Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[yarrow@sfo.com]

At 9:35 AM -0700 12/12/07, TradingPostPaul wrote:
> I lived in your area when I was little in the late '40s. One would think
> that the rural poor in the Appalachians would still carry on the self
> sufficient traditions of their forebears. Many would still be living on the
> same land. Perhaps it's the food stamps etc. that have weaned so many away
> from growing what they can. How did they get by a hundred years ago, and
> why not now?

Maybe it's something like what happened in Ladakh. Helena 
Norberg-Hodge first went there as a translator and was impressed by 
the peoples' attitudes, that they had everything they needed, and 
lots of time for celebrations. Some years later she returned. In the 
interim, trekkers had been through and the people who lived in Ladakh 
had been exposed to the trinkets of western culture. She told of 
meeting the same people, who were now begging from western tourists, 
and they told her, we are so poor.