Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> I can't think of any good reason to live as I did growing up unless it 
> becomes necessary. My homesteader mentality is to be prepared to deal with 
> all potential problems if they arise, but to enjoy what we have while we 
> have it. To focus on the negatives is to lead a negative life with a big, 
> dark cloud overhead where there might be sunshine.
> 

One man's negative is another man's heaven.   The biggest darkest cloud I can 
possibly imagine would be to spend years at a time away from this farm.  Here 
in the midst of spring gardening I'm looking at the effects of 16 years of 
soil building and how far, and yet how little, it has come.  I'm well aware 
of 
my middle-age and my mortality.  How many more years can enjoy working the 
farm 
this way?  I don't know.  But I take a great deal of pleasure in living 
modestly, working the place with horse and hand tools, and depending as 
absolutely 
little as possible on the whims of the economy at large and what it offers.   
Doing that means I get to live HERE, whereas an alternate plan would put me 
commuting hours a day or worse, pursuing a job and living hundreds of miles 
from 
here and plotting and scheming like the Kunta Kinte character in Roots to get 
back to my farm all the while I grow older and my escape gets to be less and 
less likely.  That would be a negative life personified.

Enjoying "what we have while we have it" is a double entendre.  For some of 
us the cataclysmic end of the oil culture would be a good thing, not a 
negative, dark cloud.  It would mean that a lot more people would have the 
opportunity 
to lead meaningful, productive lives rather than floating parasitically on a 
tide of oil, turning and flowing wherever that tide drifts them.

James