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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

As is my wont, I saved up the "One Year Vision" thread and read it all at 
once.  

What did the Romans think when the empire went into decline (or the Mayans, 
or the Anasazi, or the Norse colony on Greenland)?   More to the point for 
the 
homesteader, I'm thinking, is what about those people who lived on the 
fringes 
of Roman society and holed up on remote farmsteas?  What about the people who 
did not give their farms over to the slave-powered agribusiness of the day 
and flee to Rome for bread and circuses?   When western civilization declined 
into the "dark ages", did it really make that much difference to them?

I have a collection of testimonies that is getting to be a thrilling, yet 
chilling, pattern.  They come from people more or less my age, one from Iran, 
one 
from Ireland, one from Portugal, and one from Russia.  If I collect half a 
dozen more, I am going to write it up as a blurb and e-publish it, that new 
Knol 
thingie on Yahoo maybe.

The story is the same.  It started when the man from Iran had is father 
visiting, and the father made small models of farm implements he had used as 
a boy 
in rural Iran.  One item was a scratch plow (as opposed to a turning plow).  
I 
had just bought a barn full of horse drawn implement and included among them 
was a scratch plow just about identical to the one the elder Iranian had 
made. 
 When I got to meet him (the elder), he described a lifestyle just about 
identical to that my grandparents lived.

Ditto a man from rural Ireland, one from Russia, and just this last week (the 
only one I did not meet face to face) a mand from Portugal.  He described the 
life of his grandparents in the mountains of Portugal which minus a few 
inessentials was just about identical to that of my rural SW Virginia grand 
parents.

It was a life of staunch self reliance. All these people from around the 
world also testified that the knowledge of that lifestyle was more or less 
gone.  
The man in Portugal described how the rural subsistence farmers knew how to 
plant and harvest rye and maize on small bits of mountain land, process it 
into 
bread and other food stuffs, and they had that to eat whether they had 
anything else or not.

What's coming now, says I, is not a cycle.  It is not a repeating pattern.  
For the first time in human existence we may (likely) be facing the scarcity 
of 
our ultimate source of food (oil, that is) and almost no one knows how to 
survive on a few hundred square feet of ground.   

As to the roaming hords, I'm not concerned.  Roaming hoards of the past had 
survival skills and could live off wild stuffs in a pinch, endure heat and 
cold.  Any roaming hoards we generate now of days, well, they aren't your 
grandfather's roaming hoards!  Just as soon as they run out of gas or can't 
find a 
hamburger to unwrap, they will likely fall over dead anyway.

And any that make it this far, they will be greeted by my Gadsden Flag, or 
the wooden seal I'm working on that I lifted from a $20 bill issued by 
Georgia 
in 1778 which shows a coiled rattlesnake and the motto "NEMO ME IMPUNE 
LACESSET" (No one provokes me with impunity!)

That is, 'Lay on McDuff' ... you stand to gain little and to lose everything.

You see, my point, and being a terrible writer I have to draw attention the 
the real point, my point is that there is going to be no revolution except a 
personal revolution of one.  We are not going to throw the bums out without 
replacing them with more bums.  It matters not a wit whether we elect Obama 
or 
McCain or whether it's by a landslide or one side carping and whining about 
the 
other stealing the election.   The only revolution you are ever going to have 
is a personal one.

Since last spring, we have looked at the increasing prices and said, "Forget 
that!"  Do you recall Monty Python's flick "Life of Brian"?  The protagonists 
trying to escape from the Romans runs into Harry the Haggler who won't let 
him 
go until he haggles over the price of a gourd.  "I say 'Twenty Shekels' and 
you say, 'Twenty for that!?  You must be mad!'"  So when we went to the mart 
or 
the grocery store for salt and cooking oil, we'd go from bin to bin and hold 
up some item and say, "Four dollars for that, you must be mad!"  It's a 
wonder 
they didn't throw us out ...... 

Instead we've eaten at least 95% of our meals eigher from stored grains, from 
what we raised on the farmstead, or what we gathered wild.  We simply won't 
participate in the breakdown of the economy.  Today I've got potatoes to bake 
for supper with some bacon, cheese, sour cream, and broccoli with which to 
load 
them;  corn bread; and steamed cabbage and carrots.  All from the farm here.  

So here it is, and pay attention to this because I really am no good at it:   
 Homesteading in these times is not a matter of mirthlessly holing up in some 
remote corner .... it's having a choice!   Even now we could afford to by 
food.  Not going to do it though.  We have a choice and we aren't 
participating 
in 

In the past people had choices.  If Rome fell, we'll just stay here and eat 
the goat cheese and barley bread.  It was fun when we could go to Brundisium, 
eat the seafood, take in a play, etc.  But all that's going to Hades in a 
handbasket so let's just stay here, break out that amphora of wine we put up 
last 
fall and tell stories.

But now of days too many people have no choice.  It's gas up the car and 
commute 50 miles or be destitute.  For us that stash of potatoes and flock of 
chickens is about having a choice.

The vision for a year from now:   Preserve your ability to choose.   </HTML>