Slow Farming and Climate Change Talks

As our betters jet back from Paris, with bellies full of artisanal French food and exciting business contacts that allow them to both profit and “save” the world, our thoughts on the farm have been on Delores. She of the wandering tribe of swine that seldom saw a fence without seeing an opportunity. She who after a gallant effort to artificially inseminate and an arranged marriage of four weeks to a neighbor’s boar is still not pregnant.

We are now faced with a classic small farm dilemma: do we keep her for another try at motherhood or convert her to sausage? Back in August, during her matrimonial date with Old Red, Delores was what is euphemistically described as “pleasingly plump.” She has now been on an owner-imposed diet and slimmed down to what we hope is a good breeding weight. (Yes, hogs, as well as other livestock, can be too fat to conceive.)

There are so many small farm models to follow in this world. And we do not offer ours up to any but ourselves: a three-way contest between profits, sufficiency, and fulfillment. Last week’s post on taking time out from the first two to sit in the woods and do nothing but meditate and smoke a cigar spurred one online reader to call me a slacker.

The conclusion I drew was that, in his mind, the monetary profits of the farm stood superior to sufficiency and fulfillment. An imbalance, if applied mindlessly, that has contributed greatly to this world of rapidly diminishing resources and a climate rollercoaster. Which reminded me of a another recent commenter who seemed to take issue with the notion that achieving sufficiency was anything other than a weigh-station toward profitability or a path down the road to abject poverty.

So, as we watched the old classic set in the Scottish Hebrides, “I Know Where I’m Going,” last night, I chuckled when one of the characters took umbrage at being told that the villagers were poor because they had no money. What poverty of imagination, she said, that would imagine us as poor because we lack money.

Hers was an outlook actively at odds with the modern mindset, the one that devalues the wealth derived from family, community, and being a part of the earth, the one that feeds on the acquisitive and that can, if not moderated, create a life out of balance.

It is this mindset, I think, that led to conditions that energized our betters — a convening of corporations, governments, and nonprofit agencies — to spend a week dining in Paris. Now, with their bellies bloated and their backs sore from congratulatory pats, I have the sneaking suspicion that all of their grubbing around for money will result in a climate plan for more of the same.

We, meanwhile, spent our weekend on the farm. We dined on produce from our gardens and meat we raised. We worked hard, relaxed, and gave a favored sow another chance.

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Reading this weekend: Animate Earth by Stephan Harding

Small Town Resilience

Last week a colleague spent three hours advancing 15 miles in the cancerous landscape of Atlanta.

Around the same time, I was commuting in central Missouri down a two-lane highway through a largely depopulated land of corn and beef cattle ornamented with the occasional red-brick one-room schoolhouse sitting in a grove of trees. The schoolhouses, long empty, were universally well kept, no broken windows, grass mowed—buildings cared for symbolic of the hope or expectation that they might once again serve a purpose.

The housing stock was older, yet well cared for and solid. But it was a lonely landscape of older couples and few children. I drove past the occasional activity of men in distant fields loading hay onto trailers using tractors built to accomplish much, the work done with such little effort as would have stunned even their grandfathers. Little effort and fewer people, freeing up the children and grandchildren to follow the classic road to town and city, a well-worn path since the ancient world, but one accelerated by our fossil-fueled innovations.

I stopped for the night in Boonville, Missouri, on the banks of the Missouri River. Boonville is not a prosperous town. Its trail of empty strip mall architecture dribbles from the outer fringe of the town’s core to the interstate, signaling a raising of the drawbridge, a calculated retreat against a yet unacknowledged enemy. But the core is still vibrant with neighborhoods, small-town hardware and furniture stores, plumbing and electrical businesses, an elegant restored hotel, a diner, and a bar and grill.vfiles38877

That evening I walked from the old hotel to the bar and grill, a place called Maggie’s, for dinner. The Midwest small-town bar and grill is unique. It is the genuine third place Ray Oldenburg spoke about. Warm and friendly, with people of all ages and classes: farmers, workers and professionals, town and country, producer and consumer. These gathering spots are spread across the agricultural heartland. They are the glue to the community, providing face-to-face time between neighbors. Time not gained in a traffic jam.

I am not naively asserting a rural idyll, without strife, tension, unemployment, severed families and the ills of too much idle time. Yet the small town is fundamentally more resilient, resilient because of its smallness and its proximity to productive land. Rural communities, with their face-to-face interactions, have provided the template for human existence for the past thousands of years.

Communities within a megacity are a mere echo of that life. They can nourish and sustain in the ascendancy, but their larger host survives only as wealth is pumped in from the outside world. When the pump is turned off, the decline is inevitable and rapid. Consider Rome, from a city of a million to a village of thousands in the space of mere generations. Or the specter of Detroit, reduced by half in one generation.

Perhaps these Boonvilles, these freshly painted one-room schoolhouses, these Midwestern pubs are the starter-cultures for the wort, the yeast for the fermentation required to restart the small farm, small-town life, a way to redirect the human trajectory from the cancerous growth to the healthy organism, from the complex to the comprehensible?

The cities like Atlanta in our landscape offer nothing but a promise of continued sprawl, congestion, and three hours and 15 miles stalled in the present. And if history is the judge, they offer us nothing in their inevitable decline.

For all the problems in that rural Missouri landscape, it is still one of latent hope. The problems it faces are fundamentally local and scalable. And if the survival of our future allowed bets, mine would be on the Boonvilles and rural counties in this land.

 

The Blood on My Hands

I laid out my shotguns and deer rifle on a folding table outside the kitchen window. With fall around the corner, it was time to clean and oil the guns. It’s a methodical process that is satisfying to undertake on objects that are a beautiful marriage of design and utility. Using a kit made for the purpose, I rammed the cleaning rods through the barrels, oiled the working parts, and rubbed the wood stocks till they shone. I finished just as guests arrived for dinner, returning the guns to the cabinet as they walked up the drive.Guns 002

Growing up in Louisiana I, alongside my father and brother, hunted and fished year round. It was a rare week that did not find me crouching in a duck blind, running trot lines, crabbing, or catching crawfish. Game, fresh- and saltwater fish, shrimp, and oysters easily provided five dinner meals out of seven for our household. Staying up late at night cleaning and gutting fish, setting the alarm every two hours to run the trot-line, waking up at 3 a.m. to get to the duck blind or be on the open gulf by sunrise, all were part of the landscape of my childhood.

Mine was the hunting and fishing of providence, not of the trophy hunter. It was the experience of a profoundly masculine world. From the catching, shooting, and cleaning to, in many cases, the cooking, it was a culture of men putting food on the table for their families. It wasn’t needed in the middle class home of my father—he certainly could have provided all of our meat needs from the grocery store—but it was a lifestyle I shared with most of my friends growing up.

There was always an exhilaration in making a good shot or setting the hook on a large fish. It provided, and still does, a sense of accomplishment that is part evolutionary and large part tribal. The camaraderie of men in camp, the solitude of the hunt, being on the water by myself, or with my father, the rituals of killing and of eating, each shaped who I am as a person.

Perhaps it is counterintuitive, but killing another living creature can teach a person a lot about nature. Putting that act of killing in its “proper place” reminds us of where we came from and where we belong. And remembering our place in a natural order may be the best way to save this planet.

A detractor could argue against the killing, the male role in that culture, and I would listen and perhaps agree in part. But my defense is simple and straightforward: I prefer to be the one with blood on his hands. I believe it is a stance that makes me more, not less, sensitive to the value of life. It is the same reason I butcher poultry and livestock. It seems more honest.

Some may be shaking their heads right now. But as we collectively pile into our cars, while away our hours shopping, allow our kids to grow up without seeing the light of day as they game their way into perpetual adolescence, move from air-conditioned office to air-conditioned vehicle to air-conditioned home, with all that those actions entail to the planet, we might ask ourselves a hard question: who are we kidding?

Whether vegetarian or meat eater, just because we do not pull the trigger or set the hook, we are all culpable in the killing that our lifestyle requires.

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Reading this weekend: The Art of Stillness: adventures in going nowhere by Pico Iyer. And, Journey of  the Universe by Swimme and Tucker.

Highway 36

I spent a couple of days in the heartland this week. I flew into the Indianapolis airport and took the two lane highway 36, from Indiana into the heart of Illinois. A drive, straight as an arrow, that takes you though some of the richest agricultural land in this country. Small towns were planted every five to ten miles, even an oddly placed suburb in what seemed the middle of nowhere, and vast oceans of farmland.

Having nothing better to do with my time, I counted vegetable gardens. I counted as I drove through towns on the highway. I counted as I passed subdivisions. I counted as I passed farms by the dozens. Finishing the trip two and half hours later with a grand total of zero vegetable plots spotted. My recent digs at neighbors for not planting gardens now seem misplaced, because well over half of the homes in our valley have some sort of vegetable garden. But zero?

Now we can assume I missed plenty. But I was diligent in looking and even a casual survey should have turned up the odd patch of tilled ground behind a house or two. But I also didn’t see any small orchards or vines. Most homes in our valley sport at least a pear tree or two in the front yard.

What could account for a food desert in this landscape? Was this the curse of rich land and commodity prices? Or was it that I was simply looking at 200 miles of an industrial park disguised as an agrarian landscape. A bit like those fake Hollywood towns of yore, looks the look at first glance but nothing supporting it.

It was odd to see old farmhouses with the corn and soybeans tilled and planted up to the driveways. The houses bobbing on the landscape like lost boats at sea. Gone were the outbuildings and barns of the past, now replaced with corrugated buildings housing supplies and gargantuan equipment. No room in this landscape for the personal or something as humble as a vegetable patch or fruit tree. No need for the homestead pig or grapevine, the message is clear, this is valuable land.

Yet what explained the absence in towns of vegetable gardens? As is my wont, I’m no doubt guilty of reading too much into this simple lack of observable gardens. But vegetable gardens, a few chickens and a fruit tree or two make a statement. And their absence in our rich heartland is a statement, something darker, a yielding of ones will or culture.

Perhaps it is better to farm or garden on land that requires a bit more struggle?

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Reading this weekend: Plain Folk of the Old South, by Frank Lawrence Owsley. One of the Southern Agrarians, this is his classic examination of the non-slaveholding southern yeoman class.

Bargaining with the rain gods  

OK, give us some rain, not too much, not too little, just enough and when convenient…for us. With crazy weather patterns becoming the norm I’m not sure what totem offerings to make to whomever is listening. But I’m willing to try. Just clue me in big guy.

The folks in the UK, I hear, could stand a dry spell. The good people of the Gulf coast could use a month or two to dry out from Noah like deluges, just not too long…. And we’ve been running low for the year. Not a drought, yet. But edging into the scary zone where you know what can happen. So when a major system kicked up and started firing moisture northwards from the Gulf of Mexico and along a frontal line, we were hopeful.

But after a misting over 24 hours and by yesterday afternoon a mere measly 10th of an inch was in the rain gauge. So late on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, with the skies having parted I was glued to the computer watching stray storms popping up; calculating wind directions, intensity and whether the gods were going to play fair.

For a couple of hours we watched what appeared to be a promising cell fire up on the Cumberland Plateau. An agonizing drift eastward at a glacial pace and it finally crested the ridge of our valley around 6 pm. A nice round ½ inch dropped into the gauge. We’ll take what was offered. Do I need to slaughter a lamb or offer burnt offerings?

So after the rain of yesterday I piddled about the farm today, did a bit of fishing, mainly as an excuse to smoke a cigar. And I mulled over an email we had received. Someone wanted advice on leading a more self-sufficient life. I disclaim any authority to answer adequately. But apparently I can’t seem to resist the siren call of thinking I have something to say (see below).

So, while I’ve been a bit useless today, Cindy has been her usual industrious self. She has been cleaning our hive bodies and getting frames ready for our two new bee nuc’s. These are ones to replace the four hives lost last year to bad weather and poor management.

5 Guidelines to greater self-sufficiency

Lesson #1: Garden

Start by getting your hands dirty. Plant a garden. Grow what you like to eat. Plunge your hands into the soil, make some notes of what you did and repeat next season. It is not hard. At the end of the season you have some fresh produce, don’t waste it. Eat it, save it or compost it.

Lesson #2: Livestock

Start small and raise for your own home consumption. Raise only what you like to eat. It doesn’t take a college degree or permaculture certification to raise a hog out for nine months, butcher it and eat well for the next year. Chickens or ducks, a hog or a lamb, can all be raised successfully on a small bit of land.

Lesson #3: Work

We all have more time than we realize. So, use it. You are going to feel better at the end of the year when you have some food in the freezer and in the pantry, I promise. Knowing you can produce food for your family is simply the best feeling.

Lesson #4: Killing and cooking

Get over your squeamishness. You got an extra rooster, learn to butcher. Do it cleanly and humanely and honor it with a really nice dinner with some sides of fresh vegetables you grew.

Lesson #5: Intelligence

Use your brain. Educate yourself on the best ways to do any of the above. Our ancestors have been providing for themselves for thousands of years. Hey, how hard can it be?