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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

(Bev)

> Having a relatively short term but expensive mortgage that includes the
> land payment, paying for the mortgage and other bills out of homestead
> income was never in our plans, either.  My only goal, like yours, was to
> offset other costs. 


In a video interview with the Nearings, Helen is picking blueberries and 
explaining how the berries are their cash crop for their running homestead 
expenses.  She lists seeds, tools, and such  then pauses and adds as an 
observation 
that it wouldn't buy a truck.   Yet they had a truck.

Says I, homestead produce is a very, very good return on your investment of 
time and cash when you eat it yourself.  It is somewhat less of a good return 
when you buy food and seed with what you sell, but still good.  Somewhere 
there's a line where you must "Render unto Caesar the thing's that are 
Caesar's" 
and it is much easier to buy other things you need and want in like coin.

Don't have the link, more's the pity, but just today read a blurb on how the 
demand for organic food is outstripping supply.  Does this mean that there is 
a rosy future for small producers such as some of us homesteaders??  Indeed 
not ... the trend is to IMPORT organic food from around the world where it 
can 
be grown cheaply."

Chocolate is a rare indulgence for me, not from expense but because I rarely 
want any.  But last night I had (half) a bar of 70% cocoa dark chocolate ... 
organic dark chocolate at that.   Really good, give you quite a buzz.  The 
label said the chocolate was distributed from a company in California with 
heatquarters in Ccnnecticut, but it was made in Italy. To my knowledge there 
are no 
significant crops of cacao in California, Connecticut, nor Italy.  It didn't 
say from where they got the ingredients.  My level of confidence that the 
ingridients were actually organic is quite low.

That's what's to come, though.