Coming down the street was a young man walking his horse. "I just thought I would stop by and let him eat some of (my neighbor) Joy's grass, its good for him and good for her. " And here, on this suburban corner, outside of one of the worlds megalopoli , was a magnificent creature, mowing my neighbors lawn. I asked Tim (the young horse owner) if his horse liked carrots, and proceeded to go and pull some of my remaining carrot crop to feed to his horse.
Tim was amazed that they were "home grown". I can only imagine that he expected me to go and pull a plastic bag out of the refrigerator, with perfectly shaped and topped off carrots, consumer perfect products of the industrial food chain. Instead he received some comparativley mishapened carrots with some brown leaves in the tops, and small roots porcupining off the tap root. His horse, being more sensible than most consumers, was delighted, and proceeded to relish each carrot that was fed him.
And so, a small collection of possibilities, random intersections of activity, and I felt the surreal nature of a future state interleaved with the modern petroleum based present - community interaction, neighbors interacting, through the vehicles of horse and garden, made more surreal by the cars going by and the sterile Ortho-Lawns along the suburban street.
Horses?? Gardens?? We don't have to go back to all that, do we?? I hear this reaction to 1860 with laptops quite a bit, the sneer barely hidden, and the idea immediately discounted out of hand. But as the consensus grows that global oil production has peaked and that we are now on the back side of the Hubbert curve, the depletion side, I would ask do you really expect your car to be a viable transportation mechanism when gasoline is $16usd a gallon? Is using for transportation a vehicle that produces little CO2, whose waste can replenish the soil , and who provides beauty and power, such a silly idea? When the fuel needed for it is a non-polluting energy store that can be grow, that requires no supertankers, no mining, no armies to defend it, and that when processed through the "engine" can be returned to the ecosystem as a benefit?
Gardens, now that is an easier transformation to grasp. Although at the moment "you must be the only one in the neighborhood growing their own vegetables" says Tim, this will change much sooner than horses showing up on our streets as a normal mode of transport. My president is putting in a garden ( how cool is that!) which may do more good for us than any policy decision. As people begin to realize that large percentages of countries production are coming from small household gardens (80% of Russian potatoes comes to mind) then the concept of the suburbs as the organic grow zone around the city may begin to make much more sense to the current Ortho-Lawn types. As diesel, the foundation of our industrial food chain, becomes increasingly more expensive over the coming decade, the budgetary impact of the household garden will do more than anything to make this a commonplace of future life.
The impetus for me, as I explained to my neighbor, is to learn how to garden. To begin NOW, while I have time for all the mistakes and fumbles, to establish the gardening skills and habits, to make this a part of my daily life BEFORE it becomes a necessity. It takes time to replenish soil, time to discover the micro-environments of your lawn, time to gain the knowledge of the growing things. Add the storage and preservation aspect of a personal food supply, and there is much to be done in participating in this great transition. Gardening is the easiest piece of the future to put into place.
The horses might take a while longer.
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