From tine to time individuals have asked questions concerning the history and activities of Michigan Laid Trustees. The following is an effort to answer those questions through excerpts from the MLT Newsletters beginning in 1980. The excerpts include both activities MLT has engaged in as well as some of the moreimportant plans which we are still working on.
The first article by Norman Bober, a director at the time, presents a conceptual overview for land trusts, It is part of a longer article appearing in the June issue, 1980.
Land is basic to human existence . . . Native peoples recognized earth as the mother of life. They nurtured and preserved its bounty, for their very lives depended on its fertility. They perceived the land as a resource to be shared and felt that no one person should have exclusive possession of even a part . . . Traditions in Africa, China, India, Mexico and most recently in Israel, demonstrate communal ownership of land . . . made available to all members of the community, and whatever development takes place on it mustserve the common good.
In order to assure that lands are held for the common good, a trust arrangement is established . . . The trust is a corporate body that is charged with maintaining stewardship of the land ... in perpetuity . . . The trust may lease the land to various users, with the expectation that the renterswill preserve or enhance its long-term value.
The concept, of land trust as described above seems to run counter to a basic American tradition . . . based on land ownership . . . We are seeing private ownership of land being translated into corporate ownership . . . Yet, the land and its resources are limited. If the pattern of corporate acquisition of land continues, what avenues are open to individuals?
Land trusts are part of a creative effort to preserve land for the common good, to allow for its redistribution, and to care for scarce natural resources . . . Some land trusts have developed into, or are considering, planned communities. Others have set more modest goals. There are many possibilities under land trust management. It's up to the people to determinetheir future.
The first issue in the spring of 1980 had an article by Maynard Kaufman reviewing the origin and development of Michigan Land Trustees. Major excerptsfollow:
Michigan Land Trustees was chartered in the bicentennial year of 1976, a coincidence which helped us realize that we were trying to revive the feasibility of Thomas Jefferson's vision of a rural America populated by citizenswho earned and retained their freedom through self-sufficiency on the land.
Our original intention as a community land trust was to acquire land, by bequest if possible, and to make it available through a long-term lease arrangement to persons who would agree to use it productively and maintain its ecological integrity. This plan was deflected, at least temporarily, by the Internal Revenue Service which ruled that our status as a non-profit charitable and educational organization would be in jeopardy if we defined the acquisition andleasing of farm land as our primary purpose.
We, thereupon, appealed for tax-exempt status again and placed our educational purposes in a primary position. In June of 1977, the Internal Revenue Service agreed and ruled that we could operate as a public foundation under Section 509 (a) (1) of the Internal Revenue Code as long as we generated support through donations from various sources. At that time the Internal Revenue Service also summarized the kinds of activities which would characterize our status as a charitable and educational non-profit organization. These activities were listed as follows:
"Your primary purpose is to promote the research and development cf organic production and ecological land utilization. Your activities will fallinto two categories:
1. Scientific testing, evaluation and demonstration of 'Appropriate Technologies' suitable to the development of local self-relianceunder conditions of petroleum and natural gas scarcity.
2. Educating the agricultural community in ecological and energy-conserving agricultural production-'and the public in energy conservation in general.
As one of your activities, you will train individuals in the techniques of agriculture production which are ecologically sound. This training will be conducted on land acquired by the organization and leased to trainees. Trainees will receive 'in the field' as well as classroom training in the proper methods of organic agricultural production. It is anticipated that the training program will last at least two growing seasons for each trainee. Experiences and data gathered from the operationof these training programs will be made available to the public. . ."
Michigan Land Trustees is not trying to go back to the days of preindustrial America; it is working to ease the transition to a post-industrial future as it is being shaped by the need to use non-renewable resources withmore care and frugality.
As we look ahead, we hope to become more directly active in helping local people imagine possibilities and acquire skills in energy-conserving techniques, especially as they are relevant to our rural community. We hope to provide more opportunities for these who wish to learn by participation, literally "in the field" methods of farming which minimize ecological disruption. For this we need to acquire more land. Since we are a tax-exempt organization, donorsof land can gain substantial tax advantages. If you know of a prospective donor, let us know.
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In the fall of 1977 a 38-acre farm just north of Bangor was acquired by Michigan Land Trustees. Known as the Land Trust Homesteading Farn it is currently used as a place where students can gain practical experience in homesteading skills. In the spring of 1978 Stuart Shafer was hired by Western Michigan University as the first homesteading instructor. From the spring of 1979 to the spring of 1983 Jonathan Towne served in that capacity. Thom Phillips and Jan Filonowiczcame in May, 1983, to manage the farm and serve as homesteading instructors.
A series of workshops sponsored by MLT was conducted during fall and winter of 1979. These workshops were designed to help people become sore self-reliant as they learned such skills as cheese and bread making, vegetarian cooking, andbeer and wine making.
Some first-hand impressions of the achievements on the Land Trust Homesteading Farm are contained in these excerpts by Jonathan Towne from the first issue ofthe Newsletter:
During the first year, 1978, priority was given to bring order out of the piles of junk that littered the landscape. This was necessary before the instructor and the students could get on with the business of farming. Old cars and machinery were cleared out and a start was made to clean up thegarbage in the weeds . . .
With this input of time and the addition of organic fertilizers, the. The students actually spent the majority of their time farming rather than garbage collecting. A respectable income was generated by the vegetable gardens. Livestock projects continued in the same vein as the first year with pigs, a dairy cow and calves, goats, and poultry being emphasized. The fields have benefitted by being worked and crop rotations have been defined and practiced. . . Many trees have been planted, and the woodlot, a chaos of fallen treeslooks better and is beginning to generate lumber and fuelwood for farm use.
And in an article from 1981 Jonathan reported further changes in the farm:
The end of last summer we started building a 24 X 40 foot pole barn with hay mow. Work went pretty well in the fall between other activities and we have yet to put in the windows, doors, girts, and sheathing. A concrete floor will also be put in ... When finished the barn will house cattle and swinewith hay and some equipment storage.
This winter I set up a water heater utilizing the wood stove that heats the house. Water is heated in the firebox and rises to the tank upstairs bya thermosyphoning effect.
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In 1981 Royce Downey, Bangor's city manager, presented a plan to MLT for a garden project. The plan would locate garden plots on sites at the edge of the city. The plots would be available for Bangor residents who wished to raise theirown vegetables and supplement their dwindling economic resources.
In conjunction with several local gardeners Sally Kaufman organized the Bangor Community Gardeners project, and wrote a bi-weekly column on gardening for the local newspaper. By 1983 there were garden plots in two areas of Bangor, anddirection for the project was assumed by those using the plots.
An ambitious project was formulated by several of the members -- a journal. At present, no funding has been found to print it, but the following descriptionwritten by Paul Gilk, appeared in the October, 1981, issue:
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 marksbecause 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 express the 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 truly significant portion 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 inthat envisioning and thus enable a transition to occur.
Our desire is for "Eutopian Journal" to take shape as a quarterly . . . we will focus primarily on carefully written and fairly lengthy articles on issuespertaining to agrarian and rural culture.
We anticipate our "audience" will include those people already concerned with agrarian-oriented issues, ecological and environmental thinkers who wish to deepen their understanding 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 concernedwith cultural renaissance who may find their thinking enhanced by specific eutopian considerations.
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In November, 1982, a day-long community workshop was held in paw Paw on Condos, Cornfields, and Homesteads: The New Rural Residents and Land Use. Organized by Kenneth Dahlberg and Maynard Kaufman it was jointly sponsored by MLT and the Institute of Public Affairs at Western Michigan University. The Van Buren Soil Conservation District was a cooperating organization. Dr. Craig Harris, sociologist from Michigan State University, made the first presentation on the historical and factual background of the "loss of farmland"is sue. Three panel discussions followed: the first on some of the different factors which motivate people to move to the country or from it: "Cultural Values in Rural Migration." The second panel discussed "Land Losses and Land Use Conflicts," with the emphasis on the impact ofthe migration turnaround on rural areas and cr- agricultural productivity. The final panel discussion, "Alternatives for the Future" considered some new possibilities emerging in this population shift. Resource persons on the panels included scholars from the humanities, social scientists, farmers, and a soil conservationist.
A complete summary appearing in the Newsletter of January 1983, was written by Juleen. Eichinger. As Ms. Eichinger summarizes one of the panels:
We actually stand at. an important crossroads leading toward alternative futures. Our choices today will be the bases of future directions. With the increase in unemployment we now are experiencing, involvement in productive work becomes extremely important. Subsistence faming nay help alleviate a variety of personal and financial problems brought on by unemployment ... As we investigate the bases and implications of the recent rural migration, we can project, perhaps, some of the needs, trends and problems which might beencountered in the future.
The workshop was televised twice in September, 1983, over Kalamazoo's public access station.
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After months of consideration on the part of the Board of Directors a decision was made at the July, 1983, meeting to orient the use of the farm toward Permaculture integrated with small livestock production and vegetable crops. This will incorporate the use of nut trees, minor fruit trees and small fruits into the already existent plantings. It is an effort to approach the farm as a whole and evolve a more stable form of agriculture. More information on thisproject can be found in the August, 1983, issue of the Newsletter, and in future issues.
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The narration of a project has no completion, but I must put an arbitrary conclusion on this one. Therefore 1 would like to finish with excerpts from two Newsletters, July 1981 and Spring 1983. These are written by two people who have been students at the land Trust Homesteading Farm. The first is by Susan Grabber, reflecting some of the difficulties experienced by women in a non-sexist work environment. The second by Albert (Swan) Huntoon, expresses the sense of communityat the farm.
Duplicating men's skills is not the motivating desire of the women on the farm, but rather to acquire skills with which to craft our own work. Mastering these skills fosters an increased inner strength . . . The models in our society are male models . . . One woman's pride in fixing a machine is dampened by her awareness that a fellow male student could have fixed it in less than one-quarter time. This forces constant confrontation with the larger cultural issue of human equality. Experiences such as this also sharpen women's determination to chisel out a cooperative model in which men and women share activities.
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There were ten other students besides myself (198O), and we formed a close little community. . . It was a warm and memorable experience, and I met manypeople then who are among my best friends now.
Sally Kaufman, Editor
Michigan Land Trustees Newsletter