Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Grapes of Wrath, the sequel

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Grapes of Wrath, the sequel
  • Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:59:37 -0500

On a second thought, I should have added that I don't think making the profit should be the prime mover on the land. (Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to sell seafood and the ocean will boil.) Profit is a measuring stick in the artificial world of civilization.
The prime mover should be to have some net that goes back to improve the land.
That 'net usefulness' is what makes up for bad years, mistakes, etc.
'Those 50 people have to be ON that land' should be qualified with , "or their representatives". In other words, the point is that 50 people can be supported by 50 acres. Whether livestock (representatives) are harvesting grass or whether 12 kids are out there pulling weeds, the primary focus should be that the useful output of people has to become useful input to the land.
The land cannot perpetually be 'harvested' without CAREFUL replacement of resources with careful attention to details.
The human being's usefulness is our brain. We can use it to devise ways to encourage other creatures to care for the land, etc. We don't have to chase the worm, it does it's job independently, but we have to keep poisons from killing the worm. We don't have to kill all of the mice that bother us: we can encourage nesting places for hawks, but we have to monitor how many so they don't eat all of their food and then disappear.

These are the things I mean when I say that an acre takes a person. To be a human-friendly acre, it requires human-based inputs just as much as it requires nitrogen, sunlight, and soil fauna.

Dan C.
You're probably right, one acre through the seasons. But I have to agree
totally, for 50 acres to support 50 people, they definitely would have to be
on those acres. I think labor and transportation factors come in there. I
think they'd have to be doing the work and not be someplace else. More
thoughts on this?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


>>
>> Always appropriate, isn't it. As for us here we grow for markets on less
>> than a quarter acre. It's not a living of course, and with a short
>> frost-free season, poor soil to start with and very low rainfall it's too
>> much work for us.

>I now own 50 acres, and I have learned to think of it as a massive >place. It is a size which requires machinery, but even with machinery, >one person cannot be on the whole place in their mind. Regardless of the >labor, I have found that an acre is as much as one person can properly >keep in useful focus throughout the seasons. More than that and the >details suffer.
>
>I now understand how this farm could be 50 families' source of food and >income, but they would have to BE here in order for it to happen. We >have spent the last 100 years destroying that opportunity with petroleum >and money as motive.
>
>Dan C.
>





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page