Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Relearning how to live as voluntary peasants

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: mtncats <mtncats@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Relearning how to live as voluntary peasants
  • Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:15:53 -0800 (PST)

Paul and all,
 
I'm pleased to be uncounted.  Even the last census missed us.  Not that much of anybody would describe me as a "farmer", but somehow I much prefer to live below the searchlights.  Seems to keep our life much less complicated.   
 
I would take exception to that assumption about "willing to live in real poverty (the Farmies of the 1970s lived on the equivalent of a dollar fifty per day per person)".  It ignores intentional living.  Something I learned a long time ago was that you only need to earn as much money as you want to spend (plus a cushion).  We have considerably less income than any of our siblings, perhaps live in "poverty", yet live better.  Better food, better house, better environment.  And, no surprise, healthier. 
 
Then the IRS told us that we qualified for earned income credit and needed to file.  There's something wrong with this picture.  This "working poor" couple really doesn't need financial help.  Not that I won't complain about our property tax bill.
 
Paul, you're more interested in "community" than I am.  Not that I don't have a relationship with some neighbors, but it's far smaller than what you apparently envision.  I have nothing against communities, seriously considered joining one many years ago in another country.  But what works better for us is taking care of ourselves, perhaps setting an example, and certainly offering to share what we've learned.  I turn down requests to bake or garden for profit.  Prefer to give away surplus.  Was pleasantly surprised to see an ad for a new CSA here. 
 
Have I missed your point entirely?
 
Tom (in central Va)
 


TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote:

Reactions to this part of it?

By the same token, however, there is no farming being done in the United
States of America -- not on a local, sustainable scale, that is, not to
any degree worthy of official attention. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of the
Census stopped counting farming as an occupation in 1986 -- the number of
actual, self-employed, traditional farmers had become statistically
insignificant. To be sure, there are some non-corporatized farmers still
around, but they exist only because they have either a reliable source of
non-farm income (as I had), or because they are willing to live in real
poverty (the Farmies of the 1970s lived on the equivalent of a dollar
fifty per day per person).

But the bottom line is that our corporatized, industrialized,
government-subsidized mega-scale methods of petro-food production have
made small-scale farming virtually impossible. And that is the
heartbreaking story of American agriculture in the twentieth century,
whether you're talking about grandma and grandpa's forgotten old farm or
whether you're talking about The Farm.
----------------------

paul tradingpost@lobo.net



_______________________________________________
Livingontheland mailing list
Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland


Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast
with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut.


Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page