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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Run like the Devil
  • Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 10:25:35 EST



> I downsized, perhaps even too much, to
> the point where I now want to upsize a bit.

Downsizing and then building back up to the level you want is a very good
homestead mechanism. It's like tuning a stringed instrument where you loosen
the
string a bit before bringing it up to the proper tension. The Budha is said
to have attained enlighenment when he heard a musician on a passing boat
telling his student, "If the string is to tight, it will break. It it is too
loose,
it will not play."

Crises are often the way nature brings about those downsizings in our affairs.

When I first got onto this larger acreage here, I dashed about like a madman
tilling up this and planting that. Even the successes came to no useful end.

I could not easily drop the mentality from the business world that more and
bigger is always better. I was raising gardens and flocks and then figuring
out what I was going to do with them.

But the whole paradigm flipped around at some point and I looked at it from
the other end. There was no point in preparing any more than we would eat.
There was no point in preserving more than we would prepare. There was no
point
in processing more than we were going to perserve. There was no point in
picking more than we'd process. There was no point in planting more than
we'd
pick.

It took some mental discipline to work this out. The urge in the headiness
of early spring was to say, I've got the space, I've got the seedlings, I'll
put out 300 spring cabbages. Fact is, we'd be hard pressed to actually eat
25
before the summer cole crops come in, so there is absolutely no point in
growing that many (for our own use, unless they are going to be marketed.)
There
is still an unholy voice that whispers in one's ear when one puts out the 40
spring cabbage plants (a few extra for loses).

Did you ever have the experience of cleaning out a room or a drawer and when
you'd picked through it for an hour and it was as cluttered and messy as it
had been in the beginning, you then stopped trying to take out what needed
discarding and istead took out everything then only put back what you knew
you
wanted to keep? Downsizing a homestead is that way. With some experience a
homesteader gets a good idea what is needed and what works. Often it's best
to
empty out the homestead and put back only those things that are profitable
and
doabe.




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