MLT Newsletter
Summer 1985
Early summer is a time of rejoicing- the corn is springing skyward tall
and green, the oats and wheat are taking on a golden hue. The
gardens are lush with splashes of color from marigolds, snaps, and
other flowers blooming. The wrens and barn swallows chatter from trees
and lines, the catbirds sing from the tree tops, the blue heron passes
overhead, a hummingbird visits the delphinium.
We on the homesteading farms are engaged in the beginnings of our summer harvests. We wish you all the same joys.
PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE:
The Directors of MLT are happy to report we are half-way there on
enrollments for the Permaculture Course. But-only half-way.
This is where you can help. If you or someone you know is
debating about attending the Permaculture Course now is the time to
send in the $30 registration fee. The deadline is July 22.
The dates are August 12 to 31. To facilitate.balancing the men/women
ratio, scholarship money is available for women, as well as native
Americans. For additional information write Bobbi and Jonathan.
The summer issue of the Newsletter opens with an article by Pete
Notier. Pete is an English teacher in suburban Chicago. He spent
the "83-84" school year at the University of Illinois studying Rural
Sociology, and the proceeding summer at the School of
Homesteading. The One Straw Revolution is reviewed by Swan
Huntoon, Managing Director of MLT. And finally, a Haiku by Paul
Gilk, a self-provisioning kindred spirit in Wisconsin.
Sally Kaufman, Editor
LAND AS ETHIC, LAND AS TRUST
Our ethics evolved in an era in which concern for our neighbors
was meant to be taken literally. Honesty, respect, tolerance,
mercy, justice, charity - these were Immediate concerns of day to day
living in a community narrowly located in time and space and narrowly
defined by custom and tradition. Today all this has
changed. Our technology has created effects of scale in time and
space and with such disregard for custom and tradition that the
old ethic of responsibility to our proximate neighbors is
inadequate. A new ethic that accounts for the vulnerability of
nature and community to our actions upon them must be developed that
will guide us locally and globally, now and as far into the future
as the half-lives of the isotopes we leave in the wake of our
technological advance. The starting point for this new ethic,
which combines a concern for both community and nature, is the
land. In a concern for the health and survival of the land as it
is used in trust by each generation, can be found the basis for an
ethic of concern for the survival of the natural and human communities
that ultimately and intimately depend upon the land for their existence.
In "The Ecological Conscience", written in 1942, Aldo Leopold
called upon us to understand that the land is not just a physical
platform upon which plant, animal, and human communities are built, but
is itself a living member of the community. When the land is
viewed as a commodity rather than as a community, as a substrate that
supports life but that has no life of its own worth supporting and
regenerating, the ecological conscience cannot take root and
grow. Our failure to see the land as part of the community with
the same right to be respected and treated kindly as any other member
of the community is at the heart of the failure of the ecological
conscience to find good ground to grow in and threatens the very idea
of community itself, along with the prospects for the emergence of a
new ethic.
The consequences for community of an exploitive attitude towards the
land have been apparent for some time. When distant corporations
control the land and the contracts for crops grown on it, human
communities decline, as has been shown in comparative studies of
California farming communities when corporate farms take over from
family farms. When crops are produced fencerow to fencerow,
wildlife communities decline, as has been shown in Illinois studies
that found 90% of the wildlife has disappeared from rural areas with
the elimination of windbreaks and hedgerows. Ecologically as well
as ethically, what affects one member of a community affects all the
other members of the community, and no one segment can attempt to
isolate itself from those effects without seeing the community itself
deteriorate. The ecological conscience and regenerative
agricultural practices that grow out of that conscience mean more than
changing farming practices to stop exploiting the land, though.
They mean assuring practices, attentive marketing and distribution
networks, and new relationships among producers, consumers, and means
of production.
This position assumes that, ecologically and ethically, the health and
well-being of the community ought to take precedence over the health
and well-being of any individual or group in the community, and this is
not an assumption that is widely accepted, especially in
agriculture. However, again especially in agriculture, there is
ample evidence that when a few individuals attempt to profit at the
expense of the rest of the community, not only does the community
suffer, but in the long run, those few individuals also find it
increasingly difficult to maintain their favored position as the basis
of their wealth erodes from beneath them and they must either move on
in search of new fields to exploit, attempt to intensify their
exploitation of a community that has less and less to offer, or suffer
decline along with the rest of the community.
The evidence in American agriculture of this process of the erosion of
community and of intensified exploitation, both of the soil and of the
towns and people that live from the soil, has been widely discussed:
The inherent productivity of the soil is lost to erosion and to
increasing infusions of fertilizers and pesticides that prevent the
living soil from regenerating its own productive capacity and that
result in declining returns per unit of input. Family farms that have
become unprofitable are sold to equally unprofitable corporations that
can use the tax laws to turn losses into profits, so long as the health
of the community, which begins with the health of the land itself, runs
a distant second to the balance sheet. Speculation in the land
replaces stewardship for the land so a few developers can grow rich by
creating artificial communities founded on shopping malls and $200,000
mini-farms at the expense of the ecological community founded on base
rock and topsoil and of the human community founded on nurturing and
caring for each other and for the land.
An alternative to these trends can be found in Edward Faulkner's 1954 book Soil Restoration.
Faulkner envisioned a "soil Utopia" of farmers using regenerative
methods to produce highly nutritive food crops for a community whose
biggest problem would be the unemployed workers from a defunct
agricultural chemicals industry. This Utopia need not be seen as
a distant vision of what might be but as a real possibility of what can
be if we develop and implement ecological and ethical criteria for a
health community. A good place to begin is in heeding Aldo Leopold's
call to an ecological conscience that will nurture the health and
well-bing of that whole community rather than that of a few of its
members, and the ecological conscience must begin with the land.
- Pete Notier
ZEN AND THE ART OF AGRICULTURAL ALCHEMY
The One Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka, Bantam Books, 155 pp., $3.95 paperback.
Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it
takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again.
- E. F. Schumacher
At the age of twenty-five, Masanobu Fukuoka experienced a
profound revelation, one which completely changed his life and may
significantly influence the "science" of agriculture. He was
working as a plant pathologist and an inspector for the Yokohama
Customs Bureau. Although fascinated with his work he became
increasingly depressed and lonely. While watching the sun rise
over Yokohama Bay one morning, Mr. Fukuoka saw a night heron fly
overhead. "In an instant all my doubts and the gloomy mist of my
confusion vanished." Concepts he had accepted all his life were
abandoned in a flash. He realized that "Humanity knows nothing at
all. There is no intrinsic value in anything,and every action is
a futile, meaningless effort." As a result of this vision,
Masanobu Fukuoka has been able to take a fresh, unbaised view of
farming in Japan and developed "do - nothing" farming. For more
than thirty years he has worked to perfect his methods and has become
the leading spokesperson for agricultural revolution in Japan.
To anyone familiar with conventional and organic farming practices Mr.
Fukuoka's methods seem so simple, elegant, and effective as to appear
almost magical. They incorproate no modem machinery, no tillage,
fertilizers, or pesticides, and utilize a minimum of human labor.
His yields match the best in Japan. "I simply broadcast rye and
barley seed on separate fields in the fall, while the rice is still
standing. A few weeks later I harvest the rice and spread the
rice straw back over the fields. It is the same for the rice
seeding." His technique is similar for vegetables and fruit
trees. The basic concept is to restore as much of a natural
balance as possible while eliminating any unnecessary work (that still
leaves plenty of work despite the term "do - nothing" farming).
Unfortunately these methods aren't applicable to our climate, but they
may be used as a model of what can be achieved with effort.
If Mr. Fukuoka's farming practices are revolutionary it is his
philosophy which makes them so. Wendell Berry emphasizes this in
his preface to the book. He writes that Mr. Fukuoka "speaks of
agriculture as a way ...", and that "It is this grace that is the
origin of Mr. Fukuoka's agricultural insights...". His Zen - like
attitude of joy, innocence and reverence sets Masanobu Fukuoka in
opposition our society's Faustian faith in the ideals of scientific
inquiry and its supposed curative possibilities.
The One Straw Revolution
is not only a book about farming, it is a book about cultural values
and their relation to spirtual and physical well being. In it Mr.
Fukuoka gives us a practical guide to his farming methods, his thoughts
about food, philosophy, and lifestyles, and tells of his struggles to
revolutionize conventional chemical agriculture. Written with
sensitivity and a boundless love for the earth, this book is inspiring
reading for anyone concerned about the future of farming and the fate
of our world.
- Swan Huntoon
RAIN HAIKU
the tall rain strides past
on its spiny legs my old
father runs for cover
- Paul Gilk
MOMENTOUS EVENTS ON CR 681
The Land Trust Homesteading Farm was the setting for the marriage of
Bobbi Martindale and Jonathan Towne May 4th. The wedding took
place in the woods at the back of the farm, and was concluded by
planting a white oak tree from the School of Homesteading. The
white oak is known for its beauty, strength and longevity - we wish all
to Jon and Bobbi for their lives together.
A look back - this is the Homestead Farm's second wedding. Our
first manager, Stu Shafer and Patti Dickinson were married while at the
farm.
The homestead is undergoing a transformation. The grounds are
gradually being planted with trees and shrubs, the backyard has been
enlarged - and the house has been painted grey with blue trim. A busy
spring for Bobbi and Jon!
THE JULY MLT MEETING
The next MLT meeting will be Sunday, July 21, beginning with
another volleyball match at 5:30 sharp (we can set up the croquet set
for those who prefer a more sedate sport). A potluck supper will
follow at 6:30, and the meeting at 7:30. Location - School of
Homesteading. Join us.
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