Projects And Commentary

Cole Crops Ready For Transplant 2013

Tess's Land Race Currant Tomatoes Rising

2011 Apricots As Pretty As Ever!

Lovely Candied Lemon Peel

  


The preceding are just some homesteady projects of the past and the present:

    So today this blog post is going to respond to the following article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/01/the_foxfire_books_are_modern_diyers_just_play_acting_.html#

       I found the above article quite interesting. I myself have read most all of the Foxfire series! In fact, it has had a distinct effect upon my life. So much so that I doubt that I would be where I am today, had I never been influenced by it, and by John Seymour's "The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency." However, I think the author of the article above, though making some valid points, is really missing some insights.

       Let me start by telling a little of my story. In 1997, my second son, Matthew, was born. The years previous to that had been a real emotional roller coaster. I had had a couple of early miscarriages, and lost two children in my second trimester of pregnancy. Because of my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I was able to carry on, but not without much sorrow.

      By the time Matt came along, I had been on such a long hormone roller coaster, that I was bound to suffer from the effects of it. So, I went through a postpartum depression, as my hormones were taking their sweet time to level out.

      It was not the first time I had dealt with some postpartum blues. After my first son, Ken was born I experienced some mild depression as well. Enough so that my parents were concerned. Even today, I don't remember it being nearly as bad as they were making it out to be. They recommended some counseling, which I did not find to be very helpful. Truthfully, I was mostly, just grieving over the fact that my parents had moved far away from me, right at the time I became a wife, and then a mother. My Dad surrendered to the ministry, and within a year, I was married, abandoned(conceptually by my mom and dad who were off living their own life, without me), and then became a mother. Actually, I think I did pretty good:^)

      However, what I endured when Matt came along was more severe by far. I got through it, after I discovered what was wrong, by much prayer, Bible study, and singing to Jesus. Once I came to understand just what depression is, I spent my time forcing my mind out of the rut that hormones had thrown it into by changing each negative thought I had into a positive one. It was a painstaking process. So whenever I would feel panicked, or I would have negative thoughts, or be overcome with grief, I would replace it with prayer, or quote scripture, or a spiritual song. In addition to this, I supported my efforts with some mood lifting herbs, and a few vitamins as well. This worked very well!

      When the fog lifted nearly a year after Matt was born, It was like the sun came up, and flooded my life with renewed energy, and an intellectual rainbow of creative thought! It was then, that through prayer, I discovered that God was telling me to stop casting around for what I should do with my life, and focus on what he had already given me to do. He told me to be the best wife, mother, and Christian I could possibly be!

      So I began thinking about how I could do what I sincerely felt, and still feel, God wanted me to do. In my mind I decided on priorities. One of the first goals I set for myself was to raise godly men(and later when Lacey came along, a godly woman). I also began looking at what kinds of food I wanted to give my family. I felt, and still feel that in the area of food, our nation is starving itself.

      How can I say that, living in one of the most over-weight states in the nation? Because being over-weight is a symptom of starvation. What? You say, "How can this be?" I say this, because in most people, not all(everybody is different), a person gets over weight when their body is not getting enough nutrition. The body, starved of the nutrients it needs, desires more and more food in order to get that nutrition.

      Now anybody who reads this section, that knows me, is going to say to themselves, "This woman IS overweight. How can she talk about being overweight?". My weight came along with my pregnancies. In high school to stay thin, I had to eat one meal a day. My metabolism has never been very fast, not sure why. Honestly, I think the starvation of my years in high school, probably assisted my weight gain once I had babies. The body, once denied, works very hard to pack pounds on. Early in my marriage, I seriously did not get near enough exercise. I was busy being a mom.  Believe it or not, I am not a heavy eater. Anyway, ultimately, what got me here is exactly what I am talking about above.

     Anyway, at the end of 1992, I looked at the devolving state of food in the grocery stores, and said to myself this is not good enough for my family. I realized that the food at the stores, were being sprayed heavily with pesticides, and that artificial fertilizers were allowing crops to continue to leach nutrients out of the soil, without adding anything back. Added to that was the appearance on the scene of genetically modified food, which I did not trust to be healthy at all. My instincts were right: Don't Eat GMO Food

     As I was researching giving better food to my children, I stumbled across the Back to the Land movement of the the early 70's, otherwise known as "homesteading". It was then that I read the Foxfire series. Someday, I'll go into how we went from renting a lot, to renting 2 acres, to renting a couple of different 5 acre places, to finally owning 4 acres, and now 34 acres. For now, I'll just say that the people that the guy in this article pokes a little fun at were me at one point or another.

     I went from a lot in the city in southern California, to an on again/off again subsistence farm in Oklahoma. Why on again/off again? Well if there is anything I have discovered, it is that feeding oneself solely from what one raises is HARD WORK!!! There are weeds, predators, disease, weather catastrophes, seed fertility loss, and physical disabilities resulting from injury! It has always been that way too! What person's grandpappy, or grandmama didn't have stories of great crop losses or starvation times on the farm??? The answer to that is NONE OF US!!!

    The man who wrote the article I posted, which is the topic of this post, is right in a way. However, the author misses much of what should be the point of his article! The generations that knew how to truly survive, have died, or are dying! We,  who are left, are trying to revive, or keep alive, knowledge that is rapidly being lost!

    I thank God for Martha Stewart's fancy chicken coop! Thank the Lord, there is somebody out there in the public eye, showing the public that good organic fresh eggs are better for you than store bought mass produced eggs that come from a chicken that has about a foot of space between him and about a hundred thousand other chickens! Because those chickens get no sunlight, nor fresh air, nor healthy bugs or grass, and cannot produce healthy eggs! Martha Stewart is NOT playacting! Martha Stewart is helping families across this nation!

    We need more people, "playacting" at raising their own food!!! We need them, because there could come a time when the house of technological cards we have built, could fall! Some day we may HAVE to scrabble a living out of the land again! Someday, whether we can raise a chicken, or plant a seed, or even own a seed that will grow a non-toxic fruit or vegetable, may mean the difference between life and death for us, or our country, and even our planet!


Britt Peterson, in the article writes:

   "Emily Cook, manager at Virginia’s Farm at Sunnyside, told me she was sick of “farmer groupies” who weren’t actually interested in the real problems farmers are facing. “The discussion needs to move beyond how great heirloom tomatoes are to how are we going to have farmers 20 years from now,” she said. “Our system really needs to change to make farming a viable career to people.”"

    Oh, how much the above line of thinking misses the mark! The idea that we need to make it so farmers can have "careers" on more factory, over-sprayed, antibiotic laden, nutrient stripping farms, is the opposite of where we need to go! Farming was never a career, anymore than being a doctor was a career, or being a preacher was a career! Farming always was, and should be, a calling!

    We need more people! From the smallest backyard enthusiast, to the subsistence homesteader, to the organic grower at the farmers market, to the yuppy CSA, to the small organic raw milk dairy, we need them all!!! Those people, are the security of not only this nation, but the world!

    In the 1920's and 30's a revolution took place in agriculture, called the tractor! It was a miracle to farmers everywhere! It gave them more free time! It made their lives easier. About the same time, another revolution was occurring, a revolution of how farmers thought about farming! Instead of farming being a calling to feed others in their communities, and their families, suddenly farming became a "Business!".

    There were some good effects from the revolution of farming from calling to business, but there were a lot more bad effects! The thing about big technological changes, is that it is like throwing a a big stone into a clear, still, pool. Whatever havoc the stone creates, for good or ill, gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger! Once farming became a business, then businessmen took over our food supply, and it became more about making money than it was about surviving, or health, or even the  happiness of the farmers themselves! This is why since the 1930's we have gone from about 55% of the population owning of being associated with a farm, to 2% of the population.

    What the Foxfire books show is the history of an extremely self-sufficient society, and their remnants who have since died, leaving us with a lack of skills to do for ourselves! Yes, we do have a number of very yuppy back-to-the-land hobbyists, who have very little concept of just what they are messing about with. What blessings they are to the world! For they are the ones awake enough to see we have a problem! They are the beginnings of a new revolution, heading us back toward balance, and stasis until the next stone gets thrown in the pond!

    In the meantime, there are those of us, who are NOT playacting! We are working, and striving, and failing, and getting up, dusting ourselves off, and striving some more! We raise our gardens, milk our goats, and cows, raise our poultry, grow feed crops for our animals, grow orchards, preserve our harvests, spin our yarn, weave, crochet, and all manner of other things!

    To me, all these people, from the child who plants bean in a cup, to an old man who still follows a furrow in spring, to the woman who milks her first goat with one hand while reading about it with a book in the other(like I did myself), to the dairy farmer who has done it all his life, deserve to be lifted up for their courageous actions! They don't need to be discouraged, rather encouraged, and assisted!