in hand and seek diversion.

Among the early starters, I've watched "Justice," "Men in Trees" and the CBS Monday night comedy line-up that starts with "The Class." Last night I stayed up late for the return of "Boston Legal" and there are a slew of shows I'm looking forward to seeing.

Talk about a glass half-full exaggeration. Check out the spin in this article, Consumer Confidence Near Four Year High. You have to scroll down to the last paragraphs to get the full effect.

In the report, the research group said that those who deem current economic circumstances as "good" moved up to 28.3% of those survey in March, versus 26.4 who said the same thing last month. Those who saw conditions as bad fell to 14.7%, versus 15.4% who held that view in February.

Consumers' assessment of hiring also gained ground. Survey respondents who say jobs are "plentiful" stood at 28.4%, up from 27.4% the prior month. Respondents who believe jobs are "hard to get" were nearly flat, at 20.7%, from 20.2% in February. Consumers' jobs outlook also gained ground, although those anticipating a rising income was steady at 18.8% of the survey.

Now I'm not an economics expert or particularly good at math but, when I turn to my calculator and subtract those who thought the economy was "good," I get 71.7% who must have answered "fair," "poor" or "bad." Even if there weren't that many multiple-choice answers, that leaves 57% who must have said something like "the same" or "I dunno, I'm too busy paying bills to think about it."

Same with the jobs outlook: I wonder what the other 50.9% had to say about employment prospects. I also ponder exactly what kinds of jobs are "plentiful."

Now, maybe I'm an idiot and don't understand how these things are calculated or measured. If so, will someone more knowledgeable please explain how this works?

I don't know about the rest of you but Hubby and I are barely treading water and he makes a better than average salary.

I haven't done much in the garden this past week. I reconsidered staggered plantings of peas and put in the whole 12-foot rows on Thursday afternoon. The more I thought about it the more I felt a three-foot row of plants might not give me enough for a single serving and peas store in the freezer really well.  I was also looking toward the future and decided it was better to take them all out together to make way for the pole beans that will follow in their space.

I also put in seed for collards, spinach and Raab broccoli. With all these seeds in the ground I grew nervous about the murder of crows watching me from the pecan tree. I have a rather artful water sprinkler on a four-foot high copper-tube pole. It's round and has a lovely blue-glass crescent moon in the center of circular copper-tube rings. When a hose is hooked up to it and water pumped thru, it spins around and throws the water out in lovely arcs. So, I fetched it from the workshop in the barn, placed it in the center of the garden and hammered its supports into the ground. I then dug out a roll of iridescent mylar tape, the kind used for party streamers, and taped some lengths of it around the outer copper ring of the sprinkler. The nearly unceasing winds here hit the moon center and spin it around; the streamers flash and flap. The crows took off with a racket of complaint. This contraption is a great deal prettier than a scarecrow and is doing its job.

This week I finally got to put some stuff in the ground! My asparagus "crowns" arrived and, in case you've never seen one, they look like creepy alien spiders with too many swollen legs. They also looked quite dead. I've planted dried-up rhizomes before so I know I should not be too disturbed by this.  But, there is always the niggling suspicion that the nursery has suckered you and a little anxiety until the first bits of green poke thru the soil.

I had harsh words with Burpee regarding my asparagus order: At the same time I ordered the crowns, I also ordered various seed packets. The seeds came at the end of January but the crowns did not. I also noticed they had charged the full amount on my credit card. I called them up and was told that I would receive my crowns at the "appropriate planting time for my location, which will be mid-March." I told the customer service rep that my country extension office felt I should be planting them in February and that I was much closer to being in zone 8 than zone 7a so would they please send my crowns now.

She then stated that the "real reason" the crowns could not be sent was their being frozen in the ground. This was during our exceptionally mild January so I asked if the crowns were in Canada because no where on the East Coast (Burpee is in PA) was the ground frozen.

On the first day of my first planting period, February 7th, NOAA predicted snow.  It didn't snow -- there was just another torrential downpour. After a weekend of high winds and partly cloudy skies, the beds had only dried out to a depth of 3-4 inches by Monday afternoon.  So we pulled out moldy tarps and covered them that evening in hopes that someday they might be dry enough to till in the manure and topsoil that now look like twin pyramids at the entrance to the garden. <heavy sigh>

One year, it rained for 40 days in a row and I never did plant beans. There's an old saying, "Beans planted in mud/ Taste like wood." You have to use a Scottish accent to make that rhyme which kind of tips off the saying's origin. I lived there for a while and can attest to the fact that it rains a lot in Scotland.

All my research, Excel files and graphic layouts -- not to mention, the back-aching labor -- mean nothing when the weather doesn't cooperate. As it stands now, we have one bed ready and waiting for asparagus. We have five other beds, partly framed, and waiting for additional topsoil and manure to be tilled into them. All that great effort and renting the digger did not get us ready after all. <another heavy sigh>

In previous diaries, we have discussed what to plant, when to plant and how much to plant. Today's topic is where to plant. It's time to pull out a pad of graph paper (or open a graphics program) and diagram what goes where.

In a row garden, it's easy to figure out what goes where. Generally, the rows are laid out on an East/West axis and the tall plants go in the North and the short stuff goes in the South. It's an orderly progression from corn to pole beans, tomato plants to bush beans, on down to onions and carrots in front. There's a tidy linear logic to it but problems arise from always putting the same plants in the same rows year after year. Various grubs, nematodes, bacteria and fungi build up in the soil just waiting for their annual feast.  Also, different plants deplete or nourish the soil differently and start out needing different types of soil mixtures. Uniformly, tilling and fertilizing the whole garden bed to a 6.0-7.0 pH doesn't take into account that potatoes, for instance, prefer acidic soil more in the 5.0-5.5 range. Rosemary wants a dry soil while lettuce wants its roots to stay moist.

It rained almost every other day last week and all of this weekend. After two dry days in a row, I went out last Friday and tried to trench another bed. The ground was still so wet that it was like trying to move half-set concrete. Every little shovel load weighed 20+ pounds. It had not been this hard to finish the bed DH had started -- an area two feet by 12 feet long! After an hour and a half, I only trenched an area four feet by three feet and was drenched in sweat. I felt like a wimp but I knew I couldn't do it. On February 7th, I intend to start planting and need more beds. When the asparagus roots arrive next week, I've got a place for them. But where will I put my onion sets and peas and spinach and the potatoes after that?

It finally stopped raining yesterday and is not expected to rain again until Saturday or Sunday. DH decided to take Friday off to help me get this job done.  It is possible that the ground will be dry enough by Friday for us to dig. It is not possible that two old people can dig seven beds in one day...

Never plant anything that you don't like to eat except some crops planted for your animals. In the wintertime, kale is a supreme fresh green for chickens, rich in iron and vitamin C, but it is too bitter for my tastes. My husband and I don't eat a lot of corn but we'll grow some for our chickens and also because our neighbors will think we're weird if we don't grow a few rows like everyone else.

The first step in planning a garden is making a list of the vegetables you want. Then you need to figure out how much of each vegetable you want. And finally, you have to make a Planting Schedule so you'll know when to sow seed or put in transplants.

Figuring out how much you want is more difficult than you may think. With varieties of lettuce, you need to seriously ask yourself if you're going to eat a salad every day. There aren't many ways of preserving lettuce. DH and I like fresh mixed greens and will eat a salad every day when they are in season. So ideally, I would like five different kinds of lettuce to mature every week. Romaine and Bibb take 75 days to mature, Butterhead takes 60 days and Loosehead types and Mesclun mixes jump up in 45 days. So starting on February 27th, I'll plant just a few seeds of Romaine and Bibb and continue to sow just a few more every week. On March 14th, I'll start doing the same for Butterhead and Looseheads. And on March 29th, I'll start staggered plantings of the fast-growing greens. By the end of April, I should have a steady harvest of mixed greens. Even before that I can pick the outer leaves on the older varieties and have pretty glorious side salads. I'll explain why I start on 2/27 below the fold.

Looking at the dirt in our backyard, DH said, "Hey, I just figured out why North Carolinians are called Tarheels." The dirt is black, black as tar. It's black from the decomposition of prehistoric swamp millennia ago. The guy at the Southern States Farm Cooperative said the soil hereabouts is so rich, "You can throw a rock on it and it will grow into a boulder." They've been growing cotton for decades, maybe centuries, on the field behind us and have only managed to deplete it to a rich cocoa brown. In the mind of a gardener, black soil is nutrient-rich soil, ready for seeds and plants. But, I don't trust this black color and we're going to add manure just to be sure the dirt has what vegetables need to put out high yields. I can always throw in lime later if I've overdone the nitrogen.

And I can't tell from looking at it whether it's alkaline or acidic. DH put a bit of it on the tip of his tongue and declared that it's alkaline and we'll have to add some sulfur. I always wondered how ancient farmers tested their soil balance. DH's Daddy showed him this trick and his Daddy must have shown him, on back.

For many years I have dreamed of having a self-sufficient garden that would produce an abundance of organic vegetables. John Seymour's books on the subject and Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew have inspired me. I now have a nearly perfect opportunity to manifest that desire. Our backyard has a 100' by 70' flat area with southern exposure and the soil is black sandy loam. Ultimately, using deep bed methods, I could produce enough vegetables, fruits and eggs for 50 people. Imagine coop members paying me $100 a month and you begin to see my business plan. But, I'm going to start by trying to provide vegetables and eggs for only my husband and myself with a surplus that can be distributed to our family, friends, and neighbors.

Here we are getting ready to drive down from VA to the suburbs of Atlanta to do the final move-out on a house we expect to close on 9/9. Last night I read a diary on dKos by dbratl reporting on panic gas buying in Atlanta. This morning there are reports that the Gov. in NC is asking people to conserve because of shortages and that gas stations in TN are closing because they are sold out. Good Lord, folks! Is the rolling thunder of America's interstates about to grind to a halt?!

I realize our dilemma pales in comparison to the hell Katrina survivors are going thru. So I'm certainly not asking for sympathy. Instead, I'd like this thread to be a pool of info on gas availability up and down the eastern US. Are the reports of shortages just rumor-mongering? Are there long lines where you live or does everything appear to be okay?

Bottom Line: Is there enough gas along I-85 for us to get to Atlanta and back?!

Why is blonde bimbo subbing for Keith instead of the smart black chick? Keith had a week's vacation already so why isn't he on tonight? Is he sick? Or sick of dealing with abusive bosses? If he's been fired, I might as well cancel extended cable 'cause there's nothing to watch except movies I can rent at Blockbuster.  

I'm really freaking out about this. Was it his anti-smoking campaign? I'm a 40 year smoker so there's no hope for me; I'd get lung cancer even if I quit. But, I wasn't bothered by his efforts to dissuade younger people. I wasn't offended by him saying he'd like to smack me. Heck, I laughed out loud about it.

Keith is the only news reporter I trust to give me both sides of any story. If I've lost him, I'll feel like... I don't know, going to New Jersey and standing in a ditch or something.

So, Susan, can you assure me that our boy, Keith, is okay? ****** One of the reasons I adore Keith is he answers his email. He had a root canal yesterday and was still too medicated to do the show. Also, he says, his boss apologized to him. And, I should quit smoking. :-P

If I wanted to inspire you to believe that you can grow enough food for a family of five on 5 acres, I would recommend reading "The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency" by John Seymour. There is no other book available that so completely details how to take an organic, wholesome approach to providing for your self.

But, if you live in the US and already have 5 or more acres, or if you plan on doing so, then you need to know what Joel Salatin has to say in "You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and $ucceed in a Farming Enterprise." He is a well-known promoter of grass-fed poultry and beef and an out-spoken advocate for family farmers in Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Like most original thinkers, he is also a cracked pot. More than once I felt like cracking the spine of his book against the nearest wall when he veered off into right-wing nut-so land. So allow me to spare you the outrage and distill the nuggets of gold buried in the mud of his wing-nut philosophies.

The bottom line reality is that most of America's farmlands have been reduced to 6 inches or less of topsoil. Generations of monoculture, slash and burn, erosion, drought, and chemical dependency have turned once fertile croplands into barely sustainable grasslands. Simultaneous with this rape of the earth was the imposition of an industrial model of production on an essentially organic process. Salatin sees this quite clearly and yet he blames liberals, tree-huggers, and eggheads for allowing it to happen.

The main mistake was treating agriculture and animal husbandry like an assembly line chemistry project. With an emphasis on standardization and end-results, the essential process of farming has been subverted, perverted and polluted. And the whole concept of family farming or small-holding has been denigrated as a money-losing enterprise. The rise of agri-business has been the death of the small family-owned farm. Salatin blames government without seeing that it has served the interests of the agri-business lobby that was rapidly gobbling up family farms as soon as they foreclosed.

Salatin indicts the entire food producing industry:

When you buy a hamburger from your local fast-food outlet, you are eating beef from a cow that never saw daylight. It was locked into a feeding trough, shoulder to shoulder with other cattle, eating a mix of antibiotics, chicken manure (!), bone meal from other cows (!) and grain. It stood knee deep in its own shit. It never got to chew its cud out in a pasture. It has been treated like raw ore being turn into I-beams. Factory-produced beef is full of sickness and can kill you.

When you eat a chicken bought at your neighborhood grocery store, you are getting an animal that was packed into a warehouse with less than a square foot of space. It also has never seen the sun or felt the wind or tasted anything remotely natural. It had its beak cut off - without anesthetic - so that it won't peck other chickens to death because of the stress of being so jam-packed against them. And it shits. And the shit lands on the floor and dries out eventually and because chickens scratch, this dust fills the air. The chicken breathes fecal dust all its days. It is shot full of antibiotics but its lungs are still lined with actual crap. If you take one of these chickens and boil it down, the broth is a nasty shade of brown/gray. Factory-produced chicken is full of sickness and it can kill you.

If you buy a tomato at the grocery store, you are most likely eating the fruit from a plant that literally never grew in the earth. It was hydroponically grown in a chemical solution, injected with artificial flavor, red dye and vitamins and arrives at your produce sections at least two weeks after it was packed and shipped. You might as well be eating a nerf ball.

So, we're eating shit and our land only grows grass. Here Salatin emits brilliance: He takes what he's got and turns it into a white-collar salary. Put your cows and chickens on the grass that you've got and reduce your feed bill by 30-50%. Let the sunshine disinfect their natural animal functions. Feed them living green stuff to kill their diseases. Let them lay a layer of manure on the top soil, scratch it in and build another inch a year until you can plant your own grain and kiss the big-boy grain providers good-bye.

But the key to Salatin's approach is selling direct at retail or above prices. The most interesting chapters of his endless rant had to do with accounting and marketing. The gist of his accounting is to keep a careful record not only of your expenses but, of your time. Then, pay yourself at least $25 per hour. Work out the per unit value there from. Pay no attention to what the supermarket is charging. You are producing a superior product. It's wholesome, natural and additive free - and you deserve to be paid accordingly.

Then, go out there and sell it. Not everyone has the personality to do this or the daredevil gustiness to put their product on the line and demand a higher price. Salatin has that kind of evangelical fervor. He has preached his gospel of "God's Own Plan" for whole food goodness at every PTA, garden club or Moose Lodge that would have him for the last 25 years. I commend his passion. Salatin can rant with the best:

http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Everything-Is-Illegal1esp03.htm

This is a good read and presents some of his basic principles and prejudices.  I disagree with his position that anyone should be able to brew up spaghetti sauce in their roach-infested kitchen and sell it to whomever they please. Since I can't be in the kitchen of everyone who provides food to me, I rather like knowing someone else is inspecting the premises. I plan on building the kitchen on my farm to surpass health code requirements.

But, I digress.

After spending quite a bit of passion ranting against the mechanical, industrial production models of big agi-business, Salatin presents his alternative - which is, at its core,  a mechanical , industrial model of production. Yes, his cows get fresh grass and sunshine - while being moved along inside of electric fencing. Given their freedom, most cows would prefer to wallow under shade trees but Salatin drives them forward across his prairie grass with an electric prod.

Instead of the one-square foot of space they get inside agri-business chicken warehouses, Salatin's chickens get a whopping two-square feet inside of a 12 foot by 10 foot by 2 foot high chicken wire cage that is moved every other day across the prairie grass two days after the cows.

There's no question that his model is an improvement over standing in shit and breathing fecal dust. At least his animals do get fresh air, sunshine and fresh grass. But, his successful production depends on controlling his herds and flocks. On the one hand, he exalts allowing animals to enjoy their "animal-ness" while on the other he assures us that they have "no souls" so we shouldn't be bothered about eating them. Or controlling them. After all, that's what God intended we should do.

I had wild vacillations of moods reading "You Can Farm" and "Pastured Poultry for Profit$." I veered between admiring Salatin and abhorring him. I want small farmers to succeed and everything that helps them is good to me. But, I have reservations about endorsing a man who takes pride in being sloppy and lazy about farm building projects and considers his children as so many peons to do his bidding.

He tells us that his young daughter just loves getting up before dawn to help Dad refill the feeding bins for the chickens out on the pasture. I bet she does; since she is home-schooled, does she even know of any other activities that might please her more?  The photographs of her in her home-spun cotton dress, squatted down by the movable chicken coops caused me undo ire - can't the man buy her a pair of blue jeans? Doesn't he understand what a cold draft up a skirt can feel like at 5am?

I know this criticism may be petty but I felt it exemplified the callousness of Salatin's ego-driven success. He's a salesman and his product is his farm produce. You may replicate every aspect of his production model and still fail if you lack his ability to sell, sell, sell! So the hinge on which his system swings is ego and personality. I have met a few of his disciples and they all had that slightly perspiring edginess that defines cult followers.

One of them told me in a whisper, "I couldn't keep my chicken boxed up like that. I let `em go in the pasture and it works just as well, I think." I looked at the photos of his flock roaming freely across his pasture and bought a couple dozen eggs and a stew chicken who had passed her prime egg-laying. The eggs are superior and we're having Chicken and Dumplings tomorrow. I don't' mind eating chickens who have had good, productive lives. It's not because I think they don't have souls; it's because I know they have spirits and I respect the sacrifice of their lives to mine. I pay homage to them and thank them for providing for me. Salatin doesn't get the idea of Nature's Plan and, for that and his hatred of intellectuals and "eggheads," I'll never be one of his true followers.

Bottom Line: Salatin's process of adding an inch of top soil per year to your land by driving animals in cages across it actually will work - if you're a lazy S.O.B. who is off giving lectures to sell your products.

On the other hand, if you are willing to work hard and shovel all the free cow manure available from dairies and the free horse manure from stables and invest in a manure spreader and a tractor to plow it into your grasslands about once a month for a year, then you can add six inches of top soil in a year! And grow whatever you want in that nitrogen rich mix. But, I'll wait to write that book after I've actually done it. Yep, Hubby and I often joke that the locals are going to call us Manure Farmers for the first year until they see our yields in the second year...

I believe that Peak Oil is going to throw us all back into being reliant upon local providers of food. And I plan on being one of those providers. You, too, can join the real Green Revolution if you have cash for land and the inclination to work hard. There are no get rich quick schemes even tho Salatin claims there are. It's easy for him to say; he's a snake-oil salesman, selling another model of unnatural animal confinement and calling it wholesome. Well, honestly, more wholesome. Is that good enough?