Not only are the evenings deep and dark, so are the mornings as I wait for the sun to rise. Maybe it’s because I’m up with the Teat Strippers at 5 AM waiting on the sun, watching the wind push on branches thinking I could step outside to see how cold it is and take in a deep breath of the diesel smoke from the passing pickups and trucks, and smell of silage and fresh cow feed on the air. Memories of summer and all the green stored away in the silage clamps.
The bread is done in oven, 🍞 🎃 while the black beans cook down on the stove, the acorn squash in the oven. Last night, I cooked up rice and red lentils with some balsamatic vinger and MSG for a light but sweet taste. Omelet this morning, the eggs 🥚 are cooking down now, haven’t decided what vegetables will be in omelet, probably onions, corn, spinach. Maybe more balsamatic vinger, I like my food to be tangy and a bit acidic.
Then it’s off to work on my mountain bike, 🚲 listening to more of the Cheap Colorado Land audio book by Ted Conover. That book brings me back to photo I took years ago of the mobile home in Medusa, sitting below the towering Catskill Mountains in the distance. ⛰️ Maybe it’s because while many if not most people are poor and outcasts, I do dream of a life out in the hills and mountains. There is something wonderful about composting your own shit, making your own electricity, raising your own livestock and crops, making your own heat through wood, burning and burying your own trash.
This photo is etched on my mind… Not sadness but reality, the smell of wood smoke, diesel and maybe a note of burn plastic.
But no, I live in a very different world. 🌎 In the land of wokeness, with the overflowing recycling bins and trash cans, just waiting for the smashing over the garbage truck to haul down to the garbage recycling plant and sewage treatment yards that I inevitably ride past. Then past the public housing ghettos and freeway interchange. Today should be nice for the ride in, assuming it clears out ☀️ early enough, though even in the cloudy I’ll still ride. 🚂 I’m hoping the rain holds off tomorrow so I can ride in and see the Canadian Pacific Christmas Train 🎅 which will be idling at the Albany Oil Train depot tomorrow morning as I ride back. I smashed that pink styrofoam egg 🥚 tray in that white garbage bag, soon enough I’ll turn it into carbon dioxide and styrene gas though probably not much as compost the wet crap and burn the shit hot! Beats a million years compressed in the local garbage dumping yard in the Pine Bush after people pretend to recycle their yogurt containers. ♻️ Hell, even the recycling symbol is such an industry scam like so much of woke culture is these days.
With mom sick I didn’t go anywhere this weekend 🏡 except on my mountain bike. It was a good weekend, did some cooking, got out to Five Rivers Environmental Education Center twice, then rode out to Voorheeesville and Bender Mellon Farm Preserve, past Meads Farm and Preska’s Dairy. 🐮 I said hi to ladies, as smelled the cow shit, hay and silage. Never turned on the heat this weekend, but spend a fair bit of weekend hiding under the covers with my heated blanket ♨️ or with my hands under the heating pad and maybe once or twice I turned on the space heater when my hands were cold. That bread I made this morning was good, but that acorn squash really hit the spot. 😋 People throw away the crust, but I actually think that’s the best part. Plus my 5-gallon compost bucket is overflowing after two weeks, I should dump it in outside bin.
Maybe I would have bought that homestead next to my parents house where I’d put in wood heat 🪵🪓 but it didn’t have a woodstove and my insurance lady didn’t seem interested and giving me an estimate on how that would impact my rates. Truth is it was too close to neighbors and highway to burn too much debris, even if it was zoned agriculture and had a nice barn and outdoor sink for butchering. 🐖 🗡️ But that house is sold, and I could buy somewhere else, but I”m fine with my cold and cheap apartment, 🏠 reading and listening to the stories of the off-gridders from under the covers of my bed. Next weekend at this time, I’ll be away from suburbia, in wilderness, next to my propane heater 🌲 and rip-roaring camp fire. 🔥 I am still saving, and at some point, maybe when I retire, I’ll have that off-grid place with the simple T-40 board walls and metal roof, goats and hogs and burn barrels out back. 🛢️ And no I won’t be recycling my plastics or even taking them to county-mega dump like the woke suburbanites do while denying such shit. But first, let me sing along with Gram Parsons about the Kickers, Cowboy Angels across those prairies with their waving grain. 🌾 🚜 🇺🇸
I have all those data queries 🖥️ and other projects left over to work on from Friday, when I get in the office and hopefully the QAS USPS Mail encoder will be finally linking to the library and soon we can start working on address corrections and updating the mail file. 📂 Three day work week, then Thanksgiving 🦃 hopefully with the family if mom feels good, might be one of last Thanksgiving we all spend together as my parents are getting old.
Then up north, watching the weather for a week from Monday but I still think I want to do three nights up north if at all possible, 🏕️ preferably somewhere farther north then East Branch but whatever a few nights 🌲 in wilderness is better then staying home in woke suburbs where electric cars, grid-tied solar and recycling plastics – and swearing at the color television at Donald Trumpster ✊ ✊ 📺 – is all the rage. Honestly, I don’t miss not ever owning a television but even I do check Twitter, Truth Social and New York Times more then I should when I should be reading. 📚 Ride back downtown in the darkness, wait for later local home, 🚌 quick dinner then bed and maybe read some more before sleeping or watch some stupid YouTube video of some dairy man doing wild-assed farmer shit. 🐮 Then sleep and up at 5 AM tomorrow morning. Truth is I find a lot of inspiration in the Cheap Colorado Land audio book, even if I’m not sure that’s quite the life for me, though maybe many aspects will be true to the off-grid homestead I ultimately building a few years that hopefully won’t involve grid-tied electricity or woke and fake plastics recycling but hopefully hogs and goats and a blackened burn barrel and lots of composted poop, healthy, good foods and cananbis.
I have been thinking a lot lately what it means to be actually poor versus frugal or choosing a lifestyle that many people would describe as being poor even if it involves many expenses not apparent on the surface. Some of it’s joining the Frugal Living group on Facebook, but also it’s been my observations lately on SNAP, watching and reading about homesteaders and homesteading families, and even farmers who spend enormous amounts of money on their livestock and feed but often live in rundown homes and drive old beat up vehicles. Probably what brought me to term was reading about the old Positivity Alliance, one of those communes where the members gave away all their wealth to be poor enough that where exempt from paying income taxes and funding the war.
I ride my bike and take the bus home most days from my office in suburbs. It’s not fast, the bus is clunky and slow. But I certainly could drive to work with the acres of parking. Yet, I’m well aware that there are many people who can’t afford to drive or have no choice but to take the bus. I suspect many of the people I see riding the shuttle back and forth and then transferring to city bus even at my office don’t do it because they choose that lifestyle.
Likewise I shop at primarily at Walmart and thrift shops, live in a pretty rundown but cheap apartment, don’t use my heat much, live without a television or high-speed internet, and it’s been months since I’ve had my laptop at home. But those are choices, as people point I out, you’re a director, you could live some place a lot nicer, a lot warmer, with all the color and light of a modern suburban home. Indeed, compared even to my neighbors or even many poorer people in city, I live particularly simplistic. But a lot of it is I don’t like the world of advertising, buying shit, plastic, landfills. Even if I do drive a big jacked up truck out in wilderness. The money I don’t spend now I want to save and eventually put towards my off-grid cabin.
Truth is it’s not always clear how much money people have, and why people choose to live the way they do. While it’s obvious the status symbols of wealthy suburbanite – the fancy chemical lawn, the grid-tied solar panels, the weekly trash pickup and television and high speed internet in each room – many others do choose to live simply. Many homesteaders are poor, in part because opportunities for good paying work in rural areas are few and far between. Or they just don’t want to participate in the often scammy-consumerist business life of hawking questionable products to both government and the private sector. And certainly many farmers give up much to reinvest in their land, and keep them and their familes on it.
Farming and homesteading is really expensive. It really is shocking even how much used equipment costs, to say nothing of feed and fuel bills, fencing. Land is remarkably expensive, much less building a house or off-grid systems especially if you’re seeking maximum comfort and compliance with building codes. It’s easy to be impoverished in a conventional sense with all those costs if you want to dedicate your life to your land. To say nothing about tax bills – they are no joke for farm families or anyone that owns a significant amount of land, especially compared to what the land can return in commercial product sales. It’s different to be struggling to stay on one’s own family land by trying to squeeze enough produce out of it compared to struggling to stay off the street, but often the margins after cost and the risk to life and legacy are pretty similar.
I have nothing but distaste for the fake nature of suburbia, the chemical lawns, color and light of modern homes full of appliances, the constant drone of advertising telling you to buy and discard shit, the seemingly limitless electricity, the packages that appear mysteriously on your door step when you order them, the flushing of toilets that disappear the poop to far away place or the trash that disappears when you put it out at the curb. All the brightly colored packages at the store. I think I’d much rather smell the cattle and horny buck goat or the smoke off burn barrel, see the sun hit my solar panels, or have food that less then perfect. Like the poor people. But I’m saving for that life, and some day I will make the leap.
Truth is that I’m not poor even if I don’t keep much money in my bank account and I’m loathe to spend and waste money unnecessarily, buying more crap that I later have to get rid of. I don’t love paying large electric bills for something that is invisible and gives me little joy. I’d rather sweat a bit in summer, shiver in the winter. Sit in darkness in winter and spend my nights as much as possible in the wilderness, next to fire and out riding trail and exploring. I don’t like the comforts that so much of middle class suburbia is addicted to.
I have become a big listener to audio books from the library, both on Hoopla and Libby. Audio books have one big advantage over E-books and paper books – they don’t have to get your undivided attention. Some people disagree with this notion – but it’s still a way to learn and think critically about issues – when you have to keep your eyes on the road or whatever you are doing.
Riding my bike to work and driving places are the two places where I do the most listening to audio books. When your hands are on the steering wheel or bike handles, it is a chance to give the audio book your undivided attention – in the sense you can’t easily flip over to other social media or other distractions. You start the book, and you get through it cover to cover. I have done so much more getting through full books on the bike then during any other activity.
The morning started out cold but colorful with fiery red skies before the clouds pushed in. That said, it was a pretty cold and gray November morning but many are like that this morning.
Yesterday was a quiet day of reading, then in the afternoon visiting the Boy Scouts Sportsmart, not buying anything like cross-country skies but then riding out to Five Rivers 🐸 then coming home and reading for a few more hours before lights out by I don’t know, maybe 8 PM or earlier. It was so crazy 🤪 with tons of people 👪 at Five Rivers yesterday until dusk 🌆 but it was a nice ride home. Today is also busier then I expected, indeed I was shocked 🚽 when somebody was in the outhouse, and I tried to pry open the door thinking it was vacant until somebody shouted out, occupied! I ended up pooping 💩 in a little hand-dug cathole in the woods. I really try to avoid flush toilets when I can, as I rather the poop rot naturally in the ground. I just hate how everything is a celebration of landfilling and fossil fuels. 🌎 I’m not political even if I make my money from moving data for Democratic Party, I don’t go pushing for new laws, but I don’t also want to participate as much as I can from the shit one-way system we live in. Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated by the off-gridders and homesteaders. 🐐
Pancakes 🥞 with cranberries, shredded carrots and apples 🍏 and lots of coffee at 5 AM this morning. Finished off the last of the one container of Greek yogurt I got last week at Walmart, rinsed it out before putting it in the trash so it doesn’t stink 👃 before I get up to woods and turn it into carbon dioxide. 🔥 I could pretend recycle it but I know there is no real market for No 5 plastic, and truth is I make a lot less trash then most and I need stuff to get fires started. ♻️ Maybe it’s all that reading I”ve been doing about the off-gridders this weekend that has my mind so focused on the wilderness and having fires. 🌲And thinking about those days riding through the wilderness on my bike after enjoying cannabis. I don’t do that shit at home nor do I ever touch beer at home. 🍻
Started out my day riding out to the Bender Mellon Farms Trails 🚲 and taking my bike around some of those trails, riding easy, hoping not to break and spokes or get a flat tire. So far so good. 🤞True of the wheels are decent, maybe I’m getting used to it and don’t want to mess with the spoke key, but whatever. It was skipping into low last night when I down shifted but didn’t have that issue today. ⚙️ Then I headed over to Five Rivers for a second time this weekend and walked around there before heading back home to make some cornmeal pancakes with onions and spinach for lunch. Also put carrots in them for extra softness and fiber. 🥕 Any chance to replace calories with fiber, I figure is a good thing.
Been doing a lot of reading on this cold weekend. 📚 I don’t normally bring my computer home, so I figure learning is a good thing by reading and it’s beats the endless ads and crap of social media. People say being well read is part of the healthy human life. Started out a book reading about the the History of the Rensselaer Train Station and railroads in the Albany area, Ernie Mann’s Railroads of Rensslear. Then I started reading Mark Sundeen’s The Unsettlers about modern day rural and urban homesteaders and off-gridders. For listening while riding, Cheap Land Colorado by Ted Conover. That book discusses the mostly rural poor, the outcasts, the crazies and others who have bought 5-acres of very cheap land on the Colorado plains.
I am endlessly fascinated by the rural poor, the homesteaders, the off-gridders. 🐐 Maybe I make too much of the nobel savage of the rural poor, and I confuse voluntary poverty with real poverty, but I deeply unsettled about the modern consumeristic suburbanite life. And it’s not just because I like all things dirty, the pungent smell of manure, wood smoke and silage. Some people make so much out of so little, while others drown themselves in big color televisions, plastics, and motoring everywhere as they eat organic twinkies and say their green because they recycle some of their plastic with their weekly 96-gallon garbage service, put solar panels on the grid-tied-house, and have their $100,000 Tesla parked out front. 📚 Got to take advantage of Libby now, though come Thanksgiving I should plan out my 10-Hoopla Borrows and get them out before I head up to camp. Libby is not reliable in places without phone service, like out in the wilderness.
Mom is sick this weekend with a cold, 🤒 so no visiting this weekend, though it’s probably what has been going around the office so everyone is hopeful including my sister and neice and nephew that we can all get together for Thanksgiving. 🦃 It’s all good, it’s expected to turn to a mixed-bag later on today, and while it might be too warm to stick, it’s going at least be pretty wet come the evening.💦 I want to read more this evening, prepare beans and acorn squash along with knead bread dough and prepare that for cooking at 5 AM tomorrow morning. I think I have enough clothes to avoid going to laundromat this week, though my 5-gallon compost bucket is overflowing but I’ll stick that outside in the morning and it will be fine with cold. 🪣 Going to rot at any rate either here or out in my parents pile. 🍏
It looks like it will be a good weekend to get out of town next weekend, ☀️ though rain or maybe ice and snow up north come Monday. I’ll probably take that following Monday off so I can get three nights camping 🏕️ starting Black Friday. I am leaning towards heading farther north for this trip, but no so remote that I’m far from plowed road should things turn to ice and snow by a week from Monday. Leaning towards camping along the Boreas River – Moose Club Way – NY 28N but I’ve also considered Old Lake Durant Road campsites or maybe just old East Branch Sacandaga. I’d just love a few days hanging out at camp, 🔥 have some nice fires, cook some delicious meals, 😋 smoke some weed and ride all day. 🚲 Kind of like those memories of Horseshoe Lake, or even the Adirondack Rail Trail. I like the idea of riding Moose Club Way but also the Roosevelt Truck Trail ain’t far from thee, and while gated and rough in places, might be quite nice on the mountain bike.
