Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - [Homestead] Don't Tread on Me

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Don't Tread on Me
  • Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 14:23:29 EDT

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>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page