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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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