[bivol]

yea, guess that’s a problem, Elke… but no matter, those who want, will! and they will have extra dollars in their pockets!

[bivol]

Roscoe, i think it’s better not to. from little i know it’s that bone meal can be used for firing up power plants, but it’s not a good idea.

umm, a suggestion: why not use guts and stuff as maggot feed, and then sell the maggots for fish bait, or feed then to the fowl?
also, fat could maybe be sold to bird-feed producers, they need fat.

[bivol]

@OldKat 23381 wrote:

A few other thougts from my vantage point. Something that gets glossed over in most discussion is that the weak dollar is a product of our own governments reckless spending. As we print money, like Charmin prints toilet paper, to “monetize” the debt each new batch makes the sum total in circulation worth incrementally less. Simple economic fact. Our government is destroying our way of life with debt. I also heard recently that Russia and China are doing everything within their power to cause our dollar to not be used as the benchmark in trading, as you mentioned above. Yet there are people that insist that China is our friend. They are NOT our friend and we are crazy to think they are.

OldKat, i wholeheartedly agree on what you said!
i’m sure we both ment nothing personal against citizens of china, but if ANY country is sucking you dry on ANY means, trade or whatever, that county is not your friend. period!
because it IS crazy that everything is produced somewhere else and that all our money goes somewhere else, instead staying within borders! and i see NOTHING good in factories closing by the dozen because it is cheaper to produce everything in china! it is a normal human impulse to rebel against something like that and guard our production, no matter that the political (and big business) dogma is at the moment! big bussiness multi-nationals will always be well off, and i don’t think they care for stuff like patriotism or well being of their countries!

and speaking of borders, the whole “global-market” idea came from big business in US and europe, but is costing the national economies more and more. so, maybe it would be the time to go back to “regional markets”, or, in plain text, to reintroduce customs.

now, market theories are:

1.national market – very little trade outside

2. regional market – parts of the world who make up separate economic entities, like soviet countries being economically largely cut of capitalistic ones , or nazi-controled economic system in europe in ww2.

3. global market – current. unfortunatelly.

question: US has a strong economy, but also has a growing trade debt to china. so, wouldn’t depreciation of dollar also be a means to make that debt smaller, domestic export easier, and lessen the price of work in US?

because at the moment, if china would re-draw all the credit money from US financial sector, US financial system would almost collapse! or, it would SURELY colapse, only i know that the dollar will then be “re-set”, that is, re-made, and tied to the gold standard again, to ensure its stability.
ofcourse, china’s demand like that would bring tense relations, and that would effectively mean that china would have all its foreign reserve value wiped out in a moment, which would mean war.

[bivol]

@Rod 23305 wrote:

Hi Bivol

Great perspectives from someone who has been their. Thanks for your input into this dialogue which has many of us overly concerned.
I grew up very poor (in money) in an era when the great depression was still a recent memory. We had no car, no vacations, no new clothes, no TVs, made our toast on the kitchen stove top, made our own soap, patched our clothes, did our on shoe repair, lived out of our gardens, had an ice box, heated with coal, and used hand me down bicycles for transportation. It works, we had a good life and came through it whole.
I think it could be like that again and we will find ways to survive.

Glad to!

Rod, we had basically a copy-paste situation here when i grew up, some two decades ago. and it HAD GOOD SIDES!

for ex., there was virtually no teasing or degrading if you didn’t have something – noone had anything extra! back then i think someone pushing it on basis of someone else being poor would have trouble in the toilet later! not so today…

but that isn’t the point, the point is:

1). people can GET BY with less than they think it’s possible. but IT IS possible!

2). people have, i guess, has lost the faith in their own brawn (and brain, too, it seems!) if you say to some averige citizen (job, family, car, house) he and his falmily had to till their garden to eat and drive around on bikes, i think he’d be spoo-oked!
but why not? perfectly normal, and heating on wood is the most wonderful form of heating there is! 18 years of it and i warmly 😀 reccomend it!

i’m a little late, it seems, but this topic has really become big and interesting, with lots of good ideas!

jac, it is true what you said. luckily, i think no big scale reversion to horses is likely to take place, because horses are not numerous enough, and take a long time to grow in numbers. and because there will be anough fuel for strategic needs (food and army) from other sources, like coal, peat, etc.

in a serious shortage of fuel i think it’ll be like this:
1. cars are used very little
2. gasifers are used on what trucks and tractors there are
3. liquid fuel is being made from coal, wood, by fischer-tropsch process

large fields are tiled by tractors, and the is enough fuel. manure is gathered from people. i see no other way.

the main problem with people today is that they just don’t think they can do without loads of stuff…

[bivol]

it’s surprising how little people need to get by when they need to. OK, there would be DRASTIC cuts in resources and change way of life, but hey, as long as it keeps people alive, they’re gonna do it to survive.

now, this sounds really harsh, but in a crisis, it’s every nation for itself. and US and europe are pretty good of, for now.

Erik, i wouldn’t be too afraid of mass starvation, because it is rather inplausable this would happen, at least in case of US or Europe. and this is because there is, simply, enough space to produce food.

besides, when it comes fuel shortages, we’ve seen it all here before, in the 90-is in serbia under sanctions. then, food was still produced and there was no famine, even if the agriculture was mostly mechanized and industrialized till then. we LOL ed at the fact that serbians under sanctions still ate better quality food, and more, than we ate without sanctions.
simple fact: people will get by.

every time people NEED to do something to survive, they WILL do it, and survive. Serbia, romania, cuba, all these countries are proof.

the worst prospect would be if the central government would collapse. if it doesn’t, it’ll be OK.

Gordon, i understand your potential worries, but i’d like to say:”don’t worry!”
even if the exodus would take place, i think there would still be enough land to accomodate people, like leasing family sized plots now huge farms in great plains. it goes without saying that in case of a serious fuel shortage those big companies would also have no fuel for machinery, so it’d be wiser to share that land to people who will, in dire need, have to learn to till it. but food is food.
and if there would be spare fuel for that vital industrial branch, and thereby also enough vital foodstuffs, maybe there will be food rationing in the cities, to make the exodus more gradual and controled.
rationing happened before,a dn there is no reason not to reintroduce it again in dire need.

[bivol]

@dlskidmore 23282 wrote:

I’ve heard that fish line run at the right height is a good deterrent, as they can’t see what’s bothering them.

AND if it also makes a sudden racket, all the better!

[bivol]

we have 4.5 $ per quart of gasoline, FOR NOW. LOl i remember people thinning gasoline with water when there wasn’t enough of it. but then there were big sturdy cars who could take it, nowdays modern cars can’t.

there are other fuel sources, though. like cooking oil, heating oil, biomass, lng.

if i had the space, i’d seriously consider shifting to wood gas, but for now, unfortunatelly, nothing.

lately the driving’s been: walk up to the car, look at it, and then go and take a tram! LOL

[bivol]

@OldKat 19999 wrote:

From bivol’s post above;

This is correct, as far as it goes. I have no idea what happens in your part of the world, bivol. I can tell you for sure that a politician bending to the wishes of business is a problem in the USA.

Unfortunately they are not the only special interest group looking to wield political influence. Add in unions, ethnic minority “representatives”, various other special interest groups such as environmentalists (hard core fanatics, not your garden variety type that really only want to see clean air & unpolluted water etc), pro-hunting groups, anti-hunting groups, animal “welfare” groups, etc, etc. There are many, many more, but you get the picture.

All have their place in the political process and that is all well and good. However, we are never going to please 100% of the public because we all have such differing views, wants, agendas. Currently nearly 1/2 of the people in the United States pay NO federal taxes, yet they still have a say in how our taxes are spent. If that number surpasses 50%, how long before the remaining (shrinking) percentage of tax payers says “To heck with this, I’m not going to support a system where I pay all of the taxes and somebody else gets all of the benefits”? The modern political process leaves a lot to be desired, no doubt.

hi OldKat, sorry for the late reply!

well, in my country we have the so-called multy-party system, so a consensus is practically impossible.
imagine this: subversive agents X three stooges, X tribally organized crime complete with vassals, and masochistic, logic-amputated masses, and you’ll start getting the picture of political life here.

at least your politicians bent partly to the will to your own bussiness-people, here our politicians bend to foreign bussiness people.

against bending to bussiness, i guess a grass-roots political system, and alocation of decision-making further down the political structure could help. i think.

as for any public initiative, that doesn’t exist in my country.
people are so in he colonial mindset, and historically powerless against the state, that any public initiative is doomed from the start, and we as the nation are sheep, and will never rebel. how pathetic!

for the looting of state industrial sector in the 90-is those political scum should without and any egzegeration get the bullet for high treason, cause they conciously destroyed the national industry.

but, instead there being re-elected! this same party has been ruling for 16 of 20 years here. but that has more to do with intelligence of people (or the lack of it) than with the party itself.

as for lots of people not paying the taxes and still deciding about allocation of funds, i can understand fully!
mom and dad are private enterpreneurs, and they’re litteraly being sacked by the state!
they pay 60% or more to the state, but that’s not the worst part! the worst part is that people of the croatian minority in Bosnia have croatian state citizenship and routinely vote and fill the parliament with that same above mentioned party that ripped us off!
try to imagine this: and croatian state pours funds in Bosnia to the croatian majority, financing schools, hospitals, monasteries, electricity, whatnot, and those bosnian croats pay no taxes to Croatia, but they still, via voting, tailor our destines by continuilly tipping the scales for that same guys who destroyed our industry in the first place!
and then they complain that people here can’t stand them! go figure!!

[bivol]

well, you’re right about that. how about making a dog pen? maybe a movable pen would be good, made like those movable chicken pens,… um, a pen and a wire line on which the dog yould be coupled, and could walk up and down, barking…. my imagination got loose again, seems.

deer seem to be a problem during the night and early morning, so someone would have to sleep over at the plot or put the dog out…

second idea: know those movie scenes when some makes a trip-wire, that triggers lots of cans and rattling stuff? maybe putting a thin withe a deer would trip over cans and make a racket would be enough ho scare it.

i mean, encyrcling the whole plot with rope or wire and tying it up to some cans ready to fall isn’t so expensive i think…

[bivol]

yea, it is discouraged all round the western world, because of all the mantra concerning “specialization brings better results” and blah blah.
esentially what it does is make one more dependant on other people in society, and so easier to control. not to say more vunerable in cases of disasters or crises.

nature gives us the very opposite lesson to this mantera. animals who are over-specialized are often first on the evolutionary chop in times of change, and it’s always jack-of-all-trades animals that survive various disasters.
this lesson can’t be overemphasized enough!

all of this has already proven itself, PART-TIME FARMER CLASS PROVED TO BE MOST RESISTANT TO GLOBAL CRISES!

i guess lots of people wouldn’t be against it if they knew that a garden plot can get them through the month with extra dollars in the pocket – every month!

and on top that they knew where from the food came from!

[bivol]

clayfoot
what you said is very likely true, but i’d like to be e open and ask: why? why is it neccessars that animals DON’T have the possibility to retro-think?

i mean, we know humans can do it because: a) we’re humans and can think of those stuff b) other humans told us what they thought. to date no animal has told us its story from its mouth, so i don’t know if they are not cappable of retro-thinking or imagining stuff…. ok, it might be connected to the size of brains, but if one remembers that animals can remember stuff from years ago, and call those memories up when needed for finding food and water, then why not for mental stimulation when in pinch?
proof? well, no direct one. except maybe this: animals in confinement don’t get bored right away. they also need time to “go nuts”. so until that time they must drain the memories until they can’t cope with boring reality no more. if they lived only within the moment, they would snap much sooner, i think.

and there’s another thing, esp. with intensive-farming animals: they know of nothing better. it’s like a human being abused without ever being aware there is even a different possibility of existing.

it’s true that people assume that prey animals “live in the moment”, because it’s simply better to not look too much in the past and see all killed herd members. it’s easier that way, and as a defense mechanism it is better. noone says they dont, and that’s better for the purpose of persuing normal normal daily activities under stress of being hunted, and with lots of stimuli from outside.
when an animal is in captivity, i think it can, at leastto a degree, call upon pleasant memories if it had them (and that’s the saddest part).
but for entire life without seeing sunlight that don’t help much, too.

especially smarter animals, like primates and elephants can be scared for life and their recovery is similar to a human’s. noone says domestic mammals (or birds) are not on the level of prim and elephants, but we don’t know that for sure, because people simply don’t give a damn about them, & because there are more cows than elephants. that doesn’t say domestic animals suffer less than humans! no sir, i was more touched right deep down by bellowing of trucked steers on a parking lot than to sights of random humans getting hurt or killed (maybe because we see that all the time)! some stinging pain just passes deep down, i can’t explain it. maybe it’s the helplessness.

from experience i can say that a one’s own brain can be his/hers best friend or worst enemy.

[bivol]

could a good guardian dog be a good chouce against deer? the’re always alert, usually wont chase after deer….

or, simply a dog on a chain or in a box, that barks a lot to scare the deer… maybe a moving pen, like a moving chicken pen would be nice….

[bivol]

they look jummy, um, i mean, CUTE!

[bivol]

hi everyone, long time no see!

well, this one is from Germany: http://www.zugrinder.de/

[bivol]

@dominiquer60 14586 wrote:

I ate the 4 year old Red Broiler hen, I cooked her all day long in a crock pot and later added veggies and then added some dumplings. I brought her to farmer potluck and she got rave revues and no one would have thought the bird was an old hen. I will let you know how the 9 year old Rhode Island Red/ Brahma cross cooks up. I don’t know about cooking older water fowl, but with chicken, cook the bird all day long until the meat falls off the bones, and I know that you can even cook it further until the bones are soft enough to eat.
Good Luck and let us know how the old geese turnout.

i’m (hopefully) not mad when i say old hens are the best and most economic chicken to eat: we used to put one in the pot and cook it with all the vegetables like for a chicken soup for about 2 hours. and then take the chicken out and roast it for about 40 min, or deep fry it.
most delicious meat, far better than young meat! has stronger aroma but without fat – fat is in the soup!

LOL i remember when a single chicken, prepared in this style, (accompanied by a big bowl of soup, lots of mashed potato and even more salad) fed 7 or 8 people a good lunch (and we like to eat!)

…no-one stayed hungry.

[Author]

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