Saving Seeds

On Yon and Flood Prep: Buckle up!

It’s funny how things happen.

The other night I was wondering what to watch after a few hours of writing, so I was looking for some brain candy, and bumped into a docuseries about a Welsh football (soccer) club called Wrexham. Loving my soccer, I watched it all in one sitting!

Welcome to Wrexham (TV Series 2022– ) - IMDb

Then my son sent me this interview between JP and Michael Yon to watch. I’d seen the clip promoted by the algorithm but one look at the title and I was depressed, so I passed. But I’m glad I watched it this time as I’ve never come across Michael Yon before and I’m glad I’ve bumped into him. These guys are rare, and you’ll see what I mean if you listen to the interview. The number of countries he’s been to and lived in, the number of languages he speaks, the different work he has done and his connecting of the dots that we don’t even know are there.

He is a valuable resource, I think.

Michael Yon | Author, Photographer, Combat Correspondent

I’ve signed up for his newsletter, I want to stay connected to this guy.

Here is the episode description:

We are heading into one of the most epic famines in world history, where the poor will freeze in the dark and burn in the sun while they starve. Michael Yon, one of America’s youngest Green Berets at 19 years old, joins Dr Jordan B Peterson to discuss the current state of affairs across the globe. Michael has travelled and lived over half of his life abroad in more than 80 countries. Author of three books in the United States and three others in Japan, he is America’s most experienced combat correspondent.

After watching it I sent it to a group of awake friends with the note: Buckle up gents!

I’ve found myself recently staring at our large backyard and wondering where and how to grow a veggie patch and keep some chickens. I’ve had a sense that difficult times lay ahead, that the GMC is not over by any stretch, that it might just be the beginning, and listening to Yon, that foreboding sense has been well and truly reinforced.

Having just listened to Yon and having just watched a show about a Welsh soccer team, one of my readers from Wales (!!) sent me the following story about self-sufficiency and preparing for hard times, asking whether I’d be interested in sharing it. You bet! With all this serendipity frankly, I’m obliged to.

It’s an interesting and useful story in many ways, and clearly there are plenty of people out there getting ready for a flood, both physically and psychologically. So should we.

With thanks to my reader from Wales (I’ve kept all the images, it’s a nice touch).

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This was to be a Twitter thread about seed-saving but as I’ve thought about the details it became apparent that is part of a much bigger story about what is important to me. And perhaps to you? My writing anything longer than a tweet has become uncommon, and I’m not sure who might endure reading it, but here’s a snapshot of the last 20 years of my life and why the present moment seems to bring into focus all that I’ve learned and tried to achieve…

Transition Cornwall+

Transition

In the mid-2000s I nervously entered the periphery of a group active in the small Suffolk town where I lived (with my wife and 2 young children) which started this journey. Thereafter, for many years I worked closely alongside members of this group who remain some of my most valued friends. We were part of the Transition Town movement – “a community-led response to peak oil and climate change”. We held events, talks, produced a monthly newsletter and more. We ran a community kitchen. We designed, built and nurtured a community garden in the courtyard of the local library. We understood how energy is the primary resource underpinning modern civilisation. We fretted over global warming and the tipping points which might trigger runaway climate change. We shared ideas, books and essays, food and drink, meetings, workshops, fun and laughter; nurtured the growth of a diverse and committed network of local activists. My own interests strayed into economics and the financial crisis in 2007/8 came as no surprise to followers of Steve Keen, John Michael Greer and other “mavericks”. Chris Martenson and others explained how Environment, Energy and Economics intersected. Politically, practically, not much was done. Promises made for the sake of appearance, but not kept. Policy responses to energy and climate were (like the unsustainable debt-based financial system) just more cans to kick down the road… Actual change relied on the actions of individuals with principles, which they more-or-less stuck to - any degree of personal sacrifice being amply compensated by a sense of self-respect reinforced by their “comrades” following a similar path.

Migration

In 2014, our children partly- or fully-fledged, we cashed-out our property in Suffolk and moved to Wales where we always loved to go on holidays. No more mortgage! Part-time jobs motivated by our heart and soul rather than our bank balance. Lucky us. More time at the allotment. More time on Twitter! Contentment in our semi-retirement. Enough is plenty, and I believe that an enduring focus on self-reliance and living frugally (partly based in respect for ecology and planetary limits) together with a large dose of serendipity (buying our first house at the end of recession in 1993) has paid dividends. The more I practice the luckier I get!

Cultivation

Throughout this period, I’ve had an allotment. It’s taken much thought, time, and work to build fertility and learn what works for me in Suffolk and then Wales. Compost puts life into your soil! Processing biomass for compost and harvesting rainwater[i] are the first jobs to undertake. Experiment with new crops but focus on what you like and what works. Saving seed from the best plants of your favourite crops year after year builds varieties that thrive in your particular location. Perennial crops produce more bang for your buck but require deep engagement with the plants. Fruit is an excellent high-yield low-maintenance investment in your growing space but takes planning and foresight.

Crisis

Fast-forward to Autumn 2020. It became apparent that things were badly wrong when I discovered how Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin had been systematically ignored and discredited as treatments for Covid-19 despite conspicuous clinical success. “Vaccination” was to be the only game in town. I did a bit of research into the mRNA platform and decided it was too experimental for me to accept. Being immunocompromised and a “key worker” I was one of the earliest cohorts to be offered a jab, and was scared enough of Covid (thanks BBC!) in January 2021 to take a dose of Astra-Zeneca which I naively believed to be a more traditional vaccine. Then the safety-signals started to scream at those who cared to listen (not the legacy media cheerleaders) and the censorship began, and the rest is history.

My understanding is that not one of the “Public Health” interventions is founded on science or withstood evidence! Masks, social-distancing, lockdowns, and experimental injections; all doing serious (ongoing) harm and having little if any actual benefit. And saying so on Twitter or Facebook results in censorship or de-platforming - as we now discover, by order of the US government. Totalitarianism[ii] had taken root (Biden’s recent “Red” speech and purges of dissidents now make that clear to everyone but the beholden) and the media has been its propaganda tool since early 2020 in my view. The Fourth Estate turned Fifth Column.

Meta-Crisis

High energy prices, potential food shortages (supply-chain and fertilizer issues), war and pestilence. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride again! With a deepening ecological- and potential climate-catastrophe looming too. Each of these can and does lead to mass migration with all the conflicts that entails. The financial system is irreparably broken and the political response is totalitarian...

•      Are we being frogmarched into The Great Reset by the Davos elite? (“For our safety” or theirs? That at least I think we know.) How scary is the World Economic Forum obsession over private/public partnerships in the light of Mussolini-style fascism?

•      Was it always a plandemic (Event 201 etc.) to reach these totalitarian ends? To what extent has psychological manipulation been used to “hypnotise” people with mass propaganda?

•      Has/will the threat of climate change been amplified in order to spread even more fear and excuse further restrictions and control?

•      Why has the obvious goal of negotiating a peaceful end to the conflict in Ukraine been conspicuous by its absence? Who can we trust to provide us with reliable information?

•      Is this a controlled-demolition of the economy to bring about a centralised, controlling social-credit system, cashless with digital ID? (Central Bank Digital Currencies)

•      Why must we adopt pronouns, teach “woke” sex to children and stimulate gender dysphoria?

•      Is this all deliberate depopulation (to mitigate climate change and conserve scarce resources, or otherwise)?

•      Was David Icke correct all this time?

I’ve considered all these questions and more in a deepening state of perplexity. Everyone has their own opinion on to what extent they believe or dismiss these hypotheses[iii], but open debate is not permitted and to even raise most of them - especially by those who might be taken seriously - is to risk cancellation (or, in Biden’s America, imprisonment) by the powers-that-be… How to respond?

Full Circle

The factions on each side of any of the above questions engage in slanging matches on social media, neither giving an inch; the legacy media makes token scratches at the surface. So, there is no opportunity (except on independent media platforms which are often prone to become echo-chambers) for nuanced debate. A fait accompli for the dominant ideology, thus avoiding scrutiny & accountability.

I sense a renewed groundswell of popular opinion against giant corporations and the control they exert over our lives – our freedom of choice, politics (lobbying), regulators (revolving doors and capture), our institutions in healthcare, science, academia and of course the profiteering done through the “Horsemen” of energy, food/agriculture, military and pharmaceuticals - each supported by the banks and financiers. Mega-entities like Blackrock and Vanguard sit (vulture-like) in the shadows with large stake-holdings in almost every major corporation in each of these sectors.

Certainly, the billionaire class has had a “good pandemic” and always enjoys the spoils of war! Imagine if the vast majority of people put all other differences aside and agreed that this is the core problem to solve[iv]. To suggest it might be achieved through existing political structures appears increasingly unlikely (especially in countries like the US and UK with an entrenched political duopoly, where each side appears indistinguishable except on a few fringe issues[v].) Even more so with these corporations’ global reach and apparent immunity from the jurisdiction of individual nations. The fiduciary duty of corporate boards makes these supra-human entities like black-holes, unstoppably devouring everything straying under their event-horizon! Where will it end[vi]?

To embrace self-reliance and frugality is to return to ideas from the 1970s (oil crisis and stagflation!) and before: Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”, Illich’s “Tools for Conviviality”, appropriate technology, localisation, community. The groundwork has long been done. The “Transition” philosophy also adopted many of these ideas but co-opted some more contemporary concepts like permaculture and agro-forestry.

Time to find a Transition Town near you?

So, returning to the action of individuals, I will continue to act in accordance with these principles and hope that others will do the same, preferably by choice but perhaps by imperative. Absent political change (“revolution” is a messy business) we can/should/must become conscientious objectors and hope that “the market” will recognise a signal from the supposed groundswell and the business ecology will react as we should expect. Small may again be beautiful. Perhaps, then, politics will follow?

Big is very ugly and dangerous. I want more of this…

A Trillion Straws to Break the Mightiest Camels’ Backs

These suggestions will usually save money. Where they don’t, the premium is a price worth paying in the short term. To reiterate, the principles are frugality, self-reliance, and making conscious choices to remove power from mega-corporations.

Resource use

•      Don’t waste food. Use leftovers. Keep perishable goods to a minimum.

•      Refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle.

•      Buy secondhand rather than new.

Energy

•      Use cars only when necessary. Embrace the exercise and connection with nature/community of walking or cycling, or the release of time for reading or other stimulating activities on public transport.

•      Wear extra clothing and turn down the thermostat.

•      Share bathwater with your loved-ones, sequentially or concurrently according to taste!

•      Get a book published any time post-1975 about energy-proofing your home.

Totalitarianism

•      Very simple choice: Resist or comply. Digital ID is the gateway to dystopia.

•      Boycott the monoliths who destroy small businesses or support censorship/push the political narrative. My own list includes Google, Amazon, Facebook, Youtube and Paypal[vii].

•      Move your money out of commercial banks into building societies or other mutuals.

•      Use cash (or lose it[viii]?!) Use it often and deliberately. Avoid businesses which make this difficult.

Grow-your-own

•      ...on a windowsill or balcony, in your garden, or by getting an allotment or joining a community garden.

•      Understand the BigAg business model. The corporate machine destroys all forms of life.

•      Organic is best. Putting toxins near your food is not good for you or the soil-life on which your plants depend.

•      Start with heirloom varieties (which “breed true”) from independent suppliers who will be shut down if BigAg has its way.

•      Save your own seed. This single process encompasses all of my principles in one simple measure. It is a revolutionary act.

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[i]Long Spring and Autumn droughts in East Anglia partly prompted the move to famously wet Wales. But the Spring droughts happen here too, and this year I ran out of rainwater for the first time. In my experience, climate change is real.

[ii] Totalitarianism (noun): a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.

[iii]From JFK to 9/11 to Covid and beyond, a multitude of books, essays, podcasts etc. have or will be published investigating these questions. The term “conspiracy theorist” is a lazy way to dismiss such people. The authors (to the best of my knowledge) are sincere, curious, rigorous and truthful, and profit is not their motive, i.e. Without conflicts of interest, which their detractors usually do have. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, there seems a greater prevalence of contrarian domain experts, investigators or their informants “committing suicide” in suspicious circumstances than get taken to court for libel. (If they are wrong, why not use established legal proceedings? To avoid “disclosure”.) And let’s not forget Julian Assange is still rotting in prison for his unveiling of uncomfortable truth.

[iv]I’m unsure if such labels really apply any more, but remember not so long ago when “Left” and “Right” agreed that private monopolies/cartels were not a good idea?

[v]Therefore, Wikipedia’s definition of totalitarianism redundantly specifies “banning opposition parties” since both are, in fact, the same in these cases.

[vi]The advent of supercomputers and AI leads futurists such as Ray Kurzweil to predict a singularity whereupon computers become “smarter” than humans and start making important decisions themselves. The term is borrowed from cosmology where a black hole is an example of a singularity. So perhaps the origin of the limited liability corporation (granted as a legal entity some of the rights we supposedly have as individual humans) has created a myriad of “black holes” which, over time, with escalating velocity, consume or are consumed by progressively larger and larger competitors. Perhaps Blackrock (which I think is publicly listed) and Vanguard (which I think is not, and whose unelected members may actually control the operations of the former) will be the last 2 standing until… Vanguard is the only corporation left at the singularity of finance, resources, humanity, and control over planet Earth?

[vii]Sorry to say Twitter is too damn useful to give up voluntarily.

[viii]Brett Scott deals with this in his recent book “Cloud-money”