So I set out thirty two days ago, took ten days to make the transit from Iowa to Massachusetts, and I’ve been here the last three weeks, chasing goats, feeding sheep, cutting wood, and generally getting acquainted with hilltown country.

   One of the things I have not talked about is the fact that I’m representing a small group of investors, primarily Kossacks, and that we’ve just finished a first round private placement for farmerchuck’s boiler business ...

   It is an old saying but still quite true: Leaders are readers. When farmerchuck first noticed my writings here on DailyKos that was nothing so special, as quite a few have done so, but what got my attention was this:

  I started getting emails asking for clarification in some areas and suggesting expansions in others.

  There are quite a few very bright, motivated people who’ve accumulated around the Stranded Wind Initiative, but Chuck is the only one that challenges my thinking in this fashion; this was one of the primary drivers in my coming out here. I always look at people’s bookshelves when I visit and in this case it’s gone a little deeper, as we’ve traded the tomes we each find most instructive regarding our current dilemma.

I’ve mentioned this here and there and it isn’t a great big secret; I’m mildly autistic. If you’ve seen Rain Man ... well., that’s not much help. Kim Peek, the real life inspiration for Raymond, is a savant, but he isn’t autistic.

  Better representations of what it means to be on the autistic spectrum might be Vernon L. Smith, economics Nobel prize winner, Satoshi Tajiri, the creator the Pokémon, or Temple Grandin, a Colorado State University professor who has authored a number of books on being autistic and coping with life in a world full of people who are "neurotypical".

    I feel compelled to write about this mostly because of the discrimination issues we face and the fact that we, who are already "outsiders" in so many ways, may be best equipped to deal with the rapid disintegration we're facing due to the mortgage scam unwinding.

   One of the more entertaining activities here at No Snivilin’ Farm is quelling goat riots. Goats are, well, they’re like progressives. If they see a little gap between the fence and the gate with something they want on the other side look out, ‘cause you’ll get mowed down if you’re in the way. They’re much more clever than the sheeple, who are my usual charges in the evening, and rather than moving in one mass some will engage in doing the fence a disservice, while others go prancing off to distract the dogs, and a third group will focus on the prize, say grain intended for baby goats or the donkeys.

  It all happened this evening, as they say, when farmerterri was feeding the young goats outside so farmerchuck could clean their pen ...

  I had a nice talk with the 9/11 widow the other day, she happened to be going out of town, and was in need of someone to entertain the livestock while she was gone. Lately I’ve been reading Ran Prieur and I jumped at the chance to imitate his house sitting lifestyle, even if only for a day.

  I did a bit more than sit; farmerchuck has been teaching me a bit about boilers and such, so I did the investigatory work required to determine what should be done with the heating plant for this house.

 I got out over the weekend and scooted up to see fellow Kossack mataliandy in northern Vermont. She and her husband are both, well, they’re city kids, and they just picked up and moved to the wilds of Vermont to build a solar powered straw bale house.

 They’ve got some cool plans, but they’re short on equipment and her shoulder joins the pantheon of farmerchuck’s Lyme disease and my poor discombobulated insides – health troubles that get in the way of getting stuff done. I had a quick look around and I think we’ve got a plan for next weekend or the weekend after that’ll get a portion of their troubles resolved ...

    I’ve made a friend here and she plays with the Windham Orchestra. They had a show in Saxtons River and I went to listen.

    The town itself is an intense visual treat and I’ve picked out a few of the better bits for your viewing pleasure.

 
  The breeze blew up out of the southwest and Friday I found myself on the road towards Vermont. I was going to see a friend play in a concert at the Vermont Academy in Saxtons River, then on to visit Kossack mataliandy but I had some time to kill before the show and I’d been wanting to see Brattleboro, of which I’d heard a great deal.

   The city itself is quite beautiful, full of old buildings and nestled in the middle of a valley full of mature forest, but on the street I happened to meet a proper rucksack wanderer, in a fashion that Kerouac himself would have recognized. We had a nice chat and a nice stroll about the city during which he shared his fascinating, and at times harrowing story.

 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.