Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Any time that people who you know hate each other are all nodding like 
dashboard dolls over the same catch phrase, evil's got to be afoot.  One 
day it occurred to a PR type that all agribusiness revolves around crops 
that are either "native" (like timber) or decidedly non-invasive, like 
corn.  So the catchy phrase "non-native invasive" was born.  It sound 
perfectly environmental, yet it's completely self-serving to 
agribusiness.  Since then a way has evolved for botanists to stay silent 
on the issue of habitat destruction, and thus keep their jobs, by 
scapegoating us.

I think it's fair to say that in Western culture farms always seem to 
expand to be as big as one guy can plow in the spring.  This is 
inevitably bigger than "one guy" can actually take care of.  I wonder 
how much of the tumbleweed problem in Missouri is actually due to that.  
I'd really love to have some growing.  They seem as though they'd make 
the best choice of all for compost.  You need material that's stiff 
enough not to mat down, but thin enough to decompose along with manure 
in a timely manner.  I wonder whether a different sort of farming model, 
one that optimizes the use of small plots of land and leaves the rest 
undisturbed (along with those common sense tillage practices I was 
talking about) would have made a difference in the tumbleweed population.

Bill
S. Oregon coast