Turves

Lovely word. A man in Ireland might sell a piece of property with a peat bog on it and retain the right to 'cut turves' of peat. Mineral rights. Finished a couple of books and finally got started on the one that Shaun had left when the guys were over. At Day's End: Night In Times Past which is a fine book about nighttime. I knew I was going to enjoy it. Good reading for the weekend, as I am myself a student of the dark. Meeting TR for lunch tomorrow, opera talk, then shopping and back home; it'll give me a chance to hunt for mushrooms. I'm planning a nice dinner with a bottle of wine. Small steak, baked potato, mushroom gravy. A very cheap zin ($6) that actually is quite good if you open it four hours ahead of drinking. I'm going to collect horse shit off the road, dry it, and burn some this winter. It's supposed to make a good hot fire. It was buffalo paddies that heated the sod huts. I need to rebuild the grate for the cook-stove, so I put that on the list, and I need to clean out the cupboards and start a winter food list. The logistics of being a recluse. I'm currently using a trench latrine, so I can muck out the outhouse and the composting toilet. If I let them dry, it isn't such a bad chore. Get the firewood, clear some brush, finish the floor insulation. It isn't a long list, but there are subsets of chores, and one thing leads to another. I'd like to gather 25 gallons of acorns and leach them down in the stream, so I didn't have to use rainwater I'd collected for washing. I hate to waste water. I have my water use down to less than 500 gallons a year, I use four gallons of gasoline a week, and I spend 80 to a $120 a month on food. I can eat very well on four dollars a day. Bean soup and cornbread. Hash and eggs. It's not rocket science. I once lived for a month on only what I could gather, and I gained ten pounds. Go figure.