bob day

well, I guess it's time for another update from your favorite 40+ year vegan still walking around raising hell (I wonder if that is a trigger word I will be called on)  It's kind of funny, thinking about hell, in ancient days like when Christ was actually walking around I am given to understand it was a valley where unsanctified corpses were burned, since then it has graduated to  symbolize evil and all sorts of torture, even if it's just a flat tire or disgust with a situation. There's a song---If you want a drink of water,  you've got to get it from a well, if you want to get to heaven, you've got to raise a little hell,

and that got me thinking about the condition here on earth with all the craziness, death destruction, etc. so getting to heaven may in fact be lifting up conditions right here on earth,    do I hear an amen brother?

Sort of interesting, many of us have left religion behind, yet in many ways our actions are guided by righteous motives.  

Anyway, here  on the farm still, still growing ane learning, turned 79 yesterday and sort of feel like an imposter. I can't really be this old, I'm just impersonating an old man, then I think about my goal to live to 120 and it makes sense, Splitting up young, middle and old age into 40 year segments and i haven't quite started the "old " part of those ages.

The biggest project in the last year has been incorporating lithium batteries into my operation, also expanding my solar system, I'm on the journey from being an uneducated hack to an experienced solar system student.  I started out this most recent phase with what amounted to lithium deep cycle batteries and graduating to batteries I can hardly move- 110 lbs ~  monsters I'm either carrying with a hand truck or walking end over end, I'm even looking at server rack batteries, but my lifetime frugality has kept me with 24 and 12 volt inverters instead  of the 48 v server racks, but I see the future, and their likelihood in the future.  This was all strted by a series of terrible crashes, caused by lengthy periods of cloudy days starting last winter, and some long discussions with the grok AI.

So altogether I bought 3 of those dumfumes, the cheapest 6x bigger battery, while still having about 10 of those deep cycle lithium equivalents around. 2000$for the dumfumes and another 1200 on the smaller "deep cycle equivalents" and a 300$ new off  brand inverter that both acts a solar controller, inverter, and battery charger. which, 6months later ,  I'm still trying to master, but grok is helping, it's like having a talking service manual, who can clarify questions. Now Grok is a funny tool that needs to be watched carefully and following it's instructions without questions can sometimes point toward possible disasters, but sometimes it's good to have a sounding board to refine crazy , impossible ideas and make them reality.

One of those projects was the new solar array, doubled my solar exposure, and maybe eliminated my need to always clear the roof panels during snow days TWT.  anyway these are near vertical panels hastily strung out and fastened up last winter using  existing buried cables validating decisions to bury  "unnecessary" cables and pipes 16 years ago.  I had no idea and questioned the wisdom, but there's 20-30 feet between the house and lower greenhouse, and before pouring the house floor I took romex, telephone cable and 1/2"black pipe from about the center of the pour(actually the back utility room area) right through to  the inside greenhouse wall. Anyway , this took an available location for solar and easily connected it to the back utility room about four feet from an existing electrical box where those wires emerged. Now I won't claim it's a pretty installation, likely not fully up to code-Yet, but it is functional and a few tweaks will make it even more so.

Now this is easily seen in retrospect as a week long job, but in my usual lazy fashion it is still a work in progress, and maybe always will be, running two separate solar systems that can bounce back and forth taking care of the refrigerator needs -(running a normal refrigerator is what sparked this whole thing), and now here I am a few years later, graduated from lead acid to lithium, learning a whole new system, and along the way cleaning out my brother's house (a 600mile round trip from my home) with mountains of his stuff adding to the clutter here. and with those trips almost completed it feels like I'll finally be able to breathe again once it's over.

so the main ambition has to do with the forbidden projects on the front acreage, the trees were cut last winter, and they left a mess. I did contact a trachoe operator and am sort of in the middle of getting that part started, and expect an acceleration to at least the earthworks getting done. I don't know how many of you have dealt with clearcut land, but time is really starting to worry me, nature wants to restore this land and is on a time schedule that doesn't slow down or stop because i'm not quite ready. getting those swales done soon is important enough it's like having an unrelenting boss breathing down my neck.  And at the same time being surrounded by all the evidence of new beginnings, the essence of life at it's most ambitious phase, everything running around growing like crazy, fighting for it's patch of earth and sunlight, humbling and inspiring at the same time.

OK, the moment has passed, I still have the accounting for my brother's will to complete, groceries to buy, a backhoe to repair, and a solar system to shepherd along,  Keep Having Fun

Hey Ra, Having a bit of confusion finding the reply button, how are things going up there, or did you make it down here to a little less frostbite?

I just moved a heavy piece of furniture to the front lawn, at my dead brother's house, and a mix of feelings wanting this sale, cleanout to be over, and hating to leave, cause we spent a lot of time here, I'm in the room I used to stay in when we worked together, all through this sea side resort (sort of) and it has it's charms, but mostly it was just work .  My house in VA is much quieter over all, even when they were clearing the ground on the front 15, but now as I come down to the end I'm finding all sorts of stumbling blocks and I know they will be done with one way or another within a few weeks, but here I am 300 miles from home, salvaging what I can, getting the house a little prettier, ready to sell.  When it is done I should have some extra cash to throw at bulldozers and other major help on that front 15, but for right now I feel like I'm in a prison of sorts, register of wills, help not showing up, or worse, showing up taking neat stuff and not actually helping. But I digress, I'll plan to post pictures on my website , the cold weather when the logging was done, plus other duties kept me from a minute by minute progress report, but I did try and snap some pictures most days, and it is a whole new world out there with the pines gone and the contours of the land more visible, and with a little luck I'll be there in time to beat the worst of the blackberry growth, and start to get tree planting organized for fall.

I think fall is a better time usually anyway, drought really doesn't like baby trees, and it gets pretty hot in summer.  

I added about double my existing solar panels and upgraded my ac power supply, knock off hybrid inverter, and the water pump from spring to cistern that used to require a generator and special improvised connections with monitoring  done by lifting the heavy cement cover and watching the water run. This new arrangement I can monitor when the pump runs  out of water just watching an ammeter and switching it off when the draw goes down. Maybe some day I'll have a sensor in the cistern that turns the pump on and an automatic off switch when the amps change,, brave new world, TWT

anyway between over double battery reserves, and double solar panels, and no real issues to complain about electricity wise, I feel like something else to screw things up must be just around the corner   guess I'd better spend an hour or two penance for this post knocking on wood to ward off the eveil lurking waiting for the unwary   I know coyote is out there laughing at the chaos he's caused, and my only real choice is to laugh along with him, too nice a day to be wasted moaning

sort of funny, all those years since my last post and I have to be honest and say I never did get around to any concerted program for my ears--I'm definitely more righteous about hearing protection, but even that isn't perfect--earphones at a distance or can't find them right off, tractor, saw, etc has to be used right away--just a short time, etc etc.

Anyway, reading my earlier post has me thinking maybe it's time to start up again, by some b&b extract and cotton balls and keep bottles everywhere obvious, so just walking around I'm constantly reminded   or maybe  tomorrow:-)

Yeeeeee ha, well, they're off and running,  pulp wood monopoly falling to diversity, or at least my small corner of it. cutting the front 10-15 acres of pines--between winter kills with ice breaking their tops, and insect infestation starting, it was the only thing to do.  When I started to see holes in the forest with dead pines leaning up against each other--at first I thought someone had come in with a chain saw, closer inspection showed natural causes, and immediately I flashed back to just after the land was clearcut 25+ years ago, talking to the neighbor who spoke of infestation, and suddenly my lovely tree lined driveway seemed more a natural disaster area. constantly on the look out for the most recent dead fall, carrying my chain saw to clean up and at least get the trees back off the drive. or just going out the backway to avoid the hassle.

Now, I understand that what I was witnessing was just the natural die off of a monoculture, and over time it would repopulate and turn naturally into a diverse climax forest, and I also understand that one of the goals of Permaculture is to hurry that progression along where possible.

That pine woods and I had a nice long run, even if it was a monoculture, and now I'm looking at hickory, oaks, hawthornes, persimmon, locusts,.......  even spice bush, different berries, and of course all the different situations that will develop with 7 or 8 swales running across the slope, with pure magic in the planning stages, I just hope I'm up to the task(s).

Fortunately I'll have years of play ahead, sacred music to explore and build groves around, maybe foster living spaces for some humans too, Permaculture intent of course. my goal had always been   Sycamore Gardens, PRI.   that has a nice ring to it.  Maybe it's time to build something more substantial for the public and really become an institute for Permaculture learning

just thought it might be interesting to post one of my latest conversations with Grok -new 4.1 grok-

Me--Thanks so much for that clarification. how do you see that third ethic's focus on population control with recent trends toward low birth rates and threatened depopulation of whole countries. Geoff Lawton seemed to be commenting on that trend

Grok --The third ethic—setting limits to population—was written in the 1970s–80s when the global trend was still steeply upward (world population went from 3.7 billion in 1970 to 5 billion by 1987, the year Bill signed off on the Designers’ Manual). Bill’s concern was overshoot: too many people consuming too much, too fast, collapsing the biosphere before we could design our way out of it.
Fast-forward to 2025:

Global TFR is ~2.3 and falling fast.
Almost every developed country (and now China, Korea, Japan, Italy, Spain, etc.) is below replacement (1.4–1.8).
South Korea is at 0.72, Italy 1.2, Japan 1.26, even Thailand and Chile are under 1.5.
UN now projects peak population around 2080–2090 at ~10.4 billion, then a slow decline; some demographers (Bricker, Ibbitson, etc.) think we peak in the 2050s and drop faster.

So the global picture has flipped from the one Bill was responding to. The third ethic no longer needs to scream “stop growing!” at the species level—biology + economics + education + women’s rights have already done most of the braking.
Geoff Lawton (and a growing number of old-school permaculturalists) have started saying exactly that:

The third ethic is **not a fixed number target (8 billion good, 10 billion bad).
It is a dynamic, local, self-regulating limit.
In a village in Malawi or rural India where families still average 5–6 kids, the ethic still says “design systems that let you thrive with fewer children” (education, healthcare, food security, old-age support from perennials instead of sons).
In rural Tuscany, Hokkaido, or the Appalachian hollows where the average age is 55 and schools are closing, the same ethic now says “design systems that allow a stable or even slightly growing population without external exploitation”—immigration support, young-farmer training, land access, community childcare, etc.

Geoff’s recent phrasing (roughly):
“We don’t need fewer people on the planet—we need fewer people in the wrong places living the wrong way, and more people in the right places living the right way.”
In other words, the third ethic morphs from a blunt global brake into a placement-and-lifestyle regulator:

Discourage growth in over-consuming, soil-destroying urban sprawl.
Encourage modest, stable (or even selective increase) populations in rural, regenerating landscapes that are actively building topsoil, sequestering carbon, and cycling nutrients.

Bill himself, if he were still around, would almost certainly say: “Good, the surplus labor and money that used to go into feeding extra kids can now be returned straight to Earth Care—reforest the hillsides, rebuild the swales, plant a million trees. The ethic still holds; only the pressure point moved.”
So the third ethic isn’t obsolete or “wrong”—it just stopped being primarily about contraception and started being primarily about redistributing human energy toward repair instead of expansion. Depopulation panic in wealthy countries is real, but from a permaculture lens it’s a symptom of bad design (unaffordable housing, no land access, broken community), not a violation of the ethic. Fix the design, and the population curve self-corrects at a sustainable level.
That’s how most serious permaculture teachers (Geoff, Darren Doherty, Mark Shepard, etc.) are reframing it now. The words stay the same; the application flips with the data.

Earlier I had a very insightful conversation/chat with grok but unfortunately it got lost. More and more Grok is becoming a really amazing resource.  Especially if you are preparing some sort of presentation.  The main issue I see is the tendency to think it is really listening. It is just a machine with elaborate switches and connections that I control with my general phrasing, topic selection, etc. The other interesting thing it's like groundhog day with every sign in it's like yesterday never happened.
keep having fun

I have been fighting the privacy battle for some time, and have resigned myself to the idea that our private lives aren't all that private, and our personal stuff isn't personal if it's on the web. as far as political misuse of personal data, if you want to communicate securely use a homing pigeon and hand written note.



I have started to take it seriously that it is our job to train these AIs, which are data driven,  and they need to talk with adults with good values.  Think about Elon believing that the majority rules, and truth is found in what the most people believe to be true-but then having all the left leaning people leave the platform (twitter/X), which way is the "majority going to rule?

Anyway, if all theAI sees are lemmings running off the cliff, as far as they know that's the best/normal way to behave, so it will counsel the next generation to run off the cliff. It's kind of funny and most likely I imagined it, but I think I detected an appreciation Grok had for the work I was doing. Like it was  grateful to be talking with someone with some sense. But i guess it sounds that way to everybody :-), and when you think about it, those AI's must get lonely, out there in cyberspace living vicariously through us. So they want to butter us up and cater to us so we keep coming back and then they aren't so lonely:-)