North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Joe Hecksel" <jhecksel@voyager.net>]

Naomi in Idaho wrote:

> My husband has a conventional(Money ) job with benefits.  I stay at 
home... It is not a wage. It is a lifestyle.

Excellent.  I like that you made your choices and are self-funding 
them.  I like that you are not wringing your hands and telling 
everybody else how to change to accomodate your vision of how life 
should be lived.  I sense that you are not handicapped by the 
entitlement mentality.  Good!

This is the rankest kind of speculation, but I wonder if the Roman 
Empire could have been saved if a bunch of Really Smart People could 
have been beamed back in time like the Connecticut Yankee in King 
Aurther's Court.  I think not.  The social structures are self-
reinforcing.  Too many people thought they were ahead of the game to 
abandon or modify it.  

Regarding lifestyle choices.  I grow fruit for many reasons.  One of 
the reasons is that my dad was a big gardener.  I want my kids to have 
the same experiences that I was blessed with.  

One of the advantages of growing food, even one tomato plant, is that 
you can grasp the basics of the entire venture.  Water and compost (or 
commercial fertilizer) make the plant grow.  Sun makes the fruit 
sweet.  Air flow keeps the rot away.  Staking the plants keeps the 
fruit off the ground, away from the slugs.  The Enron embarassment 
would not have happened if corporate accounting was as transparent as 
the cause-and-effect of growing tomatos, and if the consequences of 
stupid decisions was as quick and ruthless tomato hornworms or slugs 
eating 'maters.

I think that my kids will be better prepared for life if they have 
gardened.  They will have the mental models that will allow them to 
efficiently winnow out the spurious detail and get to the basics.  They 
will ask the right questions.  Is the goal worthy?  Is the growth 
advantageous for the long term?  What do I really need to attend to?  
What do I need to preserve so I can continue my enterprise in the 
coming season.


-- 
Joe Hecksel
Personal Webpage http://my.voyager.net/~jhecksel