Your Basic Essentials

“Dish-washing is my balm and poultice.”—Robert Mifflin in The Haunted Bookshop

The wind is up outside the windows of my cozy study this morning. I hear tin tumbling across the ground near the wood yard. Something has come loose during the night, hopefully not a roof.Hauling Firewood with Ginger 019

A well-attached roof is an essential for living comfortably. But other than competent shelter, what else is really essential to a good life? The New York Times recently ran a lengthy article on a young couple’s travails in finding an apartment within their budget ($3000 a month) that had a dishwasher. The unchallenged assumption was that a dishwasher in an apartment was one of those essentials. Anything less, the writer implied, and the couple might as well return to medieval times.

One landlord told the couple that they didn’t need a dishwasher because New Yorkers liked to eat out. That a couple would choose to eat at home and hand-wash their dishes was a non-starter, perhaps even inconceivable, for this spoiled and entitled young couple.

More than a hundred years of consumer capitalism and the free labor of fossil fuels have left most of us ill-equipped to contemplate the essentials of life and the value of work. We as a society have used the largesse of cheap fuel to devalue community and extol the individual, warping in the process our relationship to the daily rhythms of work, to the degree that simple hygiene gets farmed out to an appliance.

Is the struggle to wash dishes really such an onerous chore? In the days when we owned a dishwasher, we put almost the same amount of energy into loading and unloading the machine as into hand-washing the dirty dishes ourselves. Doing dishes together, we have found 15 years into living sans dishwasher, is a great way to catch up on the day, to reconnect over a shared task.

As moderns, our definition of what is truly essential includes computers and smartphones and dishwashers. What is truly essential is now defined as anything that helps us avoid what we perceive as work. And adhering to that definition clouds our understanding of what we need, unsettles fundamentally our ability to truly know what we can do ourselves, promotes our abdication of control and authentic participation in exchange for accessories to purchase, whether labor or goods.

Our journey, living on a small farm, is not unusual; it is one on a well-worn path of reasserting some measure of control over production and community. During these past 16 years, we have learned to do more for ourselves and to more fully embrace the life that as a friend who grew up on a farm described as “Do it yourself or do without.”

This life on the farm has taught us to be more thoughtful on what is essential, to value more dearly the help of a neighbor and recognize the need to cultivate those relationships. We’ve discovered that physically building fences enhances the metaphorical sense of the same: it indeed makes good neighbors.

I dare say that the generations to come, in dealing with the decline of fossil fuels and the ravages of climate change, will not find the struggle to wash dishes nightly a mighty inconvenience. Indeed, they may find that the essentials of a satisfying life come from shared toil, the fulfillment of building something with their hands, or the freedom of doing without.

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Reading this weekend: Resilient Agriculture: cultivating food systems for a changing climate by Laura Lengnick

To That End

We try. But I won’t declare that we do the best job of caring for our land. You see, I know where the bodies are buried: the troublesome bits of erosion, the areas of overuse, diseased trees, and neglected infrastructure. Yet, I won’t underestimate our hard work and successes at stewarding this small farm of seventy acres, a stewardship that, hopefully, leaves the land, upon our departure, in better shape than when we took up this way of life.

Nonetheless, we are both aware of the potential futility of these efforts in a world overburdened by population, climate change, resource depletion, and the general collapse of good behavior. Even as I type these words I can view the neighboring hills, a mile in distance, denuded of trees from a poorly executed clearcut, a process that is repeated up and down our small valley.

At times our farm seems an island in a sea of abuse. Small farms or small land ownership is no more immune to poor practice than large farms and tracts of land. Perhaps the small farm has a bit more flexibility; it is closer to the root of a problem and so can respond in real time. Like a small motor boat compared to an ocean liner, it is more maneuverable. But it is no nobler, for its small size.

Orwell, in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier, makes a reference to small landlords being worse than a large landlord, based on their limited resources to improve their investments. Similarly, the small farm is just as subject to those market forces, the same drive to wring every bit of profit from the resources at hand, as the large farm. A sad play that has us repeating our role in the original sin, where we short the future for a bite of an apple today.

That all leaves me, looking from my window on this Sunday, thinking that this island, which is our farm, is already being lapped by those rising waters of our future.

Yet, we make our small efforts to stake a claim to an imaginable future that has room for well cared for small farms, families, and community on a healthy planet. To that end we gathered last night with other area small farmers for an evening of fellowship, food, and conversation. To that end, today, we plant a new vineyard of wine grapes. And, to that end, our sow, Delores, farrowed last night.

To that end, that is the present and future as best as we can manage, for today.

Seeds, Plantings and German Board Games

The first seed catalog arrived around Thanksgiving. Since that festive date, as more are delivered, the inside of the house now has totem piles of nursery offerings scattered throughout. I’m sure the seedsman and seedswoman must agonize as to when to mail out a catalog. Too early and it is disregarded as hopelessly out of season. Too late and the grower is out of funds. The non-gardener thinks of gardening in May when the farmer’s markets open, or perhaps not at all. But here we are a week into winter and a few days shy of the New Year and seeds and plantings on our mind.

On the kitchen table lie two baggies, one contains marigold seeds and the other basil seeds, gifts of the Fuja boys a few valleys over. We joined them last night for a nice dinner of a peppery and delicious turnip soup, accompanied by tasty fresh brewed farmhouse style ale. And then we retired to their music room and played a bizarrely entertaining board game called Agricola. Trust me, if you play, make sure to get someone who has played before to explain the rules. Fortunately their brother from Chicago was in for the holidays and shepherded us through the evening. A bit overwhelming for the novice, but we had a great time, particularly Cindy who won the game.

And as we left Tim gifted us the aforementioned seeds. Russ and I discussed our impending receipt of olive trees. In either a spectacular act of optimism or gloom we are both going to make small plantings of some olive tree varieties that can grow one planting zone to the south. Optimistic is our thinking that even if they die back every few years, a harvest of olives every three to five years can’t be a bad thing. Gloom, because the climate is so inconsistent, and likely to become more so, that a planting of olive trees might just be the outlier of a new planet. But at $10 a pop for the whips we figured the risk was low.

Last weekend Cindy, while perusing Craigslist, found a listing from a nursery in Georgia that specialized in Southern heirloom apples. A wonderful listing of varieties I had only read about in Creighton Lee Calhoun’s classic work. So without hesitation we ordered a Brushy Mountain Limbertwig, Black Limbertwig, Buckingham, Magnum Bonum and Original Winesap. We back ordered a Horse and a Hall. These will be planted below the hazelnut grove in their own orchard, some distance away from the main apple orchard.

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The wrap-up

  • Year-end housekeeping: This coming year, now that the alphabet is complete, I will continue posting a piece each Sunday-ish. I will also start a twelve part piece on farm tools to be published once a month. And each month I’ll be posting a few farm pictures as part of a year-long scrapbook of life on our farm. Hard for me to believe the blog is entering its fourteenth year!

 

  • Reading this weekend: William Cobbett’s, Advice to a Lover; an 1829 pamphlet by one of my favorite writers on gardening and agrarianism. This is a pamphlet where he lays out for the young man how to find an appropriate mate.

I would not suggest any of you take his advice seriously. Indeed it would be hard to find a woman today who would measure up to his list of qualities of what she must possess. But his wonderfully opinionated prose is priceless,

“There are few things so disgusting as a guzzling woman. A gourmandizing one is bad enough; but one who tips off the liquor with an appetite, and exclaims, “Good! Good!” by a smack of her lips, is fit for nothing but the brothel.”

Everyone enjoy their New Year, stay safe, and by all means, avoid those guzzling women.

Eating Our Seed Corn

In Atlanta this past week, I had a quick conversation with a man in the elevator where we both remarked on the weather. A cold front had moved through that afternoon, dropping the temperature to an unseasonable low. He said, “This must be left over from that typhoon they’re talking about.” I replied that it was a cold front. And he allowed that that made sense.

The high school kid down the road was relating to me why she loved her favorite class, English literature. The students there were currently enjoying The Scarlet Letter. I was pleased she liked to read, so I asked her if she read ahead of the class and had finished the book. She looked puzzled. “No,” she replied, “the teacher only plays one chapter at a time.” No reading, just listening to a book on tape.

For me, the phrase “eating our seed corn” comes to mind. One of my favorites, it perfectly encapsulates the trajectory of the human race on this planet. Whether we’re talking about climate change, peak oil, destruction of agricultural land, depletion of fresh water, population overshoot or any of the other things that keep us awake at night, the phrase seems apt.

We are eating our seed corn, cannibalizing the future for a convenient present. No resource is too precious to warrant saving–not the intelligence and education of our children, not the arable land where they built a new Walmart; not the diminishing aquifer pumped out to frack a limited supply of shale oil or gas; not the soil under the clearcut forest on our neighbor’s property, where reseeding did not enter into the financial equation; not our planet when it is at odds with continued growth.

Someday, and I fear rather soon, we will go to the collective storehouse and find that our seed corn for next year’s crop was last night’s cornbread.

Stewards of the Decline

Legs perched on handlebars, hands dangling by his sides; he steers by graceful childhood joy into the parking lot of Paul’s Market, as my truck moves past. Not for him any concern of past or future, no awareness of shuttered glances between parents and eloquent silences. These come later, in half remembered visions if he is lucky, or not at all if he is not.

For now, I wonder, does he have that unfocused pleasure in being young; a Tom Sawyer seeing Pirates and treasure among the general decline?

Who would spoil those few years by contributing to a flood of unwanted, un-blockable data: streams of image destroying commercials, internet porn, and mom’s new “Dad”? Is he able to construct a fort of fabrication, holding off barbarian hordes with dirt clods and sling shots. Or, are his friends already “cool”? Are there any gentle pleasures for him these last days of summer? Or, is his sister showing off her new tattoo?

I wish him a cone of oblivion to the present: A pig-wallow of false innocence to keep away the burning sunlight.

Out of sight from the rear view mirror, he has blended into the past. Already, he is too distant to benefit from the man he will become. No amount of rooftop shouting will reach his ear; all pleas to stand still and resist the flow of time are only whispers that sound like spokes rattling on his bicycle wheels.

There is Mr. Junior waving as I round the bend. Does he at 94 voicelessly shout to me, poised, as in the middle I am, to heed his advice and warnings of the road ahead?

The road winds on into the town of Sweetwater, avoiding the interstate, I travel Oakland Rd to downtown. Past the Farmer’s Co-op fertilizer storage, past the used car-lot, the old post-office, the three block downtown area revitalized with antiques shops selling a past we cannot have.

The closed textile mills, one with new life promising that we can “sell it for you on E-Bay”, a promise of deceit for a culture of conspicuous consumption that the crap bought today will bring riches tomorrow. And, I wonder do I hear a voice shouting from a rooftop?

I pass Richesin’s Feed and Seed: closed after 75 years by people who can’t be bothered to rearrange their shopping hours. The same people navigating by siren calls will close Archer’s Pharmacy in the next year as they ground in the breakwater at Walgreens.

And I hear the whispers as my wheels turn.

I leave town and pass a new home, two stories, incomplete, gradually falling in on its self. Outlasting as a ruin the relationship it now mirrors.

Pulling back onto our farm I survey all we have done in knowledge that all the work is as temporary as our tenure on this place. I hear Junior call from six miles away, “We are only stewards of the decline”.