Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Nancy Babbitt <nbabbitt2003@mac.com>]

Isolation is the cause of unhappiness here.

If Mr Warner had 5 or 10 or 25 acres just outside of town, growing  
veggies of all sorts and animals, and town people came by to  
purchase . . . maybe his family would not be so unhappy.  Not  
everyone can tolerate isolation.  A living CAN be made on small  
acreage, can it not?

nancy
On Oct 3, 2006, at 8:59 AM, TradingPostPaul wrote:

> A FARMER FEARS HIS WAY OF LIFE HAS DWINDLED DOWN TO A FINAL GENERATION
> By Charlie LeDuff New York Times
> October 2, 2006
>
> LEBANON, Kansas --- The heart of the heartland, the exact  
> geographic middle
> of the continental United States, is owned by a middle-aged Kansas man
> named Randall Warner. He exports wheat, beef and soon his second  
> grown son
> to the city. He stands in his boots in his field and wonders what’s
> become of his way of life.
>
> “I drive through the city and I wonder what all those people do for a
> living,” says Mr. Warner, a sturdy, square-faced man. “I see that, and
> it makes me sad that my children see it too and think that there is
> something better there for them.”
>
> Lebanon, the nearby town where Mr. Warner learned to read and  
> write, has
> lost nearly 25% of its population over the last 15 years.
>
> Large corporate farmers are taking over. Mr. Warner doesn’t understand
> the ins and outs of the international trade policies and government
> subsidies that are changing the landscape, only that to make it  
> nowadays
> “you work harder — sunup past sundown.”
>
> Next year, Mr. Warner believes, there will be even fewer farmers  
> here, in
> part because of fuel costs. And he wonders what will become of his  
> legacy
> and his land.
>
> His son Travis, 18, wants to know more people besides his dad and the
> salesman at the John Deere dealership. The nearest pretty girl is  
> 20 miles
> away.
>
> He wonders if there isn’t something better than stumbling out to the
> fields with sleep still in your eyes and working past midnight. The  
> summer
> air here is as stifling as corduroy drapes. Travis hasn’t spoken about
> this to his father, but his father suspects it just the same.
>
> Travis is a state wrestling and hog breeding champion. He is going  
> off to
> college soon and doesn’t know if he’ll ever come back. His brother,
> Dustin, left for good. “I like to work with people, I guess,” Travis
> says. “Be around people. And we come out here every day. It’s Dad and
> myself; that’s not working with people.”
>
> He says this while sitting in the cab of his blue pickup, a dirty  
> older
> model, eating the sandwich his mother made him. His father is far  
> off in
> the field, unable to hear the gloomy truth of the matter.
>
> “I told my dad he could retire and cash-rent the land to the big  
> farmer,
> but then what’s he going to do with his time? This is all he knows.  
> Come
> out here and work daylight to dark. “I don’t want that.”
>
> The father says he would have to hire an old hand from down the  
> road to
> help him work his 3,000 acres. He’ll have to do that and, if that
> doesn’t work, then start selling off the farm in pieces to the big  
> farmer
> down the way.
>
> This is how a town like Lebanon dies. The old Lebanon bank has  
> caved in.
> Main Street is a peeling veneer. It’s a common scene across the Great
> Plains. People are losing their optimism.
>
> Everything about Mr. Warner speaks of work. At 52, he stands erect,  
> with
> skin as weathered as cattle hide. He is frugal, does not smoke or  
> drink
> coffee or liquor. His home is average, a stolid two-story ranch at  
> the edge
> of a wheat field with a barn outside the door. He is hardly ever home,
> mostly to eat and sleep, taking a half-day off for church. His  
> wife, Linda,
> complains about the isolation. Is it too much to stop home while  
> supper’s
> warm? Or go to town occasionally to see a motion picture? His wife  
> talks of
> throwing it in sometimes too.
>
> “My whole life is wrapped up in this,” Mr. Warner says while baling
> hay. “To tell you the truth, it can get a little monotonous. I’ve had
> four vacations my whole life.” Still, it is a good life, he says. “The
> best kind of life there is.”
>
> No political party seems to care much about the working man’s life,  
> Mr.
> Warner feels. Stick a Republican and a Democrat in a sack, shake it  
> up,
> pour it out, and the same rapacious thing crawls out. Creatures from a
> smoke-filled room.
>
> Mr. Warner, a Pentecostal Christian, believes in miracles. He  
> believes in
> speaking in tongues. He believes that abortion is taking a life and  
> that
> gay marriage is an abomination. So he voted Republican.
>
> What crumbs do the Democrats offer him? Two men in tuxedos on the  
> steps of
> City Hall with a marriage license in hand? Handouts for those who  
> won’t
> work? Mr. Warner says he could be peeled away from the  
> conservatives if the
> liberals would talk to him about his values: “God. Family. Work,” he
> counts them on his fingertips and adds them up. “Heritage.”
>
> Do something to stop the corporate takeover of farm country. Give  
> his son a
> reason to stay and you could have his vote. “F.D.R. was the greatest
> president this country ever had,” Mr. Warner says. “He provided
> security for the farmer.”
>
> Father and son have moved on to spraying fly repellent on the  
> cattle. The
> sun is going low, the sky is growing golden. The father’s gotten to
> thinking. The boy will soon go away to college. His voice shows no  
> trace of
> his natural confidence. “Do you think you’ll come back to rural
> America? And farm? Raise cattle? Raise pigs?” He talks obliquely,  
> toward
> his son.
>
> The son mumbles. “Depends if I find something better in the next  
> couple
> years.”
>
> “What could be better?” the father asks. “What could be better than
> life on the Great Plains where the wind blows and you catch fresh  
> air every
> day?”
>
> “That’s what I’m going to look for,” the boy says.
>
> The boy turns his back. He returns to his work. The father watches  
> after
> him.
>
>
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