spokedust

Agrarian Dreams

I’m 32, will I continue to live my dreams? I’m reposting this as I just screwed up and deleted it. Leading a family isn’t easy. I think I’d like to lead my family into building our own house. Seems like a daunting task as there’s a lot about construction I don’t know. But envisioning working together to lay a stone wall, a central fireplace of stone or Russian ceramic stove. The reality never seems to work that way. Where do you buy land that you can pay in full? Do you have to move out to no-where’s-ville? Or is it just delusion and the kids would hate it anyway.

But there does seem to validity to moving out of the urban setting for a simpler pace of life. Not more restful. Agrarian-ism is hard work but honest work. And agrarian work is in sync with natural patterns. But how do you do that? I like TV, I like ez food. It seems much easier to just work an extra week, then stop in at PCC rather than planning a brood of chickens. But do I want to remain captive to an employer? I want control back over my time, leaving on a trip with the family spontaneously – being home in the afternoon for….Tea…. Agrarian thinking reduces the overall family cash requirement. We could homeschool in the city – there are great things, museums, racial diversity, and architecture. But do I really want my kids to “grow up fast?”

How do you make that transition, it feels so huge. Well I read some Gene Logsdon recently and got some more hope. Living At Nature’s Pace http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/189013256X Gene argues (like Wendell Berry – “Jayber Crow” & Joel Salatin “You can Farm”) that the post WWII organizational machine totally messed up farming by making it bigger & bigger. This threw off the natural balances. Gene points out that pre WWII farms were family oriented, diverse, kept profits up by keeping costs down. The key to keeping costs down? Let animals do the work (no external resources required aka tractors & gas). Use resources that exist on the farm. What grows easily – GRASS.

If you can grow a lawn/plant a garden, you can be agrarian. Move 20-50 minutes away to 1-10 acres (whatever you can pay off as much as you can) get some chickens & turkeys but keep your day job. Begin building a few fences as you observe the plants & patterns on your land. Keep your day job. As your kids grow, let them take on projects – a small cow, a couple sheep, training a Shetland pony to pull a cart, plow. – Remember Almanzo Manning was breaking oxen when he was 9 – NINE years old. Keep your day job. BUT you could be getting closer to taking a job that provides less cash – BECAUSE you have less needs!!!

One hard consideration for me is community. Eric so & so described in “Better OFF” http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BOB31U that the problem with the back to the land movement of the 70’s was that it was distorted by American “independentism” or hippy communism. The independents went out to the woods like pioneers but got lonely. Hippies built communes but didn’t think like pioneers. Eric researched his MIT masters in sociology & Technology by living in a “minimite” community for a year. The past we are nostalgic for, the simpler life isn’t lived alone but the work is shared, shared with others. Principles shared, experience shared - these fuel the passions, not achievements or trophies. So I think we can do it but this needs to be a family commitment. We don’t need to rush, just plan step by step toward gaining control back over our time and reducing our cash requirements without losing quality of life.

posted by bikenomad @ 11:26 PM