MLT Newsletter
10th Anniversary 1986
. . . Population must increase rapidly,
more rapidly than in former times-and
ere long the most valuable of all arts
will be the art of deriving a comfortable
subsistence from the smallest area of
soil. No community whose every member
possesses that art, can be the victim
of oppression in any of its forms. Such
community will be alike independent of
crowned kings, money kings, and land kings
-Abraham Lincoln
HOW IT ALL BEGAN: MEMOIRS OF SURVIVING FOUNDERS
-Sally and Maynard Kaufman
On March 23, 1976, the mailman brought a letter to our box posted by a Joe Filonowicz in Orchard Lake, Michigan.
... It is my understanding you have a
homesteading school. I am in the process of setting up a North Carolina
and a Michigan Land Trust. The N.C. community is already in
operation. Would like to start in Michigan this summer. We
have the land. We need some good home-steaders, with or without
money. Perhaps some of your graduates would be interested.
If you are receptive I would like to come over and see you . . .
And so began our relationship with the Filonowicz's and the beginnings of Michigan Land Trustees.
There followed an exchange of letters and visits among the three
architects of MLT--Joe, Maynard, and Paul Schultz, presently a fruit
grower in Lawrence. Three perspectives on land trusts had to be
mediated. Joe saw need for a radical reform in
agriculture: community land trusts as a corporate alternative to
private ownership for ecological improvement. Paul, while
agreeing with these ecological concerns (he was one of the founders of
Organic Growers of Michigan), also wanted a land trust to make land
available to the disinherited, e.g. settled out migrant workers.
While sharing these concerns, Maynard had his own agenda: getting
our homesteading program institutionalized at Western Michigan
University.
Michigan Land Trustees was chartered in July, 1976. The
incorporators were Joe Filonowicz, Paul Schultz, Maynard Kaufman, and
Eugene Suchy, a Detroit accountant and an associate of Joe's.
And the work went on. By-laws were written, as well as a brochure
for publicity. Issues of balance between the Board of Directors
and the members or trustees; the relationship between the Board and the
leasee of land to be acquired by MLT had to be resolved. Our
original application to the IRS for tax-exempt status was based on the
idea that land would be acquired and made available through long-term
lease arrangements to persons who would agree to use it productively
and maintain its ecological integrity. The IRS, however,
ruled that our status as a non-profit organization would not be
compatible with acquiring and leasing farm land as our primary purpose.
Finally a combination of factors came together to convince the IRS to
give MLT status as a public foundation in June of 1977.
Maynard had been working out a proposal for a Homesteading Program at
WMU. During the winter term Homesteading Theory would be taught
on campus, followed by Homesteading Practice on an MLT farm. Joe
agreed to furnish the farm and housing for the program. Maynard
went to Dr. Cornelius Loew, Vice President for Academic Affairs at WMU,
and presented the proposal that WMU hire the farm instructor and
provide a start-up fund. With the backing of Dr. Loew, a
cooperative effort began between MLT and WMU. Since the
Homesteading Program demonstrated our educational purpose, the IRS
granted Michigan Land Trustees a 509 (a) (1)
status. Stu Shafer, a "graduate" of Maynard and Sally's
School of Homesteading, was selected as the first
instructor. The Land Trust Homesteading Farm was leased to
Stu with the provision that he instruct the Homesteading students from
WMU.
By the fall of 1977 the Board of Directors had grown to include Bill
Kobza, Ken Dahlberg, and Tom Breznau, in addition to Joe, Maynard, and
Paul. Advisors to the Board were Fred Hinkley, Van Buren County
Extension Service, and Steve Small, a lawyer from Benton Harbor.
The combination of funding, imagination, time, and the commitment of
all these people brought Michigan Land Trustees into existence.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN: THE LAND TRUST HOMESTEADING FARM
-Stu Shafer
The first year of the Michigan Land Trustees' first big educational
project was -- what else? -- a year of "firsts". The first sign
for the "Land Trust Homesteading Farm/WMU Homesteading Program" was,
necessarily, a big 'un, because the title was almost longer than the
first year class roster. But this hand-lettered sign wasn't the
first or the biggest public statement about what was going on at the
old Lundborg place. The best statement of that was the visible
change over that first year from an abandoned, run-down old place
littered with the rusted refuse of the past to a new homestead, vibrant
with the ecologically entwined lives of people, crops, livestock, and
wildlife -- from a symbol of entropy to a symbol of rebirth and
regeneration.
Our "first harvest," as is the case on so many new homesteads, was
salvage -- otherwise known as junk. The Land Trust Homesteading
Farm was particularly well endowed with this resource. The
problem was that the salvageable stuff was buried in piles of
trash. Every building (except the house) was literally knee-deep
in junk, and we had to first make paths, and then sort through the junk
for what we could use or sell and what we had to haul away, before we
could even use the buildings for storage or livestock. This
took a lot of our time -- too much, perhaps, from the standpoint
of economic efficiency; but part of the learning process was having to
deal with conflicts between such things as market forces and our
ethical desire to recycle and re-use as much as possible.
There were other firsts: our first "bathroom" (an out-house), our
first showers (across the road), our first accident (a pitchfork tine
through a big toe), and perhaps the first "goat boat" in history (a
landlocked plywood structure that we used as a milking parlor and the
goats used as their favorite hangout). First-year type
experiences for the first year class.
Meanwhile, we planted a garden and a few field crops and strung some
electric fences. The soil was, expectedly, in bad shape,
yielding less than memorable harvests. Once again, however, we
were able to supplement our resources by "living off the land" -
picking wild asparagus, wild greens and herbs, mulberries, and
dewberries. We did manage to stock the freezer and stack some
wood for the non-growing months.
Our fondest memories of that year are of the people involved. Of
course there were conflicts and controversies, but these were, in
balance, a minor part of the experience. We still
maintain contact with some of the people from that brief period almost
ten years ago. We moved on because we felt our goals of
social change could not be met through homesteading alone.
Patti is now a nurse and I am a graduate student in sociology.
But our dream for the not-too-distant future is to work at those goals
from a new homestead, re-claimed from the ravages of
agribiz. We know that others from that first year group are
on similar paths. We don't know all that has transpired on the
Land Trust Homesteading Farm since we left, but we feel certain that
new seeds have been generated that will produce ecological farms and
restorative processes wherever they land.
UTOPIAN AGRIBUSINESS VERSUS GREEN EUTOPIA
-Paul Gilk
"The goal of mastering the land by gaining perfect control over its
production can be seen paradoxically to lead to destruction rather than
to the desired perfection." Sara Ebenreck
Utopia is taking over American agriculture. Its name is
"agribusiness." To call something Utopian, in casual speech, usually
implies an element of disbelief. In this context, "Utopian" involves an
idealism of imaginary perfections. While the standard notion of Utopia
clearly implies a drive for perfection, it is a mistake to believe that
this drive has nothing to do with the workings of our society and its
political and economic system. A great deal of Utopia is
packed into our everyday word "progress." To be against progress is
heresy.
To say that agribusiness is Utopian is an assertion which rests on the
veracity of Lewis Mumford's thought -- and Mumford is, in my opinion,
one of the most remarkable historians of modern times. In an
early book. The Story of Utopias, Mumford shows that Sir Thomas Mere,
the coiner of the term "Utopia," was a sixteenth century
punster. "Utopia" was a middle term which could mean either
"outopia" or "eutopia." "Outopia" mean no-place and, over time,
this definition has become accepted for "Utopia." Utopia connotes a
perfect system, a social ideal which might, with proper engineering, be
realized through rigorous and rational planning.
In a later essay called "Utopia, The City and the Machine", Mumford
digs deeper into the past in an attempt to find where this Utopian
impulse originates, or, at least, where we can find it operative. He
wastes no time in telling us the "concept of utopia is ... a derivation
from an historic event: that indeed the first utopia was the city
itself."
By "city" Mumford means the ancient city, the first city —
civilization. If I understand Mumford correctly, he is saying
that the ideal engineered system is in fact synonymous and coeval with
the rise of civilization; that makes civilization, as a regimented
system imposed on the tissue of folk culture, an inherently Utopian
undertaking. And that makes industrial agribusiness, as an
organized agency of civilized structure, an arm of utopia.
Civilization, of course, arose on
the stability and surplus of Neolithic
agriculture. Once decentralized villages had generated the city,
a chasm of class structure appeared which was unique to human
history. The few who governed and controlled this system were the
civilized elite, while the great bulk of the population were
compelled to work, their production expropriated by taxation, raw
force, or pricing mechanisms turned against the producer and the
primary product. This is the structural organization of
civilization. The pattern of a small urban elite, utilizing
religion and military force, and controlling a much larger agricultural
population stayed relatively constant until the Industrial Revolution.
The invention of agricultural implements, of steam and internal
combusion engines, and the use of chemicals were combined in the new
commercial economy to essentially destroy the remaining patters of folk
culture with its subsistence village economy. Utopia was becoming
global.
Mumford finds "another coordinate Utopian institution essential to any
system of communal regimentation: the machine." The
machine that accompanied the rise of the early city "was composed
almost entirely of human parts," and the "original model has been
handed on intact through a historic institution that is still with
us: the army."
In other works -- The City in History
is a good example -- Mumford shows that Neolithic agriculture was based
on horticulture. Horticulture, in turn, was based on
gathering: women's work, in other words, in an ancient context of
gathering and hunting based on gender distinctions. For a
while, apparently, feminine values grew in power and prestige along
with settled agriculture. But, as Mumford says in his
essay on Utopia, the "hunter-chieftain
of the later Neolithic economy transformed
himself into a king; and kingship established a mode of government and
a way of life radically different from that of the proto-historic
village community . . . ." Mumford goes on:
In the period when the institution of kingship arose, no ordinary machine, except the bow and arrow, yet existed: even the wagon wheel had not yet been invented. With the small desultory labor force a village could command, and with the simple tools available for digging and cutting, none of the great utilities that were constructed in the Fertile Crescent could have been built. Power machinery was needed to move the vast masses of earth, to cut the huge blocks of stone, to transport heavy materials long distances, to set whole cities on an artifical mound forty feet high. These operations were performed at an incredible speed: without a superb machine at command, no king could have built a pyramid or a ziggurat, still less a whole city, in his own lifetime.
By royal command, the necessary machine was created: a machine that concentrated energy in great assemblages of men, each unit shaped, graded, trained, regimented, articulated, to perform its particular function in a unified working whole. With such a machine, work could be conceived and executed on a scale that otherwise was impossible until the steam engine and the dynamo were invented. The assemblage and the direction of these labor machines was the prerogative of kings and an evidence of theirsupreme power; for it was only by exacting unflagging effort and mechanical obedience from each of the operative parts of the machine that the whole mechanism could so efficiently function. The division of tasks and the specialization of labor to which Adam Smith imputes so much of the success of the so-called industrial revolution actually were already in evidence in the Pyramid Age, with a graded bureaucracy to supervise the whole process. Every part of the machine was regimented to carry out the king's will: "The command of the palace . . . cannot be altered. The King's word is right; his utterance, like that of a God, cannot be changed."
I lack the space here to produce more of the passages from Mumford's
essay which support the argument that agribusiness is Utopian. (I
urge every interested reader to study that small essay carefully and
slowly.) To be sure, Mumford does not deal explicitly with
agriculture, with its overtly mechanical and chemical rationalizations,
over the past century or two. But the point is clear:
technical devices in the service of civilized exploitation have
facilitated the ruination of peasant culture in all industrial
societies and reduced peasant culture to destitution in most
"developing" societies. Utopian civilization devours common
culture.
It's a remarkable commentary on how poorly we understand the internal
dynamics of civilization to see that even the current "farm crisis" has
not caused farm and pro-farm organizations to examine the root forces
behind low commodity prices, chemical pollution, foreclosure and
eviction. Even the parity arguments of raw materials
economics, important as these insights are, persist in an
explicitly economistic analysis. The raw materials analysis is
helpful, but it lacks woefully in historical and cultural
considerations. In a rather blundering fashion, the
ecological policies of Green politics imply a scaling down of large
systems, the abandonment of ecologically destructive technologies, and
decentralization of urban populations. Unless people
undergo a Great Awakening, the drift of political events will
lead us to a kind of fascism: only this fascism has universal
extinction at its fingertips, and a religious mythology to support this
potential extinction. Unless Green and Rainbow politics begins to
catch on -- participatory classlessness, lessened resource consumption,
democratic ecological socialism combined with the cooperative
rejuvenation of rural culture -- there may be no escape from
nuclear annihilation.
As Mumford points out, there is an alternative meaning of
"utopia." This buried Utopia is "eutopia," the good place.
Where utopia asserts the perfect system, with the king as the "godlike
incarnation of collective power," and the city "cut to a heavenly
pattern," eutopia (like Taoism and the parables of Jesus) trusts to the
simplicities of rural life, voluntary association, and mutual
aid. If utopia is the civilized State with all its
rationalized institutions, including Cruise missiles and
commercial agribusiness, then eutopia is a network or confederation of
self-governing communities, practicing a high degree of
self-provisioning. If Utopia generates passive consumerism
and political apathy, then eutopia is communally subsistent and
ecologically political. The conventional politics of
progress are Utopian; the ecological politics of Green parties and
movements are eutopian.
Finally, I would suggest that if Utopia correlates tightly to civilized
institutions controlled and directed by men, then eutopia will produce
a massive increase in women's political influence and power. To
turn from the godking in the heavenly city to the earth mother in the
fields carries rich implications for what it means to be a woman and a
man, for the cultural diversity of small cities, and for the coherence
of rural life.
The Farm Crisis: Past, present, and Future
-Kenneth A. Dahlberg
When MLT was incorporated 10 years ago, the basic elements of the farm
crisis were already visible to us. A farm economy which had been
built to progressively increase the production of individual crops and
commodities was beginning to falter because the relative cost of the
major "factors" of production was shifting. Throughout its history, the
most expensive "factor" of production had always been labor (with the
possible exception of slave labor in the South prior to the Civil
War). What this meant was that "efficiency" and
"productivity" were defined in terms of saving labor—the most
expensive factor—by replacing it with land, energy and resources,
and capital—all of which were cheaper in relative terms.
Especially since World War II, cheap fossil fuel energy had come to
play a major role in the farm economy--with increasing mechanization,
dramatic increases in the use of fertilizers and pesticides,
wide-spread electrification of rural regions, etc. In addition,
the larger food system was also transformed by the easy availability of
energy. Roads, interstates, a car in every garage, and a more
mobile society generally led to the increasing urbanization and
suburbanization of America and to the long-distance transport of foods,
to increased packaging and processing, to super markets, to the
development of fast food chains, etc. The food system became
national and based on national advertising, the desire for convenience,
and the financial, structural, and marketing imperatives of large
corporations. People moved out of rural regions; urban capital
moved in. As most MLT members are aware, we have the most
energy-inefficient food system in the world--where roughly ten energy
calories are required to place one food calorie on our dinner
plates. This, of course is the reverse side of the labor
efficiency/productivity coin.
In 1976, farmers were becoming aware that there were energy
problems. The increases in oil prices brought about by the OPEC
oil embargo were having their impact on fertilizers and
pesticides. Yet the logic of the farm economy-the
"production treadmill"-still suggested to most farmers that they had to
"get bigger or get out." Many farmers bought or leased more
land. This of course meant more large-scale equipment, more
dependence on banks for financing, and more dependence on foreign
markets, since U.S. markets were largely saturated. Each of
these aspects has worsened since 1976. The price of land has
decreased dramatically, thus reducing the equity for borrowing
purposes. While interest rates have come down some, land prices
have come down more, leading to the current credit squeeze and the huge
increase in both farm bankruptcies and bank failures.
A combination of increasing production of major commodities abroad and
loss of markets caused in part by the grain boycotts of the USSR after
the Afganistan invasion has led to low prices for most major
commodities. Domestic farm policy has been characterized by a
host of contradictions: large amounts of free enterprise rhetoric
combined with the largest farm support programs in years. We have
now moved from PIK to more selective price supports to acreage
reductions (finally combined with serious efforts to take marginal
lands out of production and put them into more soil conserving uses).
All of these are stop-gap approaches.
There has been some increasing awareness on the part of the agriculture
establishment that there are serious problems. Yet, the reigning
paradigm is still the productivity paradigm and it is hard to see how
there can be any basic improvement in U.S. agricultural and food policy
until that model is more visibly challenged and eventually
transformed. The recent debates about the desirability of one of
the first major genetic engineering developments--the bovine growth
hormone which would greatly increase milk production—is
illustrative of the confusion. The developer,
Monsanto, testified in true technological tradition, that this
represents progress and that dairy farmers and the public will have to
adjust accordingly.
Of course, technologies are not
neutral--either in themselves or in their
impacts—so that what is needed is sharper criticsm of the full
range of impacts of new technologies and policies on farmers,
rural regions, urban consumers, the environment, health,
etc. Also, farmers will have to come to understand that their
future lies more with developing local and regional alliances with
nutrition, hunger, coop, and consumer groups. This is
because there appears to be little likelihood of expanding
international agricultural markets over the next ten years. Also there
appears to be little likelihood of the large good buyers, processors,
and marketers passing on any increased share of their profits to
farmers. Equally, farm credit will remain difficult to obtain.
Thus, a two pronged strategy would appear to be necessary for improving
farm life and rural communities. One involves farmers becoming
less dependent upon ever more costly inputs—not only energy
related ones, but also those related to credit. The MLT continues
to emphasize the importance of production for household use and to
experiment with alternative systems such as permaculture which are
based on what are likely to be the future realities of
production: higher energy and capital costs as compared to
labor costs. Also, MLT has always been concerned with agriculture
in the Wendell Berry sense; that is, how does it provide a meaningful
and ustainable way of life for both families and rural
communities.
What is also needed is greater awareness that farmers must re-examine
their traditional political approaches and alliances. As
suggested above, alliances are needed with local and regional
groups going far beyond farming. Rather than thinking in
terms of on farm production, we as a society need to think more of the
overall health and reliability of our food systems. These should
be structured on a grassroots, bottom up approach—as was the case
earlier in our history. While our larger national and
international processing, transport and marketing systems offer
convenience, they are rigid and potentially subject to massive
disruption or collapse given other major changes—whether in the
global climate or international economics. Our urban oriented
society needs to learn to recognize the importance of healthy and
prosperous rural regions and the need for much more locally based food
systems. MLT has great potential to serve as an educational
bridge, educating "urban agrarians," farmers and rural residents to the
importance of local and regional food systems that are healthy,
sustainable, and economically viable.
The needs for MLT and similar organizations are even greater than when
we were founded ten years ago. The opportunities are also
greater, although as part of the process all citizens and all sectors
must challenge the ever increasing spending of our national resources
on a chimeric technological search for "security" through "Star Wars"
type weapons systems or support of repressive regimes abroad. We
must shift from symbolic--but potentially destructive problems, to the
real problems of preserving our evolutionary heritage and
providing healthy and socially just systems among a diversity of
peoples.
Magic, Poesy and the Land
-Joseph C. Filonowicz
The land trust was a modest proposal to provide a rational model of an
alternative way to American life, on the land and in the city, a
symbiotic relationship of man and nature, and man and man. It has
not been a rousing success. Why? Because it is too
rational. Man does not live by rationality but by irrational
beliefs. The pages of our newspapers and TV newscasts confirm
this fact daily. The last people to live in harmony with the land
were the primitives. They believed in the magic of nature.
Their souls resided in nature. They were very spiritual.
They followed complex myths to explain a complex nature.
The march of civilization has been the explaining of complex matters in
ever simpler, rationalistic terms, now called ideologies; actually
abbreviated myths. Some of the latest popular heresies we worship are
science, technology, economics, "unreal" estate, education and, of
source, capitalism and communism. Capitalism believes in liberty
and equality, but people are not equal and so you end with the poor and
the rich. Communism denies liberty so people may learn, through
education, to be equal. Again people are not equal and you end
with the rich commissars and poor communicants.
Tell me comrade, what is the difference between Capitalism and Communism?
Man's inhumanity to man is the basis of Capitalism.
And Communism?
Just the reverse, Comrade.
All ideologies lead to irrational civilizations because they are based
on the irrational needs of individuals and societies. We are too
prideful of our assumed rationality to admit to this condition.
But irrationality is not to be scorned, it is the basis for new
creativity for the new civilizations that are born and must die along
the road of history. All we can do is point to the daily facts of
our declining civilization and list some of the current signs of
failure in some of our pet ideologies, such as science, technology,
farming and political science.
The explosion of the Challenger rocket.
The explosion of the chemical plant at Bopal, India.
The explosion of the nuclear plant at Chernobyl.
Tell me comrade, what has feathers and glows in the dark?
Chicken Kiev!
The inability after 40 years to find a dumping ground for atomic waste.
The increase in armaments to decrease the chances of war.
Terrorism, the clash of ideologies.
Drugs, the biggest of world businesses, to soothe the mind of irrational realities.
Iowa Congressman Jim Leach reports: "If you put the whole
state of Iowa up for sale today you would find it's half as valuable as
it was five years ago-and that's for everything in the state.
Iowa faces the problems of a developing country in the Third
World." This is the result of the absurdity of placing faith in
state cow college agricultural scientists and bank economics. It
is ironic and indicative of modern farm science that high-tech Iowa
farms are going broke in the late 20th century and the Amish farmer of
Pennsylvania is growing richer by still plowing with 19th century
horses. It was one of the early messages of the land trust
that this situation was bound to occur.
The land trust is just a sign post along the road of history. As
we said at the beginning, homesteading is too rational for this
culture. The Amish have a workable myth, it's theology. Of
course, we do not like Amish theology. But it works for
them. A new irrationality has to be added for the land trust to
become an operant myth. The French anthropologist
Levi-Strauss says that a "myth is an act of faith in a science yet
unborn." A great starting point for the new myth is the
Uncertainty Principle defined by the
post-Einsteinian physicist Werner Heisenberg.
It expresses in quantum mathematical terms the reality of nature.
Everything is in flux, reality is energy, motion, moonbeams in a jar,
uncertain, nothing is ever in a place where you can measure it.
Measuring it changes it, scientists are lost without measurement,
measuring makes it certain. In philosophical terms, the
universe is complex, uncertain, mystical.....magical. We are back
where the primitives began. Einstein did not like this view of
things. He said, "God does not play dice with the
universe." We don't know that. But we do know that man can
play craps with nature...and crap out.
Where do we find the new myth? Look to the poet, the artist, the
musician. They are already beginning to express it. Its
roots today are in a planet-wide information society, forming by
courtesy of science and technology. Through mass communications,
something entirely novel to the world, a nation can bodily hold hands
across 3000 miles for a common cause. It also allows the tuning
of minds across the world in a common, spiritual consciousness, a force
growing more powerful than any government. Something
supra-irrational. It's coming. As Franz Kafka said,
"All human error is impatience...a delusive pinning down of a
delusion." Man is a theological animal; he always has been and
always will be. Today, he has lost his soul, he is in search of a
new theology, not a new religion. A theology that respects the
creation and not a religion that idolizes a false creator. If you
do not understand what has been written here, do no despair.
Neither do I. This is just the way things seem to be.... AWESOME.
THE LAND TRUST FARM: 1996
-Jonathan Towne
Yep, things have sure changed in the last ten years. The Land
Trust Farm has been transformed from a resource drain into a rich and
varied agroecosystem which sustains itself and much of the livelihood
of the three families who are members of this community. That is
not to say that there isn't a long way to go. Only some
of the overstory has begun to produce, and there is still much planting
to be done. Over 150 years of deforestation can't be undone
overnight. The fish ponds aren't all constructed. Restoring
the soil from a depleted agricultural soil into a rich forest soil
hasn't been completed. But these things and more will happen
because the people on the farm have learned patience and gained the
knowledge and understanding of how ecosystems work, and have lost the
urge to impose quick technological fixes.
Of course, the Land Trust Farm hasn't evolved in a vacuum.
Because its energies were directed toward permaculture and sustainable
agriculture it was able to define itself quickly and become a model
thousands look to. Things were at rock bottom in the early to mid
1980's when Reagan, with his fundamental moral doctrine, was
popular. But it was inevitable that the pendulum would swing the
other way. And when it did people wondered how they could have
been so blind. With the M-X missile disaster in 1987, and
the violent weather and climate changes that have been occurring, which
reduced the US corn corp in 1989 to a quarter, it became obvious that
something was wrong! Jesse Jackson was elected President in 1992,
and he immediately set us on a path of total nuclear disarmement and
instituted civilian defense systems. To the surprise of many,
this led to the Soviets doing the same.
American hostilities in Central America, the Middle East and southern
Africa were ended. These countries decided they didn't need
Soviet or American support any longer. The Soviets decided
Afganistan was tarnishing their world image, so they withdrew.
President Jackson instituted a commission to
investigate the violent climate changes. They found
quickly that deforestation and pollution of the oceans were
responsible. Measures to control acid rain, air, and water
pollution were taken to lessen these effects in the short run.
Ultimately, changes had to be made in the wasteful lifestyle that was
responsible for poisoning the groundwater, killing forests, and
producing violent weather. A larger awareness became widespread
that the destruction of tropical ecosystems had to stop. This
came about through the elimination of destructive government policies,
and the short term application of new ones which stopped the
importation of Latin American beef, bananas, and coffee. This enabled
them to restructure their economies, and allowed the rain forest to
start regenerating.
A new Green Revolution has come into being and its symbol is the
tree. What better resource is there than the tree? It holds
the soil, builds and heats our homes, provides our food, purifies our
water and air, and is a symbol of beauty, grace, strength, and
peace. Existing old growth forests have all been reserved
in the U.S., and with monoculture cash cropping on the way out for loss
of the export market, these changes are also occuring in the Third
World. People are becoming more self-sufficient and eating better.
In this setting the Land Trust Farm is a bit ahead of its time.
Its policy, that of permaculture, has been to design useful
agro-ecosystems around nature using productive species and varieties
from around the world in patterns which mimic those found in
nature. Two additional homesites have been found near the
keypoint of south facing slopes. Well developed windbreak
systems are on their way to maturity around these homesites.
These windbreaks produce food and wood along with changing
microclimates. Gardens are snuggled against them to take
advantage of their reflectiveness. There is no great
tendency to keep perennials-even trees and shrubs out of these
gardens. Chickens and ducks keep bugs out of the fruit trees and
slugs out of the garden.
These people who hold perpetual leases all take part in managing the
rest of the farm. A permaculture design is followed,
more-or-less. Chestnuts, walnuts, and filberts are starting to be
produced in quantities, and are sold for the most part, off the farm
and at farmers markets and co-ops. An organic egg business is
going well, taking advantage of chickens' ability to eat the fruit of
nitrogren fixing herbs, shrubs, and trees, while controlling
pests. The pond supplies irrigation water, produces fish to
sell, and encourages wildlife. The fish have also dramatically
reduced the mosquito population. It is expected that the tree
crops will indefinitely supply the wood products needed on the farm and
some specialized woods to sell off or to convert into crafts
products. Gradually, the existing woodlots will be managed more
for ecological values than fuelwood.
A lot of action occurs in and around the original
farmstead. Solar greenhouses help keep the insulated house
warm. Water is heated in the warm months by the sun and by wood
in the winter. Many different polycultures are present in the
form of mixed annual and perennial gardens, windbreaks, and
orchards. There is little actual lawn except in areas with
heavy foot travel and a living area behind the house. Planted and
naturalized ground covers exist elsewhere. Many plants exist for
no other apparent reason than for themselves. Examples are
the woodland wildflowers just north of the house, and the cactus and
prairie gardens on the sand mound west of the house.
Public outreach is broad and diversified. Workshops occur
monthly, sometimes more often, and cover such themes as arts and
crafts, processing of plant and animal products, tree grafting,
permaculture design, managing a prairie, and even community
organizing. A self guiding nature trail exists on this property
and the adjoining property to the south for hikers and skiers.
The people are friendly and open, and available as resources.
Local papers and radio and TV cover the progress of the farm along with
the events that take place there.
The Land Trust Farm is sure different than it was back in 1978 when the
first group of people attempted to bring order out of chaos.
Chaos has given way to patterns which are aesthetically pleasing,
ecologically healthy, and educational. It is also a
productive and a healthy place for people to be a part of.
EDITOR'S NOTE
We hope you have enjoyed celebrating our birthday with us.
Michigan Land Trustees is an organization of people-Trustees-concerned
with the issue of land and its use. We invite you to join
us on projects, with suggestions, articles, and at meetings. If
you know others who would like to join us, memebership fees, as you
know, are very nominal--$5 or more per person. Please send
us their names and addresses.
Join us in a toast of home-pressed wine and juice to another 10 years!
Sally Kaufman
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