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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >We all may be homesteaders, or wannabees, or used to bes, or just
> interested parties, but we all draw the line on technology and
> innovation somewhere.  It may be based on health, the lay of the land,
> the job at hand, or finances.
> 

All to the point as long as one has one's eyes open. The factor to which I 
continaully allude is that people are brainwased into thinking that doing 
something with a machine is easier, more economical, more efficacions than 
doing the same task by hand or hand tools.  

When we went to the movies last week, there was a new store in the strip 
mall called "As Seen On TV".  Being there half an hour early for the movie, 
we 
went in to look. It was very nearly as entertaining as the movie.  It was 
all the crap products you've ever seen on infomercials.   Every ten feed 
along the shelves was a flat screen monitor playing the infomercial and all 
the 
crap was on the shelves for you to buy.  Most of it depends on the 
"Alka-Seltzer" marketing approach ... you don't sell the cure rather you sell 
the 
disease making the buyer think he must then have the cure.  So here is this 
small portable on demand steamer and the infomercial shows someone crashing 
into a wall trying to set up an ironing board then knocking over the iron and 
burning their leg ..... "Has this ever happened to you!???"

So, says I, the first thing to do is to clear away the myths and biases 
about hand work in order to make a rational decision.

We hear in all these discussions, as this time, about all the old timers 
who curse horse drawn agriculture and were so glad to get hold of a tractor.  
But what is omitted from that story is that at the time of hand tools and 
horse tools, farms were quite small.  It was when farms began to cosolidate 
and take on debt, chemicals, and all other manner of ills I do not wish for 
myself that tractors became easier than horses and hand tools.  THAT's what 
the old timers recall.

I am going to suggest three types of hand labor missteps:

First there is the case where it is just easier to do it by hand, but the 
machine afficionado just can't help themselves, it has to be done with a 
machine.  Usually under the unfounded illusion that it saves time or labor.  
Someone had given us a tree for firewood which they had bucked up into 1 1/2' 
pieces.  I parked the truck beside the wood and he said, "Wait, don't be 
lifting all that wood, I'll get the tractor with the bucket."   Go for the 
tractor, start the tractor, scoot all the wood into a pile, lift it, and it 
makes 
a poor load since it is not stacked well."  Took about twenty minutes all 
together.   Next load I didn't wait for him to show, I simply tossed the 
pieces in the truck and it took about five minutes.  As the last piece of 
wood 
was put in the truck, he came rumbling up on his beloved tractor ... "Ah, 
man, I could have loaded that for you and saved you all that time!"  Nothing 
... nothing in heaven above or earth beneath would convince him that I'd 
loaded the truck in a quarter of the time it took him.  I don't even discuss 
it 
with people anymore.  It's a MACHINE, we don't have to look at our watches or 
any such ... by definition it takes less time with a machine, period, no 
reason to think or investigate further.

The second case is where we are willing to substitute a machine for an 
easily learned skill.  A couple of years ago I attended a gathering where the 
first night's supper is pot-luck chilli that everyone brings their own 
version 
and slaw and cornbread are supplied by the sponsor.  I was cook and bottle 
washer and came in with a score of cabbage heads and my own cutting board 
and knife I'd brought from home.  I hadn't seen some of the early arrivers 
for 
two or three years and as we caught up on news, I quarted, thin sliced, and 
chopped the entire stack of cabbages.  It is admittedly a practiced 
regimen.  But once the hands know it, it is deadly efficient.  In a short 
time I 
was wiping up the board and knife and one of the people gabbing there 
remarked, "I can't believe you made slaw out of all that cabbage with just a 
knife 
while we've been standing here!"   Yet people are so convinced that the 
Slice'em Dice'em Chop-o-matic just HAS to be so much faster than a knife, 
there's 
no reason to even consider the latter. 

There's a NASCAR race here this weekend and although I try to avoid the 
burgs altogether during race weekends, the seed'n'feed has a real deal on 
filling propane tanks during the race. So I loaded up the tanks and headed 
in.  
There is a steep bank between the parking lot and parkway maybe 20' wide and 
120' long and a fellow was there in the storm trooper suit with his gasoline 
string trimmer mowing down the weeds.  A scythe with a short blade is 
faster, easier, less work, and does a better job on such jobs.  I watched 
him, 
having mowed weeds in the pasture just that morning, and thought to myself, 
"If I'd thrown the scythe in the back of the truck, I'd show him how I could 
cover twice the ground in half the time he's taking."  And yet I knew that 
even if he saw it with his own eyes, he'd still be walking in a world where 
the string trimmer was faster and less work.

Yet it is nothing more than the difference of a little easily learned skill.

The third case I am suggesting is when using a machine is indeed faster and 
less work, but not all that much.  The case in point is cutting firewood.  
Everyone thinks that in a contest with a bowsaw and a chainsaw, the latter 
would cut, what, fifteen to twenty times as much wood in a given time.  In 
reality it's more like a third more or less difference than that.

So yes we all choose how much technology, gagetry, and machinery we use.  
But very few of us do it without a bias, and underlying and unsubstantiated 
belief that the machine must per force be much much faster and easier.

----------------------------------

I found in looking back on my records that I tended to lose electronic 
records.  Computers crashed, disks became outdated, CD's aged and failed, 
etc. 
And yet the records I kept in journals and notebooks I still had all of them, 
or nearly there abouts.   So I've given up keeping any sort of computer 
records.  For day to day reminders to aid my rapidly failing short term 
memory, 
I beging the day with a blank sheet of copy paper folded in quarters which 
gives me eight writing surfaces.  That with a pencil keeps my shop notes, 
kitchen notes, and garden notes so I don't keep showing up in a rush 
somewhere 
and ask myself, "What was it I came here for?"  At the end of the day the 
sheet is dated, unfolded and put in a notebook and constitutes a fairly 
accurate daily record of what's going on around here.

James