BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Norman Bober
Thomas Breznau
Kenneth Dahlberg
Joseph C. Filonowicz
Luise Gilk
Maynard Kaufman
Judy Kobza
William Kobza
Werner Krieglstein
Paul Schultz
MINUTES FROM THE SECOND ANNUAL MICHIGAN LAND TRUSTEES MEETING at the Land Trust Homestead Farm, October 3, 1981
A gathering of 22 trustees and guests assembled that Saturday afternoon for a pottuck dinner. Afterwards a tour of the Land Trust Farm was provided by Jonathan Towne, the Farm Manager.
Finally, the annual meeting was called to order by Maynard Kaufman.
The first order of business was Jonathan Towne's "State of the Land Trust Farm" address. The diversified vegetable and livestock operation saw three qualitative changes in the last year:
1) There were improved yields in field crops. At the same time, the condition of the soils continues to be improved.
2) A change in marketing strategy has doubled the sales of farm produce. Vegetables are now trucked to farmers' markets in surrounding towns.
3) The Homestead Farm's kitchen has been redone. In addition to another cooking stove, the effectiveness of the area has been improved by an exciting, new, acid green paint job.
The MLT Homesteading School averaged five students throughout the spring and summer. No more students are expected in the fall, however there is the possibility of allowing tenants to defray expenses.
Sally Kaufman next reported on the Bangor garden project. Fifteen people participated in community vegetable gardening. With food relief cutbacks, the city management is optimistic of continued success in assisting people gain access and knowledge in more self-reliant food production. Further coordination between MLT and the city will hopefully sustain these efforts.
Paul Gilk announced that the MLT journal prospectus was completed. It will be sent to writers, journalists, and academicians for evaluations and suggestions.
Joe Filonowicz offered a critique of the MLT in an effort to re-awaken the motivations of the Board and the Trustees. The competence of the School (a retreat for "...middle class city malcontents" and "...psuedo, prophetic hypocrites") and the Board of Directors came into question. An exciting verbal melee ensued.
With the subject of new projects, Paul Gilk asked for MLT involvement with the Michigan Council of the Humanities. He will be working on a grant proposal for a program on some issue of land use. It would be sponsored by MLT and perhaps other local likeminded organizations.
A1 (Swan) Huntoon requested that we produce a brochure to inform and lure students and benefactors. Given issues raised in Joe's discussions some clarification may be in order before determining a brochure format. Nevertheless, interested persons are welcome to draft ideas.
Jonathan Towne presented the Nominations Committee selection for the standing MLT committees. For Land Acquisition and Finance: Sally Kaufman, Swan Huntoon, and Dan Adams; Land Management and Leasing: Jonathan Towne, Mike Kruk, and Tom Bresnau; Education and Research Committee: Paul Gilk, Mike Phillips and Juleen Eichinger; Nominations Committee: Werner Krieglstein, Jon Towne, Mike Phillips, Tim Johnson, and Marcy Brooks. The trustees approved all the nominations.
Finally, the meeting was adjourned but not before some of the MLT rules and procedures came under question. The next Board of Directors meeting is scheduled for Saturday evening, November 21 at the Land Trust Homesteading Farm. Potluck begins at 5:30, the meeting at 7:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome!
Respectfully submitted by,
Mike Phillips, Acting Secretary
TREASURER'S REPORT (OMITTED)
Maynard Kaufman, Acting Treasurer
THE MICHIGAN LAND TRUST HOMESTEAD FARM IN PERSPECTIVE
Criticism has been leveled that the Michigan Land Trust Homestead Farm is just a "home for middle class dropouts" or a "love nest". Some people think that you qo to the homestead farm to enjoy the fruits of the "pastoral ideal" and be "laid back. Many people go here because there is nothing else to do. Consequently, with many notable exceptions, the farm is made up of less than serious students. In any event, since I am in no position to turn people away and I do not provide the students with discipline, the homestead farm sometimes takes on the appearance of a summer camp.
What value, then, is the MLTHF to the goals of MLT and society? We are not obviously successful in cranking out homestead farmers, although even if only one or two people end up successfully farming because of this program, I would give it a good measure of success since this is not an easy life to attain. The real benefits are not as measurable, Not only will all of our students practice more gardening, food preservation and other homestead skills, thus reducing the power of industrial agriculture, but they are also the seeds for the development of culture. Wendell Berry saw the disintegration of American culture in the last forty years as being connected to or even resulting from the simplification of agriculture due to the use of technology for its own sake. Agriculture, the primary interface between people and the land, is simplified to where 3% of the population farms, commonly with monocultures. Agriculture became less of a cultural center but more of a technical problem. Who are we to limit the MLTHF to being a disciplined course of instruction concerning the technical aspects of organic farming? The experience must be concerned with people also. The intensity of the people-land experience that this farm provides will be a major cultural influence in the right direction.
It depends on how we see cultural change occurring. If it is possible for meaningful change to occur in a snowball effect then we are probably not rolling the initial snowball. More likely change trickles through a culture by a constant sifting of values. If this is the case then we are doing our job as are countless other programs throughout the world. The homestead student being middle class and educated is an ideal vehicle for this kind of change.
- Jonathan Towne
THE JOURNAL PROJECT
. . . for, as Professor Patrick Geddes points out, Sir Thomas More was an inveterate punster, and Utopia is a mockname for either Outopia, which means no-place, or Eutopia -- the good place.
Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopia
The journal project -- from original suggestion to third-draft prospectus -- is now nearly one year old. Slowly have we moved, debating each addition and revision. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." So says an old Chinese proverb.
In thinking about a title for the journal we have moved from "eutopian dialogues" to "eutopian journal": journey and journal, that which is thought or travelled in the span of a natural day. The old French word isjournee, a day's work or travel. The root in Latin is diurnum day, or diurnus daily.
The words together indicate a day's thought on the good place or a day's distance toward the good place; and eutopian journey, a journal of grounded thought.
Our intent is, above all, to devote "Eutopian Journal", our tentative title, to the articulation of coherent visions of "post-industrial" agrarian culture, and then to the relevance of those visions to emerging social trends and ecological constraints. ("Post-industrial" gets packed in quotation marks because it is such an elusive and perhaps misleading word.)
We believe that since an urban bias permeates virtually all our ways of thinking and speaking, as well as our institutions both public and private, it is critically important to begin to formulate and expressthe cultural need for a revitalized and transformed rural and agrarian life. If, as we believe, urban-industrial affluence has reached the point of satiety and is headed toward contraction and decline, there is an immediate and pressing need to divert a truly significant oortion of our urban-based and industrially dependent population to stable and self-supporting agrarian environments. To facilitate that process thoughtfully, carefully, lovingly, humanely requires as much creative thinking as we all can muster. The journey toward the good place could turn easily into a stampede going nowhere unless we come to grips not only with where it is we wish to go, but also where it is we have been. "Eutopian Journal" aims, therefore, to be both imaginative and historically informed. A coherent rural culture, based firmly on small-scale, organic and increasingly cooperative agriculture, with its attendant crafts and services, must be first envisioned and then created as an alternative to the saturation of all society by urban-based values and commodity-oriented institutions. We hope to be of use in that envisioning and thus enable a transition to occur.
Our desire is for "Eutopian Journal" to take shape as a quarterly, issued more or less at the spring and autumn equinoxes and at the winter and summer solstices. We are still considering the use of art work, poems, letters-to-the-editors, book and movie reviews as elements within the journal. But we will focus primarily on carefully written and fairly lengthy articles on issues pertaining to agrarian and rural culture.
We anticipate our "audience" will include those people already concerned with agrarian oriented isues, ecological and environmental thinkers who wish to deepen their understands of the rural cultural implications of their advocacy, feminists concerned with agrarian reconstruction in a non-exploitative and non-traditional economic and social order, and Utopian visionaries concerned with cultural renaissance who may find their thinking enhance by specific eutopian considerations.
The next step is to conclude our already-begun process of finding Editorial Advisors. Once that is done, we'll begin looking for money -- at least $50,000 over three years. No one can say whether "Eutopian Journal" wilt succeed. But a journal of a thousand thoughts begins with a single word. The word is "yes".
- Paul Gilk
Maynard Kaufman
Ken Dahlberg
ADDITIONAL REFLECTIONS ON THE RURAL FEMINIST MOVEMENT
Upon reading the July issue of the MLT Newsletter I was moved to reflect on the impact of feminism in our society. Doing so called to mind the important part played by women in a cultural advance so basic it can only be considered the cornerstone of civilization -- the Neolithic agricultural revolution.
The classic view of the origins of agriculture, that human-kind progresses in stages from hunting and gathering through pastoral nomadism to agriculture, is gradually being replaced by a more adequate interpretation. This revised interpretation holds these premises: agriculture developed in hi11 or mountain woodlands in a mild well-diversified climate; the inventors of agriculture were sedentary people; these people had virtually no shortage of food.
Well situated fishing peoples who relied on aquatic life for a year-round source of food, fit this pattern best. Stream junctions and lake outlets are favorable locations for fishing and farming villages. No other area meets the requirements for the rise of this fishing-farming culture as well as Southwestern Asia.
What role did women play in the Neolithic fishing village of Southeastern Asia -- the cradle of agriculture? Professor Carl Sauer answers this question quite succinctly in his bookSeeds, Spades, Hearths, and Herds when he writes; "In this culture the men built the boats and fished; the women had domain over the tilled land and the homes. Women were cooks and cultivators, domestics and domesticators. These societies were developed and organized by their women."
From their struggles for the right to vote to today's fight for the E.R.A,, women's influence has been seen in all facets of our society. Yet, until recently we have been unaware of what is perhaps womankind's most profound effect on our civilization: their contribution to the founding of agriculture. As awareness of the vast achievements of women increases (as it must), it can only result in recognition of the crucial rote women have always played in the development of humanity.
- Swan Huntoon
NEWS FROM OTHER LAND TRUSTS
Earth Bridge Community Land Trust, Vermont, owns 500 acres with 15 leaseholds located in four towns. There are a total of 42 people living on the land. While the Land Trust owns the land the leaseholders own the buildings and improvements. Crystal Holzer, Presidentwrites:
"We in the Earth Bridge Land Trust feel that we should work toward small, decentralized, cooperative communities which could provide a socially and ecologically sound way of life. By meeting our real needs cooperatively we meet each other as equals. This is the real basis of democracy and genuine community. It is a step toward a non-violent economy."
Four purposes are stated in their articles of incorporation:
1) To acquire and hold title to property, land, not as public or private property, but in trusteeship; to hold lands in its stewardship for future generations...
2) To lease said land on terms that are consistent with sound conservation and ecological principles; terms that reflect ...interest in the environment and in cooperative planning for associated communities.
3) To collect income from the leased properties.
4) To conserve and maintain abundant organic resources of forest, park, and agricultural lands; to guard against excessive exploitation of income-producing mineral resources and rapid depletion of such resources.
Ms. Holzer closes her letter with a quote from Alod Leopold's Sand County Almanac:
"We abuse land because we think of it as a commodity belonging to us; when we start to regard it as a community to which we belong, we may start to use it with Love and Respect. . . and that is the only way in which land will survive the advent of mechanized man."
MEMBERSHIP
We welcome new members to MLT. The annual membership fee is $5.00 or more per person Our policy has been to continue mailing the Newsletter to all those who have paid their dues in the last 18 months. The date your last contribution was received is given below. Thank you for your support in the past. We hope to hear from you again.
- Sally Kaufman, Editor