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["Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>]

Ah, James, that's kinda what I said.  The homestead should support itself 
and its occupants.  Not sales for the purpose of acquiring gold but for the 
purpose of sustaining the homestead.  There are things that do not grow in 
all areas.

And it isn't things that the agri-business models seems to need --  
fertilizers, Frankenseeds, etc.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>
> Our definitons would still vary.  And historically those on homestead or
> pasoral economy often, if not most often, did other things not directly 
> related to
> farming or husbandry.  My grandfather was by any definition a homesteader, 
> I
> doubt he ever ate a bite that he didn't grow and cooked with wood etc. 
> But he
> was also a barber.  His father likewise ran a pastoral economy as the 
> basis
> of the family's sustinence, but he was also a cobbler (among other 
> things).
>
> Yet during their times people of ordinary means spent anywhere from 40% to
> 75% of their income on food.  During some historical times it was a much 
> higher
> percentage.  And I'm not referring to hard times.  Just as we are 
> accustomed
> to spending (in the usual modern economic model) less than 10% of our 
> income on
> food, at the time of our grandparents it was much, much more than that.
>
> My grandparents paid property taxes by selling cows and tobacco.  They 
> didn't
> buy gasoline, electricity, phone service, insurance, internet access, etc.
> The amount they spent on oil for lighting, cloth for clothes, replacement
> tools etc. was a rare trifle.  They used rails for fences.
>
> What I would point out is that in our past, the homestead produced 
> something
> that was a valuable commodity in the affairs of people, that is, food. 
> People
> were used to spending half or more of their income on it.  AND those
> homesteads had very, very modest cash needs.  Their agriculture was before 
> the Green
> Revolution and so did not require the cash inputs of diesel, fertilizer,
> manchinery payments, and interest on all the above.
>
> Fast forward to now of days.  Food makes up less than 10% of people's 
> budgets
> and the cash expenses of modern life are many orders more huge than that 
> of
> our ancestors.  What we can produce by completely sustainable methods does 
> not
> net much.  So we have to modernize into cash outlays in order to have 
> modern
> cash inputs.
>
> I understand you definition, Lynda.  It makes sense and holds water.  But 
> the
> modern paradigm that passes for 'homestead' has no historical precedent.
>
> So I tend to draw the line at the natrual carrying capacity of the 
> homestead.
> If the operation is completely sustainable without outside input of fuel,
> feed, or fertilizer (as was aslo true of our ancestors' homesteads), then 
> the
> opearation is still a homestead both by my modern definition and an old
> traditional one.  But if it can only operate by means of cash derived 
> inputs, it is,
> in my parlance a Country Farmer Esquire type operation simply making one's 
> cash
> do rural busy-work.  Or else if we enter into that cash outlay for cash
> income model, we are following an agribusiness model.
>
> James
>
>
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