Here's what's apparent to me: No government regulation would have or is going to change what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling oil wells is an inherently dangerous activity. They blow out periodically on land but it's not the big deal that it is when they blow out under a mile of ocean.
It's ludicrous to politicize this thing. Either we drill the ocean or we dive headfirst off the cliff of peak oil. There is no political will in any viable party on the planet to jump off the cliff. Absent that, we're going to drill in challenging places and mistakes will be made.
Someone makes critical judgement calls in the drilling of a well in a matter of moments, even seconds, and this time, bad calls were made. Greed may have played a part in the disaster, but this can and will happen again as we test the limits of deep water drilling technology.
I've heard the difficulties in drilling a well off the coast of Brazil are similar to landing a ship on the moon. The wells will be drilled.
I am sick of hearing how BP is at fault. Or Obama. Or Salazar. If you're burning oil, you share the blame. (Which means I too share the blame.)
We tell these people to get us cheap oil and then crucify them when they fail. It's not unlike blaming a soldier for killing someone in a war he didn't start.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Cheese economics
Leah took four five pound wheels of cheese to a local horse show last week, along with some hand-made pottery and homemade jellies and jams. She sold all the cheese (please don’t put my wife in jail), and about 2 dozen jars of jam. She also sold a couple of nice pieces of pottery. She came home with almost $600.
So this morning while sitting under a cow, milking, I started doing some math to occupy my mind. It takes four gallons of Jersey milk to make a five pound block of cheese (more if you’re milking a Holstein). I’m also raising calves on my cow, so I only milk once a day. I get about two gallons per cow out of the deal.
A sack of feed costs just over $5: quite a bargain, absolutely dependent on cheap fossil fuel and mechanization to produce at this cost. The feed is nothing but ground Monsanto genetically modified corn, and cotton seed hulls produced from Monsanto genetically modified cotton seed, with a bit of cottonseed meal, salt and trace minerals. Two cows won’t consume a whole sack, so I’ll figure the cost at $4.
The cows get pasture, but that pasture doesn’t come free. There's fertizler, weed spray, etc. I also feed them a bale a day of hay grazer (sorghum type hay) that sells for about $5/bale, once again, totally dependent on fossil fuel powered machinery. It’d cost more if the work had to be done by hand. Much more. I raise my own hay, so I’ll be more than fair and say the cost of pasture and hay combined is $5.
I use a bit of fly spray on the cows, hot water and soap to disinfect the milk pails, funnels, etc, used in handling the milk. We buy cheese cloth to strain the milk and also to make the cheese. There’s the cost of culture and rennet. And there’s the energy cost of refrigeration, also totally dependent on electricity generated by fossil fuels. Being generous, let’s say all of this adds up to $3/day (it’s more, but by God, I've got to make this work, so I'm going with the low number).
So, I have $12 in direct expenses involved in the process, per day. Not including taxes or the cost of the land, of course, but who gives a shit about all of that.
The entire process of milking the cows, from prep work to straining of the milk takes me two hours. I have to catch the cows, spray them for flies, wash their udders, feed them and squeeze out the milk. Pour the milk for the milk pail into a larger milk can, carry the milk back to the house, strain the milk, clean the pail and the can, etc. Leah often takes over on the straining, but the time is spent, one way or the other.
While we drink raw milk, we discovered it’s better to pasteurize the milk before making cheese. We’ve made it from raw milk, but raw milk cheese must be consumed immediately or aged a minimum of 60 days to ensure that no bad bacteria survive the process. Leah has to heat the milk, then cool it rapidly. This takes about a half an hour; she spends a good portion of that time standing above a pot in a sink full of cool water stirring to cool the milk to exactly 90 degrees. Then she adds culture to the cheese and waits 45 minutes. She adds rennet and waits another 45 minutes. The milk must remain at 90 degrees for this entire period. Exactly 90 degrees. She cuts the curds, then she places the pot into a sink full of moderately hot water and gently stirs the curds. The process varies from this point forward, depending on the kind of cheese she’s making. For something like cheddar, there’s quite a bit of work left to do, but for fresh cheese like that she sold at the horse show, this takes about an hour and a half. The temperature of the curds and whey must gradually be raised to 100 degrees during this process. Go over 102 degrees and you’ll probably ruin the cheese.
Then she has to drain the whey from the curds and pack this into a cheese press. The cheese has to be turned a couple of times, removed from the press and refrigerated.
No way you’re doing this in less than 3 hours. Truth is, by the time all is said and done, it’s more like 4 hours, scattered over an entire day.
Leah quartered the cheese, meaning each block weighed a pound and a quarter. She sold each chunk for $6. So we grossed $24 for a day’s worth of cheese.
Less $12 in expenses, gives us a profit of $12.
We have 6 hours of labor invested. So we have earned $2/hour, assuming you drive out to our place to buy the cheese. Delivery to market cuts into that profit quite significantly but she was going to the horse show anyway.
Hell, we’re making a profit. Guess I ought to go spend another $1,400 on an additional cow….
For what it's worth, the pottery, the jelly and the produce I raise in our garden all have similar profit margins.
So this morning while sitting under a cow, milking, I started doing some math to occupy my mind. It takes four gallons of Jersey milk to make a five pound block of cheese (more if you’re milking a Holstein). I’m also raising calves on my cow, so I only milk once a day. I get about two gallons per cow out of the deal.
A sack of feed costs just over $5: quite a bargain, absolutely dependent on cheap fossil fuel and mechanization to produce at this cost. The feed is nothing but ground Monsanto genetically modified corn, and cotton seed hulls produced from Monsanto genetically modified cotton seed, with a bit of cottonseed meal, salt and trace minerals. Two cows won’t consume a whole sack, so I’ll figure the cost at $4.
The cows get pasture, but that pasture doesn’t come free. There's fertizler, weed spray, etc. I also feed them a bale a day of hay grazer (sorghum type hay) that sells for about $5/bale, once again, totally dependent on fossil fuel powered machinery. It’d cost more if the work had to be done by hand. Much more. I raise my own hay, so I’ll be more than fair and say the cost of pasture and hay combined is $5.
I use a bit of fly spray on the cows, hot water and soap to disinfect the milk pails, funnels, etc, used in handling the milk. We buy cheese cloth to strain the milk and also to make the cheese. There’s the cost of culture and rennet. And there’s the energy cost of refrigeration, also totally dependent on electricity generated by fossil fuels. Being generous, let’s say all of this adds up to $3/day (it’s more, but by God, I've got to make this work, so I'm going with the low number).
So, I have $12 in direct expenses involved in the process, per day. Not including taxes or the cost of the land, of course, but who gives a shit about all of that.
The entire process of milking the cows, from prep work to straining of the milk takes me two hours. I have to catch the cows, spray them for flies, wash their udders, feed them and squeeze out the milk. Pour the milk for the milk pail into a larger milk can, carry the milk back to the house, strain the milk, clean the pail and the can, etc. Leah often takes over on the straining, but the time is spent, one way or the other.
While we drink raw milk, we discovered it’s better to pasteurize the milk before making cheese. We’ve made it from raw milk, but raw milk cheese must be consumed immediately or aged a minimum of 60 days to ensure that no bad bacteria survive the process. Leah has to heat the milk, then cool it rapidly. This takes about a half an hour; she spends a good portion of that time standing above a pot in a sink full of cool water stirring to cool the milk to exactly 90 degrees. Then she adds culture to the cheese and waits 45 minutes. She adds rennet and waits another 45 minutes. The milk must remain at 90 degrees for this entire period. Exactly 90 degrees. She cuts the curds, then she places the pot into a sink full of moderately hot water and gently stirs the curds. The process varies from this point forward, depending on the kind of cheese she’s making. For something like cheddar, there’s quite a bit of work left to do, but for fresh cheese like that she sold at the horse show, this takes about an hour and a half. The temperature of the curds and whey must gradually be raised to 100 degrees during this process. Go over 102 degrees and you’ll probably ruin the cheese.
Then she has to drain the whey from the curds and pack this into a cheese press. The cheese has to be turned a couple of times, removed from the press and refrigerated.
No way you’re doing this in less than 3 hours. Truth is, by the time all is said and done, it’s more like 4 hours, scattered over an entire day.
Leah quartered the cheese, meaning each block weighed a pound and a quarter. She sold each chunk for $6. So we grossed $24 for a day’s worth of cheese.
Less $12 in expenses, gives us a profit of $12.
We have 6 hours of labor invested. So we have earned $2/hour, assuming you drive out to our place to buy the cheese. Delivery to market cuts into that profit quite significantly but she was going to the horse show anyway.
Hell, we’re making a profit. Guess I ought to go spend another $1,400 on an additional cow….
For what it's worth, the pottery, the jelly and the produce I raise in our garden all have similar profit margins.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The economy is great; the recovery proceeding...
...aside from this list of 50 minor inconveniences (plus a hundred or more that failed to make the page.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Sabbath eve blues
Sabbath eve, June 4, 2010
Leah spent the afternoon helping set up for a horse show that is slated for tomorrow. Money from the show goes to support LOPE, an organization that finds homes for retired race horses here in Texas. Our house is full of various buckets of produce. Squash, black-eyed peas, potatoes, cucumbers, okra and tomatoes. I decided to help her out and can some of the tomatoes while she was gone.
A whole afternoon of hard work over a sink and a hot stove yielded 7 quarts and 11 pints. I don’t know what a quart of tomatoes sells for, but I can tell you it isn’t enough.
I have decided I am not going to grow any more wheat. Despite what futures quotes say, wheat is selling for slightly less than $4 a bushel where I live. That’s 60 pounds for $4. Sixty loaves of the cheapest bread probably sells for about $120 and the farmer gets $4. After eating all the expenses involved in raising the shit. This year, that means I earned nothing. Nada. Zero, ziltch. Not a fucking grunion. Truth is, I probably lost money raising the shit. Remember that when you bite into your next sandwich.
I tell myself that if I can’t make money selling food, at least I can eat the stuff or give it to friends to eat. But I have celiac disease and can’t eat goddamned wheat. Guess the fucking chickens can eat the fucking wheat and then I’ll eat them. One guy down the road baled his wheat instead. The bales are worth more than the grain would have been and harvesting costs were significantly less.
My corn looks pretty good, but the futures prices for corn are also bad.
At least I’m not a Louisiana fisherman.
Or a Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida fisherman.
Or someone dependent on the Florida energy plants that need clean sea water to operate and may soon have to shut down. Can you imagine what’ll happen to the tourist industry when oil from the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico finds its way to those clean white beaches? Or what happens to the real estate market in the Southeastern quarter of this nation when the full impact of this catastrophe becomes evident?
I noticed the stock market gave up gains it had made earlier in the week. Unemployment numbers continue to be bad, especially when you realize that nearly all recent recovery is related to government giveaway programs that will have to be paid for at some point in our future.
Economists seem sure that all these bad loans will someday cure themselves. Hugh Hendry says I recommend you panic.
I think Hendry is right. I expect a rash of sovereign defaults. It’s not just Greece. We can deal with this now, or deal with it over the next 20 years, but it’s not going away. There is simply too much bad debt within the system.
I watched Robin Hood last week. The show didn’t get great reviews, but I enjoyed it.
Despite all the woes, I am glad to be alive.
Leah spent the afternoon helping set up for a horse show that is slated for tomorrow. Money from the show goes to support LOPE, an organization that finds homes for retired race horses here in Texas. Our house is full of various buckets of produce. Squash, black-eyed peas, potatoes, cucumbers, okra and tomatoes. I decided to help her out and can some of the tomatoes while she was gone.
A whole afternoon of hard work over a sink and a hot stove yielded 7 quarts and 11 pints. I don’t know what a quart of tomatoes sells for, but I can tell you it isn’t enough.
I have decided I am not going to grow any more wheat. Despite what futures quotes say, wheat is selling for slightly less than $4 a bushel where I live. That’s 60 pounds for $4. Sixty loaves of the cheapest bread probably sells for about $120 and the farmer gets $4. After eating all the expenses involved in raising the shit. This year, that means I earned nothing. Nada. Zero, ziltch. Not a fucking grunion. Truth is, I probably lost money raising the shit. Remember that when you bite into your next sandwich.
I tell myself that if I can’t make money selling food, at least I can eat the stuff or give it to friends to eat. But I have celiac disease and can’t eat goddamned wheat. Guess the fucking chickens can eat the fucking wheat and then I’ll eat them. One guy down the road baled his wheat instead. The bales are worth more than the grain would have been and harvesting costs were significantly less.
My corn looks pretty good, but the futures prices for corn are also bad.
At least I’m not a Louisiana fisherman.
Or a Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida fisherman.
Or someone dependent on the Florida energy plants that need clean sea water to operate and may soon have to shut down. Can you imagine what’ll happen to the tourist industry when oil from the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico finds its way to those clean white beaches? Or what happens to the real estate market in the Southeastern quarter of this nation when the full impact of this catastrophe becomes evident?
I noticed the stock market gave up gains it had made earlier in the week. Unemployment numbers continue to be bad, especially when you realize that nearly all recent recovery is related to government giveaway programs that will have to be paid for at some point in our future.
Economists seem sure that all these bad loans will someday cure themselves. Hugh Hendry says I recommend you panic.
I think Hendry is right. I expect a rash of sovereign defaults. It’s not just Greece. We can deal with this now, or deal with it over the next 20 years, but it’s not going away. There is simply too much bad debt within the system.
I watched Robin Hood last week. The show didn’t get great reviews, but I enjoyed it.
Despite all the woes, I am glad to be alive.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Back in the saddle
I’ve been AWOL since last Thursday. Daniel Pace and Caio Ribeiro joined Mathew Walker and me in West Texas. We went to Balmorhea and then to the Big Bend Park, from there back to Balmorhea, on to Fort Stockton, our old farm at Bakersfield and finally back to the ranch at Belmont where I now live. I enjoyed the trip but I’m glad to be home. Vast distances separate towns and locations in Texas and invariably I find trips to the Bend involve too much driving and not nearly enough sleep. Daniel and Caio were shooting footage for a companion documentary and or promotional material for Contrabando, the film. I detest being photographed and filmed; by the time they were done, I was all but snarling every time they raised a camera in my face. How do you like me now, motherfucker?
I notice that the efforts to kill the blowout in the gulf have failed. This comes as no surprise, but the news is a terrible blow, nonetheless. Basically, we’re fucked in more ways than most can or will imagine. Here’s the gist of it: the environment will be destroyed and someone will continue drilling.
On the home front, we harvested a meager wheat crop averaging about 35 bushels to the acre. Wheat prices are pathetic. Makes me want to stuff the shit up every available orifice of the bastards that control such matters. Grass continues growing; the second crop of hay is near ready to cut. The garden continues to produce more vegetables than we know what to do with. I’m irrigating corn where I can and warring with feral hogs determined to harvest our corn crop before we do.
Javi Garcia’s latest record continues to be the best new work I have heard this year.
And I don’t have much else to say at the moment.
I notice that the efforts to kill the blowout in the gulf have failed. This comes as no surprise, but the news is a terrible blow, nonetheless. Basically, we’re fucked in more ways than most can or will imagine. Here’s the gist of it: the environment will be destroyed and someone will continue drilling.
On the home front, we harvested a meager wheat crop averaging about 35 bushels to the acre. Wheat prices are pathetic. Makes me want to stuff the shit up every available orifice of the bastards that control such matters. Grass continues growing; the second crop of hay is near ready to cut. The garden continues to produce more vegetables than we know what to do with. I’m irrigating corn where I can and warring with feral hogs determined to harvest our corn crop before we do.
Javi Garcia’s latest record continues to be the best new work I have heard this year.
And I don’t have much else to say at the moment.
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