Old 99 Farm, week of June 12 2016

June 2016: Note change of date to Friday 4pm to 6pm from Thurs for weekly pickup. Or by special arrangement or ‘catch me in’. I offer picked produce on pre-order basis, picked Friday am.

Would you support a handgun ban in Canada? http://www.torontosun.com/ Go to bottom of page to participate in the survey.

We have new crop beet greens, chard, collards, kale, parsley, eggplant and green garlic. Lettuces almost finished, as are chards.

Eggs are going back up a buck a dozen to $5 for XL, $5.75 for Jumbo. Still a bargain and you’re helping me farm ethically and sustainably here in the Dundas valley.

Oh my how I got a boost this week from Albert Bates’ blog The Great Challenge about the ‘marshmellow test’, delayed gratification, trust and climate disruption, called Hot Brain Cool Brain.
Walter Mischel’s psychology experiment at Stanford in the 1960s took youngsters age 4 to 6, put them in a room one-by-one, gave them a choice of a cookie, mint, pretzel, or marshmallow and the following deal: they could eat the treat right away, or wait 15 minutes until the experimenter returned. If they waited, they would get an extra treat. Many lifestyle successes correlate with ability to delay gratification, which the researchers discovered by following these subjects through their lifetimes.

There is also an existing body of evidence that tells us that humans are predisposed to disbelieve scientific facts, or even their own experiences, if they conflict with strongly held beliefs. This is likely the phenomenon most responsible for our failure not merely to make the cultural changes required of us to avert climate Armageddon and Near Term Human Extinction – even simple lifestyle changes like eating lower on the food chain, cutting discretionary travel, living in a smaller house and having no more than one child – but our failure to even acknowledge, as individuals or collectively, that we have a problem. We have chosen instead, to believe an unreliable worldview. The students who showed low trust of adults, came from unreliable households, usually took the treat immediately: no delay.

So the kicker for me is that there likely is a self-reinforcing feedback loop going on with climate news. The more risky and unreliable the future climate gets, the more we react with hot brain thinking (which favours immediate responses, ie ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’). This relates to climate disruption because our collective choices for immediate gratification, eg trip to Florida, big car, alway on AC, imported fruits and veg, etc. are reducing our chances of handing on a liveable climate for our kids. Cool Brain thinking could neutralize strongly held beliefs (eg the that my choices don’t matter, that it’s too late anyway, that the leaders are all crooks, etc.) and cause us to opt for different lifestyle choices.

I think that’s very hopeful insight about human nature and our present condition at the end of the industrial age with Nature bleeding at the jugular.

For me the cool brain thinking identifies the present day, beta tested tools to reduce ACD. My list, which I’ve been adding to since 2005:

• permaculture
• internet
• Transition Town movement
• Relocalisation movement
• biochar as soil carbon sequestration
• Intermediate Technology movement
• social marketing
• wikileaks
• natural capitalism
• organic farming
• restorative agriculture, carbon farming
• Holistic Management system

The list is growing. What are your grounds for hope in a viable future?

Have a great week, check out the Mischel talk on the marshmellow test and enjoy local sunshine!

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami