less... 'compared to other farmers'... and more ... 'transitioning towards ecological embeddedness' ... it is going to take time - granted it is the one commodity we are running low on, but its reality, we all need wriggle room and adjustment in order to make these transitions. So many of the points you make are valid, and most people don't understand them at the level of actually getting into the paddock and making it happen (it being food production) it is a high labour high costs - yet low funded low return part of this equation. When someone tells us all finally they are willing to pay the true cost of growing good food to farmers then we can talk about removing the low cost requirements to making it happen.
I sort of feel it's unnecessary to justify your use of a tractor which you obviously thought about long and hard about with sensitivity to all the harms it causes. I can imagine most farming critics are the sort that justify an international weekend getaway via a cheap airline because they've been crunching numbers so hard in the office.
To get back to a farming that causes much less harm it's gonna need a whole lot more effort by the whole of our societies. Farmers can't and shouldn't be doing it alone. Like you've often said.
My Mum back in Australia recently sent me a photo of a memorial statue of two farmers loading bags of wheat onto a lift conveyor, stacking them neatly onto a truck. Hundreds of bags. This is what my Granddad had to do. Before bulk handling came along (when my Dad was a young farmer) this is what they all had to do, and many other jobs that's very hard on people's bodies. I remember when I was a kid my Dad being away for a few days up in the city hospital having an operation on his back. It really hit home for me how much easier we've made it for ourselves.
I enjoyed this look into your farm operations, I wish you'd write more about it. But don't feel you need to justify your use of plastics or rototillers or whatever. Before people complain about your use of fossil fuels, let them come down to your farm and work for a couple of weeks and see how they like it now.
Thanks Chris, I think about the same questions on our place a lot, and I totally agree, except that I think there are no grounds for you to feel required to defend your frugal practices.
However well we understand the limited future of the current fossil fuel economy, we still live in it, culturally and economically. I’d love to move wood around with bullocks (oxen) instead of a tractor, but this would require someone (else) to make a bullock team a significant part of their life’s work. I’d love to do our forest work with axes and crosscut saws instead of chainsaws, but this would require several more strong (and probably young) people to help with the work for little economic reward. So I use the traditional tools as much as I can, especially in the household economy, but use a car, chainsaws and a tractor as well.
Any attempt we make to move towards a lower energy system is culturally and economically eccentric, and is very difficult to engage other people in - with all their own emotional and economic needs. Shuffling back towards the fossil fuel consumption levels of the 1960s would be a great achievement. Maintaining a golden thread of some skills and technologies from the 1800s is a gift to the future. We can’t make the future, or the past, in the present.
Your attempts to put your logic into practice on your farm deserve curiosity and inquiry, but certainly celebration. It might be creating some less painful paths forward to whatever future we get.
Thanks for the comments - appreciated!
less... 'compared to other farmers'... and more ... 'transitioning towards ecological embeddedness' ... it is going to take time - granted it is the one commodity we are running low on, but its reality, we all need wriggle room and adjustment in order to make these transitions. So many of the points you make are valid, and most people don't understand them at the level of actually getting into the paddock and making it happen (it being food production) it is a high labour high costs - yet low funded low return part of this equation. When someone tells us all finally they are willing to pay the true cost of growing good food to farmers then we can talk about removing the low cost requirements to making it happen.
I sort of feel it's unnecessary to justify your use of a tractor which you obviously thought about long and hard about with sensitivity to all the harms it causes. I can imagine most farming critics are the sort that justify an international weekend getaway via a cheap airline because they've been crunching numbers so hard in the office.
To get back to a farming that causes much less harm it's gonna need a whole lot more effort by the whole of our societies. Farmers can't and shouldn't be doing it alone. Like you've often said.
My Mum back in Australia recently sent me a photo of a memorial statue of two farmers loading bags of wheat onto a lift conveyor, stacking them neatly onto a truck. Hundreds of bags. This is what my Granddad had to do. Before bulk handling came along (when my Dad was a young farmer) this is what they all had to do, and many other jobs that's very hard on people's bodies. I remember when I was a kid my Dad being away for a few days up in the city hospital having an operation on his back. It really hit home for me how much easier we've made it for ourselves.
I enjoyed this look into your farm operations, I wish you'd write more about it. But don't feel you need to justify your use of plastics or rototillers or whatever. Before people complain about your use of fossil fuels, let them come down to your farm and work for a couple of weeks and see how they like it now.
Thanks Chris, I think about the same questions on our place a lot, and I totally agree, except that I think there are no grounds for you to feel required to defend your frugal practices.
However well we understand the limited future of the current fossil fuel economy, we still live in it, culturally and economically. I’d love to move wood around with bullocks (oxen) instead of a tractor, but this would require someone (else) to make a bullock team a significant part of their life’s work. I’d love to do our forest work with axes and crosscut saws instead of chainsaws, but this would require several more strong (and probably young) people to help with the work for little economic reward. So I use the traditional tools as much as I can, especially in the household economy, but use a car, chainsaws and a tractor as well.
Any attempt we make to move towards a lower energy system is culturally and economically eccentric, and is very difficult to engage other people in - with all their own emotional and economic needs. Shuffling back towards the fossil fuel consumption levels of the 1960s would be a great achievement. Maintaining a golden thread of some skills and technologies from the 1800s is a gift to the future. We can’t make the future, or the past, in the present.
Your attempts to put your logic into practice on your farm deserve curiosity and inquiry, but certainly celebration. It might be creating some less painful paths forward to whatever future we get.