A LOOK OUTSIDE THE BACKYARD
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler. With much on peak oil, alternative fuels, and building sustainable communities.
“It’s no secret that game wardens wield exceptional authority, but what happens when they abuse their power and use it to trample gun owners’ 4A rights? One such instance recently occurred with game wardens violating a gun owner’s 4A rights on their own property. Armed Attorneys Emily Taylor and Richard Hayes discuss the incident and why it should be taken all the way to the Supreme Court for 4A right violations”. – The Armed Attorneys
Challenging economic times call for ever more creative survival strategies. Food costs have exploded across the land, forcing families to squeeze every last penny from their rapidly devaluing dollars. Housing costs are another matter altogether and a home mortgage can be a terrible burden to bear. Just ask anyone who has lost their home through random hardship or the disappearing job. At times it seems a most unsolvable puzzle.
A man named MC (“Radiator Charlie”) Byles of West Virginia had a solution to these type of problems in the early 1940’s. In this case his answer was large and red and proud, and particularly delicious on a slab of steaming homemade bread with salt and mayonnaise.
A homespun gardener and inveterate tinkerer, he wanted to build a better, and bigger tomato. And build it he did. After several years of propagation his tomato plants could produce, mild, meaty, and delicious fruit of immense proportions. People flocked to his door for a look at a 3 pound tomato, and he was happy to accommodate them. Never one to miss an opportunity, he sold his seedling plants for $1 each and paid off his $6,000 home mortgage in a few short years. He named his new creation “the mortgage lifter”, and a backyard gardening legend was born.
That legend lives on today, and for good reason. Imagine paying off your property with the fruits of your backyard labor. Think about what life would be like without a house payment, or a weekly grocery bill large enough to choke a horse. It’s an inspiring and encouraging idea. It gives me hope. It can be done. Marshall Cletis Byles would tell you so, if he could.
I tip my gardening hat to him, and to the unbounded energies of his creativity. I’d say it’s time for many of us to take another look at his game changing idea. Perhaps it’s possible to follow his example and do our very best to lift the grinding weight of the mortgage from our backs. It may be an overly ambitious or unrealistic plan, but like him, I must try.
There are many ways to get there, and perhaps you have already begun or are well on your way. Our version of the “grocery lifter” comes in the form of rabbits and squab. Others beat back their bills with a small flock of geese, which possess the marvelous ability to efficiently convert grass to many pounds of tasty meat. The addition of a few pigs can provide miraculous results for your larder, particularly if you are a fan of pork and pig fat. Pigs, like tomatoes, have often been referred to as mortgage lifters. My neighbor has added a couple of steers to his small pasture and plans to keep one for the freezer and sell the other to cover his costs.
You may have an entirely different idea, but the intention is the same. I think it can be any animal or plant that works for you and fits your particular set of circumstances or comfort level. The important thing is that we all do a little to help ourselves and contribute to a more self-sufficient life. Every bit of food we can produce at home takes power form the corporate controlled food model. It gives us a reason to get up in the morning and keeps us grounded in the small satisfaction of a job well done.
So let’s hear it for the backyard gardener, the keeper of hens, the canner, and the prepper. Give thanks to the independent farmers and agricultural workers everywhere. Let’s revel in the joys of animal husbandry, fish farming, or beekeeping. Put a little bit of the farm and the old-fashioned barnyard back in your everyday life. You won’t regret it.
We can do it. We are doing it. Let’s decentralize, and unplug from the controlling grid. We must put our heads together, and our families and communities will follow. Let’s keep our friends close, and our enemies at bay. It’s the mortgage lifter revolution, because the very definition of mortgage is death and we must throw off the chains of that grim and unforgiving reaper of sorrows.
The spirit of MC Byles, like his seeds and giant heirloom tomatoes, live on. It can be seen in the successes of backyard entrepreneurs across the continents. Sometimes the path to independence and the bounty of a joyful life starts with a simple seed, planted in the welcoming and living earth of a backyard garden.
Long live the mortgage lifters and the backyard heroes, and the unlimited promise of a new day!
———-Do you have a backyard hero? Tell us your story…
“There’s nothin’ in the world that I like better than
Bacon, lettuce and home grown tomatoes
Up in the morning and out in the garden
Pick you a ripe one, don’t get a hard ‘un
Plant ’em in the springtime eat ’em in the summer
All winter without ’em’s a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin’ and the diggin’
Every time I go out and pick me a big’un
Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes
What’d life be without home grown tomatoes
There’s only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love and home grown tomatoes
You can go out and eat ’em, that’s for sure
But there’s nothin’ a home grown tomato won’t cure
You can put ’em in a salad, put ’em in a stew
You can make your own, very own tomato juice
You can eat ’em with eggs, you can eat ’em with gravy
You can eat ’em with beans, pinto or navy
Put em on the side, put em on the middle
Home grown tomatoes on a hot cake griddle
If I could change this life I lead
You could call me Johnny Tomato Seed
I know what this country needs
It’s home grown tomatoes in every yard you see
When I die don’t bury me
In a box in a cold dark cemetery
Out in the garden would be much better
Where I could be pushin’ up home grown tomatoes”
From “Home Grown Tomato”, By Guy Clark, Sugar Hill Records, 1997.
Today I ate a homegrown cherry tomato, and I liked it. It was perfectly ripe, bursting with flavor, and it did not travel 1000 miles or more to get to my mouth. In fact, I picked it from my sun room, just a few steps from where I write this.
I ate it because it was good, and I could.
To eat it supports a system in which I believe, one that is right in so many ways. It is a local transaction, of that there is no doubt. More than that, it is a conscious and personal act. I tended and nurtured that small plant, and I studied it’s growing fruit with hope and anticipation.
To eat a tomato from the supermarket more than likely supports a system that I do not believe in. That tomato depends on chemicals, the corporate model, and long distance transport, steeped in diesel. It rarely tastes like a tomato either.
Thus, I so protest. I pop it into my mouth and I eat my cherry tomato which was just a second ago still attached to the vine. It is an inconsequential act, I suppose, but it still holds power. It makes me feel better. It may not change the world in any significant way this day, but it did change my world, and for the moment, that is enough.
On an early morning in mid-March 2013, a middle-aged man of character and fair standing in his community, free from warrant or criminal history, walked into his local Walmart store in Western Colorado and attempted to purchase a resident fishing license at the sporting goods counter. His honest and best efforts were categorically denied, with prejudice. In case of criminal liability you can also seek the help of criminal justice lawyers practicing in Mesa to sort out any kind of criminal issues.
It just so happens that I have direct knowledge of this unfortunate yet otherwise insignificant event, and I can attest to the fact that the man was deeply disturbed by such a troubling outcome.
He was told that said purchase was denied because he failed to present upon demand the necessary documentation needed to prove his state residency beyond any shadow of doubt, and the proceedings stopped right there. This determination came as a great surprise, as the man had purchased a Colorado resident hunting or fishing license of one kind or another each and every year since escaping the all too restrictive confines of the east coast in 1976.
I can assure you that the refusal of service and accommodation by the vendor was taken quite seriously by said confused citizen, and the deal did not go down without discussion and argument. It did not help this agitated individual to know that he would soon miss his carpool connection, and that he would have to drive a second vehicle by himself for two hours as a result. He would undoubtedly miss the early bite too.
For him it was no small matter, and it left him shaken and angry beyond simple proportion. Of that I am quite certain, and as you may have guessed by now, I possess such first hand and intimate knowledge of it all because it happened to me. I can tell you what I know.
My issues began when I attempted to purchase an annual fishing license at another agent one week earlier and suddenly realized that I had never purchased a fishing license in 2012. I would have known about this change in licensing if I had been following the blog of thecoastalside.com which provides all the latest updates and information on fishing, but I wasn’t.
This is no big deal of course, but I had forgotten that a few years ago the State of Colorado had adopted a “season year” fishing license, which was valid from April 1 to March 31. This is different than the more traditional “calendar year” license of old, which renews on January 1st of every year.
At that point I opted to buy a one day fishing license, because it did not make sense to pay full price for an annual license that would be valid for only three weeks.
I had no problem purchasing my one day fishing license, which is to be expected, because it is not supposed to be difficult to purchase a hunting or fishing license in Colorado.
After all, a complete representation of my personal information and recreational histories are already stored in the “central computer”, as the state developed a Total Licensing System years ago. It already knows my Driver’s License Number, my Social Security Number, my height and weight and eye color, my current and past addresses, and all of my license purchases throughout the years. Who knows what else it knows, and who it shares it with?
I just know that I was always told that the computerized system was designed to make everything more streamlined and carefree for us mere mortals of the public domains.
So why then, the problem, which is exactly what I wanted to know?
I had not planned to fish again until April 1st or after, so when my friends asked me to fish on short notice I decided to purchase an additional fishing day. The Walmart store was on my way.
I presented for inspections a current and valid Commercial Drivers License, which is not easy to acquire by the way, complete with photograph, background check using CRB Direct, and current medical clearances. In addition I also provided the one day fishing license that I had purchased the week before, my elk license from last fall, and a Colorado Hunter Safety card issued in 2006. I freely admit that I was not prepared for an interrogation, and that I did not carry a satchel full of identity papers to prove my validity.
I simply wanted to add an additional fishing day to a one day fishing license, and I was willing to pay. My driver’s license and photo ID confirmed my identity. My one week old fishing license provided evidence that I had supplied the necessary residency documentation at the time of that purchase. It should have been enough. In fact, it was more than enough to satisfy all legal requirements.
But it was not so in the vendor’s eyes. As it happens, my driver’s license had been reissued five months before, and listed only the reissue date. This seemed to cause insurmountable roadblocks. Colorado requires that you live in the state for at least six months to qualify for residency, and the sales clerk took one look at that…and stopped all proceedings. He flat-out refused to continue with all the conviction of a loyal and dedicated foot soldier.
I have some knowledge of the inner workings of the licensing system. I explained to him what I knew, and that all of my paperwork when added together was reason for him to attempt to issue a license. After all, the necessary information was readily accessible on the fully integrated licensing terminal hovering just outside his reach.
He simply refused, citing policy and procedure while staring intently at a handout sheet, and literally threw up his hands before heading for the back room to search for reinforcements.
A couple of clueless sales clerks, a department manager and one store manager later, I was resolutely denied service and emphatically asked to leave the premises. For the record, I must acknowledge that over the years I have been thrown out of places with much more inspiring views and tasteful decor. But that is a story for another time.
I just wanted to go ice fishing. I wanted to escape the data control grid for just a few hours and feel the fresh air on my face in a desire to remember why I moved to the west in the first place. I wanted to hook up with a primal and pulsating creature, drawn from the depths of another world held far beyond the grasp of the social engineers and the prying, electronic eyes and ears of a robotic spy drone. I wanted to pretend for a brief time that I was a free man in a free state doing what I do best and enjoy the most, without some lingering and disturbing aftertaste of heavy-handed experience hanging on my breath. Is that too much to ask?
What does one do when faced with such a circumstance?
Well, I chose to take the matter to a higher authority, and in this case that was the licensing division of Colorado Game, Fish, And Parks. I had no doubt that they would like to comment on the heart of the matter, and indeed they did. They were quite happy to provide some guidance in this regard.
Vendors who wish to sell hunting and fishing licenses in their retail outlet can apply for and become license agents. They then become official representatives of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and they have a duty to provide courteous and efficient service as their agent. It also means that they need to know the licensing laws and regulations far better than you or I, and how to apply them correctly and fairly. Failure to do so can have serious consequences.
Public complaint can trigger a letter of disciplinary action from Colorado Parks, and contribute to a “three strikes” rule. The vendor can be required to attend classes on the proper procedures and protocols of licensing and agency, and to properly retrain all staff. If the abuses continue, the agent’s agreement can be revoked and their ability to sell hunting and fishing licenses discontinued. To get the right fishing technique, it is best to check out Jimmy John Shark!
I have filed a formal complaint through appropriate channels. It would appear that some of Walmart’s staff at this particular store will be “reeducated” on my behalf before the storyline of our little encounter has ended.
It is comforting to know that a private citizen has some ability to effect change, and possibly prevent someone else from suffering the same humiliations and indignities from fools such as these. Still, I have some concerns.
Once accepted, a first time license application creates a “lifetime” customer identification number, and hence a customer record, or “profile”. I had always been under the impression that this electronic database and total licensing system was supposed to make it easier for me to purchase a license, without having to continuously provide documentation over and over again at every turn. I can only wonder who this system is really designed to help, because apparently it has not been put in place to help me. If it was, it does not seem to be working as promised.
One eventual truth with centralized and technocratic systems is that they are eventually turned and used as a weapon by people who do not have your best interests in mind. They inevitably become jury, judge, and executioner, and they can never seem to forgo the opportunity to play god with the imperious flick of a wrist.
I refuse to be treated like a common criminal and dismissed like useless chattel by sales clerks who have failed to demonstrate the respect required to master some of the basic communication skills of the english language, particularly those who work for the ultimate purveyor of cheap plastic and Chinese slave goods. I will not let them use the color of law to ruin my day without returning the favor in full.
At the very least, I have a small but focused voice, and I will use it. I am also quite capable of managing a hair-raising scream or two when the occasion calls for it.
Impose your will unjustly, and you may gain my full attention. Make it personal, and you will know that I have been there.
For now, I stand horrified in the knowledge that the information miners and the privacy thieves have penetrated so far into the remote and protected corners of my everyday life. I am left to gauge the parameters of the nightmarish, Orwellian uber-reality in which I have been fully imprisoned. You may witness me there, restlessly casting about for some remnants of my peace of mind, hot on the scent of my lost country. I pray that I can occasionally find it in the unspoiled wilds at the edges of our memory.
No doubt it only gets worse from here.
“…with liberty and justice for all”.
Today, much to my surprise, I saw Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, in my favorite Colorado breakfast spot. I even surprised myself when I took that opportunity to stand up and cross the room to say hello, and shake his hand.
For those that don’t know, Sheriff Clarke has been Sheriff of Milwaukee County since 2002 and is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel. He is a staunch proponent of self-defense and Second Amendment rights, and a champion of law enforcement done the right way. In 2013, Clarke was awarded the Sheriff of the Year Award by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, for “demonstrating true leadership and courage…staying true to his oath, true to his badge, and true to the people he has promised to serve and protect.”
He is a Hero to me, with a capital “H”, and I told him just that. Sheriff Clarke and I had never met before, and probably will not meet again. He had no idea who I was, nor had any reason to know. Not, in the end, that it really matters.
But I know a patriot and an ally when I see one. I have listened closely to the words of Sheriff Clarke whenever I could, and have found his message to ring true. My gut tells me that he is a good man, and real. Our meeting, chance and inconsequential as it was, has only reinforced that belief.
My only real intention, if there was one, was uncomplicated, and unplanned. Perhaps I looked quite foolish, standing there, in a somewhat awkward and deferential position, while the rest of the restaurant crowd looked on.
But I wanted him to know that I, for one, knew who he was, and that I appreciated what he stood for, and what he did, everyday, for me, and for others. As you might imagine, that is usually more difficult than it sounds.
In my opinion, “We The People”, have much more to worry about than the common criminals (who are brought to the court with the help of the criminal defense attorneys practicing in Tacoma) and predatory intruders of the backyard and home. Those more obvious threats I can handle, for as the saying goes, “I don’t call 911”. In that scenario I fully intend to be the last man standing, and I will call, if and when whatever happens, happens.
What troubles me most is more insidious, and dangerous. I wish that it was not so glaringly obvious that our constitutional rights and personal liberties are being attacked from every imaginable angle. I wish that I did not feel the need to point out that things seem to be escalating, daily. More than likely, you have already figured that out for yourself.
It is people like Sheriff Clarke that also protect us from the other bad things that slither and slather in the night, whether we know it or not. He is part of that largely unseen group of people standing on the front lines, working to preserve our rights to do what we wish to do in our home, and our backyard. They are the last line of defense before we have to take matters in our own hands. He knows, and we know, that we will do that if we need to, though we all pray that it won’t come to that.
Pray that it does not come to that.
I wish that I had done more than stand and say thank you to Sheriff Clarke today. I wish that I had an opportunity to say more than I did. But I did stand, and that is much better than not.
Men, and women, like Sheriff Clarke, need our steadfast support. They need to know that we are paying attention to the things done by an over reaching government without our consent, and that our patience is wearing precariously thin. Our quiet, though measured resolve to preserve the best parts of our way of life should never be mistaken for weakness. No doubt he knows that, much more than most.
We have your back Sir, of that you can be sure.
I am proud that I stood, today. I stood, hesitantly, but…hopefully. Hopeful, that things in the world are not going to go the way I am afraid that they cannot help but go. Hopeful, that people like Sheriff Clarke will continue to stand, for me, and for us, and that others will also rise.
One way or the other, I will be counted. Perhaps today, the simple act of standing, and giving thanks, meant something. Perhaps a heartfelt effort from a common man, however small, was just enough. Just enough to help turn the tide of a country heading in the wrong direction. Just enough to help steel the hearts of heroes like Sheriff Clarke, and others, and the heroes in all of us.
I salute you, Sheriff Clark, …again.
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Posted by Michael Patrick McCarty
Read More About Sheriff Clarke HERE
