The tractor dilemma

Sometimes I'm an insomniac. Like right now. I've been up for a few hours, and I really have no need to be up. In other words, more sleep would probably be good. But there's no use fighting what you can't fight, so here I am. At least I can be productive in some way.

We were transplanting yesterday using this transplanter (see right for a picture of the old single-seat setup) that attaches to the tractor. A description of the equipment is a topic for another post, but in a few words, it automates something I've been used to doing by hand. Transplanting by hand involves pulling seedlings out of the trays they were started in, dropping them in the field, and getting your hands (and usually many other parts of your body) dirty by securing the plant in the appropriate spot. The tractor transplanter does the actual spacing and planting for you.

It has its pluses and minuses. A big plus is the actual time to get the plants in the ground is fast: it took about 10 minutes for four people (one driver, two transplanters, one quality control person tailing the tractor--three people would suffice though) to do two rows in one 275 foot bed. That's blazing fast. A big minus is that it's a piece of equipment, and therefore it doesn't always work right, which leads to frustration, backtracking, and tinkering.

When we first used the recently improved transplanter (two seats now) yesterday, it went perfect, and I was truly impressed. If it could save that much time, then, I thought, it might be the thing that convinces me that a tractor is something really worth having. But further transplanting proved to me that the perfection was fleeting. And while the transplanter always saved time (compared to hand transplanting) no matter what, I'm not sure that the time savings itself is worth the money and effort to have and maintain the equipment.

Besides, I've been wanting to avoid machines, because, well, I'm not sure the infrastructure and resources are gonna exist for much longer to allow us to continue to use machines the way we do as a society. As oil becomes more scarce and prices go through the roof (and don't fret, it will go back up in the not-too-distant future), I'm not sure tractors are going to make sense.

And on principle I find many machines ridiculously wasteful when I can do the very same things with my own body (often better) and simultaneously reap the benefits of pushing myself physically. In that case, time is not a cost, it is a benefit. As the subhead of my blog attests, I'm trying to live a simpler life, because simpler is good for me and is the only way that we as a community are gonna even begin to get on track to healing the clear-as-day wounds inflicted by our longtime hyper-consumerist ways. So, usually it's a no-brainer: I'll take manual labor over machine labor when it makes the most sense, which is most of the time.

But there are fuzzy areas. Both organic CSA farms I've worked at use tractors, for good reason. Both are about the same size at around five acres, which is small, but big enough that it's easy to see why a tractor comes in handy. For instance, manually preparing the soil for planting five acres would probably kill you before summer's first harvest (someone tell me if my perspective is limited on this). So as I see it our options when we have our own farm are three: buy a tractor (a used one, obviously, and biodiesel powered), secure the services of an animal (horse, mule), or scale down to where manual labor and small machines suffice.

The last two options are most appealing to me, for many reasons I'm sure I'll get into in future posts. But they beg some questions: Can we farm an acre or two and still make a living? Can we make the transition from machine-based labor to animal-based labor (I prominently include myself in the animal category) in a season while knowing very little about how to work with draft animals? Or maybe we should make the bulk of our money other ways and just have a garden plot big enough to mainly feed ourselves for the whole year and therefore not worry at all about non-human labor?

These are critical and difficult questions for a wannabe sustanainable farmer today. We hope to come up with some satisfactory answers in the next year or two.

What do you want to listen to?

Though some might say I'm a luddite, don't believe them (well, just a little). Because I often love the Gore-invented interwebs. I also always love music, though I mostly hate MP3 iPod garbage, but you'll never see me picking up a record over a CD. Digression. Sorry. Found this cool site today that makes listening to all kinds of music really easy. When I say all kinds, I mean a crap load of songs. Not everything in the world, but plenty. Site is called JustHearIt. Seems like it's new, in beta at the moment. But according to their about section, it's all legal.

From what I can tell, the site gathers music from all over the Net, in audio and video form, lists it for you according to your search query, and lets you drag the song to a Flash player playlist in the same window.

It seems to work pretty well, but I couldn't figure out how to tell if a song was audio or video ahead of time, which was a bit annoying because almost every single one of the videos that I pulled up was from youtube and had buffering problems.

Anyway, pretty cool resource if it is indeed legal.

How a sprain leads to useless ponderings on technology

Being laid up here for the past few days has allowed me to ruminate a bit. Part of those ruminations have been fueled by reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I can't believe that I haven't read this book up till now, considering my formal training is in English and philosophy; this book is essentially the modern day meeting of literature and philosophy, though more focused on the latter than the former. But I don't intend to review the book in this here post, or dwell on literature or philosophy.

Instead, I want to talk, I think, about plain old technology, a concept central to the book and something I've thought deeply about often. The last few days I've been sitting around a lot, generally recuperating my wrist, reading, clicking away with my left hand on the computer, and watching a bit of baseball, all the while with a fan blasting me--because it's been farking hot. And it occurs to me in this very situation that I hate technology and love it at the very same time.

I pretty much hate modern dwellings. My apartment sucks. It's almost prison-like in the way it separates you from the outside world--and most abodes I've experienced are the same way. But that's the way it is I suppose: modern housing does a good job of protecting us from the elements. And yet, that protection seems detrimental in some aspects, as if the my body requires at least a bit of the elements I'm not getting inside my place. I'd like to think that we could do a better job designing these places we spend so much time in.

Now, you're probably shaking your fist at the screen saying, Just go outside, crapface! I know. You're right. But, as I said, it's been so hot, and my wrist has crippled my ability to walk around pain free without wearing a big brace or some Ace bandages. And so I decide to stay mostly inside. And sulk a bit.

And inside lives the remarkable invention known as the fan. It moves the air and dries my sweat, leading to some cooling of my body and a slight bit of satisfaction. Just a bit. But it's nice. What if there were no fans? Well, I'd get by, probably with a couple of fanning slaves from the neighboring tribe, but you can't really beat fans for efficient cooling (and their relative lowness on the cruelty scale): for pocket change and a few units of renewable energy I can stay fairly cool all day long and rest my wrist.

In contrast, my new neighbors feel they have to run their air conditioner all day long, every day. Now, I don't wanna be a snooty asshole about this; I've contemplated using the A/C a couple times over the past few days, and we've even kicked it on once this year (it's a-nice), but air conditioning has to go in the category Inventions--Fairly Bad. Not only is it a wasteful power sucker (and consequently a major polluter) but it's also loud and expels additional hot air into the already hot air outside. You know about urban heat islands? Well, I have to imagine that A/C units contribute a bit to that phenomenon. How does that saying go? It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul ... or some such ridiculous thing. Stupid technology, unless it is required for health purposes.

Anyway, I'm conflicted. I'm not really a luddite (well, kind of). Nor am I by any means a tech junkie. Generally, I'm just a practical fellow who tries to get by with the minimum. And I've always wanted to make a list of what I consider the most essential and useful forms of modern technology (that is, technologies that require electricity or its equivalent) for no other reason than to amuse myself. So, here we go:

• Refrigeration -- This will always be at the top of my list. Refrigeration, as well as its cousin, freezing, is one of those things that make life a whole lot better for humanity in general. Being able to preserve food makes things substantially easier. Of course, I could rely on spring houses, cellars, and caves, but then I'd have to worry about snakes and bears and security and ease of access. Refrigeration is a major improvement.
• Computers -- What a tool for democratization, connectivity, and problem solving. We don't even know the potential yet. Also, as a form of entertainment, the interactivity of computers is a giant improvement over TV.
• Powered transportation -- God, don't make me say cars, because that's not really what I mean. What I mean is powered vehicles make the world more accessible to the individual (and simultaneously limit our reliance on animal labor). And this desire to explore, I think, is somehow encoded in our DNA. The current transportation paradigm is way fucked up, but we have to start somewhere I guess.
• A/V recording and preservation -- How fucking sweet is it that I can hear Tuvan throat singing in my own house? Or throw on something that was recorded in the early 20th century? Future generations will be overwhelmed by such direct, multifaceted access to their ancestors' world.
• Indoor plumbing and sanitation -- This kind of stretches the definition of the list, but it's one of the big, important technologies of our time.

Hmmm. I'm out of time and ideas. Dinner must be made. In an oven. With electricity. I'd use wood or solar if I could though.