Homestead mailing list

[Leslie <cayadopi AT yahoo.com>]

Near a city? Not a chance - I'm in the camp that they are going to be much 
more dangerous places.
 
I already drive a 100mpg scooter.... I haven't found a vehicle that gets more 
than that.  I think I'm already doing my part, much more so than the city 
folks.   And I'm an expert horseman, push come to shove.  
 
Government subsidy?  Not a chance.... I think most of government should be 
lined up and sh*t....
 
The point was that increasing taxes on fuel will hurt rural people.  Not only 
in their personal transportationg needs.   Most farmers still use tractors to 
farm food for the city folks.  And transportation of food to the city folks 
still requires fuel, much of it by truck from farms to rail.  Farmers also 
need to have supplies to grow food delivered to them by trucks.  
(Fertilizers, seeds, etc.)
 
Forget the homesteading aspects of farming for this conversation.... as city 
folks aren't producing food in their highrise condos...  and require food 
from food producers (a/k/a farmers).
 
Maybe what the government should do is ONLY raise fuel tax on folks who are 
either living in a city, or not producing food.......so that the farmers can 
still get the city folks food at a reasonable price.
 
:-)
 
 
 


--- On Sun, 1/11/09, Marie McHarry <mmcharry AT gmail.com> wrote:

From: Marie McHarry <mmcharry AT gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Homestead] Fear & Loathing , new Peter Schiff interview, 
immeninent dem
To: cayadopi AT yahoo.com, homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Sunday, January 11, 2009, 10:58 AM

Drive less. get more fuel efficient vehicles. Be self-sufficient to
the point that fuel for vehicles isn't a big thing.  You need to do
that in any case as the price of fuel will go back up and only go
higher. What do you want? A government subsidy. If you need to be
close to a city, move.

On 1/11/09, Leslie <cayadopi AT yahoo.com> wrote:
> But how does that help RURAL?
>
> I live more than 10 miles from the closest small wide spot in the road
town,
> and they will never build a bus, or trolley, etc. connecting us rural
folks
> to the grocery store in town.
>
> There's only two very teeny tiny towns in the whole county actually
(the
> county is about the size of Miami-Dade County if not bigger in square
> miles.




>From Clansgian AT wmconnect.com  Sun Jan 11 11:26:37 2009
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> >LOL, yeah, I tried not to take it personally that folks are ignoring me

Bev, sometimes the best way to get ignored on this list is to post something
actually about homesteading.

After reading the link it started a whole round of discussion here, and it
has a great deal to do with homesteading and the prospects of homesteading.

The chinampas are like a great number of other horticultural phenomena such
as the highland farming in New Guinea, the terraced gardens of the Incas, the
mesa gardens of SW, etc.  They were very skillful adaptations of greatly
increasing the fertility and productivity of the land but at the same time 
adapting
food plants and animals for a specific niche.

What this has to say to homesteaders, and especially potential homesteaders,
is that prosperity as a homesteader has to do with making a stand on a piece
of truck and bringing about this same phenomenon in the microcosm.  And none 
of
us personally has the centuries that the meso-Americans had to develop it.

People look for that ideal homestead, and there was even one fellow I heard
rumors of that wrote a book about it.  It is well to look for the place best
suited for yourself, but not to take half a lifetime doing it.  Make your best
shot and then make a stand there.

We moderns too often have been, as the Joni Mitchell song says, "caught in
the Devil's bargain" by thinking we can buy anything, even pastoral 
prosperity,
so long as we have enough or the the right kind of money.

You cannot.  Like the Chinampas the ability of our individual small plots of
land to sustain us comes from years of attention to them, allowing our pants
and animals to adapt to the biome, and adapting outselves to the whole
operation.  Even if, in some alternate universe, I were to sell this farm to 
someone,
they would not have the personal knowledge of its idiosycrasies, possession of
the seeds and stock adapted to it, nor a taste or proclivity for its
particular array of produce.  You can no more buy a pastoral lifestyle than 
you can
buy the ability to play a musical instrument or ability to speak another
language.

A study of the agricultural goings on in meso-Ameraica gives us a couple of
other insights into today's circumstances as they relate to homesteading.
First I'd point this out:  The Aztecs had plenty of gold, as did the Mayans 
and
Incans.  But among them it was never money, it was adornment.  Sahagun 
recorded
a great deal about Hahuatl society and preserved a few of the Aztec codices.
The basis of the economy was reckoned in corn, specfically in tortillas.  When
lists of things such as stipends for warriors and retainers, cost of weapons,
etc. needed an accounting or exchange rate, they were noted with symbol that
represented a number of tortillas.  This echos many other such ancient
economies such as the Minoan, Shang dynasty of China, and ancient Egypt.  
Egypt had
plenty of gold too, but expenses were not reckoned in gold but rather in
measures of barley.  In feudal Japan the cost of things were reckoned in so 
many
'koku' of rice, the amount needed to feed one peasant family for  a year.  
Many
societies have had gold but did not ever use it as money.  This belies the
infomercial that gold has been a unrivaled storehouse of wealth for 5000 
years.
It most certainly has not, and such societes as the meso-American, Incan, and
ancient Egyptian show, it is not universally recognized as having intrinsic
worth that could be translated into anything practical as we imgaine it could
today.

That leads me to, and explains, the second thing the Chinampas teach us.  As
is pointed out in Bev's article, the Aztecs didn't invent the system, in fact
it might not have been Nahuatl speaking people at all.  The archeological
evidence shows that the areas where chinampas were the basis of agriculture 
had
several waves of "civilization" that came and went.  YET the knowledge of how 
to
farm the chinampas persevered.  What was happening there is better
illustrated and preserved in oral tradition just a little south of there in 
the Mayan
speaking areas.  It was not until this previous century that the "ruins" of
great Mayan civic centers were discovered in the jungles.  Archological 
evidence
reinforced by oral tradition tells how the peasant population was forced to
support the wealthy but when the land around the cities became exhausted and
drought aggravated the situation, the peasant families and clans simply moved
deeper into the jungle to farm new land and abandoned the cities.  The wealthy
(ass-sitters) starved.  Same thing seems to have happened in Mexico, when 
times
got dicey enough, the chinaperos simply withdrew to more remote locations and
the wealthy ass-sitters died.  Mexico city itself was founded by a group of
just such expats.

The historical evidence flies in the face of the myth that the rich do fine
in crises while it is the laborer who ultimately sufferes.  Another example is
the Chaco Canyon civilization.  As the land around the Anasazi ruins eroded
and salinated, the farming was moved farther and farther away until almost all
food was being produced on the nearby mesas.  At some point the mesa gardeners
said "No more".  They produced only enough for themselves and the Anasazi
culture turned on itself and ended in collapse and cannibalism.

We hear that now of days the rich are doing just fine, and I suppose in one
way of looking at it, they are.  People who had a billion dollars who are now
"reduced" to a few million have no claim to doing poorly.  But not a few 
months
ago we were told to watch what Boone Pickins and Warren Buffet because they
"always" make money.  We were told that if Pickins was investing in wind power
it must be THE thing.  He lost billions.  The rich have lost a lot more in
this downturn than all people of modest means put together.

It gets pointed out that in the worst of times the rich thrive.  Yes, they
do, but not the SAME rich as before those times.  Pearl S. Buck's "The Good
Earth" is fiction, but accurately represented the times of the revolution in
China.  When the story opens, Wang Lung is grindingly poor and the House of 
Hwang
and the unnamed house beside which he camps in the south are wealthy beyond
imagining.  By the end of the story (by the end of the revolution, that is), 
Wang
Lung is starkly wealthy and both those formerly wealthy houses have
completely collapses into destitution.

This is more often what we find happening.  When there is a cultural or
economic shift of great proportions, the current wealthy become extinct and 
new
wealthy rise in their place.  And it is not because the secreted away a few
trinkets.

So, Bev, you see what becomes of your post - it was in no wise ignored!


James