Stump Lane

PURSUANT TO THE DESIRE, articulated in the previous post to learn new survival skills for after the demise of FAKE post-industrial society, I’ve added a blog category, as a means to keep relevant information and ideas handy. The president wants us to “win the future.” Setting a slightly more austere goal for myself, I’ll be content to simply “survive the future.”

For the inaugural post in the new category, this is what’s been on my mind today, when I should more rightfully be focused on busy work:

“A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jícama, amaranth, and mucana…. Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the body needs to make proteins and niacin;…. Beans have both lysine and tryptophan…. Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, “is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.” [Wikipedia]

Can a system like this be adapted to the colder climate and shorter growing season around here? Also, fucking avocados, how do they work? They don’t seem to be grown locally to Northern New England. Managing to survive the future and having continued access to avocados would be freaking orgasmic, though.