Macska Moksha Press

My Favorite Mesopredator -or- Never Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like Cats

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal – or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.” (Elizabeth Peters, Egyptologist and mystery writer)

Hanging out in the straw, the picture of "cute." All kittens become cats. Enjoy them every moment at this age.

Hanging out in some straw, the picture of “cute”

The worship of cats by the ancient Egyptians is well-known. It has been surmised that this deification occurred because cats saved the Egyptians from starvation. The Nile River valley was amazingly fertile due to annual flooding so food could be grown in great abundance, but the granaries were infested by rodents. Enter the cat, hunter of rat. When the people of the Pharaohs befriended Felis sylvestris lybica, their days of belt-tightening were over. Now there was enough to go around the whole year. Hence the literal elevation of cats onto pedestals. This cultural reverence was carried down to the individual level: when an Egyptian household’s feline died, the whole family would shave off their eyebrows. Their tragedy was thus announced publicly and without shame to friends and neighbors in a fashion that was undeniably (pause) in-your-face.

Fast-forward a few thousand years and the cat’s worthiness was no longer as appreciated: During the Dark Ages in Europe the Church somehow got it into its head that cats were of the devil and needed to be eradicated. Perhaps bounties were offered; whatever the motivation, many people took up this ridiculous crusade (is there any other kind?), and cats were decimated. What happened next? Rats bred unchecked and spread The Plague, killing at least a third of the population of Europe. This is why cats look so smug to this day. “Not so fast,” they seem to be saying in response to any treatment that is less-than-deifying. “Remember what happened last time? We do…”
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Postcard From Eastern Oregon: When planting food is illegal

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

[Originally published on Energy Bulletin, September 2012]
This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless. For the past eight years, we had been actively exploring a variety of forms and practices of small-scale agriculture and restoration, including bicycle-based urban farming, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), plant-breeding and seed-saving, staple crops (grains, legumes and oilseeds) and the cultivation and processing of medicinal herbs (no, not pot). Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects. It was the social factor — which can and did embody a profound hostility to Truth — that brought down our own farming efforts, at least for now.

With sadness and anger, we put our tools and seeds in storage, found foster homes for our perennial medicinals, and raised traveling cash by selling our home (a school bus) and an old but reliable Volvo. After tearfully parting with our beloved farm cat, two of us hit the road in an old pickup to see what we could see.

This journey took us to Eastern Oregon to seek out Finisia Medrano, a.k.a. “Tranny Granny”, a Shoshone-trained elder who knows the ways of “The Hoop”, an ancient tradition of food gathering and cultivation that sustained the Native Americans and the land in good health for thousands of years until being violently disrupted by the European Invasion. The Hoop is not dead but, as we were to see, is severely threatened.
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RIP: Fugz the Farmcat, 2010-2012

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Fugz, with Tulsi Basil harvest

This piece was originally posted at Daggawalla Seeds & Herbs, 1/7/13.

On December 27, 2012, Fugz the Farmcat was hit by a car and died. From the appearance of his injuries, it seems that cause of death was head-trauma, so he likely died very quickly, if not instantly. He was slightly over two and a half years old and was initially survived by at least 12 progeny. However, his son, Oscar de la Rentoes, followed his father in death the very next day, 20+ miles away, in Portland.

Nikki & I were both devastated, and felt very very sad. Fugz was a dear companion to both of us and had been with us at our new home for only six days when this happened. This was the first time we were able to live in the same place with him for a year. During that whole time, for most of 2012, we were focused on finding a place to settle and farm where we could live with him again. In a society as alienating and lonely as ours, there are few humans who can be as true in their loving as a cat, and Fugz was an especially loving cat. When we took him to the vet this summer, the doctor asked if we had bottle-weaned him — we didn’t — because his demeanor was so mellow.

Who Will Feed the People? Obstacles to Small-Scale Agriculture in the USA

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The author with a high-wheel cultivator

“In the future, more people will have to grow their own food” has become a truism among pundits and observers who are paying attention to the changing state of western industrial civilization, and of the U.S. in particular. Declining energy resources, ecological degradation, and global financial disolution are a few of the trends that are and will be impacting agriculture-as-we-know-it, and forcing agriculture-as-it-will-be.

That chemical-based farming is a failing experiment has been well-documented elsewhere; numerous books and articles have explored declining soil fertility, chemically-resistant weeds and pests, the tainting and depletion of irrigation water, the shrinking diversity of seeds, the dangers of genetically modified crops, and the plummeting nutritional value of fruit, vegetables, and grains. I will not reiterate these issues here, except through examples that address my points, which concern the future of agriculture.

The “need” for a smaller-scale, non-chemical-based agriculture is clear. So are the attributes that it must have. This agriculture will be regionally-based, because the means for shipping produce around the world will no longer be profitable. This agriculture will be based more on animal power (two-legged and four-legged), because machines will be few, and the fuel for them too expensive or unavailable. This agriculture will focus on soil-building rather than chemicals, because the chemicals are sourced from the same raw materials that make the fuel. This agriculture will break with monocropping over hundreds of acres and instead utilize small parcels intercropped. And, this agriculture will have to involve much more than 2% of the population, even if that population is in decline.

I must mention that, in my opinion, the forces at work in the world today — energy, ecology, economics — are of such a large scale and their inertia so powerful that we are being coy when we say we “need” to switch to a smaller-scale, non-chemical agriculture. I suspect that we “will be” making that switch, like it or not, planned or not. No need to rally for the ball that was tossed in the air to come back down. It’s on its way, like all things that go up. But the transition — the beginning of which we are living to see right now — is a very tricky one, to say the least!
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101 Photos of Cats I Have Loved

March 7, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Me & Sylvio: On the day we found him and his litter-mates. We were fast friends.

“Time spent with a cat is never wasted.”
(Colette, French novelist)

It is only fitting that the first post on this website should be dedicated to cats. I personally befriended each and every one of the cats and kittens pictured in this gallery. A few I met only once, others I knew for years. Some have since died. All were a joy.

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