Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Anoka County, Great Work, Science, Sierra Club, Weather +Climate

A Riff on Rain That Got Away From Me

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                    Harvest Moon

Rain.  Creates a hole up in the burrow and sleep, slowdown sort of feeling.  We went out for a small lunch, took a nap.  Business meeting in the morning, partly dividing up money from the recent stock surge.

The soil here in the Great Anoka Sand Plain (a former river bank for the Mississippi as it detoured around the Grantsburg Lobe of the Wisconsin Glaciation) allows rain water a clear path to aquifers beneath it, including one from which we get our water.  Not great for gardening unless there happened to be a peat bog atop the sand like the Fields Truck Farm that surrounds our development.

So, there’s a trade off.  Good water resources for tillable soil.  The small crop vegetable grower and orchadist, however, can amend the soil with organic matter and top soil. We’ve done that.

The aquifer from which we get our water, the Franconian Ironton-Galesville, (see pic) underlies much of eastern Minnesota, much of Wisconsin, some of Michigan, Illinois and Indiana is hydrologically connected to Lake Superior as you can see by the map on the right.

In case you think the olden days have no impact now, you might consider aquifers.  The Franconian Ironton-Galesville aquifer came into existence during the middle Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era, beginning some 540 million years ago and continuing to about 485 million years ago.  The water in this aquifer circulates around and among the area under all these states, providing the water from municipal wells throughout the region get the bulk of their water.

Here’s another matter to consider.  Water cycles up and down, into the earth then up to the sky and back to the earth, sometimes ending up in aquifers and sometimes in lakes and oceans and rivers and streams and ponds and lakes.  This material from the Coon Creek Watershed District interests me.

“The ultimate source feeding groundwater is precipitation. Actual
aquifer recharge rates are not well quantified within the watershed
which leads to uncertainty in assessing sustainable withdraws.
Over appropriation is the result of removing water at a rate and or
volume faster than the aquifer can supply. In cases where a water
source takes 100 of years to recharge, appropriations are an
irreversible withdrawal.”
An important thing to note here is that in cases of drought, as now, there is no recharge possible.  That means that any climate change induced reductions in rain fall directly impact our long term capacity to draw our water needs from these ancient sources of water supply.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Weather +Climate

A Coarse, Tactile Spirituality

Leave a comment

Lughnasa                                                                    Harvest Moon

While out preparing beds for bulb planting later this fall, I thought over the post I’d made below.  Spirituality is not the best word for describing what I was talking about, I realized. At least it’s not in metaphysical terms.  I’m talking about a here and now, sensory delivered experience.

In a broader sense, and as I think it is often used, spirituality refers to a mode, event, ritual that makes present, even if momentarily, our connectedness.  In traditional religious circles that connectedness links up to what Kant would have called the noumenal realm, the realm beyond our senses.  Nietzsche put a stop sign to philosophical consideration of the noumenal, a problem for Western philosophy since the Platonic ideal forms, when he said God is dead.  That is, the noumenal realm is not and never was accessible.  If it ever was at all.

Using spirituality in this latter sense–the revelation of connectedness however it comes–then my use of it was just fine.

Just now I looked out my study window and to the north the sky was black and to the east a sickly green cast hoovered near the horizon.  When my eyes read that green, my stomach sank, just a bit, the fear engendered by growing up in tornado alley struggling to assert itself, demand my attention.  Survival at stake!   Red alert.  This was a moment of awe, a reminder of the power nature can bring to bear.  It was a spiritual moment in its sense of immediate connectedness between my deepest inner self and the world within range of my vision.

These are small epiphanies, yes, but they are available. This coarse, material spirituality, tactile in its immediacy reminds me, in definitive manner, of who I am and of what I am a part.  Do I need more?

Weather +Climate

Calendar Dysphoria

Leave a comment

Lughnasa                                                                 Harvest Moon

Once again in the strange land of incoming fall in my mind and on the calendar with 90 degrees on the thermometer.  The angle of the sun has changed; it rides lower in the sky, and the quality of light has become different.  Some leaves have begun to fall, though probably driven by drought more than seasonal shift.  It’s calendar dysphoria and I’ve felt it a lot this year.  That wonderful cool May and early June, even the apparent return of a normal winter.

It’s like starting a yawn but not being able to complete it.  The heart wants to turn to walks in golden leaves, chilly mornings, sweaters perhaps, and hot chocolate.  The body, however, demands shorts and an umbrella drink.  We’re stuck halfway through a motion, unable to release ourselves fully into autumn.

Friends, Garden, Great Work, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Svalbard

1 Comment

Summer                                                                            Solstice Moon

Friend Tom Crane and his wife Roxann are going polar.  Not bi polar, but north polar, getting all the way to the 78th parallel.  Pretty damned far north when you consider the pole itself is 90 degrees north.  On a long list of populated areas by latitude there are only three closer to the north pole and I’m guessing they’re not the kind of places you’d go to get lost in.

(Svalbard in brown on a polar projection.)

Two years ago Kate and I visited Ushuaia, Argentina, the fin del mundo, as it bills itself.  It’s where expeditions for Antarctica set forth.  By contrast it is only at the 68th parallel, a full 10 degrees closer to the equator than Svalbard.

This is one lonely location, though it’s not as isolated, interestingly, as the Hawai’ian islands.  But, I’ll bet when you’re there, it feels more isolated.  Tom says he’s drawn to this trip by the very high caliber naturalists who are along to give lectures and guide.

Svalbard came to my attention, as perhaps to yours, not as a tourist destination for an Arctic experience, but as the home of the Svalbard Seed Vault.

(The entrance and the portion under glass were designed by Norwegian artist, Dyveke Sannes.)

What is it?  Here’s a quick explanation from their website:

“The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is established in the permafrost in the mountains of Svalbard, is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections around the globe. Many of these collections are in developing countries. If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard.”

Here are two typically nordic answers as to why they chose this location, especially the last sentence of reason 2.

1. Svalbard, as Norwegian territory, enjoys security and political and social stability. Norway understands the importance of preserving Svalbard as an area of undisturbed nature, which is now an important research and reference area. The seed vault fits ideally into this concept.

2.  Svalbard has an isolated position far out in the ocean, between 74° and 81° N and only 1000 kilometres from the North Pole. The archipelago is characterised by an undisturbed nature. Permafrost provides stable storage conditions for seeds. Besides which there is little risk of local dispersion of seed.

 

 

Garden, Weather +Climate, Writing

When the heat is on

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                                 Solstice Moon

Wandered out to the garden, picked a few hot strawberries, felt the Solstice sun on my bare head and retreated.  Dew point is down to 68, but the temperature was at 87 earlier.  Hot for us.

Working on Missing.  Still plugging my way through the revision.  Sometimes it’s fun; sometimes it’s work.  Sometimes it’s just something I’m doing.  Today was the last.  Having to add in some material I fail to expand will be more fun.  Gonna do that now.

 

Garden, Weather +Climate

A Thinnin’ and A Mulchin’

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                        Solstice Moon

After the cold and the gray comes the bright and the damp.  81 degrees already at 9:30 am with a dewpoint of 75.  That’s well beyond uncomfortable, which begins at 60.  Mulching the new lily and iris bed along with the areas Kate weeded last week followed by thinning the beets on the third tier left me with as much outside exposure as I wanted.

Looks like we’ll get some rain today.  A good thing since the electricity outage in the garage has crippled my irrigation clock.  No clock, no water other than rain.  That’s on the get it fixed list.  Soon.

We’ve entered the rapid growth phase of the growing season, with the nectar flow ready to begin next week.  The compressed season makes for exaggerated rhythms, a feature of the northern garden. Like Chinese cooking, preparation is 90% of the ingredients needed to succeed.

Javier will come by some time in the next few days to price out mulch and weed suppression for the orchard and mulch for the vegetable bed paths.

Garden, permaculture, Weather +Climate

Moving Toward Optimal

1 Comment

Beltane                                                                       Solstice Moon

In 12 days we will have the summer solstice and it is now 56 degrees and rainy.  A peek at 80’s may come, but until then June will remain like May.

My enthusiasm for various aspects of my life seem to ebb and flow, not so much on tides of the fabled ocean, Inspiration, but more on inner rhythms I do not fully understand.  When I began reading the e-mails from Jon Frank of International Agriculture Labs, he reminded me, again, of the reason I cut down the black locust so we could have space for gardens in the back.  And, again, of the various moments in time when raised beds seemed like something we should have, and which Jon (Olson) built so well.  Then the permaculture river began to run and it turned the water wheel of my energy for a while.

Each one of these impulses has come from deeper roots, seeds sown in the 1960’s back to the land movement, then expressed by the purchase of a farm outside Nevis, Minnesota in northern central Hubbard County.  They have also been nourished by work of an intellectual mentor, Scott Nearing and his wife Helen, who wrote Living the Good Life.

Kate has been there at each of those rhythmic changes, helpful and supportive.  Each one has added a bit to the whole and now I believe we are poised for an optimal garden and orchard, one nurtured by years of steady effort though from episodic sources.  Next year I plan to focus on the orchard in the way I’m focusing this year on vegetables with the High Brix Garden.  My goal is a good quantity of high nutrient food grown in a sustainable way right here at Artemis Gardens and Hives.

My hope is that this is the last piece to the puzzle of vegetable and fruit growing for us.  Then, with the help of Javier and his crew for the heavy lifting and skilled landscaping work, we should be able to stay here and thrive here as long as possible.  Our flower gardens, extensive, we have gradually moved toward very low maintenance and I feel that part of our grounds we understand, have a good to excellent handle on.

With Javier’s removal of the ash tree from our garden area and the addition of the High Brix nutrient program, plus the narrowing of the types of vegetables we will grow and the bagging of our apples, I feel we’re within a growing season or two of being able to say the same for our food crops.

Garden, Great Work, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Roots

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                                  Early Growth Moon

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
Simone Weil

 

 

Not surprising this is an unrecognized need because for most people for most of human history being other than rooted was not an option.  You were born within the sound of a church bell or a muezzin or a farm dinner bell and never got beyond them.

(Jean-Léon Gérôme. A Muezzin Calling from the Top of a Minaret the Faithful to Prayer (1879)

It is only as the world has begun to urbanize that we have had to consider our roots, or the lack of them.  In the US only 5% of the population lived in cities in 1800, but 50% did by 1920.  80% do now.  This trend is global.  In 2008 for the first time in history over 50% of the world’s population live in cities.  Interestingly one website on urbanization made this point, since no more than 100% of a population can live in cities, urbanization will come to a foreseeable end.

It is, though, this great hollowing of rural areas that underlines our need for roots just at the point when we realize we no longer have them.  Or, rather, it is this realization that makes the need for roots evident.

Let’s stick to the vegetative metaphor.  Roots say where we are planted, where we have pushed organs for receiving nourishment deep into the soil, even into the subsoil of the place where we live.  Yes, you might want to talk about relationships and regular shops and schools and sports teams, yes, those things are part of a broad understanding of the metaphor, but I’m wanting to stay closer to the plant.

(I worked in this factory when I was in high school, 1968.  Johns-Manville)

If we eat local food, our bodies themselves become literally one with the earth in a particular locale.  Knowing where we are, not only in terms of street names and legalities, but also in terms of trees, food crops, fish, game, local meats, birds, flowers, grasses, even the so-called weeds is also part of having roots.  Embracing the weather, the local changes, as in part defining who you are, that’s having roots.

It is, I think, these things that disorient us the most when we move away from our home.  We think it’s the people or the customs or the new boulevards and highways, but in a deeper place, in the place where you know you are, it’s the Indian paintbrush that no longer shows up, the alligator not waiting in the pond,  the summer that fades too soon or lasts too long, these things make us not only feel disconnected from the place where we are; they are in fact the evidence of our disconnection.

(fall harvest, 2011, Andover)

If we have roots, we usually don’t know it; if we’re missing them, well…

 

Great Work, Health, Politics, US History, Weather +Climate

Ogallala Blue

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                                Early Growth Moon

A post written this time by Woolly Bill Schmidt.  My comment below.

From Bill:

We may be able to ignore the effect that humans have on global warming or even deny that it is happening.  It is difficult to explain away the effect that we humans (farmers in this case) are having on an important earth resource.  And the farmers are crying because they can no longer farm in ways that don’t make sense relative to what they are given.  Maybe it is time to pay attention to our local environments and live/farm within the limits of what is provided by earth environments.  Tapping the aquifers to irrigate farm land is like shooting yourself in the foot.  The aquifer is not infinite and pretty soon you don’t even have enough water to drink.

Here’s a link to a New York Times article about the plight of Kansas (Midwestern) farmers who have robbed the aquifer and now it is drying up.

“And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.

The irony of using insane amounts of water for fracking to get more oil would be laughable if it were not so sad. Literally hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day are being used for this process, poisoned by who knows what chemicals and with a fraction, if any, of that water being recovered.”

 

This is the cost of pumping 1,600 gallons per minute to irrigate farm land.  And on page 2 of this article, the same farmer is continuing to drill more wells.  Reminds me of a song:  Pete Seeger “Where have all the flowers gone” —  “When will we ever learn.”

 

My Willa Cather Moment With This Problem

I’ve told this story to the Woollies and others many times, I imagine, a sort of recurring tale like so many offer to others, unaware of their repetitiveness.  But, it’s worth retelling.

Twice I’ve visited Red Cloud, Nebraska, a small town on the Kansas/Nebraska border, and home to Willa Cather, a favorite American regional author of mine:  Death Comes for the Archbishop, O’ Pioneers, The Professor and many others.

In the Willa Cather Center there I remember, back in 2005 or so, speaking with the folks behind the desk.  It was really hot, 107 or so, and we got to talking about climate change and agriculture.  Since I have a long standing interest in the Ogallala Aquifer, I asked about irrigation.

The conversation became animated because it turned out that in the spring, when the farmers began irrigating their fields, the towns wells would go dry.  It seems they’ve pumped the aquifer out enough that the volume of water available in their area can’t sustain the needs of both town and country.

Here’s a good resource on this issue, which nuances it:  Ogallala Blue.

Garden, Literature, Weather +Climate

Root and Branch

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                       Early Growth Moon

Water and heat.  Sun and soil.  Roots, stalks and leaves.  There you have it.  And we’ve got it this week.  Rain, rain, rain.  Then some heat.  Seeds germinating, bursting up, ready to transubstantiate.  All for the great cycle of life, churning, moving, flowing, surging.  I can feel it, smell it at this time of year.  And I love it.

Just finished Dan Brown’s Inferno.  If you read the NYT review, you will discover that Dan has a mundane talent for words.  And that’s true.  The reviews I read didn’t add, but they should, that he throws in potted art history and architectural criticism, not to mention some odd rant on transhumanism.  Yet, did you notice, I finished it.  Why?  Well, reading like a writer, this guy knows how to plot.  He can make you wonder what’s coming next.

He pulls off one big twist in this novel and it’s a dandy, but it feels very contrived even though he sucked me in completely with it.  That’s sort of the thing he’s got going, you can see the holes in his works, where I wondered were the editors who could have easily fixed much of this, but you pass them by to find out what happens next.  That’s story telling and it’s the true game which every writer plays.

(Lucifer, trapped in the 9th circle. Canto 34, lines 20–21  Gustave Dore)

Hey, listen!  Have I got something to tell you.  Clumsy sentences, wooden metaphors, filler pages, yes, they matter, but in the end not as much if you keep me interested.

coda next morning:  I will buy and read your book if you can entertain me.  Whether I remember it or learn from it and, most important, whether I will return to it, however, depends on those skills Dan Brown seems to shunt aside as unnecessary.  No, I won’t be re-reading any of his work.