Thanks...

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

but i'm told yes, it lasts a nice long time.

During the Seige of Sarajevo residents lived on what they could grow on balcony and window box gardens.

That's why brown rice is for rich Americans, and you keep your whole wheat flour in the fridge.

There's a great book we should all have: Keeping Food Fresh.

Policy not party!

This is kind of a long story, CD, but to the point. Back in the late 60's I got me a little spread of 30 rolling acres and an old house. When the job fizzled out, my wife, young son, black lab and myself lived and worked our little farm for a number of years. We had our organic garden, chickens for meat and eggs and a pair of geese. We bought a couple of young pigs including one to be our sow and one for the freezer. We also bought a couple of angus heifers and some goats to milk. We had several acres of grapes and a few fruit trees. We settled in to our semi-self sufficient life. The rest of the world could go to hell with its greedy ecomomic system built like a house of cards. It was kind of like 'Little House on the Prairie' and I have a lot of good memories of that life. I mentioned in an earlier comment here about making wine in 50 gallon casks.

But there are a few flaws in the idylic life: "semi-self sufficient" means you have to earn some money for mortgage payment, electricity, gas for tractor and pickup, livestock feed ingredients and all the things that cannot be produced on 30 acres. There are also all the wants and needs of the wife and son who might not be quite as much into the independent life as I was.

The long and short of it is that it is impossible to avoid the capitalist economic system or it is a hell of a lot more trouble to avoid it than it is worth.

When I finally gave up on farming and had the cliched farm auction and all of that, I asked myself "What could I do legally to get money without contributing to such a fucked up system?". I decided real estate was about as worthless as vocations come. So with a month of evening classes I became a professional practicioner of that fine art.

I have almost perfected the living on the cheap. I live on my houseboat in my boat slip which is my only real estate. I have very low real estate taxes and my share of utilities is small in a condominium marina. I go to the office on my own schedule (never set an alarm clock) and earn so little that my income tax is negligible. I like not contributing to Geoge's war. I read books from the library, read my favorite blogs on my computer at the office using their high speed Internet. I depreciate a good fraction of the computer cost as a business expense. I can cook a lot of delicious meals with cheap inputs ($.49 to $.79 per lb. chicken legs), for instance.

The point of all this is that it is a lot easier to find a way to bring in a few bucks from the evil, greed ridden economic system than it is to fight to avoid it. If you enjoy canning and the resultant product, fine, but it's only a fraction of what you need to enjoy your life. The main thing is to set your own terms and do not let the system dictate what you need. You can try to live off your zuccini patch exclusively, but it ain't gonna be easy. And I've got used to easy.

When I commented on one of your earlier posts, CD, about the utility of money you went off on me about believing in accomplishing something and the anachist community and so on. I didn't want to contest the issue because I don't like to argue. I like to consider things for a few days and you would whip my ass in an argument, anyway. But I am as much of an anachist as there is. It is just that I do not think the system is going to be brought down -- maybe changed a little around the edges. So I'm going to just slide on by in my own little niche like a fat rat in a city.