Table of contents for Act Now

1. It’s not about fear, it’s simple economics!

I was talking with a friend this morning about the changes that are occurring in our world – such as the scarcity of food, rising fuel costs, farmland losses due to topsoil erosion, freshwater availability – and I was asking him how he was planning for the future – how was he going to mitigate any major changes that could cause “modern society” to come to a grinding halt.

I was speaking of course about becoming more self-sufficient, how did he plan to (as Farmer John says) “disentangle” himself from being only a tiny cog in the huge economic and agricultural machine that is todays world.  Did he have a garden?  What about a few chickens for his eggs?  How about planting some fruit trees so he could at least have fresh fruit for a few weeks a year?  Was he off the grid?  Did he have compact florescent as his light bulbs?  How about keeping his tires inflated or oil topped off so he used less gasoline?

These are all relatively harmless things that are becoming mainstream.  Not a huge leap.  It’s still allows a comfortable way of living.  However, he’s still in the middle of a big city, still buys 95% of his own food, 100% of his own fuel (car and electricity).  In a word, he’s still “dependent” on that giant machine called the global market!

I asked him to think back to this summer and how dangerously close we, as a country, came to loosing our food security.  We were down to less than a month of grain reserves.  That was the lowest we came as a nation in over 20 years to not meeting our own food needs!  That doesn’t count the additional cost we as a nation have to pay to transport and ship that food since we aren’t a local food producing economy.

If oil goes up, if food supplies go down, if costs of production rise (since fertilizer comes from natural gas, it will) what happens then?  What happens when supplies get slim and demand keeps up or raises (if the population goes up)?  You have runs on things.  Remember the articles about Costco and Sam’s clubs rationing wheat and rice sales to one bag per customer?

Well to be blunt, people begin to get desperate and buying up stuff which makes things MUCH more expensive!  If you believe in Peak Oil, if you believe that a higher demand coupled with a decreased supply equals worldwide problems, if you believe that honey bees are in trouble and having a harder and harder time doing their job, if you believe this is a throw-away society, then it’s not about fear!

It’s about being prepared for when things happen that are out of our control.  Buy seeds today – not in two years when they’re skyrocketing costs are prohibitive.  Buy those garden tools today – not when your worried about cutbacks at work and how you’re going to put food on the table.  Buy (or help to buy) land today – not when you’re 200 miles away sitting at a desk pushing papers – those papers will be there in two years, but the fertile land that has been worked for two years and produces beautifully will only be a dream.

Things take time to develop and grow.  Gardens take time to become fertile, water systems need time and several seasons to be prooven, housing takes time to construct, people need time to adjust to new ways of living.

If you’re not prepared today to move from the city and become a farmer, I understand!  There are those of us who are further along that path than you.  Let us pave that road for you.  You don’t have to do it now, but someone does!  If things aren’t prepared NOW, when things shift and change, they’ll be too expensive, or worse, simply NOT AVAILABLE!

As I said in the title, it’s not about fear – it’s about economics…what you put in today is an investment in the future.  Buy low today so that higher prices tomorrow won’t limit your choices.

Take a look at modern advertising.  See how the beautiful model calls that wonderful product amazing!  Watch their abs or breasts as the tout the great benefits this or that can give you.  Hear how the TV pundit says this stock or that stock is really going to rise in value because of X, Y or Z.  As a society we are cowed into thinking what the rest are thinking!

I’m not immune.  I look at TV and think, Hmmph, maybe the ShamWOW is really a great product!  I will sit and look at the attractive model show the great benefits.  I was really caught today when I entered a house today and looked around.  There were some items of substance, but most was for show.  There was the great hardwood flooring, the nice curtains, and the beautiful granite in the kitchen.  But the furniture was particle board, the knives were cheap serrated steel you buy at k-mart, and the miter joints in the molding didn’t join.

It was obvious to me that the owner cared more about show than real value!

I grew up not far from a fantastic Menonite community in south west Ohio.  Those people are slowly dying out for their own reasons, but their work ethic was purely artistic!  Go and look at an Amish or Menonite table, and you will appreciate the joinery, the hand-carved wood, the planed boards.  They took time and care, and a great deal of effort to create a product that would last generations!  Our society as a whole has gone backward from that ethic to, god I’m going to say it, a disposable society!

For me, it’s rather practical.  As my partner, Farmer John tried to point out to me, it’s about quality, not quantity.  You see, early in our relationship, we went shopping for sheets.  Come on, what couple hasn’t tried in vain to find the perfect sheet set to sleep upon?  You’re laughing, I know because it’s a totally common thread with couples!  And it’s the thread that we argued about!  “One THOUSAND threadcount!,” I laughed!  I thought he was living too high on the hog!  Wow, I couldn’t afford that, but jeez if he could…

Well, it turns out that Farmer John was right-on in his ideas!  Whereas I was concerned about keeping my sheet set to under $50, he was more concerned about keeping his sheet set for more than a year.  You see, if you wash, dry and use a sheet set that’s only 100 count often enough…it rips!  It makes FANTASTIC rags, but I didn’t want to buy $50 rags!  But if you spend $100 on a sheet set, and it lasts you 20 years…well, there’s your value!

Same thing with about everything I buy today.  If I really think about it, with a serious purchase, I try and consider if this item is naturally going to degrade, and I’ll be forced to buy another in a year, or is there a better, possibly more expensive option that I will have for a generation!

We have salvaged ruined scrap metal that today is a very active and loved member of our family in the form of garden tools.  There was a close neighbor who passed away and his property got flooded.  The family thought there was no value in the tools this man lovingly used, abused, and cared for many years.  They saw a shovel with an outdated wooden handle, and a rusted shovel head.  We saw a beautiful treasure waiting to be un-rusted (like how Michangelo said he saw the sculpture within the block of marble).  We took a wire brush and scoured the rust off, oiled the tool, and didn’t pay a cent for it except for a bit of sweat.

Now that’s value to me.

What we do here on our little shelf in the hillside is hardly farming in the real sense. That said, we are educating ourselves about how nature impacts the food we eat and cook, becoming more aware of how difficult it is to grow what you eat, and also trying to feed ourselves in a small way.

Last year we canned apples, grape juice, tomatoes & sauce, made apple beer, saved some seeds, and of course the usual garden items like squash, cucumbers (tried!), and cabbage! We’ve been maintaining a flock of chickens that has been as low as about 25 and far too high to count! Now we’re raising meat rabbits and keeping bees as well. These things all add to our diet and cut our grocery bill, but still we’re nowhere near close to feeding ourselves.

And the funny thing is, each day there’s more yet to do! When we want to be really productive, we sit down and we make out a “to do” list. We’ll take a day or just a morning to put it together, marking things off (hallelujah!) when they’re accomplished, and adding to it as we think of things (which never ends).

The way of life that most of us are used to is about spending time for dollars, and exchanging those dollars for our needs. That might include oil-changes, grocery shopping, doctors bills, credit cards, mortgage or rent payments, or even the occasional entertainment item! However, as a farmer, you spend your day tending to what is going to sustain you! Dollars don’t taste too good, and can’t fill your belly no matter how many you eat! As a farmer, the things you do throughout the day can’t compare in value to what you could sell them for at a market.

We live in a place and a time where it’s not normal to grow your own food. It’s “farmers in the midwest” who are supposed to give you your food, silly! Consequently to raise your own food, feed your own animals, and ensure your own health, an average family would need far more land than most of us have to use. Keep that line of thinking going and people start to think you’re an oddity – and if your need to have more space (or crowing roosters so you can have baby chicks) impacts your neighbors, well you’re a nuisance in the area.

There are things I really am scared about in our society! We were supposed to consolidate the family farm for efficiency – more land, less work, cheaper food – more people fed for the same cost. At least that was the marketing line fed to the public. The reality is that our food is making us sick. It’s causing innumerable diseases, and is removing our awareness from protecting the land. If you grow your table produce in your backyard, you’re going to protect it no matter what! But if you buy your food at a grocery, it’s easy to see the dollar less and buy that broccoli, thinking that you’re taking care of your family because it’s a good deal. The reality is those “farmers” who are cheaper may not even be here in America! Or if they are, they are probably doing the “usual” farming method which is unsustainable, toxic to the environment and consumer, and is less efficient and horribly wasteful than small-scale farming can be.

To grow your own food, or grow a good portion of it, that process changes you.  It changes your thinking and your values.  Cheap, fast, and easy are no longer the buzz words that you strive for.  Value, care, nourishment are more in your vocabulary now.  Instead of buying the cheapest made knock-off tool you can find for the job, you try and take your time to find a tool that will last a generation or more even if it costs a bit more – yes, you DO get what you pay for!

Also the time it takes to do a thing right so you don’t have to do it again is priceless time spent. Take for instance our chicken coop. We have an electric wire going around it to protect it from critters. Keeps them out and keeps them from eating the chickens. What do the chickens do? Scratch and peck and cover the electric wire shorting it out! Now, if we had “done it right” we would have sloped the land away from the fence so the chickens can’t scratch up! We didn’t know this at first, but this is yet another thing of our ongoing education. (It’s also about living on a crazy slope in the mountains too, but hey that’s another post)

I guess for me, it’s been a big realization that moving from time=$ and $=goods isn’t a very fulfilling way of living.  I’d much rather spend my own time doing chores to grow and make a thing while learning more about myself and the skill, than just putting a dollar down to get a product.  I know there will always be people who are more proficient at whatever skill I’m trying, but that’s part of my education – if I hadn’t tried that skill myself, I probably wouldn’t have the respect for true craftmanship and possibly the friend that I gained in the process.

We believe in a smaller, more community-oriented, self sufficient society where as an individual or household, we live with as small a footprint as possible. We believe that as individuals, we have a responsibility to close the circle on our food consumption by growing as much as we are capable of growing, and by thoughtful raising of animals, we can give those animals the best life possible for them while they sustain us and we them.

We would like to:

• Grow our own food for our own consumption
• Grow our animals’ food if they are enclosed and encourage them to forage if free-ranging
• Build or have built structures that are responsible and not wasteful of their energy requirements.
• Use the gifts of the land upon which we live to their best and fullest uses, wasting nothing while taking no more than we need.
• Take advantage of (in all possible ways) the gifts of the sun and wind in the form of heat, and energy.
• Create lasting co-operative relationships with other people through trading and helping in tasks that we cannot grow or do not have the expertise ourselves.
• Be a meaningful and productive member of that society.
• Use wasteful and non-renewable products in as little a way as possible.
• Create a safe and respectful community where each household gives and helps the other through sharing, cooperation, and community efforts.

We see this world as a decadent, corrupt, and consumerist society where the quickest, fastest, least efficient way is chosen. We build and manufacture items for a specified duration so they must be replaced, then throw away and waste the worn out items instead of building things to survive and be maintained as long as possible.

We would rather build, grow, or create our solutions ourselves and be enriched through the process while utilizing the advanced technology we have at our disposal to make the effort as simple, efficient, and easy as possible.

Ideally, we would like to be a member of a community on a piece of land that is large enough to support a minimum of 20 households and all that they require. That community would be one where each household or individual is allowed complete autonomy over their own actions unless they interfered with other households or they asked for help from the others. However, where community efforts are needed, such as grain or hay production, if each household wanted to use the harvest, they would have to participate fully in it’s creation. Members of this community would be allowed their own individual beliefs and allowed to make their own choices – the result of which is fully their responsibility (whether it leads to failure or success). Each household must not impact the community or land in a harmful way – there must be respect for the needs of the land and people of the community.

We would like to see as little government as possible, with as decisive and sober decisions as can be made while fully weighing the issues. Each member of the community is there at the request of the community at large – the safety and success of the community is valued above individual needs. All households in the community must contribute in a substantial way to their own needs, but also the rest of the community.