Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

All that idealism was heady stuff, but it died for a reason. The Summer of
Love didn't last beyond the summer, did it. Lots of kids had summer off
from college and spending money, and come September they went back to
school. Lots more suffered malnutrition and STDs, or worse. And it's easy
to be idealistic when there's plenty to go around. The thing that struck me
about that lifestyle was the fact that nobody was actually *working*.  I
heard street kids arguing "come the revolution we won't need money". Sure,
kid. I kept working. And reading Rodale. 

I liked their reaction against the doctrine of competition and consumption.
The uptight, sick 50's culture needed to be strangled, but the hippies were
just living off the prosperity of others, including their parents and
friends. Haight-Ashbury didn't create a working model of a new, sustainable
society. And almost nothing survived of the communes. Even the Farm today
isn't what it used to be at all. Gaskin explained all the changes to me
when I ran into him in Santa Fe a while back. The Magic Bus basically ran
out of gas. 

I don't have any special lifestyle or philosophy to recommend except to say
our security and future lies in how we live on the land. Sitting around
grooving won't feed a starving world or solve any social problems. Life
takes work, and working with the land is the most noble and fulfilling kind
of work.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/5/2007 at 11:58 PM Gloria Baikauskas wrote:

>Well, it wasn't quite 50 years ago.  I would have been a child then.  I
>still believe in it, Mark....and I haven't lived in a commune since 1968.

>   
>  I am rather certain that even those who didn't stay with it find their
>conscience tugging at them from time to time.  
>   
>  It is about doing what is right rather than what is easy...about doing
>no harm.  Isn't that what we preach on this list?  Doing no harm to the
>soil.....but instead fixing it...or helping Nature fix it?  We all have
>different reasons for doing it, though.  Not all are altruistic.  
>   
>  Gloria
>