Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Optogeorgia.

Do you know anyone named George?  The common Greek word for ‘farmer’ is a 
combination of  ‘Ge’ (earth, land, as in Geology) and ‘Eorge’ (work, as in 
the 
root word for Energy and Ergonomics).  So ‘George’ means ‘works the land’.  
While the state of Georgia is named after King George, that same form is also 
the Greek word roughly for ‘farming’.  I wanted a word for the point of view 
from a homestead, from one who works land.  Do you recall W.C. Bryant’s poem 
"Thanatopsis" (A View of Death)?   So I figured Georgiopsis would be ‘A View 
of the Homestead’ but that doesn’t really serve the concept here.  A view 
FROM 
the homestead would be Optogeorgia, a glimpse from the point of view of 
working the land.

The view from the homestead is a unique one, a vision not shared by those who 
have not been there.  It will change the person’s perception forever.  The 
homesteaders on this list, probably all modern homesteaders in fact, have 
also 
see how the other half lives.  Been there, done that.   

The things you notice, the mental processes you employ, and the evaluation 
and conclusion of everything is changed forever once someone has seen it as a 
homesteader.  I’m not talking about pontificators and wannabes, but someone 
who 
has stood there by the garden, or grain field, or flock or herd and known 
that 
how they were to fare for the coming season depended on the Earth (the ‘Ge’ 
part of the word) directly.



Take a ride through the country from the nearest town to your homestead with 
a non-homesteader and when you arrive ask them what they saw along the way.  
Then make that same trip with a subsistence farmstead and ask what they saw.  
"Those dead trees at the bend in the county right of way, I noticed how much 
fire wood there was in them.  And that overly wide shoulder at the bottom of 
the 
hill, if there were a way to fence it that would be, what, three or more 
weeks pasture for a cow.  That vacant spot between those two buildings, I 
couldn’t 
help but mentally calculate how many cabbages you could fit in three.  And 
all those leaves and trimmings piled up on the median …. that would fill up 
three compost bins."  



Admit it …. you do that, don’t you!   Non-homesteaders don’t.   The world 
looks like a very different place from the perspective of ’working the land.’ 
 
‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also…’ type of thing.  If 
the first thing you think of is ‘how is this affecting my money’ ‘whose out 
there trying to get my money’, it is irrefutable evidence whence your life 
emanates.  But if your first reaction to any news is how this affects what 
will 
come from your land, that too tells where your life is.

But it is a mistake to equate homesteading with gardening or farming.  A 
land-centric life changes everything.  If you are not dressing to impress 
people, 
you clothes cost nearly nothing and last for ages.  If you are not on someone 
else’s schedule, you don’t have to have a way to get places with 100% 
reliability.  If you are working the land for your living, you  will not fall 
prey to 
self-induced diseases nor have the time or attention to spare to invent or 
imagine them.  



Once your primary focus is off what’s happening with your money or your 
source of money and placed on what your land is yielding, every aspect of 
life is 
seen differently.



Half-baked and fearful views about what is going on in the world now are a 
dime a dozen.  Yet here on this list are a good number of people I happen to 
know for a fact have their boots in the muck, their hands in well worn work 
gloves, and their weathered eye on the field.  It is those people’s views I 
want to 
read because they are unique, seen from this Optogeorgia, a land-working 
view, viewpoints not easily had from elsewhere. 



It’s just getting to be a little more effort to sift out the pearls from the 
rotting oysters amid all the verbose blather here.  But that comes and goes 
on 
this list as it does on most.  First, I suppose I am reminding myself, is to 
consider the source.  Is the view coming from the worker of the land, or is 
it 
from some other focus … or none at all?



I just wanted to add this diatribe so that I can refer to it and to the 
concept of  Optogeorgia.  


James