Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

Yup. Except I think we have become much too competitive about the 
"making a living" part of it in our society. The small farms that fed 
and built this country didn't go away because they were less efficient 
except in business terms. In physical reality terms, they cared for the 
land as though their lives depended on it (most of the time). Various 
opportunists and poor national policies made that harder and harder to 
do. Schools didn't help, with their emphasis on "anything but stuff that 
gets your hands dirty."

Meanwhile, these apprenticeships often include business training and the 
academic programs do also. Unfortunately, it ends up being like the 
inventions business: the dream of success overcomes sense and recordkeeping.

I think they should be recruiting from the nursing pools. First, find 
people who know how to keep records of what they've done. THEN train 
them to farm.

I also think we should bring back more experimental farms on a grand 
scale: employing military personnel so that when they go to other 
countries, they can see what really needs to be done to build a 
civilization.

Dan C.
Belgium, WI


On 11/6/2012 11:00 AM, livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:40:01 -0700
> From: "Tradingpost"<tradingpost@lobo.net>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] (")OWL(") Cultivating New Farmers
> To:livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org,
>         OWL-OldWaysLiving@yahoogroups.com
> Message-ID:<201211052140010089.1145DA92@mail.lobo.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>
>
> Have to find one problem with that but it's a biggie. They all help to learn farming 
> but they forgot to cover the "make a living" part of it. Trust me, that's the 
> hard part. I'm suspecting those who survive do it by relying on cheap labor from 
> volunteers, grants, or family members. Or they have family land paid off long ago. The 
> cost of good farmland puts farming out of reach for almost all aspiring farmers. No 
> healthcare or retirement benefits of course. My own goal is more realistic, to 
> supplement retirement with cost effective growing for great customers, on a small plot 
> that just came with the house. And millions of others can find this doable too.
>
> paultradingpost@lobo.net