Midsize Lebowski would love it if you'd come and give him notes on Semi-ERE

[MidsizeLebowski]

Those questions I posed above reminded me of a blog post from one of the natural building mentors we've met since moving here... it's in fact from her uncle who grew up on the cusp of modern americana in a NM pueblo community. What struck me about it was the fact that this man lived through a paradigm in which doing work for money was unknown (via his ancestral community/way of life) through to the modern era of the early 2000's. Thought you all would enjoy.


https://caneloproject.com/old-style-org ... -mexico-2/

[candide]

Our savings rate went down a bit, we made more mild financial progress on the year (just under 2x annual spending), none of that mattered. This FI stuff is really just a figment of our imaginations... in times of real challenges you realize what's important. How much would our SWR matter if the world devolved to nuclear conflict or your country was destabilized by political upheaval? I think the semi-ere path was the right choice for us... meaningful skills, a little "security" to trick our feeble little minds enough to relax - just the right balance. My coffee grows cold from all this typing! Until next time friends!

Well said. I don't remember who pointed it out, but it stuck with me that ERE is a tool to help your family, not the reverse.

[MidsizeLebowski]

@candide - thanks for the comment, that's going to stick with me now too - isn't it wild how much wisdom comes off of this forum?

@AxelHeyst- So cattle grazing presents a multifaceted problem in our environment. The most obvious element is the actual consumption of the plants themselves, which rotational grazing would in theory solve - as then the vegetation would be "trimmed" but ultimately go on about it's life cycle after a recovery period. Then the cows would basically just mirror bison/deer/antelope and The Dude could abide... But what I've learned from observing bovine (and I spend many hours slackjawed and oggling bovine now that I'm semi-ere ) is that the cows clearly select for only certain plants within the community to flourish by leaving them uneaten. Coincidentally these are the plants that are being blamed for "encroaching on the grasslands" and there's whole govt funded operations to go out and pull them while using preposterous amounts of labor/fossil fuel so that everyone can feel good about themselves while ignoring the root cause of the issue.

What happens is that cows indulge heavily on grasses/forbes/palatable shrubs (ie. not the thorny or toxic ones), while completely avoiding "the encroachers". And unlike deer, cows are behemoth animals, so when they "graze" a shrub they literally mow it to the ground. Instead of nibbling a cactus bloom as a deer might they instead level the entire cacti, etc. We're talking 5-10 years of growth gone in a few minutes. And in an arid environment eating 4' feet off a shrub is so traumatic given the nature of the heat/evaporation that it typically kills the plant if not permanently stunts it.

So what we're left with are landscapes composed of the thornscrub that cows don't eat and the limited grasses that spread via rhizomes - since the cows aren't rotated most of the grasses never actually go to seed and so the species dependent upon the soil seedbank become rarer and rarer until they're ultimately extinguished.

The other factor at play is that cows are huge animals and much of the southwest is clay soils which compact heavily when trampled - this reduces infiltration across the landscape and creates channels that dehydrate the wider landscape by entrenching flows along the cows' preferred paths (often through once lush riparian areas that played a major role in the water cycle). They concentrate in the riparian zones due to access to water/more tender fodder/etc. so they ultimately end up compacting the most important regions for maintenance of the water cycle. They also also mow down year after year of recruitment of riparian tree saplings which would ultimately shade these spongey areas and buffer the water table further. So once the older growth riparian trees reach the end of their lifespan there are no juvenile trees to replace them.

The once broad, fertile, shaded floodplains become compacted, sunbaked scalds and then the monsoon rains dump huge amounts of water that rip down the channel beds deeper and deeper as there's no vegetation to slow/spread the flow - thus leading to incision. The whole region around the waterways dehydrates and no longer serves to charge the water table. There are cutbanks 20' deep along the creek that flows through our place. And this is happening en masse on public lands all over the southwest. No one knows about it, and yet it's almost certainly driving extinction at worst and contributing to future water shortages at best.

I think in your scenario if the grazing pressure is gone I'd look at areas that are analogs to your site without grazing history and see what species "are missing" at your place... then you could try to reintroduce them to the seedbank by harvesting a small amount of seed off site and placing it in areas at your home that mirror where you saw the plants growing at the analog location (ie. a shaded north facing rock pile). Water harvesting earthworks will do wonders of course as well.

[Western Red Cedar]

Good to hear that the dude and SLF keep on truckin'.

The thing that makes the impact of cattle in the western US even more tragic is that the government systematically destroyed the buffalo population in the 19th century. A species that evolved to live on the land, and often had a symbiotic relationship with the natural environment. Not to mention that the source of meat is arguably healthier (and tastier) than beef. I consider this, along with the depletion of salmon, one of the great ecological tragedies in US history.

[NewBlood]

Hi The Dude,
I just finished reading your whole journal. You've had a very interesting journey!

I'd love to learn more about your food forest/water capture/building endeavors. It would be really cool to see before/after pictures if you're comfortable sharing.

How did you end up deciding on Arizona?

[MidsizeLebowski]

Thanks WRC! Agreed, it would be interesting to posit the economic value of both if intact and compare it to the industries responsible for the "cost of progress". I guess the rationale for the buffalo extinction push had more insidious purposes than economic gain in many ways... I've been encouraged that there's at least talk of protecting the remaining salmon and buffalo are becoming part of the diet again albeit in a pseudo-domesticated fashion.

Welcome NewBlood! We're very much in the before pictures stage at 2 years in but I'm happy to post them alongside some "halfways" in the coming year or two. We're in this specific part of AZ for a couple reasons - temperate-ish climate (9F-107F is the record range for our area - most winter days are in the 50's/60's), very interesting outdoors scene due to "Madrean Sky Islands", and off-grid friendly laws that allow natural building with minimal permits/fees (it's ~$1500 in entirety to permit the home we're building ). ***Please note I only aspire to Dudeliness, at times I am still rife with anxiety/concern and can even be angered - most Undude!

[NewBlood]

Welcome NewBlood! We're very much in the before pictures stage at 2 years in but I'm happy to post them alongside some "halfways" in the coming year or two. We're in this specific part of AZ for a couple reasons - temperate-ish climate (9F-107F is the record range for our area - most winter days are in the 50's/60's), very interesting outdoors scene due to "Madrean Sky Islands", and off-grid friendly laws that allow natural building with minimal permits/fees (it's ~$1500 in entirety to permit the home we're building ).

Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to seeing some pics when the right time comes and reading more about the whole process. I had never heard of the Sky Islands, it sounds like a beautiful area! and I'm envious of the off-grid friendly laws! No such thing here...

Please note I only aspire to Dudeliness, at times I am still rife with anxiety/concern and can even be angered - most Undude!

That's a good aspiration to have. Don't feel bad about the times of Undudeness, you are, after all, only human.