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  • From: "Andeanfx" <andeanfx@midrivers.com>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] current financial
  • Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2010 04:09:59 -0700

I have a pretty good idea what a WWOOFer is but what do the letters actually represent?


I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. -- Mark Twain


----- Original Message ----- From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2010 6:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] current financial



Fascinating about the problem with Xmas and with WWOOFers. We see some people buy a live tree and plant it outdoors for a Xmas tree. I suspect the problem with WWOOFers is even worse with hosts that don't really have much to teach and just need grunt work done. And suspect for some it's just a brief break from college.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 12/25/2010 at 6:12 PM John D'hondt wrote:

From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Sure, add more. We're not in the city anymore, not isolated but too far
from stores to bicycle and if predictions hold horses will be very
expensive. Rural or city, my best guess is too many things will start
getting too expensive in a matter of months - and hope I never see it.
Gas
#1, food a close second. I don't quite like the word crash because it
sounds too all or nothing. It appears this slow motion economic
contraction is irreversible for multiple reasons. And what we're seeing
already is desperate cuts in several state and city budgets, loss of
many
social services and safety nets - and some pension defaults dead ahead.
So it looks like gradual worsening of family finances and a lot of big
bumps in the road, more downhill than uphill. With local networking
pretty
iffy for many of us the Internet is a poor substitute. Still it's nice
to
be able to communicate over vast distances with so many.

At the very moment there must be thousands of horses, definitely in
Ireland,
looking for a home for next to nothing.
But whether it is a good idea to get one is another question. Horses do
not
need to get shoed. They can be made used to working without expensive
blacksmith work. But to be useful they will need some harness; collar with
haimses, straddle and bridgins, head collar and bit and at least a cart
which people will find much more expensive than buying even a trained
horse.
I could buy at least 20 good horses here now for the price of one new neck
collar. But I won't do that for I got a few already each with their own
harness for the leather has to fit the horse.
Working with a horse also requires a learning curve from the owner. It is
not quite as easy as driving a tractor and if you try to drive horse and
cart like a tractor you are likely to loose the cart the first time you
drive in or out of a field that has a gate or pillars.
Good to know also is that a big horse,16 hands and up, will likely eat as
much as two cows. In my location a horse that size needs about 2 acres of
grazing to survive for the year. But luckily there are small pony races
that
pound for pound out-pull the big ones.

As to networking in a basically hostile neighborhood....it is hard enough
to
keep going with what we have been doing for over twenty years. I reared
four
fantastic children and thaught them all the jobs going to survive and then
the three oldest found a mate that wanted something else from life leaving
us a bit understaffed at most times. I then tried to find maybe a wwoofer
or
two who could fit in what we are doing here. Must have had a hundred over
the last few years and found half a dozen who would fit in. Unfortunately
these all have a goal in life, know what they want and have plenty of
drive
to get it. They came here for a limited time to learn something specific
and
left. . A few
of these wanted to stay but they would have destroyed us if we had let
them.
I then advertised to get a young family here offering to share everything
we
have, plenty of food, a dry roof over the head a chance to live with and
in
nature. No takers. Nada. Well I suppose this might be even more tricky
than
finding a good single person.
Most people still can't see what is coming and that is that.

Without kids at home we don't really do Xmas or shopping with the
madding
crowd, so 25th is just another day here, and long as the ground doesn't
freeze I can get some more wheelbarrow work done. The next two months
won't let me do much with the garden.


It is the same here Paul even if we do have some adult children and even
some small grand children not too far off. A long time ago when we were
still in suburban Belgium we were part of a neighborhood group of young
parents. There are about a dozen couples and a few singles who apart from
mutual help all the time came together once a month to talk openly and in
complete honesty about a particular subject. One month that was about Xmas
and all the hype surrounding it. We found to our surprise that just about
everybody there hated Xmas and everything to do with it but we all went
along with the mass hysteria because that was the only thing imaginable.
Most of us would have preferred to live with a primitive tribe along the
Amazon that had never heard of Xmas.
That two hour long meeting definitely changed the life of this family. We
became eccentric while thinking that all the hype was not necessary unless
life through the year was too empty and without purpose. One can teach
children anything, even that once a year we have to chop down a small tree
and then see it die inside the house for a while. You can also teach
children that a 60 foot tall living tree outside is something else again
and
that there needs to be a very good and better reason than "everybody does
it" to kill a tree.

End of rant, all the best for the new year,
john


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