I wrote about Gavin’s book and gift of seeds recently, and now I’d like to share a bit about the recipes and his approach to gardening, food, cooking and life in general that I align with so much I can easily overlook our superficial differences–like we’re at nearly opposite ends of the gardening calendar, we’re decades apart in age, and I would normally never buy a vegetarian cookbook.
But as I already said, it’s much more than a cookbook. And I have too much respect for Gavin’s work to shun it just because it’s vegetarian! đ
I’ve got a dozen pages marked of delicious-looking dishes I can’t wait to try. A number of dishes are already on our regular routine, like sourdough pancakes, heuvos rancheros, enchiladas with salsa verde and refried beans, and Greek salad (and we make it with homemade feta!)
At the top of my ‘Must-Try’ List: Shakshuka. The name alone sounds alluring!
We do eat a lot of vegetables and we always have salad daily and I’ve gotten plenty of new ideas–combinations I hadn’t considered, like a zucchini salad with mint–I’m often wanting to use more mint, it grows like crazy here.
The recipes are very adventurous too, drawing from diverse cultures and culinary traditions–Ethiopia, Morocco, Bali, Mexico, Greece, Thailand –which I truly appreciate, because we tend to get stuck in a bit too much of a routine sometimes. When the garden produce is rolling in by the wheelbarrow, there’s not much time to get creative.
The lovely and edible Borage flower, used as a garnish in Gavin’s Gazpacho recipe on YT. (Photo credit: Kath-UK)
In fact, on the things that really matter, we agree completely.
Like on the importance of fermented dishes, and especially sauces, because the ones that are mass-produced are full of chemicals and highly processed garbage. It’s hard not to sound preachy, maybe even impossible, when telling folks how terrible their diet most likely is. But it’s the plain and simple truth.
I still go to the grocery store from time to time and I see what’s available and what’s in most folks’ carts and it’s pretty hard not to get judgy and to bite my tongue!
The difference a few dietary adjustments can make over time is really impressive–and it starts with naturally-grown fresh food.
Considering the vast majority of folks are outsourcing their health to Big Ag, Big Food and Big Pharma it’s not any wonder why our societies are collapsing under the weight of it all!
I’ve been enjoying goofing around with the free meme-maker ap using Gavin’s gorgeous photography and inspiring quotes. đ
“In the past hundred years or so most people have forgotten about those ancient fermentation practices because of the advent of ‘instant gratification’ mass-produced products has allowed for entire generations of people to become completely dependent on corporations that supply them with the ‘food’ they need to survive. These ‘ultra-pasteurized’, pre-packaged, chemical-laden ‘food products’ are devoid of life, contain very little if any nutrients and are produced in ways that cause much damage to the planet’s ecosystems. Though eating prepackaged factory food (with unpronounceable ingredient lists) might be considered by some as ‘normal’ by today’s standards, it is certainly not a ‘norm’ that is conducive to longevity, sustainability or common sense.”
With thanks once again to Gavin, for his great many gifts, and for sharing them so graciously and generously. I’m already looking forward to his next book!
It’s Shoulder Season on the wee homestead, and by that I mean a few things.
Tomatoes on their way out, eggplant just coming inAssorted melons and squashes
Shoulder season, for those who maybe new to the phrase, has a specific meaning in tourist trades, meaning between high season and low season. Savvy travelers and those who dislike crowds or who are just cheap or nearly broke try to travel in the shoulder season.
As far as I know it doesn’t have a parallel meaning in the gardening world.
But for me it does. It’s the time we move between seasons in the garden and since we garden all year, it happens twice, once in Swelter Season (now) and once in YoYo Season (formerly known as winter).
The key summer crops in the garden are either long gone–onions, garlic, crucifers, or mostly dead–tomatoes, squash, melons. And normally the cucumbers too, except those are, so far, successfully secession planted, with the new generation just coming up as the last one is dying. Good timing there, tiny bow to me!
Old cucs on left, dying fast, on right a couple of tomatillos in the back, also dying and a volunteer datura, doing great.
New cucumber plants looking good, but will they produce?
And big bow to Handy Hubby for growing this 27 pound beauty!
A nice variety of melons and squashes, we are quite pleased.
And still more, a mini-fridge of melon
And still more squash!
And cider.
While it could be Vacation Season for some more sane types, for us it’s the work of Shoulder Season. We keep the minimum that will survive our high heat for the next two months and baby most of them best we can.
But under lights inside the fall/winter garden is on its way. There’s already another crop of tomatoes coming up, as well as broccoli, cauliflower and arugula.
In the ‘babying’ bed I continue my lettuce experiment, starting romaine indoors under lights and moving under double shade cloth to transplant, then removing one level of shade cloth after a few days to adjust. They are still alive, yay!
Also in the ‘baby’ bed under shade cloth: some parsley barely hanging on, some dill trying to seed, 2 peppers, 2 dying tomatoes and lots of very happy basil.
Tomatoes, peppers and basil for marinara. And in back left is cured lamb.
There’s processing to be done still, the marinara stockpile is done thanks to Hubby, but there’s still ketchup and bar-b-que sauce. And we still call this a bad tomato year!
stockpiling marinara
Ah, the gifts and curses of relativity. And surplus.
The pears are looking promising, and the grapes–which will be the next big project–wine and cider-making season. Blackberries and pears are our easiest fruits here; everything else seems to struggle. Though we have had years of good figs, and some neighbors still do. The grapes are looking good too, but there’s no guarantee.
And I think I finally got the trick for strawberries. It seems most everything that is most delicious is high-maintenance. What can -we do, if we like high maintenance produce but to contend with the high costs of creating them?
Many years of failed strawberries, but this year was a great success in comparison. Now the runners are going crazy and taking over this bed, so next year promises to be better still.
I’m planning for more low-maintenance in future, but those might be high hopes.
Because, my choice would be to spend my dwindling number of pain-free hours working with the flowers!
I’ve seen a few butterflies and bees on the pink ‘Obedience plant’, such a welcome sight!
Which brings up my other meaning for Shoulder Season. So much shoulder pain! And I am not good at staying stationary, it drives me nuts actually. So it’s between physical anquish, or mental, and I do far better with the former.
I’ve been planting more flowersAnd trying to attract the birds and the bees
It’s as unwelcome a kinked, knotted, crippling invasion as this mystery fruit I posted about last year. I unknowingly caused quite a crisis in the garden and lost almost all the melons I planted.
What is this imposter which choked out all my melons?!
Just when I was insisting to Hubby we need to be thinking about reducing our garden plots in order to reduce our workload and water usage, I stand corrected. The orchard squash didn’t produce well at all, for some unknown reason; the garden melons were choked out by the wild cucumber; so without the third space we’d have no watermelons or honeydews, which would mean a mostly melonless summer after lots of work and wait, as the main garden produced about half a dozen sub-par cantaloupe.
A sweet, cold watermelon is the best morale booster in the hot, humid Texas summer garden jungle!
Two wheelbarrows full of vines and fruit the pigs don’t even like.
Wild cucumber vs melons and the melons lost bad. I have still not been able to figure out what these things are, which I brought into the garden under false pretenses. I have heard suggested they may be lemon cucumbers or mouse melons, but they are not the right size, shape or color for either of those.
I really get the frustration of invasive species now. I realize I’ve been a bit cavalier on that front in the past, for good reason, but I have definitely been humbled this time as these bitter, seedy imposters are still popping up everywhere.
Please, give me an invasion of the supposedy invasive Mimosa trees, and I’d be thrilled!
You have my permission to invade my gorgeous Mimosa!
The plants that thrive here in the long high heat and humidity are so impressive, even when invasive, but it helps my morale considerably to consider the non-invasive ones as often as possible.
A couple of young zuccini with the sweet potatoesA mini-jungle of cherry tomatoes growing under the elderberry
The sweet potatoes are almost effortless. Once they get established and as long as they get a good head start over the bindweed (another ‘invasive’ relative) they are pretty reliable. Eggplant and okra are others, and we’re learning to like eggplant. Maybe even a lot.
Eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, green beans and tonnato sauce over rice noodles, delish!Eggplant, basil ferment in the back and bread and muffins baked in the toaster oven outside, because it’s too hot to bake inside.
The bountiful basil takes center stage as the parsley, dill and cilantro take early retirement and don’t even bother to seed, it’s so damn hot.
Whether and which tomatoes will survive, or thrive, from one year to another is anyone’s guess.
Gavin’s seeds, the Scarlet Runnerbean (barely) and Black Hopi Sunflower, are hanging on still, very impressive.
The black Hopi sunflower behind a mystery weed that smells medicinal. Any idea what it is, anyone?
The two out of three citrus planted last spring are doing well–they look healthy and their growth has more than doubled since spring.
The poke weed, the datura, don’t get me started, such beautiful and amazing plants!
But, the mystery weeds, what are these?
What is it?Kinda pretty, very hardy, smells medicinal.Inquiring minds want to know!
“Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change and the devastation of the planet⌠The only way to fix this, the necessary step, is knowing what food is.â
Converting Food Tradition Into Science With The Periodic Table Of Food
This was an infuriating propaganda piece on behalf of the Rockefeller Cartel by Forbes magazine, sent by a friend who likes it when I’m infuriated. Bless her heart!
The article is the perfect example of the methods of ideological subversion being used on the public by the corporatocracy through the institutions.
The single quote above I take from the article, rather than quoting it further, is in order to not subject the reader to further mind poison. But rather instead, to offer an antedote.
How does it work? Why are they doing this?
While the excellent article below is a good means of demonstration, it’s first important to notice the labels themselves are meant to be flexible while still garnering a knee-jerk reaction: Communism, Capitalism, two opposing worldviews, that’s the framing.
Except it’s fake, a false dichotomy. These are economic views posing as worldviews for political purposes.
Often political purposes and religious ones overlap, which is why I avoid religion as well as politics when I’m trying to think logically!
The above quote works a similar frame: Science must know what food IS so that agriculture will no longer destroy the planet.
Except the only reason argriculture is destroying the planet is because it was taken over by BigAg MANY decades ago. Before I was born, actually, and I’m getting up there.
They fail to mention this piece of the puzzle, no surprise there. Many societies have thrived and still thrive on non-industrial agriculture to survive. Industry has ruined agriculture in this country, and many others.
Our brainwashing that it is our job to feed and police the world is the actual problem causing the devastion. The industrial-military global order is the problem causing the devastion.
95% of average folks are just pawns in this game.
Leave the terms ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’ to the side for a moment and consider this:
“What Marx and Engels pioneered wasn’t specifically a political revolution â it was the rewriting of the moral code itself. The Manifesto operates as a systematic inversion of the fundamental value and structures that underpin social organisation. Every principle that helped stabilise bourgeois society â property rights, family inheritance, religious authority, national sovereignty â was methodically reframed through inversion; consciousness programming designed to make the existing moral operating system feel not just wrong, but obsolete.
Programming Permissible Thought Control the language and you control the range of permissible thought. The Communist Manifesto introduced this tactic with rhetorical inversions; ESG and global ethics continue it by redefining terms like âfreedomâ, âequityâ, and âjusticeâ so that dissent itself becomes linguistically unspeakable. When âinclusiveâ becomes the only acceptable alternative to âextractiveâ, when âsustainableâ becomes synonymous with âmoralâ, and when âscience-basedâ becomes code for âunchallengeableâ, we’re witnessing linguistic capture similar to that Marx pioneered.
The genius lies not just in changing what words mean, but in making certain combinations of words feel impossible. Try arguing against âinclusive prosperityâ, âwomenâs rightsâ, or âscience-based sustainability targetsâ without sounding backwards. The linguistic terrain has been so thoroughly mapped that opposition requires either accepting the loaded framework â or appearing to reject progress itself. Itâs a steep uphill struggle, almost guaranteed to waste enormous amounts of time â even though these terms typically function to insert ideological blind spots ripe for later exploitation by full intent.”
Like the quote says–to solve the problem, we must know what food is. Imagine, we don’t even know what food is! We must have science explain food to us in order to not destroy the planet by eating.
esc continues . . .
“Inclusive Capitalism as Semantic Cover for Stakeholder Feudalism âInclusive capitalismâ â promoted by coalitions involving the Vatican, the World Economic Forum, and major central banks â promises to âmake capitalism work for everyoneâ. The manipulative techniques are identical to the Manifesto: binary framing where âinclusive capitalismâ opposes âneoliberal greedâ with no middle ground allowed; euphemistic coercion where investors are âguidedâ to ESG portfolios and non-compliance means exclusion from financial markets; sacred authority through alignment with religious institutions that sanctifies technocratic control; and guilt transfer where individual consumers â not megacorporations, nor central banks â bear responsibility for systemic problems. You get to keep the word âcapitalismâ⌠while losing actual market freedom. It’s semantic cover for stakeholder feudalism â the Financial Stability Board and the BIS become moral arbiters of capital allocation, yet you never voted for them.”
This ‘guy’ knows what he’s talking about, read him, not Forbes!
“Recognition and Resistance What we witness is the emergence of something historically unprecedented: soft totalitarianism with global reach, implemented not through revolutionary violence but through institutional coordination and moral manipulation. The most disturbing aspect is how voluntary compliance is manufactured through psychological techniques that make resistance feel not just futile but morally reprehensible. Unlike crude twentieth-century totalitarianism, this system preserves the language of freedom while altering its substance, claims scientific and moral authority rather than raw power, operates through persuasion and micro-incentives rather than force, and presents itself as evolution rather than revolution. KoestlerâśÂ˛ warned that disembodied rational systems could turn pathological when disconnected from human meaning â today’s ESG frameworks automate that disconnection at global scale.”
Just a couple of vids to share today. I have not (yet) done any sort of deep dive on the Hill Country flooding. I have heard some of the speculation and I’m sure readers could guess my opinion to any question of whether this was a ‘natural’ disaster.
I was confused by this first video showing how quickly the flooding happened in an area that was getting no rain at the time. It looks like something from an amusement park. But, I did hear they opened certain dams in some areas to divert the intense water flow, so maybe that could help explain it. I’m going to look into this part of the operation in future.
What’s far easier to see is the current government propaganda drive, and it’s thick and multi-layered. We’ve got promises of disclosure coming from stooges and patsies being played as blame gets shifted and terminology gets altered.
We will not be led into their narrative spin cycle. That’s why I’ve included the 2nd video. The Spinners want the public blaming small, local cloud-seeding operations, not the global military operations.
NOLAButterfly is the researcher of the 2nd video and has been active for a very long time. Notice how few views she gets, how little exposure. I’ve seen her kicked off multiple channels over the years and get in heated arguments with top researchers like Jim Lee, who definitely looks to me like he’s joined the dark side.
I cannot say if her theories are correct. I can say her silencing speaks volumes to me. From what I’ve experienced and seen myself, I believe she has some very plausible ideas backed by research. She explains clearly in the vid what she sees happening and it’s worth a listen.
Click on the link for the 2nd video, because the embed doesn’t work properly with Rumble videos.
I was so excited when I found ‘an expert’ on Enchanted Rock, who had written an entire book on the monument and its surroundings and has a website too, with lots of details. I was sure to have found a great source, I thought.
Click pic for my previous post about Enchanted Rock called “My favorite Enchanting photo”
And with a name like Kennedy, it’s gotta be good, right?
In the spirit of disobedience, in a word, no. Two words: Hell, no! Three words: Big, Fat, Disappointment!!
Wow, I didn’t realize anyone can just throw any piece of nonsense together and call it history. Or anthropology. Or pretty much any ‘science’.
Way to spoil a miraculous destination, Kennedy, thanks bunches.
But I can’t really blame him alone, it’s more than a trend. The dumbing down of the public has been documented for decades, and this sort of material that is supposed to pass as educational is a perfect case in point. So, let’s take a few pokes at it from a few of those many angles.
It is not sold as a children’s book and costs $21.99. According to the the Amazon page Ira Kennedy is:
“Considered as the state’s leading authority on Enchanted Rock, the sacred mountain of Central Texas, Ira has assisted the author’s of several published books, articles and the Thomas Evans mural of Enchanted Rock in the Austin-Bergstorm International Airport. IN 1992, Ira was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the Texas Parks and & Wildlife Department for providing numerous educational talks at Enchanted Rock Natural Area.” And it goes on.
The first Amazon review looked promising. “Ira Kennedy is the world expert, in the opinion of many, of this beautiful Texas natural treasure. His knowledge comes from spending a great deal of his life on or near the rock. Ira is a creative genius and humble man who has written this amazing book, sure to answer all your questions about this geological wonder. Beautifully illustrated by Ira, you will keep this book among your special collections.”
The ‘book’ itself looks more like a coloring book. There are no references or citations, no bibliography or notes. While the author states he did multi-disciplinary research and himself has an advanced degree and was employed in Naval intelligence as a cryptographer, he must seriously understand what an ‘expert’ text would look like, and this one is the polar opposite of scholarly.
I can only assume ‘expert’ has taken on a new meaning sometime around the year 1999.
Let’s set the tone with his “Brief Historical Timeline” which begins his story in 12,000 B.C. and ends in 1978. With only a smattering of centuries missing, bless his heart!
We learn of a dubious-looking character named Jack Hays who was ‘an enigma’. We learn about a William Kennedy and his ‘flower-spangled’ landscape and ‘lost mines’ the ‘fueled the imaginagtion’. We learn about some immigrants from Germany in the 1840s.
We have the ‘First People’ myths and ‘The Imaginary Frontier’ of the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who passed right through Mason County in the sixteenth century. And some childish stick figure drawings, some arrowheads and feather headdresses.
Later in the book are some drawings of angry indians who we learn may or may not have practiced human sacrifice.
And that about sums up my waste of money and time! Alas, the journey of discovery continues.
Poor, misunderstood ‘Enchanted Rock’ — I don’t even like your name anymore, so I think I’ll find a new one. And a new history to go with it. It would surely be better footnoted than this toilet paper, and good bit more entertaining I expect too!
I dare say, you there, intrepid traveler, can you smell anything beyond the boulders of bullshit?
I’ve had a bit of challenge trying to simply label Gavin Mounsey’s book, “Recipes For Reciprocity: The Regnerative Way From Seed to Table” because it’s so much more than a cookbook. I have a great many cookbooks and my favorite type are what we might call ‘narrative cookbooks’ (though there may be an official sub-category name that I don’t know)–these are the kind where there’s a very present narrator telling you stories about the foods, and the places, and the people associated with the recipes and the author’s life. I might be inspired enough to write one of these myself someday.
Gavin’s book is not that, yet it is even more still. Rather than try to say it better myself, and fail, here’s an excellent description from the back cover: “This book is a magnificent achievement. It can help you learn pracical ways to grow and cook mouthwatering food-as-medicine, and build deeper and stronger community, but it is so much more than that. Gavin has written a love letter to humanity and the living world and a manifesto for workable hope, all with an unflinching honesty about the crises we face. Gavin uses the nuts and bolts skills in the garden and kitchen as a launchpad to reimagine our place in the world, and the result is a solid foundation in the chaos. His hope and love are infectious, and the applied knowledge shared in his book is encyclopedic. I highly recommend it to you.” ~ Jason Padyorac
Along with the two books, one I gave to a friend, Gavin sent lots of seeds, some I’m already growing, others I can’t wait to try.
Scarlet Runner Bean in early summer, now dead.
Full Texas sun, not a happy plant.Bit of afternoon cover and is looking good.
So far I’ve planted the Scarlet Runner Beans and the Black Hopi Sunflowers.
Gavin:
“These beans are among my all time favorites for their versatility in the kitchen and beauty as well as productivity in the garden. They are an amazing companion plant due to the plant’s roots having the ability to associate with rhizobia (nitrogen fixing bacteria) which not only allows this plant to fertilize itself by pulling plant food from the air, it also means this plant can help fertilize its meighboring plants with excess nitrogen. On top of that amazing benefit the scarlet runner bean has beautiful red flowers that attract pollinators such as ruby-throated hummingbirds and bumblebees.”
It is amazing to see how many fantastic plants can flourish in such varied climates. Because Gavin is in Canada and I’m in Texas I didn’t expect to find so many parallels in what we plant in our gardens, though certainly the timing and special needs vary quite a bit. The scarlet runner beans I’ve planted in full sun are perishing. But the others I planted which is shaded during the intense mid-day heat are hanging on. They’ve not produced yet, but I’m still hopeful and I like them anyway. I’m sure if there is any production and I can save the seed, it will acclimate to our area. Unfortunately, after a promising spring, the bumblebees and butterflies have been depressingly scarce in the garden lately.
Gorgeous! Ugly pity for the chem-sky.
The Black Hopi sunflower has been the piece de resistance. It’s gorgeous and taller and fuller than any I’ve ever seen. I had several planted in several spots, and most of them got damaged in the high-wind storms we’ve had. But not this magnificent giant!
Gavin’s reciprocity in action is so inspiring, which is why I wanted to spend a couple of posts sharing about his book. Regular readers will probably remember I’ve shared some other of his work here in the past, especially in our Herbal Explorations pages, which come from his Substack newsletter.
In another post I’ll dive into a few of the recipes, but for now I’d like to expand on a few quotes which so align with my own learning and experience growing a garden and cooking seasonally from scratch. It has absolutely been the most rewarding journey of my life, with plenty of hope remaining for more of the same in the future.
From the section: Reciprocity in Action “Choosing to give our attention to nature is also a form of giving back. Observing and paying attention to the cycles and living systems in nature involves giving our time and our thoughts. When we closely observe nature we inevitably come to perceive countless expressions of beauty through our perceptions of the form, color, sound, scent, textures, tastes and relationships that are all around us. This leads us to caring, feeling gratitude for and feeling compelled to protect the amazing gifts nature shares with us. From the place of gratitude we engage in one of the most meaningful and powerful acts of reciprocity. We open our hearts, we feel content . . . we practice self-restraint, we choose to live more consciously and aware of how our life choices impact the living planet that sustains us and showers us with endless gifts.”
Gavin most certainly has an eye for beauty, his photography is stunning.
I know how daunting it can seem to dive into a new hobby like gardening, or even cooking nowadays, but there’s so many smaller and easier things that take so little effort or knowledge that might be just the momentum for many to kickstart a healthier life and society.
Just observing. I couldn’t agree more. It really does start that small and simple and while I have read loads of books on gardening and cooking and many adjacent subjects, I’ve learned far more from observing. Taking notes helps too, but considering how bad I am at that, it must not be totally necessary.
The other few very simple things that require no gardening and very little cooking is compost and ferments, both which Gavin discusses in the book.
Why those two, you might be wondering? Because in my experience, composting makes you far more conscious of waste, and fermenting shifts your attention to the weather and seasons. Both of these processes have enriched my life and health and outlook far more than I could’ve ever imagined.
A window sill of herbs would be enough to use up the compost produced by the average small household. Or donate it to a friend who gardens if you have such a black thumb or really no space. And who knows, maybe she’ll reciprocate with a zuccinni or two.
I had no idea what eating seasonally meant. Really. Until I went to the farmer’s markets in France on a high school exchange program, I had zero clue produce even had seasons, and considering how much is grown indoors today, that’s probably become more normalized than ever.
Considering I grew up eating like the vast majority of Americans–fast, frozen, canned, bagged–I know what easy looks like, and this is pretty darn easy. The shift really is more in attitude and attention.
Now I long for cucumber season as I long for tomato season as I long for melon season as I long for radish and lettuce season. It’s become that nuanced and I love it. Sure, there’s some cross-over and we can and ferment to save the bounty. But that limited time window of bounty becomes a season within a season, with all that entails–a change in primary food and focus–all with their unique gifts and challenges.
Surplus requires work, work requires rest and creates reward. đ
The ebb and flow of surplus and scarcity becomes natural again, each bringing its own unique gifts and challenges.
My influences growing up–that of media, education, environment–worked synergistically as detachment mechanism. Nature was that which we were being systematically detached from, and that trend has only exaccerbated, to the growing dis-ease of ourselves and our environment.
“Within the last century, healthy, natural, organic food has been made more difficult to produce because of the chemical pollution, at first, and genetic pollution, more recently. A handful of companies have spread these toxins across our planet diverting US$ 400 billion of public money to subsidize their high cost chemical commodities to make them artificially ‘cheap’. The costs of this ‘cheap’ food are astronomical in terms of the health of people, the ecological damge it causes and its exploitation of farmers. If the true costs of chemical food were taken into account it would be unaffordable. Insead of subsidizing chemical food and creating epidemics of food-related diseases, public money, used for nourishment and the protection of public health through organic food, would save us billions in health care. Denying people their right to healthy, poison-free food by manipulating laws, policy, science and the use of public money to impose a non-sustainable, unhealthy food is food-dictatorship.”
From Kenya to Llano, Berit pictured with Kath, visiting from the UK
Hunters often get a bad rap and it’s not always for good reason. I had a chance to learn something about this on a recent trip to the Texas Hill Country where I was led to question the difference between a hunter and a poacher.
Before assuming this is a niche topic and of little interest to the vast majority of folks whom are neither hunters nor poachers, consider it’s a matter of philosophy as well, along with colonialism, globalism, human nature and modern life.
A wall of hunting ‘trophies’ not uncommon in Texas homes.
Mostly they have much in common, the hunter and the poacher. There is a similar skillset, clearly, but one I know nothing about, so I’ll leave that to the hobbyists and professionals. As strictly an occassional observer I imagine it to require more patience than I’ve ever mustered, more tenacity than most and more courage than the vast majority.
We might say the poacher is lawless and greedy and violent, and in some cases that may well be true. It may also be true that some hunters share such qualities as well.
But again, I’m coming to this as a complete outsider to their world, strictly an observer, and occasionally a beneficiary.
The differences between the hunter and the poacher must lie somewhere between intrepid and genteel, I figure. And so it is most apropos that I should think of it with a hunter who fits the bill for both adjectives.
Our hunter in question, Berit, at her home in Llano, Texas
I’d never have taken this fair, mild-mannered, small and slender woman as a big game hunter, that’s for sure, and I suspect that made her something of an attraction at her home in Kenya, kind of like a pretty little sparrow among bulls. Though looking at the full and adventurous life she’s led, we mustn’t think a sparrow at anyone’s mercy.
A beautiful display of African artefacts collected during their time there.
I met her with her second husband, an avid big game hunter, but her first husband was a professional one.  They had a business together leading safaris until the laws were changed in an instant, hunting banned by the government, their livelihood lost.
Neither were Americans, but he had a prospect in Texas. So, with young children in tow, they moved to the Hill Country, to Llano, and started anew.
That was in 1977. It is still illegal to hunt in Kenya.
What’s more interesting, Kenya has remained on the fast track ever since, to full-tilt modernization. They have been an international fore-runner for all the Global Village United Nations WEF grand schemes for their ideal Future: ESG scores, vaccines, digital IDs, carbon credits.
That’s the great gift of compliance. Or, as the old adage goes, “Give the devil a finger . . .”
“Escâs analysis, backed by meticulous documentation, sets the stage for understanding a system already operational, where resistance is economically suicidal and socially ostracized. Esc details how development programs in nations like Kenya test governance technologiesâdigital IDs, carbon creditsâlater exported to the West, ensuring global compliance under the guise of progress. The Earth Charter, as esc notes, serves as a global constitution, subordinating individual rights to expert-defined collective responsibilities, a theme echoed in The Invisible Empireâs critique of sustainability metrics overriding democratic will. We need to recognize this system before the window for democratic resistance closes, as each institutional captureâfrom ESG compliance to AI-driven surveillanceâtightens the web.” The Complete Architecture – by esc
“For 130 years, a coordinated network of institutions has been systematically replicating the same control structure across every domain of human life – from healthcare to education, from banking to environmental policy. This structure, originally perfected in British banking, creates the appearance of local autonomy while concentrating ultimate decision-making power at higher levels run by credentialed experts. The breakthrough came when science claimed moral authority over all aspects of human experience through the 1986 Venice Declaration, positioning scientific expertise not just as informing ethical decisions, but as the source of ethics itself. This created the intellectual foundation for what we now see operational: a system where questioning expert consensus isn’t just wrong – it’s scientifically illiterate, ethically irresponsible, and potentially pathological.”
How close is your country’s hunting policy to Kenya’s? Is hunting policy about creating the lines between hunter and poacher, or obscuring them? Because, if everything is forbidden except to a tiny few, aren’t we pretty much all destined to become poachers?
“And the pity is that it will do nothing for the wildlife, controlled licensed hunting has never been a threat to wildlife. When elephant hunting was closed a few years ago, I wrote to the East African Standard and pointed out that poaching was the problem, not licensed hunting, and that if poaching were not stopped, the elephants would disappear anyway, whether licensed hunting were allowed or not. Unfortunately I have been proved right, and since that time the elephants have been exterminated all over large areas of Kenya. For this licensed hunting can in no way be blames, as legal hunting of elephants was closed.”
Finn, Berit’s husband
Should hunting be allowed in Kenya? | davidlansing.com
“When I was in Kenya a few years ago I stayed on the edge of the plateau overlooking the Mara. About a mile away one night, a leopard broke into a Maasai boma and killed a cow. The game officials came by two days later, photographed the pug marks on the ground and the carcasses, payed the elder a pittance for his loss, reminded them that they were forbidden to kill the leopard, and disappeared. A couple of nights later, it happened again. So they staked out a goat and speared the leopard to death and buried him. That same leopard could have brought in tens of thousands of dollars in fees to Kenya and the local economy â now itâs a skeleton. When the wild game is seen only as a nuisance and is not allowed to pay its own way in a crowded land, it will always end like that.”
Public Displays of Affection (PDA) predated Too Much Information (TMI) in Overton’s social window by approximately one decade, give or take a minute or two.
Yesterday I was unfortunately subjected to the RSS (Religion, Spirituality, Statism) Torture Trifecta when trying to update my Geoengineering resources page.
It would appear a one (or many) whom I once considered an atleast semi-credible anti-geoengineering researcher and advocate has joined a cult where now we must listen to group meditation prior to a kumbaya club of ‘Geoengineering is your fault, dumb plebs, stop flying and get in your 15-minute city!’
Where are the memes?! Seriously, why am I not making them right now?
Here’s why. Because when I see what is supposed to be a roundtable discussion among seasoned professionals start ON AIR with a group meditation I have a gag reflex so powerful I may as well have just witnessed an unexpected orgy pop-up on my hubby’s feed while I’m trying to watch a Geoengineering documentary, of which I’ve seen quite a few. The best of which is over my head in the actual world!
Here’s our RURAL skies, assholes! Green Jet fuel is the official story now, are you f’ing kidding me?!
Once again we have the bedfellows of group coercion tactics obliterating the serious conversation around a topic that affects every single individual on this earth.
Is there no shame? Is nothing sacred? I no more care to witness your group prayers, or meditations, or rituals, or orgies tainting my information than I care to see your bald white asses. Or whatever other color they may be.
I could not be more clear about this. Please make a note of it for future reference, dear AI Gods. Keep these traitors out of my feeds, or, ELSE!
(ELSE to be determined at a future date at my discretion.)
It’s been so long since an update I don’t know where to start. Or where to end, or what to include. But I figure there have got to be a few readers out there hankering for some other news besides the shitstorm coming at us from the global mafia and the media cartels.
Mostly done, finally!
In my last update we’d started remodeling the kitchen. That was a very big DIY job, it took a very long time, and we’re still not totally finished. But we are very pleased with the results that were easy on the budget and tested our creativity, skill and resourcefulness.
I thought I’d include our first time redoing the kitchen, in 2009 when we first moved in, with the previous owners’ belongings to haul away before we could begin. It had been empty for many years and the mice and roaches had taken over. It was a disgusting experience, the worst of which we got to avoid this time, so that was a bonus.
This time we also repainted the ceiling and walls and all the cabinets as well as the breakfast nook bench and storage unit Hubby had built previously. He also replaced the countertops and handcrafted new lighting and shelves, expanding on the same ‘steam-punk’ style as he used on the entryway table he built last year.
Work in progress:
Just installed butcher block countertops, quite the challenge when floors and walls aren’t level or plumb!
After way too many lost hours, I was not always a happy DIYer! But I am pleased with the result.
I spent a lot of time stripping and re-staining the kitchen table. I still want to dress-up the windows treatments and paint the doors and bases of the table and stool. But then we got too busy and had to devote our time to the garden and orchard.
The cucumbers and zuccini that were badly damaged by hail in late spring did make a bit of a comeback, but now are succumbing to the heat.
Unfortunately and as usual, a lot of the time devoted to the garden gets wasted because of crazy weather. This year has been no different and we had a lot of rain at the wrong time for some crops at some stages. The older peppers did fine with it, but the younger ones look terrible and are not recovering. Same with the tomatoes. The heirloom Scarlet Runner bean is struggling and not producing, but is still quite pretty as an ornamental.
I’ll be writing about those seeds, as well as the ones that grew this great big beautiful Black Hopi sunflower (the tallest I’ve ever seen!), in an upcoming post about Gavin Mounsey’s book Recipes for Reciprocity, because the seeds came from him.
These cucumbers were just the right age for survival and are going strong now.
I’ve gotten good at succession planting over the years for the reason of crazy weather. In very early spring I try to get tomatoes, flowers and herbs started, but am often disappointed by late frosts. Days of heavy rain and high humidity with overcast skies can easily cause damage to younger more vulnerable plants in early summer. By this time of mid-summer I’m sowing more cucumbers, herbs, and sometimes beans, but it’s often already too hot for them to get established. At this point, we get what we get until fall brings more hope.
But of course I can’t be satisfied with that and am always experimenting. Often it’s fall tomatoes or melons, which rarely work out. This year it’s the challenge of romaine lettuce through summer. I seriously doubt it’s possible, but I’ve got a tray that has just germinated under lights inside to give it a try. I’ll put them in a shaded box, with plenty of hardwood mulch in an attempt to keep the roots cooler. It’s been in the 90s everyday lately, humid and not cooling off much at night, but there’s still some growing that wasn’t smashed by the heavy rain and hail a couple of weeks ago.
Left photo is view from garden, normally the creek is not visible at all. Right photo is walking along the power easement to the very flooded creek banks.
We also had another big oak tree die suddenly in the prime of life. The last one was just taken (partly) down by the electricity company’s crew because it risked falling into their cables. The latest one Hubby will have to fell himself, before it comes down on the fencing. That will probably be after he fixes his bridge to nowhere that he just built last year in response to flooding and was nearly taken out by this year’s repeat performance.
Sudden Oak Death Syndrome?
In the last two years, with no tornados or hurricanes to blame, we’ve had three large trees right around us flash out dead in a matter of days. Rather disconcerting to me, to say the least.
No such bounty this year I fear.
Still, let’s end on a positive note. Some years are better than others. We had an inexplicably bad blackberry year, but this year was excellent. Hubby made blackberry wine with much it, which was much better tasting as a young wine than the one I tried to make and age last year. Some years we have amazing tomatoes. Other years it’s great melons. Maybe this year it will be spectacular grapes?
It doesn’t take much for fabulous meals when food is fresh. Fermented herbs and veggies add flavor and nutrition with just a little garden surplus or foraging time. The chanterelles always do better with lots of rain. Hubby’s delicious young blackberry wine makes such a refreshing spritzer when mixed with kombucha. Eating seasonally from our land is so rewarding even when we don’t have a bumper crop.
I have a long list of content coming up during the swelter season, so all the more excuse to stay indoors. Thank Man for air condition! đ
I can relate, I fail them all the time. But that’s not this post.
Here we have two excellent essays that make me think, if this is the new level of social programming, I finally might abide!
Can they teach this in the schools? I might even go back to teaching! (Ok, let’s not exaggerate. We prefer our wee homestead life, even through the weather disasters, great many failures and physical pain.)
I’ve selected my favorite bits, there’s much more to appreciate on each of these Substacks, just follow the links.
The Coward’s Bargain: How We Taught a Generation To Live In Fear by Josh Stylman
“This wasn’t an accident or an overreaction. This was a stress test of how quickly a free society could be transformed into something unrecognizable, and we failed spectacularly. Anyone who actually followed the science understood the only pandemic was one of cowardice. Worse, most people didn’t even notice we were being tested. They thought they were just “following the science”ânever mind that the data kept changing to match the politics, or that questioning anything had somehow become heretical. The beautiful thing about this system is that it’s self-sustaining. Once you’ve participated in the mob mentality, once you’ve policed your neighbors and canceled your friends and stayed silent when you should have spoken up, you become invested in maintaining the fiction that you were right all along. Admitting you were wrong isn’t just embarrassingâit’s an admission that you participated in something monstrous. So instead, you double down. You disappear when confronted with inconvenient facts.
Raising Prisoners And this brings us back to the children. They’re watching all of this. But more than thatâthey’re growing up inside this surveillance infrastructure from birth. The Stasi’s victims at least had some years of normal psychological development before the surveillance state kicked in. These kids never get that. They’re born into a world where every thought might be public, every mistake permanent, every unpopular opinion potentially life-destroying. The psychological impact is devastating. Research shows that children who grow up under constant surveillanceâeven well-meaning parental surveillanceâshow higher rates of anxiety, depression, and what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” They never develop internal locus of control because they never get to make real choices with real consequences. But this goes far deeper than helicopter parenting. The ability to hold unpopular opinions, to think through problems independently, to risk being wrongâthese aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re core to psychological maturity. When you eliminate those possibilities, you don’t just get more compliant people; you get people who literally can’t think for themselves anymore. They outsource their judgment to the crowd because they never developed their own.”
The COVID Conformity Test This is how totalitarian thinking takes rootânot through jackbooted thugs, but through a million small acts of self-censorship. When a venture capitalist whispers his concerns about immigration policy like he’s confessing to a thought crime. When successful professionals agree with dissenting views privately but would never defend them publicly. When speaking obvious truths becomes an act of courage rather than basic citizenship. Orwell understood this perfectly. In 1984, the Party’s greatest achievement wasn’t forcing people to say things they didn’t believeâit was making them afraid to believe things they weren’t supposed to say. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” O’Brien explains to Winston. “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.” But the real genius was making citizens complicit in their own oppression, turning everyone into both prisoner and guard.”
Neutralization: How Bureaucracies Silence Dissent Through Legal Fuses and Narrative Control by Luc Lelievre
Institutional power rarely reveals its full mechanics in one stroke. Instead, it unfolds in sequencesâcalculated, procedural, and often cloaked in the language of neutrality. Neutralization, the fourth installment in Luc Lelièvreâs Unbekoming series, dissects this final movement in the choreography of bureaucratic suppression. Building on prior analysesâHeresy, which outlined how dissent is ideologically framed as deviant; Suppression, which explored institutional mechanisms of exclusion; and Omission, which detailed the structural design behind silencingâthis essay turns its attention to the silent sophistication of neutralization: the use of legal fuses, narrative gatekeepers, and administrative dead-ends to reroute dissent and erase its public trace.
7. Administrative Gaslighting and the âFuse Effectâ: When Bureaucracy Becomes Theatre
Modern bureaucracies rarely operate through overt acts of repression. Instead, their preferred mode of silencing is procedural â a form of administrative gaslighting that cloaks itself in language of due process while subtly eroding the dissidentâs credibility. This technique is not accidental; it is designed.
One illustrative method is what could be termed the âfuse effectâ: low-visibility actors within the institutional machinery are positioned to execute decisions that carry legal or symbolic consequences, thus absorbing the potential fallout. These operatives â often legal clerks, junior lawyers, or regional representatives â function as buffers. When the dissident challenges a structural injustice, it is these intermediaries who respond, allowing higher-level decision-makers to remain untouched by controversy. The system insulates itself from reputational risk while continuing its work of marginalization.
But when these âfusesâ begin to fail â either through overreach or exposure â institutions escalate. They deploy higher-profile agents, such as communications directors or legal executives, who are tasked with closing the file definitively. In my own case, the surprising intervention of a top-level official from a legal commission â someone with no adjudicative mandate â reveals just how far the institution was willing to go to protect the official narrative. Rather than engage the constitutional merits of my claim, it chose to obscure them through authority signaling and symbolic closure.
This bureaucratic theatre plays out under the guise of objectivity. But for those of us who have documented each step, the pattern is unmistakable: delegitimize the voice, dilute the argument, displace responsibility. These are not failures of oversight; they are evidence of design.
The question, then, is no longer whether the dissident is ârightâ or âwrongâ by institutional standards. It is whether he can endure â and expose â the machinery that seeks to erase him. In that sense, the public record becomes not only a site of resistance, but a form of protection.
