Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> As in *Gaia* being Mother Earth and
> damage to her
> is damage to every“body” which includes *all Life*.

I am good with the concept of Earth as a living organism. The concept is
useful in raising consciousness about pollution, climate-affecting human
activities and ecological sustainability. I like Lovelock's thinking,
although I disagree with him on the use of nuclear energy.

> Citizen-farmers are preserving
> the land and harvesting a dream

And I applaud groups like this that, while naive and inexperienced, have
their eco-hearts in a good place.

This operation appears to be CSA on a larger-than-usual scale. Perhaps
you know that small farm operations in or near population concentrations
have been happening for decades.

> Its 70.1 acres form a quilted,
> pesticide-free oasis of fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs and animals,
> all in a suburban valley where it is more common to find strip-mall
> developments and traffic jams.
>
> The citizen-farmers have done more than just get by, notching up
> devoted-customer numbers and sales last year that ranged from 400 dozen
> eggs to more than 4 tons of berries. As their fall season begins today
> with the opening of their popular corn maze -- healthy and tall this
> time, cut in the shape of a farmer with a horse-drawn plow -- they will
> have another chance to prove whether they can thrive.
>
> FARM LLC investors had hoped to turn their first profit last year. They
> were stymied by the road construction and by weather that turned their
> corn, normally a prime family attraction and moneymaker, into a
> "drought maze" of withered stalks.
>
> After five years of work, the group debated whether it was on the right
> track, asking, "Are we in or are we out?" said member and
> spokeswoman Christine Dubois, a writer in her non-farm
> life.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but farmers are inured to suffering
through way more than five unprofitable years. As long as they stay out
of banks, they have a chance. With emotional efforts like this, one hopes
that the energy will last until the participants get enough experience to
make it work. It helps to spread the pain, as they have done
well.

That sort of variety and experimentation is key for the modern urban
farm, said Steve Evans, "farmbudsman" for King 
County.

> "It's the farm of the future
> for around here," he said. "Even though the challenge is that
> it's on the urban fringe, the blessing is that it's on the urban fringe.

That's the best reason to hope that people like this make it work:
producing food within minutes of consumers saves lots of oil and allows
people to eat fresher produce.

Have you read Booker T. Whatley's Handbook on How to Make $100,000
Farming 25 Acres?

You suggested this might be what I perceive as "citizen
forester." I somehow missed the forestry part.