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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Bill, I've got top put parts of your comments way out of order to make sense 
in replying to the.  Indulge me.

>  It's 
>difficult to see how turning off your brain and your ingenuity so that 
>you can do the work of donkeys and windmills will result in anything 
>better

My original posit is that there is such a tremendous bias against manual 
labor, such and unquestioning confidence and belief in gizmos and gadgets, 
that 
any real comparison is out the window ... not possible with such a mindset.  

Exhibit one:  The view that using a machine or contraption to do a task is a 
function of intelligence and skill while doing the task by hand is 
Neaderthalish and doing the work of a donkey.

It is exactly the opposite.  It requires far MORE skill and knowledge to do a 
task by hand than to do it with a machine.  Until this current week it has 
been as dry as death here, no rain in many weeks.  My beds, some of them 
raised 
half a foot or more higher than the surrounding ground, were dry at least 15" 
deep.  By judicial planting and having observed how plants use water, I  have 
been able to water a fairly large garden with buckets of water doled out to 
the plants with a cup.  If done correctly, the plant will thrive while 10" 
away 
the ground will be as dry as powder.

I can' t speak as to your soils and conditions, but since I stopped using 
water supplyed by machine to the garden, I've never found a necessity for 
'drenching' the beds.  Oh, that's exactly what I used to do.  What else was I 
to do?  
The water from the pump was delivering a torrent of water, what was one to do 
with it?  Drench everything, of course.  But when I began to pump water by 
hand, I began to pay much closer attention to how the plants used it (and did 
a 
lot of reading and research on the subject).   What I used to accomplish with 
500 gallons of water, I can do with 20 gallons now.

This afternoon  I cut a lot of the grass in the orchard (since it finally got 
some rain) with the scythe.  How many times have I read on homesteading 
blogs, homesteading confessions, where someone is complaining about trying to 
use a 
scythe saying it wears them out and only knocks over weeds but doesn't cut 
them. It's because they are doing it wrong.  A properly maintianed scythe is 
close to effortless and shaves off the herbage evenly and very close to the 
ground.  It takes far MORE knowledge and skill to maintain grassland with 
scythe 
than it does with a mechanical mower.

I could go on and on (and don't get me seriously started).  Manual work only 
looks like more work to gizmo-ist because with his lack of skill and 
knowledge 
it WOULD be more work.  

Who is the more donkey-like here?

>Besides, isn't it more fun and educational to tinker around with cool 
>stuff like compressors, than to accept any form of devolution?

No.  It is far LESS educational.  You've done a lot of tinkering around with 
pumps, no?  Now my pitcher pump is the very old fashioned variety with a 
piston type pump in the body of the housing itself.  I am lifting water about 
25 
feet.  If I moved the whole operation higher up the hill to where I was 40 
feet 
above the level of the catch basin, what would happen?  Do you know what 
would 
happen and why?  Most people wouldn't and yet my 10 yo daughter knows from 
observing manually operated pumps and asking questions about them.  Do you 
know 
how to water a corn plant so that the least amount of water does the most 
good?  Drenching won't teach it to you, but watering them by hand will.

>My brother in Arizona has 3 times the lift and at least 3 times the 
water need, should he ever find a need to cultivate his own food. 

The Zuni have gardened for centuries in one of the driest climates on the 
Earth.  Yet they didn't use pumps, electricity, compressed air, nor fossil 
water. 
 It was those ingenious 'waffle' gardens where every bit of available rain 
and moisture was gathered and concentrated around the plants.  Probably not 
much 
drenching going on.  I had always admired them, but now, says you, I must 
consider them donkey-like.

Exhibit two:  The notion that doing something by machine or gizmo is ALWAYS 
far and away easier and quicker than doing it by hand.

We use a lot of coppice and coppice-sized wood for our heating and cooking.  
No cutting up furniture grade trees for the heating stove for us.  The 
gizmologist discovering that we use only manual saws for all our wood is 
derisive.   
I have on a couple of occasions challenged them to a Paul Bunyon or John 
Henry 
type duel to setle it.

"The man who invented the steam drill
 Thought he was mighty fine
  John Henry drilled through fifteen feet
 And the steam drill only did nine, Lord, Lord,
 And the steam drill only did nine."

Tools on the ground, wood stacked beside sawhorses .... go!

No, I don't ever actully win the contest.  That's not the point.  But if the 
chainsaw-ist is done cutting up the wood into stove lengths in twenty 
minutes, 
it never takes me longer than thirty.  What does become apparent is how much 
time is wasted starting, revving, following through on the cut.  And mainly 
that I have stacked the deck by specifying that there be only one sawyer on a 
side.  I can wield the bowsaw, bucksaw, or short crosscut saw with one hand 
while lift or advance the wood for the next cut.  The chainsaw-ist always has 
to 
put the saw down, reposition it, and rev it up.   He always underestimates 
how 
wicked fast a sharp saw ill cut though a 5" billet of wood.  There is just as 
much flurry, positioning, and revving for him to cut 5" as there is for 15" 
and my advantage accumulates.

Gizmo-ists have rarely actually used the manual counterpart to their gizmos, 
or used them properly.  And yet they harbor and nurse a very deep seated 
conviction that somehow it must be difficult and slow. 


Exhibit three:  The view that we must perforce embrace a way of doing things 
that is suited for someone 93 years old, infirmed and disabled.

>so that we can continue our happy, independent, and productive 
>lifestyle well into our Golden Years.  Likewise, I guess gardening 
>should just be off-limits to disabled people.

My old saw that our strength builds with use just as our knowledge and skills 
do aside for the moment, I am amazed that the defense of this or that 
unlikely contraption or aparatus is that "What about when you get old, what 
about if 
you become disabled, what about if you are a frail person alone on a desert 
island without any possible hope of rescue?  What then?"

To which I reply, what if you are not?  What is the fascination with spending 
our whole lives  scaled down to what we would do if we were old and infirmed? 
 Just because some people live on the 32nd floor of a building and must take 
the elevator, does it follow that we too must take the elevator to go up one 
flight of steps?  After all, some day we may need to go up 32 flights doesn't 
it make sense to ALWAYS take the elevator.  Some people may well need those 
electric carts at the Mart, but does it follow that we would plop ourselves 
down 
into one of those things every time enter the store?

All the evidence points to the fact that we can stay fit and vigorous into 
old age, and even overcome and compensate for the ghastliest of aflictions if 
we 
stay active and tax our physical abilities.


The notions that the user of gadgets is more knowledgeable, that it is always 
far quicker and easier to gadget a task rather than just do it by manual 
means, and that we must needs conform ouselves to the potentially weakest 
time in 
our lives are all unexamined myths brought about by deeply ingrained 
gizmo-culture.

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