We are on the highest location in Southern Ontario
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and to reach it from Toronto and Lake Ontario
one must come over Caledon Mountain.
We are also far above the waters of Georgian Bay -
and it is a long view down to them
when one drives in that direction.
Ark Two is located in the small village
where my wife was born
in the house just south of where we now live -
and her mother was born here two centuries ago -
so there are dozens of local relatives in the extended family.
It is important to be where you are known and accepted -
and have strong ties to the community.
The Ark itself is on a dead end road
bounded on one side by a 150 ft cliff.
The village has only two entrances
from the paved highway by-pass -
and two from country roads.
Being 90 miles from Toronto
it is probably too far for masses of refugees
to reach it.
That would certainly be so in the winter time.
However, it is only twenty miles from
a major Canadian military base -
which regularly does practice drives through it -
and it is also a favorite target location
for swarms of motorcyclists.
Equally important to our location
is that we are centered in
one of the main agriculture areas of Ontario.
Thirty miles east of us lies the Holland Flats
which is the vegetable growing center for the province
and there comes right up to our fence line
the Highland Company - 2,316 acres - on which last year
there were grown 100 million pounds of potatoes.
(In the area there are also other growers and crops.)
Unprocessed potatoes may not store that well
for two years -
but there should be no reason for local survivors
to starve to death during the first winter.
Great controversy surrounds the Highland Company -
because they wish to put a mega quarry
where the individual potato farms were.
How soon that may be accomplished - if ever in God's timing - we don't know -
but there will still be
extensive land for agriculture production
for many years to come.
Another controversial activity by the same company and others
is an extensive Windmill Farm
now approaching 200 giant windmills.
What a bounty that might be.
The windmills are presently controlled
from California of all places -
and presently the electricity is all sent to the US.
Still the edge of the Windmill Farm
is only five miles from us -
and if there was some way to make them function -
(independent of the electronic controls
they must assuredly now have) -
then they could be a marvelous source of power
in our scenario and paradigm.
We are also blessed by one of the few
black start hydro dams in North America
at Eugenia Falls - about 25 miles away -
which services, among other places, Dundalk which is about 15 miles from us.
Not quite so great a blessing is the
largest nuclear generating plant in North America -
which is a couple of hundred miles west of us.
Think Fukushima.
But - we do have a nuclear fallout shelter.
Now onto some of the challenges
that we anticipate that we will face.
I was looking at the statistics for PEI.
In 1900 they had over 10,000 potato farms,
and now they have only 270 -
which still grow six times the amount
that was grown there in 1900.
While I don't have the exact figures for here -
I am sure that the ratios are equally as great -
or larger - because of Highland Company.
Think Agribusiness.
While we have lots of farmland -
we have few farmers.
In fact - practically no farmers
who know how to farm except by modern methods:
Treated Outsource Seed
Chemical Fertilizers
Pesticides
Herbicides
Mechanized equipment -
All hydrocarbon dependent
Take that all away from them -
(and that is what will happen)
and they won't have a clue as to what to do.
Oh, to be able to find and import
a few very small scale old method farmers.
They exist. I read about them on the Internet.
But they aren't here.
Neither are horses.
We have Amish communities nearby -
and while they ride through the village
with their horse carts -
much of their farming is mechanized also.
There just won't be work horses.
Or Oxen.
The latter being my preference.
I have studied considerably into the subject,
but it takes 4 years to raise up an oxen team -
and what is one going to feed them in the interim?
Back to the horses.
Nephews here have barns and horses.
But they are leisure horses.
They don't know how to work.
Not even the fancy Clydesdale show horses which are too old o learn. Besides that there is the fact
that we don't have the proper implements.
Worse yet - neither do the farm boys
know how to work today.
When there is real work to be done
- then temporary migrant labor
is brought in from Mexico.
I would much prefer after the catastrophe to have show up
50 Migrant workers
than 500 Baystreet Brokers and Banksters.
The latter would just be a burden.
They wouldn't be able to produce enough
to feed themselves.
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There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth
as we process the refugees
and give them a chance in the fields.
While we view ourselves as a refugee center -
when workers collapse
we may have to simply tap them on the shoulder
and send them on to the death camps.
I see our best hope as being the diesel tractors,
although there will have to be an immense amount
of hand labor along beside them.
I know - biodiesel!
But I have done the calculations
a hundred times
in a hundred ways and one just can't make it pay off.
There are lots of tables available on the Internet
for the various models of tractors
and their fuel consumption for various kinds of equipment.
Once you compute the number of tractor hours -
against the per acreage yield of biofuel crop -
forget it.
There are many kinds of biofuel crops -
some more suitable to some areas than others -
and I have corresponded about the possibilities
with Ag Schools that consider themselves experts.
Their first recommendation was to go in
and kill off with herbicides all the current vegetation.
When I asked them what the herbicides would do
to our bee colonies -
that was the last that I heard from them.
Aside from all that -
gathering, transporting, and especially processing
the crops - takes immense amount of energy/labor/effort.
One ends up putting out more energy than they get back -
or the net effect is so little as to not make it worthwhile.
On our web site you will find plans for wood gasifiers,
electric vehicles,
and numbers of other approaches.
All of these have their place -
but I feel that for us -
the answer is diesel -
given the equipment available -
for farming and transport.
Tractors, trucks, buses, generators - diesel.
Over the last fifty years
I have seen many technological changes.
There have been significant technological changes
in the last ten years -
in regards to solar power and wind power -
and while we may make use of some of these -
(and especially water power for us specifically -
because we are blessed with an excellent waterfall)
we still need to power the diesels.
Just in the last couple of years
I have noted some real breakthroughs
in conversion of waste organic materials -
and even plastics to diesel fuel.
These methods require heat and fortuitously
there has been a breakthrough in the development
of solar heaters using recycled satellite antennas.
I have real hope for this process
but we need to do development and practice.
It is beyond the scope of this newsletter
to get into the technical details here -
but for those who would like to examine the method
I am providing the following links.
Here is a very short video
http://tinyurl.com/cu9ju76
The main source of information that I have found is:
http://tinyurl.com/6l7oka8
This above source contains many (about 60) web pages of discussion
which for our own use I have summarized.
One half the problem is getting organic material
for fuel conversion.
In this area we have lots of farm waste
like rotten potatoes -
but it would be great to find an easy source for getting scrap plastic.
Car tires are good material but somewhat problematical to handle.
Not impossible. We may be able to come up with a solution.
The other half of the problem is the energy for heat.
Around here we have wood lots -
and of course the waterfall which can generate energy
to be converted to heat.
However, here is another energy source that I am becoming enthusiastic about:
http://tinyurl.com/cq2zlcm
http://tinyurl.com/6xfojnr
The above two videos are 4 years old
and advances continue to be made in this field also.
Here is something related that is more recent.
http://tinyurl.com/ct33ukg
We have actually built an array of solar mirrors
that is so powerful that it will melt steel.
The solutions that we come up with here -
having an abundance of agricultural land -
good water power -
the possibility of an immense Wind Farm -
what may be an immense labor supply -
(although we may have to be harsh/rigorous/severe
in our demands for productivity) -
will be different from circumstances elsewhere.
I plan to devote at least the following newsletter to
further subjects of recovery -
and then after that a newsletter to
the ever more important subject of reconstruction -
but which which it is difficult to find
anywhere else any thought that has been given to it.
If you know any sources, do please let me know -
so that I will be able to include them.
Peace and love,
Bruce
Dawnsayer@webpal.org
SAFE Ark Two Newsletter
August 5th, 2012
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