I went into town today to satisfy my craving for the Foxtown Coffee Shop’s French fries. When I got there I couldn’t go in without stopping to talk to the two older gentlemen who were obviously taking a break from their scooter trip.

 Dick, age 72, and Mick, age 80, proved, after just a little prompting, to have a fountain of funny stories between them about life during the Great Depression.

   Once upon a time I was what could be called "well off". I’d been married five years, we were both educated, employed, both had consulting interests, and our income was making its way towards that double century mark. We lived in the runt of the litter in a 1950s era subdivision, a home costing what we made in eight months, but two blocks from a very nice golf course and surrounded by refurbishment projects that would sell for four to six times our home’s value when completed.

  2001 - 2002 was an utter disaster. Our new daughter was a joy but in retrospect the signs of my ex’s slide into a sort of mental illness for which there is no cure and little remediation was already underway. 9/11 took out the voice carrier where I worked. I lost control of a business I’d funded with my profits from the dotcom bust, and my ex lost her executive position at the state university due to her condition.

 There wasn’t a phrase for it then but very soon now a great many unsuspecting Americans are going to be joining those of us in the ranks of the Formerly Well Off.

 Farmers get health care via a variety of means, depending upon their means and quite often their spouse's employment. Itinerant farmhands dreaming of rearranging the world have even fewer options.

 I've felt pretty darned good these last few weeks, until I took a little tumble yesterday. Being inside has given me time to ponder the national shame that is our current health insurance system.

  Anyone who has the ability to have an account on DailyKos has a great many energyslaves at his or her disposal. Seriously, go take a look around your dwelling (you’re not DKosing at work, are you?). A vehicle of some sort, a furnace, an air conditioner, a hot water heater, an stove with oven, lights, entertainment equipment, a computer ... starting to get the picture? I became peak oil aware almost a year ago and since then I’ve been mindful of what powers the various devices I use and I’ve made it a point to go into the great outdoors with as little as possible on me, staying a day at a time or more to get back in touch with what it means to live in a world made by hand.

I’ve been doing an extended, lower impact version of this in my time here at farmerchuck’s Revoluntionary War era farmhouse, where many of the modern conveniences simply aren’t present. We’ve been having a good bit of trouble both on the behavior front as well as the fuel supply front so I thought I’d delve into this area from the perspective of a rural smallholding.

   Working as a farm hand here on what could pass for Brokeback Mountain I figured it was incumbent upon me to do the full cowboy thing, going to town on Saturday to (D)rink (U)p (M)y (P)ay.

    Being past forty and Buddhist this looks a bit different than you might imagine.

   The Stranded Wind Initiative was formed to design, fund, and implement projects that can use renewable resources that are currently "stranded", or located in places where there aren’t enough people to use them and no way to get them out. Here in the U.S. that means primarily wind and we’ve got a good bit of sun, too, but as I’m traveling about New England what I see over and over is hydropower resources right next to towns that desperately need jobs.

 I’ve got a couple of associates with very big ideas on what to do to get us out of this iron triangle of energy, economy, and environmental problems. The rivers and falls of Massachusetts hill town country provide a nice backdrop for a discussion of such things ... but I wonder if people will allow it to happen in a timely fashion.

 Farmerchuck’s land rises about 750’ in the three quarters of a mile from the Deerfield River to the ridge line that defines the back of the property. That’s a 19% grade for those interest in such things ...

 Part of what I’m doing here on the farm is fixing fence, prepping the field for a grain crop of some sort, and water dominates both of these processes. I’ve been doing a bit of stream herding the last few weeks and I thought I’d share the imagery.

     You get dirty working on a farm and the laundry facilities around here are Wash and Wire in Shelburne Falls. I struck up a conversation with Jessica M., the owner of the facility, and quickly learned that propane charges were eating her alive – unto the point she might have to close the doors.

     We at the Stranded Wind Initiative usually work on industrial scale stuff, but this is the laundry facility for the town and it’s where farmerchuck and farmerterri come to do their laundry, too, as well as being a local business which we very much want to protect and preserve. I also wanted to learn more about what Chuck does with boilers and so forth, so I called him in to look the problem over.

    Farmerchuck’s hilltop farm sports Saanen goats, Icelandic sheep, guinea fowl, and a mix of all sorts of chickens. These animals produce meat, milk, eggs, and wool. Mixed in with these obvious agricultural creatures are a few oddities, but they, too, serve their purpose.

    Let’s take a closer look at farmerchuck’s resident hit squad: Phil, Gracie, Ursula, Sydney, and the rooster platoon.

Just hanging with farmerchuck and AnotherMassachusettsLiberal tonight - this video is just too funny to keep to myself.

       The foundation of farmerchuck’s house was laid down in 1760, eight years after my ancestors first stepped of the boat. The first resident lived in the basement for thirty years, constructing a sawmill after that, then a barn, then finally the house proper, which was completed in 1790. No record exists as to the length of time required for the build but it was certainly more than a year.

      Their lifestyle here is such that, with a little bit of training on various small advances, a person from two hundred years ago could easily drop right in and begin working for them, just as I did a few days ago. Let’s have a look around the place ...

  And I’m OK. Oh, no, I’m not kidding – off to the forest we went this morning, chainsaws in hand, and I’ve returned with all of my fingers, no missing skin anywhere, and a nice little collection of photos.

  Our objectives were twofold: the clearing of a portion of the forest for a goat pasture, and the separation of felled trees into firewood and those bound for the sawmill. The juvenile goats’ normal quarters collapsed last year with ninety one of them inside it and providing the second set of hands required to rebuild this is a big part of why I’m here.

    This whole trip has been great fun so far – roaming the country, getting a little work done here and there, pursuing my quest, meeting others who are on the road,  and in general doing no harm except for these damnable carbon dioxide emissions that come whenever I drive. I keep telling myself it’s all for a good purpose – if I can help move Alan Drake’s rail electrification plans forward in some small part by my traveling and writing as I go we’ll count it a success, despite the CO2 emissions.

      If you’ve been following this series you already know how much I like being outside and this time we’re in for a special treat; far too many years have passed since I last visited this particular bit of wilderness ...

As I travel around the country talking to folks and working a bit here and there what I’m finding is that the powder we’re supposedly keeping dry, well, it ought to have been expended long, long ago. Things are tough and it isn’t just my life; everywhere I turn I see folks with worse troubles than what I have.

  I got into a nice conversation regarding these issues much earlier this week and I've only now found the time to translate and write it up in a sensible fashion.

  I would hate for you guys to think I’m a total screw off. Sure we’ve had a good time exploring Pennsylvania, checking out the forest, and talking about life on the road, but I’m on a serious mission here.

  This entire trip is a quest, and I mean quest with a capital Q; I find myself the leader of a ragged band of visionaries engaged in a grim rear guard action, attempting to free the United States from its oil dependency before the time and fossil fuels required to achieve this are gone.

  Everyone has at least some sort of secret. I have quite a few, but one I share on a regular basis often draws shocked responses: I pick up hitch hikers. Oh, not just the occasional hiker, I’ve stopped for every single one I’ve ever seen and I estimate that this amounts to three hundred or more in the twenty five years I’ve been driving.

  My run from Iowa to Pennsylvania was astonishingly free of roadside travelers, but then I settled into the Gettysburg area and met two men by the side of the road, neither of which was particularly sparkling, and thusly I’ll dig out a few anecdotes from years gone by to illustrate the fundamental joys these casual encounters bring.

  When we last set aside this journey I’d made it to Michaux State Forest, just west of Gettysburg, after having escaped the evils of the Pennsylvania Transitcondom, formally known as the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I’d drove, hiked, scrambled, and finally ensconced myself in my hammock a good quarter mile from any place another human might appear.

  Continuing that line of thinking I spent Saturday night and Sunday morning loose in the moonlit forest, reading, writing, hiking, and meditating.

   Friday I slept late, worked a good bit during the day, and then turned east around sundown. Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio all look the same in the rain at night, and I was ready to be free of vowel states. I  finally escaped when I passed into the sliver of West Virgina that separates Ohio and Pennsylvania with the gray predrawn light coming. I felt good so I kept at it for a while, then finally scored a nice parking spot between two large pieces of logging equipment near some nameless interstate ramp.

   Kossack farmerchuck rudely interrupted my back seat nap with a 6:30 AM Central time wakeup call, inquiring as to my location and disposition: Was I coming? If so, how far had I traveled? A bit of small talk ensued, cut short by my limited remaining minutes, and then it was back on the road.

  Thusly disturbed I began moving again and it wasn’t long after this that I discovered what the state of Pennsylvania calls a turnpike, but for me it will forever be the transitcondom.