Come the Revolution

Archive for the ‘life’ Category

We’re ready. And by “ready,” I mean relatively prepared for all the successes and failures that make up a farming life.

When we moved to Vermont just over a year ago, there wasn’t much we were sure of. We knew that we had work, from mid-April through October, at an organic vegetable farm; we knew we had an affordable apartment with a month-to-month lease; we knew we had each other. Beyond that, a lot of things were up in the air.

For starters, I didn’t know for certain that I would even like farming. I had a hunch that I would, but then I’d also once had a hunch that I’d really like haggis (and I’ll just let you guess how that one turned out). I knew that it would be hard work, and that my wimpy citified muscles and never-leave-home-without-it inhaler were a liability. There was a pretty good chance that I would stink at farm work. Could I hack it?

We also had no idea how long we’d be staying in Vermont. When the season was over, would we be able to find other work? Would we even want to stay in this area? Where would we go next?

The season came and went, and it was as hard as I expected. But I made it through, proved a valuable member of the team (most days), learned so much I felt like I was in grad school, and oh hey — I loved it. I won’t say I loved every minute of it, because there were some minutes that felt like torture. Like, for example, the many hundreds of minutes that we spent planting onions in the unseasonably cold, wet New England spring. Overall, though, it was a good experience, and that good experience has led us to the next step.

We’re looking for a little plot of land of our own.

We’re not looking to buy property right now. Our finances are such that five years ago, someone would’ve certainly tried to sell us on one of those infamous adjustable rate mortgages; now most bankers would probably look at us and laugh. We’re doing respectably well, and might even qualify for a USDA-funded loan, but we see no sense in rushing into a purchase that might not be exactly what we need.

Instead, we’re looking into leasing opportunities in the areas we’d most like to live and work. We’re putting together a business plan, investigating niche markets, and preparing want-ads for local papers. We’re scanning the agricultural internet for opportunities that fit our needs.

Cian, ever the realist, is anxious that I not get my heart set on having our own land to work by next spring, but then he had the same concerns a year and a half ago when we were looking for somewhere to apprentice. I have phenomenal luck and a knack for landing in just the right place, with a little help from friends and providence. So here it is, the official announcement: we’re looking for our Ten Acres Enough, and I just know we’re going to find it.

One of the joys of seasons is that in the fall, when the mercury dips to 48 degrees, we rush to don sweaters and scarves and complain of the chill; in the spring, when the forecast calls for a 48 degree day, we pull the tee-shirts out of our closets with mad glee and dash outside to soak up all the vitamin D our poor, sun-starved bodies can manage.

All winter long, pedestrians stare responsibly down at their own feet, avoiding snow banks, puddles, and patches of ice. You know it’s spring in New England when passersby once again begin to meet eyes and smile. This urge for human contact is stronger in spring than any other time of year, and the exchanged look is acknowledgment of a shared secret: we may be fully-grown adults now, but these first few days of spring still make us want to play hopscotch, or ditch class, or at the very least eat lunch outside.

Everywhere around us we see signs of spring. We hear the peepers at night, calling to each other to come out and play. We see the first shoots of daffodils and crocuses, poking their little green heads out of the ground. Canada geese reverse their arrow and point north once again. Trees begin to blossom, and on campuses across the northeast, college students park themselves on sparse plots of grass to sunbathe in as little clothing as they can bear.

Some part of me goes into hibernation each winter; I exist in survival mode, by putting my head down and pushing, emotionlessly, through the cold and the wet and the absolute dearth of sunlight. I speak no more than I have to and I go out of my way for no one, as though I’m trying to conserve my energy for what’s left of the long New England winter. Last week the temperature reached a whole 48 degrees and I, overdressed in a sweater and a light jacket, made small-talk with a stranger on a street corner. As he walked away I realized: this is my sign of spring.

…Ain’t we got fun?

I am in debt. Quite a bit of it, actually. Cian has debt, too. And we’re not alone: Generation Debt author Anya Kamenetz wrote in 2007 that two thirds of undergrads have an average of $19,300 in educational debt, and undergrads in their final year carry an additional $2,800 in credit card debt. My educational debt puts that figure to shame, and the only reason I’m out of credit card debt is because last year I put every spare penny towards paying off the $7,000 I racked up over the course of my undergraduate career and the year that followed.

Having such serious debt puts limits on the opportunities we can take advantage of. As he weeded through ads in search of farm apprentices this winter, Cian automatically disregarded close to 75% of them — not because of their location or practices, but because their stipend wouldn’t even come close to covering our expenses. We completely understand that small farms can’t always afford to pay as much as they’d like to, and the truth is that there are people (people with trust funds) who can afford to live on a $200 monthly stipend and who will snap up those positions. I’d like to say that I don’t resent those people, but that would big a big ol’ lie. I resent the hell out of those people.

(We also realize that we’re incredibly privileged, and that we’re choosing to work in a sector that doesn’t pay well. Not everyone can choose to leave one job for another that pays less — and in this economy, not many sane people would.)

So anyway, it would be easy to whine and sulk and be bitter over our financial situation. I know it would be easy, because I’ve done it. A lot. But I’m pretty sure it would be healthier to view the circumstances as an opportunity to get creative about money. I have to admit that I got excited last week when I glanced at our Safeway receipt and found that we’d saved almost 50% on basic pantry-stocking items. We also leveraged a family connection to land a free couch for our new place, and Cian found another major piece of furniture on Craigslist for way below what we’d pay anywhere else. My mechanically-inclined Dad is working his connections to find us an affordable, reliable car for our move to the boonies. Working on a farm will help to stretch our food budget, and so will having a larger kitchen in which to store sale items and bulk foods. And there are half a dozen ways for two enterprising young people like ourselves to earn a few extra bucks.

In the end, we were lucky to find a farm that’s a great fit for us. It’s in the zone we want to farm in, it’s well diversified, and several of the growers’ former apprentices are now running other farms. But all of that would have been irrelevant if it wasn’t for the fact that this farm offers employees a living wage. With that stipend, if we defer our loans, we could probably break even without changing our already frugal spending habits. I’m hopeful that with a little creativity and forethought, we can avoid the we’re-broke blues — and who knows, maybe we’ll even come out on top.

Photo by Sun Dazed.

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been some changes in the revolutionary household. My second job, the one that allows me to sock away a little bit per week, dissolved. In the process of tightening our belts a little and the consumer version of Christmas breathing heavily down our necks, we forgot to post!

A tip to counter spending big bucks on holiday cards and candy- it’s already half-price at a lot of stores. Last weekend we picked up a box of 50 greeting cards for $5. It’s a good thing we only paid 10 cents per card because I think (post-mailing this morning, sorry USPS!) we have 3 left. I think we may have to cap the number of people who get cards because sending out 100 a year seems a little stress-inducing, not to mention wasteful.

Tips to counter spending too much on presents- regift and giving food. My brother asked for some books that I happen to have (and have read, and love). I know he will give them a good home, so that will be a big part of his gifts this year. Cousins and close friends also often end up with books, some from my own collection, and they’ve only ever been happier to know that I loved the book first. I found out about my brother’s new book list out only during our conversation on cookies and baking- we have baked for the entire extended family for the past few years. They don’t have the time for baking, and we don’t have the money for presents. Cookies are a good default for everyone since they don’t clutter up the house for more than 3 days and flour/sugar/butter combinations are a lot less expensive than most video games and chachkies.

For the sakes of your local businesses and communities, try to buy local whenever you can. Mall-Wart may seem cheaper, the internet may provide a lower price and low cost shipping, but there’s no one more scared by the current low-grossing holiday season than the local business owners that are worried about paying their rent. Even just a few stocking stuffers from your local bike shop, kitchen store, hardware store, toy store, grocery, and book store can make a huge difference to those businesses.

Lastly, a quotation from my most recently finished book, Ten Acres Enough by Edmund Morris:

“Do not put on a long face because money is not so plentiful as usual —it will not add a single dollar to the circulating medium. Preserve your good-humor, for there is more health in a single hearty laugh than in a dozen glasses of rum. Be happy, and impart happiness on others.”

Lydia Marie Child’s American Frugal Housewife is a classic of 19th century industry and morality. Child was an early feminist and abolitionist steeped in the Transcendentalist movement, and much of her advice to young, less-than-wealthy housewives still rings true today. I picked up a copy while at Sturbridge Village this summer, even though I’m no housewife and, frankly, Cian’s the frugal American in this household. Here are some of Child’s more salient points.

Time is money.

The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. I mean fragments of time as well as materials.

I’m guessing there was nary an idle hand in the Child household. While it’s no longer economical to knit our own stockings in between other tasks, we can still make use of time when our hands or minds would be otherwise unoccupied by knitting for gifts or charity while watching TV or learning a useful language while walking or taking public transportation (or driving, if you can still afford that).

Live well within your means.

No false pride, or foolish ambition to appear as well as others, should ever induce a person to live one cent beyond the income of which he is certain. If you have two dollars a day, let nothing but sickness induce you to spend more than nine shillings; if you have one dollar a day, do not spend but seventy-five cents; if you have half a dollar a day, be satisfied to spend forty cents.

Well would you look at Mrs. Child, preaching the dangers of a credit economy in 1828. She’s right, though. Modern-day frugalists advise us to put away 10% of our earnings which, depending on how much (or how little) you make, may seem to add up v e r y s l o w l y. A more dramatic an adventurous savings method for the seriously committed couple is to live entirely off of one partner’s earnings, and put the other’s directly into savings.

Pick up your twine and paper.

In this family, when the father brought home a package, the older children would, of their own accord, put away the paper and twine neatly [. . . .] If the little ones wanted a piece of twine to play scratch-cradle, or spin a top, there it was, in readiness; and when they threw it upon the floor, the older children had no need to be told to put it again in its place. [. . .] The other day, I heard a mechanic say ‘I have a wife and two little children; we live in a very small house; but, to save my life, I cannot spend less than twelve hundred a year.’ Another replied ‘You are not economical; I spend but eight hundred.’ I thought to myself– ‘Neither of you pick up your twine and paper.’

There are limits to how much twine and paper you can pick up when you live in a (frugally) small space, but this hint has served Cian and I well. He saves plastic utensils from the occasional take-out meal to bring with his brown bag lunch, and I wash and save the tubs that soft cheeses come in to store my own yogurt cheese in. Ah, plastic: the modern day twine and paper.

An apple a day. . .

Avoid the necessity of a physician, if you can, by careful attention to your diet. Eat what best agrees with your system, and resolutely abstain from what hurts you, however well you may like it.

Doctors are expensive (and also, in case you hadn’t noticed, the sky is blue). Stay healthy by exercising, eating well, and maintaining proper hygiene (and by walking carefully down stairs) and, hopefully, you’ll save on doctors bills. Knowing how to deal with everyday illnesses at home is also useful, and Child provides a fairly extensive list of remedies. You might want to rely on something a little more recent.

Choose your lot.

Says Germanicus, ‘There is my dunce of a classmate has found his way into Congress, and is living amid the perpetual excitement of intellectual minds, while I am cooped up in an ignorant country parish, obliged to be at the beck and call of every old woman, who happens to feel uneasy in her mind.’

‘Well, Germanicus, the road to political distinction was as open to you as to him; why did you not choose it?’

‘Oh, I could not consent to be the tool of a party; to shake hands with the vicious, and flatter fools.’

Since Germanicus is wise enough to know the whistle costs more than it is worth, is he not unreasonable to murmur because he has not bought it?

Could you be earning more money than you are now? I could be, if I was willing to make certain sacrifices. I tried that; it made me an unhappy person. So I elected to do what makes me happy, for less money. We’re still comfortable, paying our debts and putting money into savings, but things are definitely tighter. But you won’t hear me complain: I’ve chosen my lot. Not all of us have the luxury of choice, but to the best of our ability we should choose what makes us happy, whether that’s a fat bank account or more leisure time or even (perish the thought!) goats, and then get down to the business of living well.

“Camels eat grass; grass needs water. So did their masters’ crops, whose bounty begat a population boom of humans. More humans needed more herds, pasture, fields, and more water—all just at the wrong time. No one could have known that the rains had shifted. So people an their flocks range farther and grazed harder, assuming that the weather would return to what it had been, and that everything would grow back the way was.
It didn’t. The more they consumed, the less moisture transpired skyward and the less it rained. The result was the hot Sahara we see today. Only it used to be smaller:Over this past century, the numbers of Africa’s humans and their animals have been rising, and now temperatures are, too. This leaves the precarious sub-Saharan tier of Sahel countries at the brink of sliding into the sand.”

Alan Weisman wrote this in his book The World Without Us, which provides not only a view of the constructive destruction the Earth would offer human structures should humans disappear (say, were we wiped out by a deadly virus) but also a history of the world from archaeological, anthropological, botanical, and agricultural standpoints. As a nerd, this book is completely engaging- I felt as though my knowledge of the world was expanding simultaneously in every direction. It engaged every aspect of my knowledge and comprehension of the world.

It was also refreshing, and terrifying. Refreshing knowing the earth would reclaim much of the surface damages caused by humans within a few hundred years. Terrifying that it could not reclaim all of the damages.

Last night, NPR’s All Things Considered discussed the recent republican ploy apparently newsworthy issue of Obama’s comparison of McCain and W’s positions. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig, he said: it’s still a pig. Then, even though McCain had said the same thing about Hillary Clinton’s health care platform mere months ago, someone at the McCain camp thought it would be a brilliant idea to take the phrase out of context and make it sound like Obama had in fact been referring to the Repub’s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

I am so disgusted by politics at this point that none of this surprises me, and I almost turned the radio off. I’m glad I didn’t — I would have missed this absurd clip of Joel Salatin (of Polyface Farm in Swoope, VA) putting lipstick on a pig. Literally.

It’s so funny that whenever mainstream media talks about Salatin, they say “Made famous by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” The farmer had written half a dozen books by the time Pollan’s book came out — he’s been famous in certain circles for a long, long time. I wonder who he’ll vote for? He strikes me as a libertarian, but I wouldn’t be shocked if he voted for McCain.

For the record: Salatin told NPR that when you put lipstick on a pig? It is, in fact, still a pig.

Photo: johnmuk.

As you, dear readers, may or may not know, I recently left my job as a blogger at an environmental organization here in DC. There were a lot of reasons why it made sense for me to move on, but — now listen here — being burnt out on “green” is absolutely not why I left. Honestly.

But I am burnt out. I’m so burnt out that one more poorly-written email pitch from a PR firm representing a “green” freakin’ car company could have sent me over the edge. You would have found me slouched on the pavement outside of McDonald’s, PFC-coated burger wrappers and supersized milkshake cups strewn around me, shouting about how global warming is a hoax perpetrated by Al Gore.

Here, in no particular order, the things that drive me crazy:

“Green” everything. Sometimes, green makes sense. Green travel, for instance — that’s a great way to describe a style of traveling that an eco-savvy audience might be interested in. But your SUV that gets 20 miles to the gallon? It’s NOT GREEN. Just stop.

The same tips, over and over and over. If one more freakin’ eco-websites tells me to switch to CFLs! I can’t be held responsible for my actions. If you’re going to write tips, make them good. Original. Useful. Just read Allie for a while, and then try again, okay?

Pictures and stories of drowning polar bears. I get this one. I really do. Playing on peoples’ emotions makes them more likely to pay attention. But honestly, I’m just not strong enough to read about it every day, and going through tissues at this rate can’t be environmentally friendly (but hey, at least they’re recycled).

Complaining about the current administration. I’ve done my fair share of this, especially at the afore-mentioned job. It’s not that there isn’t plenty to complain about. After a while it just loses its purpose. Yep, they’re screwing up, and we’ll be cleaning up after them for years to come. Complaining about it day and and day out isn’t going to fix it. It’s just going to make me want to throw things.

Awesome New Recycled Chairs and Other Things You Don’t Need! A certain major eco-blog (you know the one) likes to write about “sustainable design,” which basically means “stuff you don’t need and probably can’t afford that won’t actually fix this problem we’ve gotten ourselves into.” I like cool stuff as much as the next girl, but we can’t shop our way out of this, and seeing consumerism represented as sustainable living drives me to drink (but only the finest organic vodka, of course).

Ah. . . I feel better already. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Photo by Two Stout Monks.

Earlier today I was listening to Alternative Radio on NPR and there was a discussion of the privatization of water. I knew the plot on which I was standing used well water- as most places in rural America do. I knew that DC’s water comes from the Potomac (and, after treatment, is released into it again post-consumer-use). I didn’t know, however, who owned the reservoir that fed my parents’ tap water. I didn’t know who had kept me well-hydrated during college or the various other places I’ve lived for short times. I had always assumed that the municipal water was just that- municipal. Clearly this was a normal, but often erroneous assumption. A little research remedied these questions, but it led to some larger discussions.

Come the revolution, what will be the status of water? Of those who “own” water? Will the corporations who own potable water be the ones who run the world? Will the people revolt? Will this be the violent aspect of what I see as an otherwise non-violent change of culture? Could the futures of some people in this world resemble that of such science fictions as Tank Girl?

Honestly, there’s little way to know. What I can say is that there are ways to better deal with these possibilities in the future. One of them, of course, is to organize. The more people know about where their water comes from and whose hands it passes through, the better prepared people will be to defend municipal holdings. There will likely be a lot more privatization of water before it stops, especially if people aren’t willing to pay a bit more to fix and update the infrastructure that has been repeatedly forgotten by politicians over the past few decades.

I, for one, think my taxes should be going to fixing the infrastructure for municipal water and funding education instead of various other things, particularly misplaced farm subsidies and military aggression, but that’s just me.

Find out more at Food and Water Watch.

Photo by Snap.

When I first read Better Off, Eric Brende’s memoir of 18 months in an Anabaptist community, I was left dissatisfied.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the book. I found it entertaining and full of food for thought, and I’m a sucker for any book that gives me a glimpse into another culture. Still, I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to. It just didn’t resonate.

So when I saw that Cian had posted a review of the book, I decided to give it another read and see if it improved with time.

I read the book over the past week, mostly while traveling by plane and train (but not on the bus, which makes me sick). I felt a little silly reading a book about “flipping the switch on technology” while playing the part of the jet-set traveler. Brende approaches his lifestyle experiment from a philosophical standpoint — in fact, it was the subject of his master’s thesis for MIT’s Science, Technology and Society program — and the hint we get of his critical analysis of our use of technology is enough to make it clear that he’s really, really thought about this stuff.

But Better Off isn’t a master’s thesis. Instead, it’s a look at the reality of a life with less technology. In some ways, it’s obvious: if we didn’t have electric lights, we’d go to bed earlier and feel a lot less tired when the time came to get up and milk the cows. Other realizations, like the strengthening effect of limiting technology on community, were more enlightening.

In one remarkable passage, Brende concludes that even the community’s limited technology might be too much. While threshing wheat destined for animal feed, he realizes that his neighbors wouldn’t even need so many horses if they weren’t harvesting so much wheat — and they wouldn’t need so much wheat if they weren’t feeding so many horses. They were just, as one local put it, “turning the machine.”

I was most of the way through the book before I realized why I’d been dissatisfied the first time. In his review, Cian mentioned the apparent ease with which Brende and his wife Mary fell into traditional gender roles in their new home, despite Mary’s professed desire not to be backed into “women’s work.” When he discusses their division of labor, Brende brushes away Mary’s concerns nonchalantly:

“She was perfectly happy puttering around the house; what had bothered her in her youth was less domesticity than the feeling it had been artificially imposed upon her.”

In the passage that follows, Brende comes home from his work hungry and finds that Mary hasn’t made dinner. They have an argument, and Mary shows more personality in those short paragraphs than in any of the other 230 pages.

And that, I finally realized, was why I felt so dissatisfied with the book the first time around. Brende paints his neighbors to life with words, while his wife and co-conspirator is left entirely two dimensional. What an experience this must have been for her! What was she thinking all that time? I won’t spoil any surprises, but some pretty serious stuff happens for Mary during their stay — and we don’t hear at all how she felt about it. Brende’s character-treatment of his wife makes her little more than an obedient helpmate, the sidekick to his hero adventure. I hope that, if Cian ever writes a book, he’ll portray me as a real person with depth and personality, and not just a backdrop.

So yeah, that was a bummer. Overall, Better Off is a quick and interesting read with implications for the way we live our lives, wherever we are. Are you running the machine, or is it running you?

Photo by Cindy47452.