agrarian

Industry

When did the word “industrial” become synonymous with heinous attributes of our society? To be industrial has not always meant “continued or increased military spending by the national government.” a term first used by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961. Nor has it always been “characterized by a low fallow ratio and higher use of inputs such as capital and labor per unit land area”, in contrast to traditional agriculture in which the inputs per unit land are lower. Nor has industry been a “transition to new manufacturing processes…” To be industrial traditionally refers to the efficient effort put forth by individuals, and not to the methodological destruction of other countries through warfare, or the planned and procedural devastation of the environment. Nor has industry always denigrated human beings to just another “cog in the machine”.

Industrial military complexes, industrial agriculture systems, or industrial revolutions really do not refer to industry at all, but to consumption, profit motivation, and product movement. I would like to take back the word “industrial” to mean something effective but positive; a compliment if possible. I would like to see the industrialization of our communities by seeing lawns disappear, being replaced by gardens, and useless fences replaced by useful fencing in of a few small livestock. I would like us to be an industrial culture once again, but in the true sense of the word.

If we are to become industrial, we must come to understand the system in which we work. We must understand that industrialization does not mean continued or increased inputs measured in units and efficient processes that lead to positive profits. I would like to be industrial because that is what human beings’ purpose is: to work. But we are also moral beings, and so I would like us to be morally industrial. If we are to work, then we ought to work towards something good, something positive, something sustainable, something worth being.

The good, the positive, is seldom complex and even more seldom reliant upon units, inputs, measured efficiencies or manipulated markets, goods and services. It is almost as if we have let our language fall prey to the lowest common denominators of those in our society that would have us believe that progress is measured in goods and services created by our industries rather than our industry. I would like us to be industrious without relying upon industry. We can, if we only realize that we must. We must, and so I can only hope we will.

The Foundation of Life

soil

Soil is the foundation of life, and so in my quest for self-sustainability I have chosen to start at that foundational point this year. On my quest to be self-sustaining, this year started with building my own seed starting soil. With $8 worth of vermiculite I have about three wheelbarrows full of starter soil, and the vermiculite was optional. I think a little sand would have done the trick. Nevertheless, the path is clear.

Self-sustainability is becoming more and more important as the industrial agriculture machine slowly chews up its gears and we are left with fewer and fewer moral options. But why stop at not buying industrial food products? This is just a beginning, and a beginning that ironically ends at the very soil that all of our food eventually comes from.

I started with well composted manure, grass and food scraps collected all last year and turned regularly until winter set in. Before putting the soil in my homemade boxes, I ran it through the chipper/shredder. This fluffed up the soil and chewed up some of the bigger chunks. I then filtered it through my homemade soil colander (four 4×4’s with ¼ wire stapled to the bottom) into a wheelbarrow and added vermiculite.

I have started my leek, onion, cabbage, and peppers in this mix and have watered (so far) about four times with no sign of compaction. I have yet to see if my little seedlings, after sprouting, like their new home. Tomatoes go in this weekend.

It is difficult to explain the satisfaction of not buying products in order to be self-sustaining. Although I have a long way to go, this new starter soil is a further new beginning on the road to independence.

A Split-Second Decision

John Cage was a composer who “wrote” and performed a piece of silence called 4” 33’ (four minutes and thirty-three seconds). It was simply himself, on stage, and sitting at a piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. However simplistic and absurd it might have seemed and still perhaps is, I believe that the art, while not found in the actual performance is in fact found in the thought. This is culture.

I believe that many of us are realizing that what we consider culture is really nothing at all but consumerism. Culture is virtuous; consumerism is not. A man sitting at a piano and not playing the instrument, I thought, can be analogous to individuals who find themselves in a consumerist society without being consumers. I know this is a stretch, perhaps, but I believe there is something true in it.

To play a piano is a choice and one must learn, and learning takes time and effort; much time and much effort. That is why so many begin by taking lessons but few come to play the piano. Not being a consumer takes time and much effort.

The burgeoning agrarian movement that seems to be blossoming in this country can be seen as a reaction to a society that has lost its priorities to profit and consumerism, but I like to think of it as a choice, an idea that often times is ridiculed (as John Cage was when he performed his piece).

Perhaps John Cage was reacting to the ever-more complexities of modern classical music at the time? And if so, the analogy becomes even more similar. Rather than complaining as a composer, Cage did something to point this out. In the same way, we can make choices that go against the relentless pressure to consume.

Some may argue that actions such as Cage’s piece or the agrarian movement are simply fads, but I’m not sure that the argument stands. Cage’s piece is famous (or infamous) even today and he as a composer changed the landscape of modern classical music. In the same way I think that as more and more people realize the cost of a consumer lifestyle is not sustainable, they too will choose to take a stand. In Cage’s situation it was not too play for 4 minutes and thirty three seconds.

Our stand against consumerism can start with a split second decision.

Obsolete Aptitudes

Just recently I was given three wooden hand planes ranging in size from a 9”-app. 16”. Since then I have been learning to use these “obsolete” tools in the shop. I have rubbed and polished the irons and waxed the soles. I’ve spent time practicing setting up the irons for just the right whoosh sound when I run the planes over the edges of the wood. In the process, I’ve learned to “read” the direction of wood grain and to feel if the irons are sharp and in place. I have learned to recognize characteristics of both the tools I am using and the wood that I am working. My education continues.

I’ve gotten better in the past weeks and it has cost me a lot of wood shavings and rough edges. But, progress is being made. I am told and hear that such things are obsolete, but I disagree. In fact, I would argue that such aptitudes are necessary to understanding not only woodworking, but also what it is that makes us human. The answers that I find in these old “outdated” wooden wood planes do not come easily, but every one of them are applicable. The questions answered by such tools are far beyond a push of a button or trigger on one of my electric tools and at the same time apply equally to both the old wooden planes and the electric planers and table saws that I use daily.

I watch my hands as I place them gingerly on the well-worn wood of the planes and feel the weight and the balance of the tool. I listen to the sounds the irons make as I hope for a smooth glide but often get the chatter of a miss-set or unsharpened blade. Where I learn to listen to one tool, I learn to coax the other. Sometimes I remind myself that I can easily joint an edge with a machine, but then I make obsolete something too important to forget.

Such experiences make for a lonely life sometimes, surrounded by modern humans and our mechanical aptitudes, but I’m not sure that convenience and modern “necessities” are worth the cost of losing ancient knowledge and know-how. Anyway, as I begin to look around, I’m not so sure how alone I am in my obsolescence.

It is hard to describe and perhaps even harder to understand, but watching the shavings pour out of the top of the planer when I do get it right is a memory that is seldom made when working with modern tools. I am asked, “Why bother!?” and to that question I must answer, “To ask that is to not understand the answer.” The experience is not mystical, but is necessary. It is not obsolete, but essential.

The Choices We Make

When I chose to get a dog from the pound about five years ago, little did I know of the ritual that would soon become my life. Every morning up at 5:30 and after the coffee cup hits the coffee table for the final time, a nudge (toy in mouth) and off we go for our morning walk. In the afternoon after work another walk, work in the woodshop or in the garden, and some playing in the yard until it is time to eat. Then, off to the favorite bed she goes watching the house from her favorite perch.

The choice to get a dog from the pound has obvious implications. My life has changed, but so has hers. I made a choice, and that choice has brought me as well as my dog a great deal of happiness. These are the choices we make, and we continually make. Other choices that we make do not always have obvious implications.

When I choose to go to the grocery store (the walk of shame as I call it), or to buy something at the local hardware store the choices we make there also have implications. However, those implications are not always as clear as bringing a dog into your life. There are animals that pay a high price for the choices we make. We make choices for many reasons, but those reasons should always be clear to us as well as the consequences of the choices we make.

An easy choice is not always the right choice, and those choices that we deem as difficult should not always be difficult. We can choose to do the right thing, but to simply do the right thing takes time, it is a habit that we must acquire. I believe that most of us know what the right choice is but are often tempted by the easy and swayed by the convenient. Our choices become others and not our own.

Perhaps it’s time to take our choices back, but this too is a choice; at least for now.

Two Sides of a Coin

two sides of a coin

Money is typically defined as anything of value. Money is often used as a means of barter, trade, and for transactions. And so money is not often valued for itself, but for what it can get us. Money, then is useful, but not necessarily valuable. In thinking of this, I realize that there are two sides to every coin.

It seems that much time and effort is spent in trying to become rich in order to buy things that are not necessarily valuable or useful using something that is not necessarily valuable. This seems strangely a waste (rather than a valuable) of our time. However, most of us live our lives by this axiom; most of us.

The recent upswing in locavore, organic, self-sustainability and other descriptive ways of living seem to be motivated not by money, but by something far more valuable: happiness. The motivation to turn away from money to “do what’s right”, or to “be more healthy” seems to have its basis in virtue.

Virtue is a philosophical ethical theory founded upon a moral education, which is considered by Aristotle as a good in itself because such a life leads to a higher quality of happiness. Without getting into the philosophy too much, the value of living such a life is found in actually living that life. Money is not valuable in itself. However, living a life of virtue is.

So, one side of the coin seems to be the motivation to be happy, and the other side of the coin seems to be the kind of happiness that matters: the quality of our happiness. Money seems to abide by one side of the coin, but not to the other. Don’t get me wrong; I think that money is a viable tool, a useful means to live comfortably and securely. But I’m not sure that it is the best means.

The current movement towards more viable and sustainable agricultural methods and cultural beliefs is certain to lead to jobs and opportunities that are yet to be seen. But these movements do seem to be good in themselves as well. We have to be careful. On the one hand, money is a motivator for our dreams, but on the other hand money often undermines the dream itself. Perhaps what we must always remember is that what is useful is often not what is valuable, and what is valuable is not always useful: there are always two sides to a coin.

Freedom of Food

When I first began finding the joys and understanding the necessity of growing my own food, I hurriedly began finding the necessity and understanding the joys of canning my own food. After all, what good is a garden if what it produces goes to waste.

Canning is pretty straight-forward and does not rely upon refrigeration. The basic principles are the same no matter what you can, but I really enjoy canning tomatoes, red cabbage, and beets. It’s a nice feeling to open the cupboards of your kitchen and look over the summer’s work. Also, it’s a great thing to look forward to all the freshly canned food that you will have when you are working on those hot, summer days in the garden.

So, get your canning on!

Grow your own food without pesticides or artificial fertilizer.
Pick, eat what you want, and save the rest.
When ready, get some heat-resistant bottles for canning
Boil the lids and bottles for at least 15 minutes.
Prepare the food to be canned.
Always, always make sure everything is clean, clean, clean.
After canning the veggies, boil the newly bottled veggies for about 10 more minutes.
Take the canned food out and listen for the wonderful “pop” of the lid.
Try different recipes, or just can some veggies.
Mark the tops with the date including the year.

There are some important things to be aware of. First, some of your canning endeavors will fail. This is called compost in the canning world. Secondly, some of your recipes will not taste as good as you’d like. You have two options: compost or creativity. Mix some of these with other foods and sometimes you’ll be surprised.

I have read that growing your own food and putting it up is the ultimate revolutionary act and have found through the years found this to be true. So, if you want to taste true freedom, true self-sustainability, and experience what I would equate with being human, grow and can your own food!

It’s an amazing sense of freedom and the food, well, it tastes great!

For Beekeepers Everywhere

For beekeepers, fall is sometimes the time for raider bees: those bees that look for the year’s last source of food, which is sometimes a weak hive. The raiders make for the entrance en force and then raid food stores of the hive. Once in, the raiders have no problems, as the defense of the hive is limited. The raiders gorge themselves with food and make their way out of the raided hive and to their own.

Raiding is a problem for beekeepers because it often leads to the death of hives during and sometimes before winter but the issue is not that bees raid; that’s what bees do: survive. The issue is how to stop raiding bees. In my battles with raiding bees I noticed that I was approaching the problem as a human being rather than approaching the problem from the perspective of the bee.

As humans we are capable of empathy, but bees are not empathetic. As humans we approach things intellectually, but bees are not and do not respond to intellect. As humans we understand praise and penalties, but bees do not make these correlations.

With this in mind, I fashioned a screen with some scrap wire and fitted it to the entrance of the hive being raided. I did this early in the morning before the raiders showed up. In the afternoon the raiding bees were bunched up on the screen as were my own bees, but in the safety of their own hive.

I felt bad for my bees being locked in. Later in the day, in fact late in the afternoon I noticed that the raiding bees began to thin out. At that time a removed the screen until the next morning giving my bees a few hours outside and the ability to defend the hive against the few remaining raiding bees.

During this time I provided feed for the hive with a top bar feeder. I have found that after a few days, or at worst after the first freeze that the raiding bees ceased and desisted. My problem, then, was only supporting the weak hive over the winter. Some say that supporting a weak hive is not worth the effort, but after all I am only human; my empathy a weakness, my love of lost causes a fortune.

Look Up

Gardeners tend to spend a lot of time with a shovel in the ground digging and covering up. Making sure seeds are laid comfortably to rest bends the neck forward and the care that we give to the earth tends to take its toll on the broad perspectives that often help us understand why we do what we do. Shoulders bent to the ground, we look at the holes we dig, lay the seed gently in the ground, and cover them back up. To grow your own food is a revolutionary act, but to understand why we must revolt, why it is imperative to grow our own food, takes the willingness to look up at the sun that makes what we do possible and why we must do it.

One of the most freeing things I’ve ever read was that gardening is a revolutionary act. But like all meaningful endeavors, it comes at a cost. Sometimes, to remind myself of this, I go out in the garden late at night and look up. I always think about when the stars were considered “holes” in the cloak of the sky-ceiling; the light coming down from heaven. Sometimes I felt like the small seeds that I covered diligently with soil only to get excited when they reappeared as a one small and ever so slight leaf on a shivering stem.

How is it that revolutions start? With one, small act while all the time remembering what that act stands for and why we do it. As David Blume stated in the Los Angeles Times, “By being an organic farmer, you fly in the face of every part of the power structure,” Blume said. “Refusing to use chemicals, refusing to use genetically modified seeds–it’s a real act of defiance.” And what better reason to garden?

Give it to “the Man”; plant a tomato! Screw the corporations that siphon our freedoms, and buy a chipper/shredder! Save and trade seeds, and save human history from the Monsanto’s of the world! Do all of these things and do them proudly, but always remember why you do them: look up and be awed by nature in order to understand why revolting against almost everything we’ve been taught is so important. The corporations are the result of people forgetting to look up every once in a while.

Albert Camus once wrote that nothing will matter in a million years, and that is probably true, but revolutions do not think about futures; they act in the present. What better thing can we do than to do what we know is right, and know why we do what we do. There is nothing more gratifying than doing the right thing except for knowing why it is right.

So, look up every once in a while, while kneeling at the alter of the earth. Plant those seeds that you’ve saved and then lay in the grass dreaming of a day when we are all revolutionaries.

The Agrarian

It takes 1-3 Years to plant with the long term consequences in mind. Plant with space and needs in mind. The plants will start slow and eventually take hold. All the while we must nurture them to give them the best of all possible beginnings.

After 1-3 years and the continual planting and possible replanting, the introduction of poultry and other animals for pest control. This introduction has its issues and will never go as smoothly as we think. The animals introduced must be, as the plants must be, if not indigenous, then only what the plants and the land itself will allow.

From 5-7 years we must “chop and drop” roughage from the pruning that we will do. The introduction of trees for timber must be introduced but these must not affect the fruit trees bushes, and other perennials that we have worked so hard to keep alive.

This is what it takes to eat honestly.

These steps and these processes are necessary because we have not taken the time to follow in the footsteps of mother nature; we have taken shortcuts and continue to do so. But, we must remember that mother nature neither nurtures nor does she care; she simply does. She expects nothing but gives so much to those that will understand her.

We do not seem to understand mother nature any longer. We cannot “google” it, or find it on the ubiquitous internet. We must get our hands dirty, and fail. We must see the dirt under our fingernails and feel the cuts on our hands, the sweat on our brow. We must feel the bites of insects and the heat of the sun. Our cellphones must be put aside and the supermarkets must be forgotten. Technology is not a boon but a bane.

The comfort of our homes and the illusion of civilization must always be put into perspective of the natural reality in which we live. If we do not come to understand this, then we fail as individuals and as a race. Our mother will remind us of this either with our blessings or our pleas.

A good home brew helps!

The Armchair Philosopher

Writings and Music