The shower police are working;

In American bathrooms they’re lurking;

The government limit

is ten quarts a minute

but scofflaws are soaking and smirking.

According to the United Nations, global warming and water shortages are two of the most serious problems facing the world today. As I pointed out in the chapter on Your Water Footprint in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living, “It’s a huge problem and a huge topic, and every informed person, self-sufficient or not, should know a few of the facts.” But the problem is even bigger and more complicated than I realized. Never mind irrigation, flush toilets, greywater and rain gardens: I could have devoted an entire chapter just to showers.

(True, neither showers — nor the book — have much to do with self-sufficiency, but they’re both very concerned with sustainability.)

For most Americans, a daily hot shower is a God-given right, and for many it’s probably more important than things like free speech or the right to bear arms. However, while “showers” in the form of servants pouring buckets of water on the master predate the ancient Greeks — who had actual plumbed showers — they were quite rare until recently. I remember being impressed by the shower in the Glensheen Mansion in Duluth, Minnesota — in the master’s bathroom. We were told it wasn’t proper for ladies to shower when that house was built in 1905-08.

Our house didn’t have a shower even in the 1940s. Not that it mattered much, because we didn’t have hot water, either. We did have a bathtub, and my mother heated water in a teakettle on the stove. That was Saturday night only, unless somebody got real dirty in-between.

Fast-forward to 2010: The federal government is cracking down on showerheads that defy regulations that have been on the books since 1992. That law says a showerhead can deliver no more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute. The main problem seems to be that, treating a luxurious shower as a birthright, some people want much more. One (now discontinued) showerhead delivered a whopping 12 gallons a minute. Some others are also outta sight. The Raindance has a 24-inch spray face, 358 channels, and a price tag of $5,457. More commonly, upscale bathrooms now have multiple showerheads.

Tree-huggers are obviously moved by the Dept. of Energy claim that each multi-head shower fixture uses an extra 40 to 80 thermal units per year, equal to 50 gallons of gasoline or one barrel of oil. And obviously, all that water has an impact on aquifers, and places additional strains on sewage treatment plants. So yes, limiting the water used in showers is a good idea in terms of national water and energy conservation.

But as usual, there are a zillion other considerations to complicate the matter. There is the question of government intrusion into our bathrooms, of course (just as with low-flow toilets in 1994). Even if we concede that the government should play a role, what rate of water flow is “reasonable,” how long should a shower be — and is a daily douse necessary, or even desirable? What about people who shower once a week — or 2-3 times a day? Should they be treated differently?

Frequent showers interest me in light of my early experience with the traditional Saturday Night Bath. But even when a shower became available, it was seldom used on a daily basis. Most people today would be amazed at what you can do with a few cups of water and a sponge bath.

The 1969 book, Life on Man, by microbiologist Theodor Rosebury, fascinated me with descriptions of the mind-boggling numbers of normal microbial fauna that inhabit the healthy human body (trillions, of more than 200 species). Even more fascinating was the claim that they’re back again within minutes after a bath or shower, and that some are actually necessary for our health.

In modern industrial society showering is basically for social and aesthetic reasons. You don’t need a daily shower to stay healthy. In fact, just the opposite might be true. Researchers at the University of Colorado found that pathogens that occur naturally in low numbers in municipal water can accumulate in high concentrations inside showerheads. In other words, taking a shower can make you sick. (The main pathogen is Mycobacterium avium, which is also responsible for a condition dubbed Hot Tub Lung.)

A typical shower is said to use four gallons per minute, meaning a five-minute shower takes 20 gallons of water (plus the energy to pump and heat it). Restricted-flow showerheads use 2.5 gallons a minute at 80 psi, although most homes have pressure closer to 50. I just checked, and our shower delivers just over one gallon a minute, at about 45 psi. That makes it tough to feel sorry for the bloke who uses 12 times as much.

The next time you’re in the shower remember those people whose daily water ration for everything — drinking, cooking, sanitation — is a mere one gallon a day.

And that virtual water, the water footprint that we talk about in CIG to Self-Sufficient Living? For Americans, that figure is 1,189.3 gallons per person per day, more than three times the Chinese average.

Maybe we need shower police only because too many people just don’t have enough common sense. — Jd Belanger

We’re finally getting some timely rains, which the weeds love. Broccoli, kohlrabi and green beans are coming on strong, and we’ve enjoyed the first ripe tomatoes. The fall crops have been planted. There is so much to do around here that I decided making a list and setting priorities was the only way I’d get it all done. Writing a blog isn’t even on the list.

But how could a guy like me, who keeps saying most people don’t where their food comes from, resist commenting on something like this?

Supposedly, this appeared in a San Francisco newspaper. Because I try to look kindly on all of God’s creatures, my first reaction was that this was one more of those all-too-common internet spoofs: nobody could be that stupid. (On the other hand…)

Or maybe it was meant as satire. You know, a hunter makes this ridiculous statement to point out just how foolish some anti-hunting arguments can be. The trouble is, most people don’t get satire, and one like this, that could be serious, loses some punch because it leaves some doubt.

Whoever started this out took it at face value with the heading “Unkilled Hamburger” and the standard web put-down for such items: “Folks, remember as you read this, this person probably drives and votes AND may have already reproduced! God help us all…”

And then there was the news that the chemical BPA, which recently created such a stir for being in plastic baby bottles, is (and has been) present in almost all cans of food on the supermarket shelves (and in your pantry). Just about everything you eat that comes out of a can contains bisphenol A, which slowly leaches into the food and water. It’s a key compound in the epoxy linings that keeps the canned food fresher longer, and keeps it from interacting with the metal and changing the flavor of the food. But it has also been blamed for cancer, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. So far, no one has found a substitute. Think of the homestead implications I could write about on that one.

Or how about that report on the dwindling nutritional values of fruits and vegetables? Somebody compared USDA data on 43 fruits and vegetables over the years. For example, in 1950, broccoli had 150 mg of calcium: today it has 48 mg. There are reductions in vitamins, minerals and protein, across the board. The reason, some say, is technological industrial farming where selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers are used to increase size and to speed growth.  Another study showed that organic tomatoes can have as much as 30 percent more phytochemicals than the industrial kind.

Followers of J. I. Rodale — and I used to think that included most homesteaders, but now I’m not so sure — knew all of this many years ago, so what else is new?

None of this has much to do with homesteading, per se, but it does reflect on life on Spaceship Earth. In this vein we could also talk about the report that 3,100 firms (and roughly $40 billion a year — just for “intelligence”) are involved in the “war on terror.” Add in all the other expenses, along with the inconveniences and in some cases downright loss of freedoms, and it’s hard to tell who’s winning. One thing’s for certain: the terrorists got a lot of bang for their buck. The implications for self-sufficient living? Hmm.

A family in California made news by telling how they survived — in spite of turning off all of their telephones, computers, and televisions — for one whole day. And the people who think that’s really something special drive, vote and have reproduced. God help us all.

Then there’s the continuing flap over the global warming scientists, the news that China now uses more energy than the U.S., and that China’s population might actual decrease in the years ahead. That one tickles my imagination. Couple that with another recent population figure: The average Amish family has around seven children. The Chinese population dwindles, the Amish population doubles every 23 years — eventually there are more Amish than Chinese — just think of the implications for sustainable living! What a great speculative fiction story that could make!

But as I said, I have too much to do already, and even writing a blog isn’t on the list. At least I  have plenty to think about while I do those homestead chores, beyond the sidewalks. — Jd Belanger

Most serious hosta growers love to tell this story. A fellow hears that they grow hostas and says, “Oh yeah, hostas: I have both kinds.”

The joke, for anyone not familiar with hostas, is that there are more than 5,000 varieties.

Only a few years back this wouldn’t have been funny at all. In fact, legend has it that the very first westerner to see hostas in their native northeast Asia sent two back to Germany in the 1600s, naming one “the common giboshi with plantain-like leaves” and the other one simply “the other one.”

I’m not the only one who disdained hostas for years, because they were all just big boring green leaves. Now I have more than 50, and no two are alike. They range from green to blue to gold, or in combinations where white or yellow stripes are on the leaf edges or down the centers, in size from tiny Mouse Ears to such giants as Empress Wu and Sum and Substance. Amazingly, new varieties still appear, every year.

But then, new varieties of almost every plant grown show up in garden catalogs every year. Where do they all come from, and will it ever end?

No, it won’t end. As for where they all come from…

New plants obviously appeared with some regularity even before there were humans. Mutation is the fundamental source of heritable or genetic variation, which is found throughout nature. Environmental factors influence the natural selection of those mutations best suited to survival.

The process was slightly refined when humans first started crop improvement by selecting, and nurturing, the best of the plants they depended on for survival. The first corn — Zea mays — was a far cry from any corn of today. It was even a far cry from its actual ancestor, teosinte, which was formerly thought to be more closely related to rice. (The story of the botanical archaeology that scientifically connected the teosinte of 9,000 years ago to today’s supersweet corn-on-the-cob began in the 1930s by comparing chromosomes, and wasn’t concluded until DNA profiling became available some 30 years later.)

The average modern supermarket reportedly stocks some 4,000 products that use corn, in some way. And all because early farmers in Southern Mexico spent many generations observing their crops and selectively breeding the best of them.

Most of us are familiar with the work of Gregor Mendel, often called the Father of Genetics, in the mid-1800s. That helped speed things up for intentional crop improvement. Yet, many new and improved cultivars “just appeared,” as the result of mutations.

A classic example is the Red Delicious apple. It was found in Wellsburg, Iowa, in 1880. Jesse Hiatt, a farmer who called it the “Hawkeye,” entered it in a contest held by Stark Nurseries in 1892 to find an apple to replace the popular Ben Davis. Stark bought the rights to the apple and renamed it “Stark Delicious.” By the 1980s, the yet-again renamed Red Delicious comprised 75% of the Washington apple harvest.

My just-wondering question is, how many other equally-good or better sports (mutations) have appeared, but without attracting any attention? We have more than a hundred wild apple trees on our land, and I prune and care for as many as I can (not very many) in hopes of eventually finding a real winner. It’s unlikely, but possible.

Incidentally, the Red Delicious has been largely replaced by newer varieties such as Gala and Honeycrisp.

Consider the clematis. English gardener Jo (Josephine) Hill bought a seedling from her local market in the early 1980s. Once it flowered she was charmed, but unable to identify it. When she showed it to the owner of a wholesale clematis nursery, he declared it a new cultivar, propagated it, and released in 1998 as Clematis “Josephine.” Again, how many gardeners see something unusual like this, never mention it, and let it die out? I recently heard a speaker call these “miracles in the garden,” urging everyday gardeners to be on the lookout for them.

Yes, science has allowed us to speed up the process. In the early 20^th century somebody discovered that ionizing radiation could artificially induce mutations. Early attempts used X-rays. Later, gamma and neutron radiation came into play. More recently, chemical agents with mutagenic properties were found, and now, of course, we have genetically engineered crops as well.

It’s obviously easier to make money by speeding up what is basically a natural process. Unfortunately, the profit factor also enters into such traits as shipability, which has taken precedence over flavor, nutrition, and other desirable traits. Consumers of both foods and flowers are always eager to try something new, and there are always businesspeople eager to sell to them.

We might debate whether the world really needs Roundup-Ready corn and soybeans, or how many cultivars of hosta or clematis are optimal for the public good, but one thing is certain: With more than 100,000 genes in the cell of a higher plant, mutations are inevitable, and both scientists and consumers are going to make the most of it.