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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Donkeys and skill -- was 90% Reduction
  • Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:18:10 EDT

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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