Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Livingontheland Digest, Vol 183, Issue 6

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Jean French <jwf267@yahoo.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Livingontheland Digest, Vol 183, Issue 6
  • Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 11:12:59 -0800 (PST)

Paul and everyone,
 
Thank you for these articles!  I emailed the John Kinsman article ( or as much of it as the web address would allow me to send) to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack.  Maybe we all can print it and mail it to him, as a big push for rational policies?
Thanks,
Becky French
Towson, MD

--- On Sun, 3/1/09, livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org <livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

From: livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org <livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Livingontheland Digest, Vol 183, Issue 6
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Sunday, March 1, 2009, 1:21 PM

Send Livingontheland mailing list submissions to
    livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
    http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
    livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
    livingontheland-owner@lists.ibiblio.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Livingontheland digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Harlan Hubbard - painter, writer,    agrarian homesteader
      (Fox, Dan)
   2. Women lead a farming revolution in Iowa (Tradingpost)
   3. Schwarzenegger Declares California Drought    Emergency (Tradingpost)
   4. Nation's Food System Nearly Broke (Tradingpost)
   5. American taste for soft toilet roll 'worse than    driving
      Hummers' (Spirit Talks)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:29:42 -0500
From: "Fox, Dan" <foxd@sunyocc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Harlan Hubbard - painter, writer,
    agrarian homesteader
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
    <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <3E43B46F6DF5D04ABE1A998CA92219EA03D1984D@geb.sunyocc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="us-ascii"

Thanks for that one Paul, really enjoyed it. The Hubbards had a really
good attitude toward physical work, and Gene's writing about it captured
its essence in a way that many of us on this list can probably relate
to. I've actually been wanting to carve out one of those bucket yokes
for a number of seasons now, as it would be great for collecting maple
sap the way we do it every spring...also for watering animals.

Also, Harlan's paintings adorn a few covers of Wendell Berry's books, to
great effect. Mostly fictions, I think.

Dan Fox

-----Original Message-----
From: livingontheland-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:livingontheland-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
Tradingpost
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 8:47 PM
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Livingontheland] Harlan Hubbard - painter, writer,agrarian
homesteader




Harlan Hubbard - painter, writer, agrarian homesteader
by Gene Logsdon
Published Feb 25 2009 by  OrganicToBe.org
http://organictobe.org/index.php/2009/02/25/harlan-hubbard-painter-write
r-ag
rarian-homesteader/

I found Harland Hubbard in an article in the National Geographic in the
early 1960s. He and his wife, Anna, were what was called at that time
modern homesteaders who had first become well-known for building their
own
shantyboat and floating down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to bayou
country, a trip that lasted over a year. Now they lived on the banks of
the
Ohio in a house they had built themselves, mostly out of lumber cut from
their own woodland or snagged as it floated by on the river. They did
not
have electricity. They cut their own wood for fuel. They raised all
their
food, or caught it from the river, or traded for it with neighbors. The
only steady income they had was rent from a house Harlan had built in
town
in younger years. Their life was both rigorous and elegant. Harlan made
some money from his paintings and his books. The couple provided their
own
entertainment: nature watching, reading, and music.

For a while, I talked about living the same way, causing Carol's parents
some consternation. In their first years of marriage, they had lived
much
like the Hubbards but viewed with alarm the idea that their daughter and
grandchildren might have to do likewise. I was reminded, more than once,
that, unlike the Hubbards, I had children to raise. So I went to
Philadelphia, accepted the manacles of financial security, and forgot
about
the Hubbards.

Fourteen years later, Wendell Berry introduced me to the Hubbards. They
lived only a few miles from his farm. Wendell and I were both writing
for
the Rodale Press, whose publications were seeing a dramatic rise in
circulation. This was the golden age of Organic Gardening magazine.
Literally millions of people were subscribing to it because they had
gotten
the audacious notion that they wanted more control over their lives. The
magazine was suggesting ways to gain that control. Like the Hubbards,
these
readers thought that they wanted to go where they could own a little
land
free and clear, live more healthfully, more at nature's pace than the
nine-to-five regime, produce their own food, do for themselves what they
had been paying others to do for them, and make enough money at some
small
business or craft to get by. In other words, they were motivated by the
same kind of idealism that had influenced the early pioneers. They were
agrarians. They found in the publications of the Rodale Press the kind
of
information they were looking for.

It was in this heady atmosphere of hope that, at Wendell's suggestion, I
was assigned to write an article about Harlan and Anna Hubbard. I
remembered them from the National Geographic article and accepted the
assignment eagerly.

It was impossible to drive to the Hubbards' house, near Milton,
Kentucky.
There was no road to it. I either had to walk for more than a mile
through
the woods or had to boat over the Ohio from the Indiana side. Tanya
Berry
was my guide-I doubt that I could have found the house on my own. We
walked through real Daniel Boone-type country with only a rough old lane
to
follow. Finally, we could see the river through the trees. We came to a
little barn-like structure, Harlan's studio and workshop, and then
followed a path to the house. My heart was pounding. I had read Harlan
Hubbard's books, Payne Hollow and Shantyboat, as one would read about a
pleasant dream fulfilled: two people who had managed to shuck the
captivating technological inanities of our time in favor of life on
their
own terms. But, ever cynical, I feared that there would be a wide gap
between the books and the reality. I feared that, instead of
self-reliant
homesteaders, I would find two darlings of the richer classes playing a
game or, even worse, two visionaries living in squalor and disarray.

What I found was order and discipline, and the reward of order and
discipline, just as Harlan's books portrayed: an easy grace and serenity
of life that was not at all easy or simple to achieve. "I really
wouldn't know what to do with electricity," Anna answered my first
question. "I've learned how to manage without it. I don't need it. I
even doubt it would make my life any easier."

The Hubbards were a good example of what contrary Organic Gardening
readers
wanted to know about. The couple cooked with wood heat, washed clothes
by
hand on a scrub board (both helping), raised and preserved all their own
food, had no indoor bathroom, no television, radio, or telephone. But,
though living what seemed to be a circumscribed life, they possessed a
rare
combination of vigorous intellectual creativity and skilled, practical
know-how: they were people who could think with their hands as well as
with
their minds and who therefore lived a philosophy rooted in the solid
earth,
not one flying in the winds of the briefcase world. The Hubbards did not
say: Here is what should be done. Rather, they said: Here is what we do.

If I had approached the Hubbard homestead from the river landing, which
was
the way the Hubbards first came to Payne Hollow in the 1950s, I would,
during high water, have set foot on land at the gate of the lower
gardens.
This plot Harlan reserved for the late garden, planted after the spring
flood danger had passed. To the left, on a higher shelf, lay the early
garden. In early April, peas and other vegetables were already up. The
gooseberry patch on one side was leafing out; rhubarb and comfrey
flanked
the other side. Anna had already cut some for the table. Next to the
rhubarb grew a patch of daylilies. "New daylily shoots are delicious,"
Harlan said. "There is plenty to eat, even this early in the year." He
gestured toward the larkspur-purpled hillsides. He dug a Jerusalem
artichoke and cut off a slice to show how crisp and sweet it was before
warm weather caused it to start growing fast. "Later on, we'll gather
nettles," he said. "Cream of nettles soup is a favorite of mine."

A raspberry patch grew below the early garden, the brambles tied to a
trellis of discarded water pipe that Harlan had found. Blackberries he
gathered from his sixty acres of woods. "The wild ones are much tastier
than tame blackberries," he said. Elderberries came from the woods too.
Anna used them with rhubarb, the blandness of the berries offsetting the
tartness of the rhubarb. "Gooseberries and rhubarb are great together
for
the same reason," said Harlan.

Nothing was wasted on the Hubbard homestead. The gardens were totally
organic. Every scrap of waste, manure from their goats and from the
privy
compost, legumes, green manures, all were returned to the soil, more
boon
than bother. "The goats relish a patch of weeds as much as any pasture.
Weeds make satisfactory hay too." In front of the goat barn, Harlan had
sunk into the ground two fifty-five-gallon drums fitted out with slanted
tops and screened side portals to keep out water and mice but still
allow
for some circulation of air. Here they stored potatoes, beets and other
root vegetables for winter use.

Directly up from the gardens, just above the high-water mark of the
record
1937 flood, a mark that is kept sacred all along the river, stood the
house
and, next to it, beside Harlan's studio and workshop, a shed full of
kindling. Harlan called this shed his bank. "If I can't always keep a
supply of wood sawed and split from the woods for day to day use, I've
got this wood for backup."

There was a wren's nest in the privy. I sat there on the toilet staring
eye to eye with the mother bird-a little disconcerting for both of us, I
think. There was no odor, even of ammonia, coming from the excrement
below
the toilet seat. A pipe under the seat vented odors through the wall,
and
all one had to do, between uses, was keep the tight-fitting cover on the
toilet hole. "Flushing" amounted to dropping a scoopful of ashes from a
bucket down the hole. Twice a week, Harlan lifted the tub below the
toilet
onto his wheelbarrow and hauled it to the compost heap in the woods. The
pile kept moving as he used finished compost from one end while adding
new
manure to the other. Before he replaced the tub under the toilet, he
added
a layer of finished compost in it. "Bacteria will begin the composting
process quicker than would otherwise be the case."

The house was a study in artful craftsmanship. Every stone, every log,
every rough-sawn board was fitted in place one at a time-the materials
dictating the form of the house almost as much as the form dictated the
materials. "The reason the ceiling joists are sapling sycamore is
because
those were the straightest logs in the woods," said Harlan. Part of the
wall was paneled with rough-sawn walnut, and, when he ran out of walnut,
Harlan did the rest in cherry. The circular saw marks remained in the
wood
rather than having been planed away, the overall textural effect
unexpectedly pleasing to the eye. Between the two layers of rough-sawn
boards that made up the walls, the Hubbards used construction paper for
insulation. Wide sycamore boards covered the floor. Sycamore grain did
not
raise much or splinter easily, and sycamores can grow to enormous size,
easily living for three hundred years. Humans have actually lived in
huge,
hollow sycamores, the perfect transubstantiation of silviculture into
art.

The house was small, modeled on the shantyboat of earlier days. Beds
folded
up behind shelves, stair steps opened to reveal storage chests, chairs
fitted over each other like nesting boxes so that they could be stacked
out
of the way between meals; even the sink slid back into the wall like a
drawer.

The woodstove cuddled up beside the fireplace, and both were used for
food
preparation, to heat water, and of course to warm the room. In the
cellar,
Harlan had also installed a homemade furnace with a flat top so that it
could double as a shelf. Beside the furnace rows of other shelves
groaned
with jars of food that Anna had put up. In a cool corner, the fresh goat
milk sat in jars in a shallow pan of cool water with a moist cloth over
the
jars. "The milk will stay cool for several days this way," said Anna.
"With daily milking we have no problem keeping fresh sweet milk on
hand." Surplus milk they made into cheese and yogurt.

Much of the work of subsistence the two homesteaders did together.
"Harlan always helps with the canning and the laundry, which makes those
chores much easier," said Anna. "When I can goat meat and soup bone
stock, he always cuts the meat off the bones, and that's the hardest
part
of the job."

Harlan's first task in the morning before going to the barn was to set
his breakfast food mixture of ground wheat and soybeans over the fire in
the cast iron Dutch oven converted into a double boiler. "It is ready in
an hour but can sit there simmering all day," says Anna. "You don't
have to bother with it much."

In the summer, Harlan's main work was the garden and other
food-production chores. The trotline in the river had to be tended, the
fish removed, the hooks rebaited. Fish were a principal source of
protein
for the Hubbards. In the winter, there was wood to cut and split, all
done
with hand tools. "Last winter, with the terribly cold weather, I had to
keep at it pretty constantly," Harlan said.

The Hubbards even made some of their own garments. Anna darned warm long
socks and mittens to wear inside leather chopper's mitts. These mitts
Harland made himself out of scraps of leather. He also made sandals. His
favorite winter garment was a goatskin vest made from a skin that he had
tanned.

The river, always there on the edge of the mind, like a loved one to the
lover, gave them more than just fish. "You never know what is going to
float up next," Harlan said, "and it is fun to see what you can
scrounge." A good portion of the wood that they burned, or that had
found
its way into their buildings, came from the river. More steel barrels
floated by than Harlan could use. But the best prize so far was a huge
roll
of paper, so tightly wound that water had not soaked into it except at
the
edges. The Hubbards had used the paper for years, for everything from
stationary to shelf covers. With some gaily colored nylon strand from a
flotsam rope, Harlan fashioned curtain shades from strips of paper that
resembled bamboo blinds and were every bit as attractive.

The Hubbards preferred hand labor over motors. Once, Harlan installed a
gasoline-powered pump to lift water from the cistern to a tank farther
up
the hill so that, following gravity, the water could flow into the
house.
"I got rid of it," he said. (He mentioned the motor in Payne Hollow,
written three years earlier, but not that he quit using it). "The motor
was noisy. Too jarring. Totally out of place here. I found my peace of
mind
shattered because I was worrying about the motor. I found that I could
carry the water by hand to the tank with just a few minutes' work every
day." He fashioned a wooden yoke like the pioneers had used to fit over
his shoulders. With a bucket hung from each end of the yoke, filled from
a
dip bucket lowered into the cistern, he methodically walked the water to
the tank.

Watching him dip and carry the water, I was struck by the economy of
motion
and energy he put into the task. I noticed the same smooth flow of
muscle
motion when he hoed, when he cranked the handle of the grain mill, when
he
pushed the wheelbarrow. There were no hard, jerky movements, no flailing
away needlessly. His strong, supple body moved in cadence with the laws
of
leverage and of gravity. His hoe sank into the rich organic soil as if
drawn down by some unseen force in the ground. He seemed only to rock
backward as the hoe sank, his weight pulling it toward him, turning over
crumbly dirt as fast as any garden tiller could. He in fact disdained
mechanical tillers. Grinding meal, his body seemed to coil and then
uncoil
around the crank like a spring while the meal streamed steadily from the
burrs. It occurred to me that herein lay the secret of enjoying physical
work. Knowing how to use the laws of gravity and leverage, and being in
condition. Mastery brought not dull strain but the same satisfaction
that a
ballplayer derives from a perfect hook slide into second base.

The Hubbards exhibited none of the reluctance toward hard manual toil
that
so many writers perceive hanging over agrarian life. Toil they accepted
as
the reward of the body's natural grace and desire for exercise. They
never forced their bodies to compete with machines. Manual labor became
art.

As Harlan cranked away, grinding his breakfast wheat, I questioned him
sharply about this. "Physical labor is not of itself repugnant," he
said. "Too much physical labor is repugnant. A moderate amount is fun.
That's why people who think they have escaped hard labor turn to jogging
or some such waste of energy that is actually more tedious than
farmwork. I
think also that doing hard physical labor for someone else does become
tedious. Doing the bidding of someone else is distasteful, whether the
work
is physically straining or not. The body wants to work but not as
someone
else's slave. My work is pleasant and satisfying."

He stated his work philosophy more gracefully in Payne Hollow.

I try to conceive a life of more leisure, a condition which men have
ever
been trying to achieve by various means-by forcing slaves or captives in
war to do their menial work, or by letting it devolve upon womenfolk, or
by
hiring servants and nowadays by innumerable machines and gadgets. This
last
solution allows everyone to play the master, but it is well known that
machines are on the way to become masters of man.

...We... get all our living by as direct means as possible, that we may
be
self-sufficient and avoid contributing to the ruthless mechanical system
that is destroying the earth.

In this endeavor, no sacrifice is called for, no struggle or effort of
will. Such a way is natural. Rather than hardship, it brings peace and
inner rewards beyond measure.

One of the main rewards that Harlan and Anna's lifestyle brought them
was
more time to spend at pursuits other than livelihood work, the kind of
time
that all of us were supposed to be trying frantically to find. Seemingly
out of place in the small house stood a grand piano, which Anna played
often. Harlan accompanied her on the violin. Both read much and widely,
often aloud to each other in German and French as well as English. Once
a
month they rowed across the river to Madison, Indiana, for the few
essentials that they could not produce themselves and to exchange books
at
the library. Nature-watching, especially bird-watching, was an amusement
always available just by looking out the window.

Dining at the Hubbards was an elegant affair despite the lack of
electrical
refrigeration and other modern amenities. The dinner that Anna served
started out with a salad of sliced, fresh Jerusalem artichokes, fresh
violets, including the blossoms, parsley, new Bibb lettuce from the cold
frame, comfrey, plus several other greens that I did not recognize, all
sprinkled over with crumbled black walnut meats. The soup was from stock
canned three years previously. It possessed superb flavor. The main dish
was smoked goat meat, shredded and creamed, flanked by asparagus. The
heavy, moist homemade bread consisted of whole wheat flour and soybean
flour in equal portions. We drank goat's milk as sweet as any milk I had
ever tasted, and later, herb tea. Anna made tea from comfrey, spice
bush,
stinging nettle, sassafras, pennyroyal, and parsley.

A constant stream of visitors arrived at their solitary home. In fact,
the
Hubbards often wished they were not so popular. "People seem to think we
have nothing to do," Harlan said wryly. But he turned no one away.
"We're not here to put on a show," he said, "but if we can
demonstrate how our way of life is practically attainable, we feel it
will
be worth the effort."

All this work and play took place as a background to Harlan's writing
and
painting. While he was grinding wheat and we were alone in his workshop,
I
asked him why he didn't write a book telling people in minute detail how
he and Anna managed their daily lives. He smiled. "Most people don't
really want to know that much detail about anything. What I would write
would be too tedious for them. No publisher would publish it." He turned
the crank on the grinder a few more times, then stopped and stared out
the
window. "It would be like trying to teach someone how to paint a
picture.
There are certain obvious things that might be pointed out, but you
can't
teach someone to be an artist. It is something that can't be taught."

A few more cranks, and the last of the wheat spilled out as flour into a
bowl. "Teaching is overemphasized in our society," he continued.
"Learning is the thing. Teaching doesn't automatically result in
learning. Learning requires love and desire, and when you have that,
anything and everybody is a teacher."

"Would you say that your whole life here is a work of art?"

"I see it that way. I am doing art whether I am chopping wood or
painting
a picture or writing a book or making a pair of sandals."

"Can you imagine living this way without painting or writing?"

He looked at me curiously. "I never asked myself that. I just sort of
always wanted to paint and write, just like I always wanted to canoe the
river or have a garden. I used to think there was a kind of pride
involved,
that I wanted to paint something others would appreciate. I like it when
someone buys a painting. The money can be useful, but, more than that,
it's a way you know the person really likes the painting."

He paused again, then asked, shyly: "Would you like to see some
paintings?"

"Oh yes." I had refrained from asking, not wanting to cross what might
be a fine line of privacy.

We went into the studio. There were no paintings hanging up-there was
hardly enough space to allow that. Most of the wall space was taken up
by
the north window. But there were canvases, or, rather, masonites,
leaning
against the wall. Harlan turned them one at a time to my gaze. They were
mostly paintings of steamboats. I had not been prepared for that. To my
mind steamboats were alien to his life. Why steamboats? I wondered.

He proceeded to tell me. Payne Hollow, this very place where he lived,
had
once been a regular steamboat packet stop. The whole farming country
along
the river for miles and miles depended as much on small steamboats and
the
river for transportation and trade as it did on horses and roads! "Farm
families often built their own little boats the same as they would build
wagons," Harlan pointed out matter-of-factly. "Wives would go down to
the landing and take a boat to town about like taking a taxi today. The
packets responded to every hail from shore." He smiled. "A favorite
story is that a farmer once hailed a steamboat to get change for a
fifty-cent piece."

Painting steamboats, Harlan was painting his place! Steamboats had once
been part of the agrarian lifestyle along navigable rivers. I was
reminded
of the Wyeth family's island sheep off the coast of Maine grazing on
seaweed. Steamboat farmers and sheep grazing the ocean floor! This deep
kind of knowledge was at the basis of real art. I had a hunch that Jamie
Wyeth lovingly painted those island sheep (Portrait of a Lady [1968])
knowing that the sheep were partial to seaweed. I had a similar hunch
that
Harlan lovingly painted steamboats knowing that there had been a time
when
a packet had stopped at Payne Hollow to give a farmer change for fifty
cents.

It was not until some years later that I had a chance to see a good
selection of Harlan's paintings, at Hanover College, and then I was
embarrassed, remembering how ignorant I had been when I visited Payne
Hollow. I did not yet know about his early (1930-40) landscapes of
Kentucky
hill farms, like Campbell County Hill Farm (1933), which captivated me.
Those landscapes seem to have sprung onto the canvas suddenly,
ingenuously,
like the way a morel mushroom seems suddenly to appear on the forest
floor
where the hunter has just looked seconds earlier. I thought the farm
scenes
looked exactly the way they would look to someone who saw them every day
without actually looking at them, the way a child living there would see
them. In his journals, Harlan talked about the paintings in somewhat the
same way. While possessing a certain stylistic or impressionistic
character, the paintings looked real and fresh, with people at work or
passing through the scenes almost incidentally. They were everyday kind
of
paintings, the kind of everydayness that a person loves in an old shoe
that
fits comfortably, the kind of everydayness that only intimate knowledge
can
convey. Harlan once described the effect he was trying to achieve in one
of
his journal entries: "I am concerned with two aspects-one a
representation of what I see, working in three dimensions, in light and
air
molding with my hands, almost, a bit of the earth's surface. The other
is
abstract, a pattern of color and line, whose relation to the pictorial I
am
not sure of. Above these two, making a trinity, is the guiding force: in
me
perhaps a love of what I see, and what I feel when observing the
landscape."

Since Harlan was equally adept at both writing and painting, I asked him
how the two kinds of art were different and how they were alike. He
didn't answer right away. But finally: "The mental state I suppose is
the same for all art, at least when you start out. There's a sort of
sudden coming together of idea and object, of mind and matter. Then, as
the
work enfolds, there is the same problem in both painting and
writing-what
to leave in or leave out. It took me a long time to write Payne Hollow.
It
wasn't like journal entries, which don't have to be organized and
integrated. I often wrote something and then discarded it. That is true
in
a painting too. The artist is always playing the part of a little god,
creating his own world almost. For me, I like to paint sort of quickly,
that is, without too much thinking. Thinking can wreck it. But at some
point writing becomes a very intellectual activity. Demands a lot of
thinking. With painting, well, you have brushes, and colors, and shapes,
and the light. Painting is more physical."

"I guess you could hardly paint a comma and hang it on the wall," I
said. He smiled an nodded.

I remembered a whimsical little poem Harlan had written, a bit of verse
about himself at work building a boat and what it might sound like to
anyone hearing him from afar:

That pounding seems to come from Payne Hollow
Some think to themselves-
that nail went wrong,
He hit the wood that time.

I found my mind looping back to my conversations with Andrew Wyeth and
Wendell Berry-Andy's insistence on not letting the paint hide the real
thing and Wendell's emphasis on intimate knowledge at the root of art.
Only people who knew the intimate details of what they were writing
about
or reading about-in this case a carpenter at work-could write such
perfectly appropriate lines:

that nail went wrong,
He hit the wood that time.

~
See also HarlanHubbard.com
~~
Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot
County, Ohio.
Gene is author of The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative
Impulse (Culture of the Land),
The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life, and All Flesh Is
Grass: Pleasures & Promises Of Pasture Farming
Excerpted from The Mother of All Arts
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
Gene's Posts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've wanted to learn more about the extraordinary Hubbards. Wendell
Berry
has written about them in Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work. Their homestead
was also featured in the science fiction novel by Judith Moffett: Time,
Like an Ever-rolling Stream. -BA


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


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:47:34 -0700
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] Women lead a farming revolution in Iowa
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <200902271347340734.0CAB0040@mail.lobo.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"


Women lead a farming revolution in Iowa
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/02/25/women-lead-a-farming-re
volution-in-iowa/

As wives inherit husbands? farmland, they stress conservation over
maximizing profit.
By Mark Clayton  |  Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ February
25, 2009 edition

Mount Vernon, Iowa

Women own nearly half of Iowa?s farmland. But they find they have a
common problem: The men they hire to farm their land often don?t treat it
with the tender care they expect ? and often won?t listen when they
complain about it.

Women from three counties near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, discovered the shared
view in a series of meetings on ?Women Caring for the Land.? Dozens
have turned out to learn more about farmland conservation ? and to share
tales of dealing with their tenant farmers.

Margaret Doermann?s Iowa farm has some of the richest soil in the state,
which is why she insists it be farmed the way her husband did, using strong
conservation practices to preserve it. So it was a shock to discover the
tenant farmer she?d hired after her husband?s passing was treating her
land like, well ? a rental property.

?I was awakened in the middle of the night by a tractor tilling the
hillside,? Mrs. Doermann says. Her husband ?had always tilled it in a
contour [across the hillside] to limit erosion. But when I went out the
next morning, that hill had been tilled up and down so the soil would wash
right off.?

Doermann?s rude awakening didn?t end there. The water in the stream
near the field looked like ?brown gravy? ? full of soil runoff from
the hillside. She and her daughter wound up in a lawyer?s office arguing
with the farmer over how to till the hillside. A new lease now specifies
the soil preparation she wants.

?Well, you know what?? Doermann said to three women at a small
gathering of farm-land owning women last month. ?The very next spring, he
did it again.?

Doermann?s experience is hardly unique, experts say. Of Iowa?s 30.7
million farm acres, 47 percent are owned by women. But a growing share ?
20 percent ? is now owned by single women, many of them older, with a far
different take on farming than their male counterparts. About
three-quarters of the land owned by single women is rented out to mostly
male tenant farmers.

While most women still own farmland for income purposes, ?almost 30
percent of single female owners say they own it primarily for family or
sentimental reasons, not income,? says Michael Duffy, an economist at
Iowa State University who does a regular survey of land ownership. (More
farm wives are inheriting farmland as their husbands pass on.)

Those ?sentimental reasons? often translate into conservation concerns
? with animal habitat, environment, and water quality high on the list.
Women land owners care more about land preservation than about maximizing
crop yield ? with potentially large implications for farming practices,
the findings show.

Among more than 800 Iowa farm women who recorded their views on farmland
ownership in 2006, most listed conservation as a high priority, according
to the ?Women, Land and Legacy? report conducted by Iowa State and US
Department of Agriculture researchers.

Women show a ?clear and strong consciousness about land-health issues and
respect nature intrinsically ? not for its productive value, but because
it sustains life,? the report found. Women also support conservation to
ensure the land will be productive for future generations and because the
land provides ?physical and mental health and healing benefits.?

An environment-minded generation

?We now have this generation of women, many of them older, now engaged in
learning more about agricultural conservation,? says Denise O?Brien, a
full-time farmer who nearly became Iowa?s first female secretary of
agriculture in 2006. ?I hope women will feel empowered to say: ?I want
a waterway, buffer strips, and trees on my farm.? When women say that
today, men pretty much roll their eyes and think that they don?t know
enough to make these decisions.?

Jean Eells, a sociologist who focuses on environmental education, has
studied how Iowa?s large share of older women who own farmland are faring
in getting their land-conservation views heard.

?As a whole,? says Ms. Eells, ?these women have a strong view of land
as community ? as a source of food and water for animals, birds, as well
as people ? rather than just producing a commodity. But while that
conservation ethic makes them natural allies for agricultural conservation
programs, women often feel their views are out of sync [with state or
federal programs].?

Partly it?s because women don?t know or use standard terminology to
talk about land conservation, Eells says. Partly it?s that agricultural
system representatives tend to think and talk production ? even when
discussing conservation, she adds.

?If a woman brings up something about farming, and a man blusters
authoritatively about it, women are socialized to just clam up,? Eells
says. ?So to the extent that a woman landowner starts discussing
conservation, there are a lot of reasons why this might not go well.?

Male farmers and state agricultural officers echo Eells?s view. John
Bruene, a district conservationist for the US Department of Agriculture,
says women landowners are increasingly voicing their concerns to him. ?We
do deal with a majority male population in the farming community,? he
says. ?But there?s also been some new awareness that women owners out
there want a say in how things are done. They are finding they don?t have
to just do whatever their tenant wants them to do.?

As a result, his USDA department is focusing more on ways to educate women
in the lingo of conservation and also to ?reach out to a group that maybe
we haven?t done that well reaching before.?

Mr. Bruene and Jim Serbousek, a county soil commissioner, spoke to ? and
took questions from ? a Women Caring for the Land meeting of women
landowners in Linn County. Mr. Serbousek, who farms his own land and is a
tenant farmer for 10 landlords, says he heard plenty from the dozen or so
women present.

He?d never dealt with that many women landowners before. ?I was
surprised; they didn?t hold back,? he says. ?I was stressing that
they need to have communication and cooperation with their tenants. They
asked right back: ?Well, how do you keep communication going when the
only time you see [the tenant farmer] is when they sign a lease?? ?

Still, he?s not surprised older women have conservation concerns not
shared by younger tenants farming their land.

Willing to lower the rent

For most young farmers, ?it?s economics, the almighty dollar, that
speaks,? Serbousek says. ?That?s where communication comes in. If the
tenant does more conservation, I told the ladies, ?Maybe you could lower
the rent.? ?

To his surprise, many women said they would gladly lower the rent if
tenants followed good practices. But ?if they?re going to tear up the
fields, I?m definitely going to have to charge full rent.?

Carolyn Palmer, who grew up on the Linn County farm where she and her
father were born, has lived on the same 90 acres for 50 years. She is
determined to preserve its beauty and productivity.

But in the three years since her husband died, Mrs. Palmer says, she?s
noticed that the tenant was slicing off a little more each year from
waterways ? the 30-foot-wide grassy strips beside streams required to
prevent erosion. Not long ago she went out and measured: Sure enough,
he?d shaved off a foot or so.

She?s also unhappy that crop rotation has changed from corn, oats, and
hay to just corn and soybeans ? which she says has harmed her land.

?I?m sure there is more erosion since we don?t have a field of hay
? and the reason for this has to be profit,? she says. ?If I had my
druthers, I would shift back to another rotation,? even if it cut
profits.

Still, as women like Palmer and Doermann get more active in conservation
statewide, Ms. O?Brien, the farmer, sees potential for environmental
progress ? especially if farm programs can reach more women.



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:02:11 -0700
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] Schwarzenegger Declares California Drought
    Emergency
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <200902272102110703.0E38E769@mail.lobo.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"


Schwarzenegger Declares California Drought Emergency
SAMANTHA YOUNG | February 27, 2009 08:27 PM EST | AP
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/27/schwarzenegger-declares-c_n_170693.
html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. ? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of
emergency Friday because of three years of below-average rain and snowfall
in California, a step that urges urban water agencies to reduce water use
by 20 percent.

"This drought is having a devastating impact on our people, our
communities, our economy and our environment, making today's action
absolutely necessary," the Republican governor said in his statement.

Mandatory rationing is an option if the declaration and other measures are
insufficient.

The drought has forced farmers to fallow their fields, put thousands of
agricultural workers out of work and led to conservation measures in cities
throughout the state, which is the nation's top agricultural producer.

Agriculture losses could reach $2.8 billion this year and cost 95,000 jobs,
said Lester Snow, the state water director.

State agencies must now provide assistance for affected communities and
businesses and the Department of Water Resources must protect supplies, all
accompanied by a statewide conservation campaign.

Three dry winters have left California's state- and federally operated
reservoirs at their lowest levels since 1992.

Federal water managers announced last week that they would not deliver any
water this year to thousands of California farms, although that could
change if conditions improve. The state has said it probably would deliver
just 15 percent of the water contractors have requested this year.
Story continues below

Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought in June but stopped short of
calling a state of emergency. His 2008 executive order directed the state
Department of Water Resources to speed water transfers to areas with the
worst shortages and help local water districts with conservation efforts.

Over the last few weeks, storms have helped bring the seasons' rain totals
to 87 percent of average, but the Sierra snowpack remains at 78 percent of
normal for this time of year. State hydrologists say the snowpack must
reach between 120 to 130 percent of normal to make up for the two previous
dry winters and replenish California's key reservoirs.

Court decisions intended to protect threatened fish species also have
forced a significant cutback in pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
delta, the heart of the state's delivery system.

The governor, farmers and lawmakers have argued for years that California
must upgrade its decades-old water supply and delivery system and build new
reservoirs.

"The situation is extremely dire," said Tim Quinn, executive director of
the Association of California Water Agencies, adding that the governor's
action Friday "underscores the urgency of serving the long-term structural
problems."

The state delivers water to more than 25 million Californians and more than
750,000 acres of farmland.

Schwarzenegger's order leaves the door open for more severe restrictions
later. Additional measures can include mandatory water rationing and water
reductions if there is no improvement in water reserves and residents fail
to conserve on their own.

At least 25 water agencies throughout the state already have imposed
mandatory restrictions, while 66 others have voluntary measures in place.

The state prefers such local efforts so it does not have to call for
statewide rationing, Snow said.

The federal government on Thursday created a drought task force to provide
farmers technical assistance in managing existing water supplies. Farmers
also could be eligible for federally-backed emergency loans.

Almond farmer Shawn Coburn of Mendota said the emergency declaration comes
too late for many growers who already are halfway through the season. Some
farmers didn't bring in bees to pollinate, while others sprayed their
orchards with chemicals that keep nuts from forming.

"It's too late," he said. "It's going to sound horrible coming from a
farmer because you never turn down help, but come on, this thing is over
with."




------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:14:40 -0700
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] Nation's Food System Nearly Broke
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <200902272214400796.0E7B440F@mail.lobo.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"


Published on Friday, February 27, 2009 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin)
Nation's Food System Nearly Broke
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/27-5
by John Kinsman

As our government enacts a stimulus package and President Barack Obama
announces bold initiatives to stem home mortgage foreclosures, disaster
threatens family farmers and their communities.

The government's response to plummeting commodity prices and tightening
credit markets leads to the basic question: Who will produce our food? This
is a worldwide crisis. U.S. policy and the demand for deregulation at all
levels -- from food production to financial markets -- contribute greatly
to the global collapse. The solution must be grounded in food sovereignty
so that all farmers and their communities can regain control over their
food supply. This response makes sense here in Wisconsin and was the global
message from the 500+ farmer leaders at the Via Campesina conference in
Mozambique in October.

Many U.S. farmers are going out of business because they receive prices
equal to about one half their cost to produce our food. How long could any
enterprise receiving half the amount of its input costs stay in business?
As an example, dairy farmers in the Northeast and Midwest must be paid
between 30 and 35 cents per pound for their milk to pay production costs
and provide basic living expenses. Until 1980, farmers received a price
equal to 80 percent of parity, meaning that farmers' purchasing power kept
up with the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, a 1981 political decision
discontinued parity, and today the dairy farmers' share is below 40
percent.

"Free trade" and other regressive agricultural policies have decimated
farms. We are now a food deficit nation dependent on food imports, often of
questionable quality.

Our food system is nearly broke, which is almost as serious as our
country's financial meltdown. With fair farm policies, farmers would get
fair prices that would not require higher consumers prices. The Canadian
dairy pricing system is the best example that proves fair farmer prices can
and often do bring lower consumer prices and a healthier rural economy. In
addition, excessive middleman profits are taking advantage of both
consumers and producers.

As more farmers face bankruptcy, we all face a food emergency. European
farmers speak from thousands of years of experience on the importance of
family farms when they warn us, "Any time a country neglects its family
farm base and allows it to become financially bankrupt, the entire economy
of that country will soon collapse. It may take generations to rebuild the
farm economy and that of the country."

Despite the magnitude of this food emergency, the "farm crisis" does not
appear in headlines, so politicians are not compelled to provide political
or financial assistance to something that would likely fail to bring votes.
As farmers, we are now only about 1 percent of the U.S. population, and
have little power to expose and prevent our demise. However, our urban and
rural friends could be vital voices and advocates.

Bailing out the financial giants will not solve the financial crisis in the
country, but the right policies and stimulus dollars could prevent a severe
food crisis by saving farmers and workers. Furthermore, farm income dollars
remain in and multiply at least two to four times in the local economy.

Family farmers have proposed fair food and farm policies that can be
implemented at a fraction of the present multibillion-dollar policies
destroying us. As the Treasury Department develops plans to distribute the
bailout funds, the National Family Farm Coalition and others urge it to
require banks receiving funds to treat their borrowers fairly by providing
debt restructuring as an alternate to home or farm foreclosure or
bankruptcy.

Concerned citizens can call the White House, 202-456-1111, or your members
of Congress, 202-224-3121, to urge them to support policies that enable
farmers to earn a fair market price; request an emergency milk price at
$17.50 per hundred weight; provide price stability through government grain
reserves and effective supply management; support the TRADE Act to be
reintroduced in Congress; increase direct and guaranteed loans to family
farmers; and ensure that the food we raise can be marketed to local schools
and institutions, providing a better food supply at a fair price. We need
these immediate changes in our food and farm policy.
? 2009 The Capital Times
John Kinsman, a dairy farmer from La Valle, is president of Family Farm
Defenders, based in Madison.




------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:07:11 -0500
From: "Spirit Talks" <spirittalks@gmail.com>
Subject: [Livingontheland] American taste for soft toilet roll 'worse
    than    driving Hummers'
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
    <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <810A877545974475ADD8D837EB8966BE@KIMPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
    reply-type=original

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america

Tiny URL:  http://tinyurl.com/cg3jmk

Excerpt:  The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more
environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast
food or McMansions, according to green campaigners.

Kim



------------------------------

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


End of Livingontheland Digest, Vol 183, Issue 6
***********************************************



  • Re: [Livingontheland] Livingontheland Digest, Vol 183, Issue 6, Jean French, 03/01/2009

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page