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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Integrated Homestead: Conclusion
  • Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:22:43 -0700


>From Harvey Ussery's site

The Integrated Homestead: Conclusion
http://themodernhomestead.us/article/(IH)+Conclusion.html

As said at the beginning of this article, there are compelling reasons to
grow more of our own food, in our own backyards (or seek it out from
like-minded neighbors close by). Food safety in the supermarket is an
increasingly hazardous game of Russian roulette; and it is ever more
obvious that we must look to ourselves for the safety of our food—there
is little reason to hope our government will improve its sorry performance
anytime soon.

Industrial food—debased through excessive processing and contaminated
with agricultural toxins and chemical additives—is a growing threat to
our health, as indicated by soaring rates of cancer, heart disease,
obesity—and, in children, degenerative illnesses previously thought the
exclusive real estate of the very old. Despite its problems, the production
of such food is part and parcel of the very foundations of our economy, and
is not likely to change\ldots

Until the oil runs out. I recently read a careful study from Germany to the
effect that global oil production has already peaked—in 2006—and that
we can expect a decline of 7 percent per year from here on out. Our
exploitation of “the remains of ancient sunlight” to fuel an economy on
steroids is a one-time event in human history, a gigantic spike over a
relatively flat line graphing energy use in the past—and in the future.
The shrinking of global oil and natural gas supplies will be the major
event of our time. (And I say that as someone who was born during the
Second World War.)

As our global crises converge, we are all appalled at how helpless we are
to make a difference. Producing our food in ways that are more nurturing
and sustainable, however, will unquestionably ameliorate to some degree any
global crisis you want to name.

But fear is caustic, it gets in the way. Yes, I hope you will be a bit
frightened as you face some of the real challenges to putting decent food
on your family’s table, and of keeping them safe in a changing world. But
I hope that your motivation for continuing will be positive, not negative.

Our alienation from the living world has become a deep sickness, and we
will never find health as long as we stay largely within the artificial
environments we have created. Working with the fellow beings in our
backyard ecology—fungal, microbial, plant, animal—we relearn the beauty
of simple things. We reclaim our birthright, reestablish cherished
alliances with forgotten friends. We reenter the cycling of the natural
year, recognize and honor the presence and needs of species other than
ourselves, greet with affection the spirit in every vine and bee and
thistle and wren.

Working in our gardens, we step again into the Garden, teeming with life
and dazzling with beauty beyond measure. And heed once again the command of
the Creator, who charged us to love and care for it, to keep it as Garden,
not wasteland.

See entire site at
http://themodernhomestead.us/article/Home.html





  • [Livingontheland] The Integrated Homestead: Conclusion, Tradingpost, 01/06/2009

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