Eclectic Amateur

Jeff Culbreath finds an outline of the differences between the two at The House of Degenhart (highlighting is mine):

By farming, we can:

Produce healthy food to feed our family
Get exercise which helps keep our bodies fit
Work beside our children and our parents
Teach our children practical skills and give them an opportunity to use them

A popular alternative to farming is to learn a highly specialised skill and become an employee. This is that alternative that I chose to pursue. By doing this, we can:

Sit in a chair all day, away from our family, and get a money-like electronic commodity in exchange for our time.
We then leave the home to buy food to feed our family, most of which will eventually cause cancer and a host of other diseases.
We then leave the home to purchase a membership at a health club to get the exercise our body needs to stay fit.
We try to spend quality time with our family in the evenings to learn what they’ve been doing all day, and get to know them. (This comes in handy on Sundays, when we teach a class on the biblical view of the family. )
We then leave the home to visit our parents who live many hours away. We mostly talk about our job and what activities the children are doing (We pass along the information about the children that we’ve learned by spending evenings and weekends with them).
Our children learn to be consumers, but not producers, so when they are of age, we send them away from home and purchase training which will enable them to become a wage-slave like ourselves.

As a young man, I never thought through all the implications of my career path. Now that I am beginning to do that, I have a growing desire to move to a more agrarian way of life, and also help provide others with some of the facts required to make an informed choice.

And has his own thoughts on the dilemma:

There is really no way around the extreme difficulty of going from industrial life to agrarian life in one generation. (The reverse transition is much easier.) The best writers on the subject all say that, for the most part, it can’t be done and should not be expected. With respect to cheap land, it can be had – but the price is almost always separation from family, friends, and the Christian community we so desperately need.

This is why (as Wendell Berry repeatedly warns) that we need to preserve, not just farmland, but farmers. Because what can be lost easily and completely in one generation will take generations of concentrated struggle to regain.

Dale mentioned the other day (I am unsure how much in jest) that it was “time to start collecting those distributist books.“

There’s one I’m sure he already has — the Bible. It was my attempt, some years ago, to read through all of the Bible that got me started down the path of distributist thinking.

This version of Psalm 37 is the translation from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and was this morning’s appointed reading. How could it not be dear to any agrarian/distributist’s heart?

37

Part I Noli aemulari

1. Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; *
   do not be jealous of those who do wrong.
2. For they shall soon wither like the grass, *
   and like the green grass fade away.
3. Put your trust in the LORD and do good; *
   dwell in the land and feed on its riches.
4. Take delight in the LORD, *
   and he shall give you your heart’s desire.
5. Commit your way to the LORD and put your trust in him, *
   and he will bring it to pass.
6. He will make your righteousness as clear as the light *
   and your just dealing as the noonday.
7. Be still before the LORD *
   and wait patiently for him.
8. Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, *
   the one who succeeds in evil schemes.
9. Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; *
   do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.
10. For evildoers shall be cut off, *
    but those who wait upon the LORD shall possess the land.
11. In a little while the wicked shall be no more; *
    you shall search out their place, but they will not be there.
12. But the lowly shall possess the land; *
    they will delight in abundance of peace.
13. The wicked plot against the righteous *
    and gnash at them with their teeth.
14. The Lord laughs at the wicked, *
    because he sees that their day will come.
15. The wicked draw their sword and bend their bow
    to strike down the poor and needy, *
    to slaughter those who are upright in their ways.
16. Their sword shall go through their own heart, *
    and their bow shall be broken.
17. The little that the righteous has *
    is better than great riches of the wicked.
18. For the power of the wicked shall be broken, *
    but the LORD upholds the righteous.

Another stealth homeschooling endorsement:

The mindset that leads to consolidation in agriculture, so evident in the chicken business, has also taken place to an alarming degree in human culture, especially in consolidated schooling. Just as we herd more animals into confinement buildings, we herd more children into classrooms. Then we have little choice but to follow the rule of the chicken factory: one size fits all. And we justify both kinds of concentration camps with that all-American article of faith: it’s cheaper per unit; we can’t afford to do otherwise. Then we wonder why we must de-beak the chickens and frisk schoolchildren for firearms.

From All Flesh Is Grass, by Gene Logsdon (p. 137)

Geauga County Extension Agent’s first book reveals Amish farming ‘secrets’

The first day on his job as County Extension Agent for Geauga County, Randy James was asked a question his college professors had never covered: “When you’re plowing with a five-horse hitch, is it better to hitch three horses in front and two behind, or two in front and three behind?”

The question came from a farmer in the county’s Amish community, the fourth largest in the United States. Prior to taking the job, James, a Trumbull County native, knew the Amish existed and could identify them by their drab clothing. Beyond that, James was lost in this seemingly archaic culture.

During the next two decades, James received an education in not only Amish beliefs and lifestyle, but also the improbable economics of the Amish farm. Five years ago, he realized he’d learned enough to write a book about this often romanticized, misunderstood community.

That book, “Why Cows Learn Dutch and Other Secrets of Amish Farming,” was released last month by Kent State University Press. The book provides a barn-owl view of the Amish community, taking the reader into the cow stanchions and ledger books of the Amish farm, an enterprise that, according to the textbooks, should be extinct by now.

…

“They are more economically efficient than almost any farm out there,” says James, who has studied this efficiency throughout his years in the Geauga community. “On a per-acre basis, they make more money than any other farm we can find. My hope is (the book) provides insight to people who are curious about what it’s like to be an Amish family and why the farm works, both as a family and economic unit.”

…

James opens the ledger books of the Amish farm and shows readers the economics of raising nine acres of alfalfa hay or seven acres of hand-picked corn. He delves into the numbers and emotions that a young Amish couple must wrestle with when deciding if they should purchase a family farm or work out in the community. As extension agent, James’ job includes doing a farm analysis to determine if it will be a profitable operation – something he was doing the day we met for an interview.

“It’s a common thing, but it still scares me to death,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to tell them how to kill a weed than to tell them to stop working as a carpenter and be a farmer.”

I think I’m going to have to read this book.

Jeff Culbreath outlines Why Rural Life Is Better For Children:

After 20 years of town-dwelling, I’m probably more suited to city life than country life. My five or six years on the farm in my boyhood gave me a love for the countryside, but it didn’t really make a farmer out of me, nor did it give me the skills I would need as homesteader. So I am pretty much resigned to the fact that I’ll always have a job in town and will never make a living from the land.

We moved to the country primarily because I am convinced that rural life – so long as it is not lived in front of TVs, computers, and video games – is much better for children. This isn’t intuitively obvious to everyone, so I’ll list a few reasons here:

I am in a similar spot, although change “five or six years” to “eighteen years.” Also, scratch the part about being pretty much resigned to my fate.

It’s a good list of reasons, and a good discussion. Read the whole thing.

The full story is at NewFarm.org.

As Pavel Chichikov says, so much can be summed up by “How could it hurt?”, followed by “How could we have known?”

Homefeeding: Threat or Menace?

It finally dawned on me — I’m entirely through his cycle of the months, and into the regional essays, and the glaring difference between Leopold and Wendell Berry hits me: Leopold keeps talking about his farm, but he never gets around to actually farming. Hunting, yes, but so far not a word about actual farming. It’s puzzling. Maybe it’ll become clearer in the rest of the book …

I’m working my way through A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to find and read it, given how highly Wendell Berry (and others) praise it.

Leopold is nearly as quotable as Chesterton. Here’s a sample:

There are two great spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.