a cow and calf added to our farm.
The piece I was working on for this morning is still incomplete. We have been struggling to finish more of a large new fencing project on our farm; made difficult as our East Tennessee region, after a wet summer, slid effortlessly into an extreme drought. Each effort to dig post-holes, because of the hardening soils, requiring more time (and physical recovery on my part) than is normal. Those delays, plus our ongoing re-fencing of the 25-year-old inner corral, seem to have kept me from my desk.
But I have been reading:
The Soul of Civility: timeless principles to heal society and ourselves (A. Hudson). A new title that I felt was necessary to read before the social-apocalypse of the US election year in 2024 destroys any vestige left of our civil structures.
Local Culture: Friendship, Fall 2023. The new fall issue of the FPR journal issue landed in my mailbox last week. It starts with a piece by Wendell Berry and promises to be something to absorb my morning readings for a few weeks.
Selections from Against the Grain: a deep history of the earliest states and The Art of not Being Governed, an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, both by James C. Scott. I find myself in the face of the meaningless political choices on offer, reexploring my more youthful anarchist impulses, but from a less ideological perspective.
Which brings us to my final book added to my stack, Human Scale (revisited), a new look at the classic case for a decentralist future (K. Sale). Billed as the single best book on how to build a localist world, it fits my mood these days.
Well, the cattle (we have cattle, again) are bawling, the sheep stare at my lighted window with hungry eyes, and I must go.
Interesting. I thought you had decided long ago that cattle are too big and cumbersome to manage on your farm. Good luck with Bessie and Bessina.
The original Kirkpatrick Sale book (Human Scale) crossed my path years ago in connection with my blog about industrial scale. I never read Sale, but then, I never get to read the growing pile of books screaming for my attention. Had no idea he had written and published a follow-up for tan five years ago. I rather like the idea of revisiting after 30+ years with the benefit of hindsight to assess what was learned. Aldous Huxley did it with Brave New World. More realistically, the reassessment becomes the story of what was not learned because conservation of old or traditional ways and wizened planning for the future are typically jettisoned in the technocratic glare of the next great thing.
In quantity, yes, partially. Though that was also an age issue for us, not that we are OLD. But since we got “rid” of our cattle, we have had the occasional steer raised for meat. This cow and her heifer fill that niche. The heifer will be butchered next fall. The cow is due to calve in May on next year. So, her offspring can be put in the freezer the following year. And so, it goes.
It would be nice if more authors revisited their classics.
Re decentralism, I’m guessing that you are familiar with distributionism, Brian.
And you may have read Kropotkin? There’s a sliding doors moment about how Russia may have progressed quite differently after the revolution.
There’s some interesting material in this article:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kevin-carson-the-homebrew-industrial-revolution
and other pages on that site.
Spent the weekend clearing out a shadehouse and picking berries. I’m planning to add some automated irrigation to several shadehouses.
And looking into how to add some bulk organic material to some paddocks. And get some soil testing done for macro and micro nutrient deficiencies …
We are doing our own annual soil tests this week. We are also going to have our hay tested, which we have never done before. I’ll be curious to see what the latter reveals.
As for dear old Kropotkin, I’ve always had a soft spot for his Fields, Factories, and Workshops. I may have to go back and re-read some of that book.
Cheers,
Brian