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Sunday, February 17, 2019

Lousy Farmer



I would have made a lousy farmer. Thank goodness my ancestors gave up potato farming in the cold rocky soil of Quebec. That’s not a life for me.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad there are farmers. I’m doubly glad I’m not one of them. For me running a farm is a type of slavery, or at the very least serfdom. Serfs were bound to the land. Farmers are too. Don’t think so? A farmer that spends too much time away from his farm soon goes out of business. Lord help him if he’s raising animals as they require constant care.

I believe it was Henry David Thoreau who said something about how much of a misfortune it is to inherit a fully functioning farm. Then again, I guess we can call Thoreau’s cabin experiment at Walden Pond the great grandfather of the simplicity movement. He pared down life to the basics and seemed to truly enjoy himself.

Thoreau, while not a farmer, was a gardener. There’s a huge difference between the two, and not just of scale. A farmer grows food with the intent of surplus. That surplus allows him to participate in the money economy. A gardener grows just enough for his own needs. That allows him to have freedom from the money economy.

Farmers deal with the greater economy of banks, markets, suppliers, dealers, regulators -a whole host of masters. A gardener avoids all that. They can even afford to participate less in the money economy because part of their needs are being satisfied without it. No need to earn taxable money to buy the food that you can grow.

As you can imagine, governments love farmers and hate gardeners. The first farmers provided the surplus that supported bureaucracy, priesthoods and armies. Sure, we got civilization out of the process, but at a high cost to personal freedom, liberty and health.

-Sixbears

12 comments:

  1. What a privilege to grow up with gardening parents! I didn't pay enough attention. Gardening is harder than it looks in some places.

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    1. There is a steep learning curve. Best to know how to do it well before you have to rely on it.

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  2. Great, insightful post. And very true.
    Thanks

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  3. While a farmer is a slave to the land .It is a labor of love. Didn't Thoreau plant a pea crop on 2 acre to eat and sell for 45$ .

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    1. I forgot about his pea crop.

      Good thing there are those who love the life.

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  4. I never thought about it that way. Thanks Sixbears, for a new insight into gardening vs farming.

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    1. Thanks Dizzy. I like to throw out some food for thought now and then.

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  5. I always think of farm people as the backbone of the country. I know they are decreasing in number as the big latifundia corporations buy them out. But it's like so many other things, I know it's a bad sign and has a bad effect on the country, but I don't know what to do about it.

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    Replies
    1. Like so much of this modern world, we can only endure the changes.

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  6. Big AG scares me. They are run by billionaires who only care about profit and if their ego gets bruised can slow production and make us suffer with the resulting high prices.

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    Replies
    1. If they get out of hand, big farm can turn us all into gardeners. Glad we have that option.

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