It's Been a While

Blush Noisette in Drought Apr 2011

I didn't feel like writing anything in the blog for the longest time. I even thought of trying to sell this place or sticking a mobile home on it and renting it out and never coming here again. The weather and soil here are challenging enough without toxic neighbors. The situation with the oil well got even worse, as the opertor began venting large quantities of "sour" gas into the air. In mid-March, I sent the following to the operator, with a copy to his attorney (names left out to protect privacy):

Dear WWW

You are not properly disposing of the toxic gas coming from XXX #1 on the YYY lease. Instead, you are venting the gas directly into the air. The level of hydrogen sulfide in the air is high enough to cause burning eyes and throats on my land. I suspect there are also high levels of hydrogen cyanide and sulfur dioxide. I became dizzy and sick to my stomach after breathing the air for four hours last week, and my neighbor ZZZ told me he and his family have suffered similar symptoms. ZZZ has emphysema, and he says the gas from the well makes his cough worse. ZZZ's grandson's wife, who also lives on the land next to mine, is pregnant. Hydrogen sulfide can cause birth defects if a pregnant woman is exposed to it.

Because of the gases you are venting from your well, I am unable to spend more than two or three hours on my land when the wind is blowing from the north. Besides violating state rules on on H2S safety, your venting H2S into the air is denying me the use of my surface rights.

Please correct the situation immediately. 

The situation was altered within the next couple of days. Now the operator is piping the gas half a mile away and releasing it on someone else's land. So the air at the Berry Farm smells sweet and fresh, but someone else has to breathe H2S.

Here's the thing that makes me feel especially sad: I am not an innocent party. I use gasoline and oil in my car. I use methane and propane. I buy goods that have been transported across long distances, using fuel that comes from wells like the one next to my land. Even the photovoltaic system I used at Altamira required fossil fuel to make the equipment and ship it. At this very moment, I am consuming electricity created by generators running on methane (natural gas).

I've tried living without electricity, and I didn't like it. Even before I put in the electrical system at Altamira, I used kerosene and propane lanterns. Even when I heated my house with a wood burning stove, I used a gasoline powered chain saw to cut up the wood. I loved my chain saw. I love machines. I don't have any desire to return to life as it was in the 18th century.  What I'd like to have happen, if I were writing the script, is small-scale photovoltaic and wind systems that wouldn't require huge power lines, and more efficient energy storage systems, and perhaps a completely new energy source.

The weather and land here at the Berry Farm continue to be vicious. Hard to believe, but there was a frost here this past week. The low temperature for the week at the Austin airport was something like 46, but it got down to 32 here, just 40 miles away (and to the south!). Killed the new growth on the catalpa tree and grape vines and even one of the sophora trees, which is a tough central Texas native. Made the fava bean blossoms shrivel up and turn black. There was frost damage to the new leaves on the pear trees.  It's all very discouraging. The gardening mentors of my youth told me: "Plant your corn when the mesquite trees start to leaf out." The mesquite trees were wrong this year. Then, of course, there's the lack of rain. Pity I don't have the contact info for the person to whom to write a cease and desist letter concerning the weather.

I've been reading a book about relatively abrupt climate change (that appears to have been global in scope) in the 16th century -- the beginning of what's known at the Little Ice Age. There's something to be learned from those times. In particular, the Dutch people provided an example of a good response, which was to change the way they grew food, adopting a more diverse range of food crops and changing their methods of farming. The French, on the other hand, provided an example of how NOT to respond. They insisted on keeping their traditional ways of farming, even if it meant death by starvation to thousands.

Speaking of thousands, there are thousands of baby grasshoppers hopping around the Berry Farm. I'm trying Surround kaolin spray on the fruit trees, putting a thin layer on the leaves. I think I'll try painting the trunks with a thick layer. The most horrible thing the grasshoppers did last year was eat the bark on the young fruit trees, girdling them, which caused them to die.

On the brighter side, the roses and phlox are beautiful, and the collards taste better after a frost.

The Gardens in Winter

My nephew, who lives in Brooklyn, was going to visit San Antonio tomorrow but is stuck at JFK. Due to the blizzard, all flights have been canceled, the streets are closed, and trains are not running. There are even people stuck on trains.

Here in central Texas, it's a sunny, spring-like day. The recent foggy nights followed by rain have made the winter grass grow. I have not written about my gardens lately, because I have been too sad. A promoter from Houston got several hundred thousand dollars from European investors and drilled an oil well on the land next to mine, into the shale that lies just beneath the sandstone. They used hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") to break up the shale, which frees the oil so it can be pumped up. The methane that comes up with the oil in this area is what's called "sour gas" -- that is to say, it has a high sulfur content. So now, every north wind brings the smell of hydrogen sulfide. I have not had the water tested yet. The well operator assured me that they were casing the well with concrete down to 700 feet, which is below the level of the water. The theory is that this will keep oil, gas, and fracking fluid from entering the aquifer.

When I bought this land, I knew that it was in an oil field. Also, I benefit from oil and natural gas on a regular basis, to run my vehicle, to heat my house, to ship my food to the store, to operate the machinery to grow and harvest the food, to produce fertilizers and pesticides (to the extent I do not use "organic" food and fabrics), to create plastics and synthetic fibers. As I look around the room where I now sit, few of the objects in the room would be here without oil. So it would be wrong for me to feel angry. Instead, I am sad about the choices we humans have made, to trade our land and water for oil. According to the information I can find online, most of the oil used in the U.S. (the largest oil consumer of any nation in the world) is used for transportation and shipping. In fact, it looks as though more than half the oil purchased in the U.S. is used to make gasoline to run cars. Only a small fraction is used for shipping goods. I have not found a carefully researched table about where people go when they're burning all that gasoline, but based on observation, I'd expect to find that most of the gasoline used in cars is to go to and from work and to shop.  So we could make a huge dent in the amount of oil used simply by living close to where we work and shop. Changing zoning laws to allow businesses and homes to coexist should significantly reduce oil consumption. In addition, I imagine it would make life far more pleasant for most people. I've always arranged to live close enough to my work place to walk or ride a bicycle, because I hate driving cars through rush-hour traffic, or riding in buses or trains. I especially enjoy walking, just going out the door and walking to work. I'm definitely no saint, though. I walk to work because I enjoy doing it, not specifically to reduce oil consumption. If the weather is rainy, I drive. If I need to take home a lot of paperwork, I drive. Not to mention driving between San Antonio and the country place once each week and driving 30 miles to buy milk.

Anyway, I have been so sad about the oil well next door that I have not felt like writing. But I'm not one for feeling sad without thinking of things to do to remedy the situation. Sometimes, that means actively doing something, such as moving. It would certainly be easy enough for me to move. I still own the land at Altamira, just a couple of miles from here as the crows fly.  But in the present case, I've decided to change my point of view, rather than moving. It will be an interesting challenge to make beautiful gardens in the midst of ugliness. I will put plant living windbreaks that will absorb at least some of the hydrogen sulfide. If the ground water has been contaminated, I will install a rainwater collection system.

I will get guineas to eat the grasshoppers and use Nolo bait in the spring.

With respect to excessive driving ... most people will probably stop doing it when the price of gasoline goes up to $6 or $7 per gallon, or they will shift to engines or motors that do not burn oil. It will be interesting to see what happens next.