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Posted on June 23, 2025 | 58 Comments
A commenter under my last post wrote ‘all eyes on Gaza from now on’. I’m not sure exactly what he meant, but recent world events suggest that all eyes also need to be on Washington, DC as well as Tehran and Jerusalem. Probably Moscow, Kyiv, Beijing and the Straits of Hormuz as well.
It’s hard to keep your eyes on all these places all at the same time. And, even if you do, there’s very little impact you can have on the decisions that are made in and about them. In fact, I’d argue that giving our attention to the power plays of global political centres can help feed their pathologies, which is one reason I don’t write about them much anymore. That and the fact that I don’t have much to say about their specifics that other more expert commentators don’t say better.
I do have some things to say about the generalities of political power centres, and I say them in my forthcoming book. So enough on that for now. Perhaps the only opinion I’ll venture on current world events is that the view I’ve often heard about Donald Trump being different from other US presidents in his domestic focus and refusal to play global war games is now safely in the bin.
Okay, perhaps just one other opinion – current events aren’t really helping the case of those who think nuclear energy has a big role to play in tackling global environmental problems.
But instead of all that, I’m going to focus in this post on more local and parochial matters, emerging from this comment from Walter under my last one: “By the way, I don’t know what a clown farmer is. Perhaps it is someone who has to have a second income and goes to festivals and the like?”
My intention isn’t to single out this remark for criticism so much as just to use it as a point of departure, but I guess I’d say that in my experience most farmers across most scales have a second income of one sort or another – part and parcel of the desperate economics of the food sector and, by extension, the modern world. Going to festivals and the like I confess is rarer within the profession, and perhaps a little more clownish. I’m not much of a festival goer myself, so I’d have happily been able to exempt myself from such accusations of clownery but for the fact that, as you can see, I’m going to the Glastonbury Festival next week.
All I’ll say in my defence is that I’m in the fortunate position of having a free ‘Performer’ ticket, and I’ll be making the case for small-scale agrarian localism in a couple of talks there. I never dreamed when I started this blog that it would lead to a Glastonbury performance, but there we have it. So, if you happen to be at the festival do join me to discuss finding lights in a dark age at the Speaker’s Forum at 11am on Friday. And also talking about ‘Food Security in a Changing Climate’ at 2pm next Sunday. Originally this was slated to be a discussion between me and the Labour MP Clive Lewis, one of the best among that bad bunch, but it now looks like it’s just going to be me on my lonesome. So do join if you can.
But let me get back to this question of who qualifies as a ‘real’ farmer, rather than merely one of the clowning variety. This is something I’ve wrestled with in my writing and in my self-identity over the years. In ways I won’t rehash again here, I think our society puts too much weight on the term ‘farmer’, and still more on ‘real farmer’. One reason I’ve embraced the identity of ‘farmer’ is to push back against this, but I’ve sometimes felt uncomfortable when others represent me as an example of that revered and semi-mythical being, the real farmer. Clown farmer is probably closer to the mark, to be honest.
A point I make in my forthcoming book is that comedy and clownery are serious things, so perhaps ‘clown farmer’ is in any case an identity I can seriously embrace. There’s a lot of online chat in the alternative farming space that dismisses people as hobbyists who, in contemporary parlance, are seen as merely ‘larping’ or ‘cosplaying’ at farming. But why stop at farming? The modern world and the kinds of things it places value on is one big cosplay as far as I can see. At least cosplaying as a farmer is kind of on the right track.
Anyway, I don’t mean to sound too defensive about all this. The superpower of the clown is the ability to laugh at themselves. I could do with a bit more of that, and so could our society. A clown farmer in a clown society is good enough for me.
Still, as I said, clowning is a serious matter. The late, great anarchist anthropologist David Graeber has had a big influence on me in his view that the modern epoch erred when it forgot about the comedy of political power claims (Mikhail Bakhtin is another influence along those lines). Perhaps the idea of being a ‘real farmer’ involves something similar, albeit further down the power hierarchy than such comic claims as being ‘prime minister’, ‘president for life’, or ‘his excellency’.
Another influence on me and another late and great was my permaculture teacher, Patrick Whitefield. I liked his definition of ‘farming’ – not a job, not physical work, not some time-honoured country club with exclusive membership, but a way of observing the landscape and thinking through the intertwined human and natural ecologies lying latent within it.
Which neatly segues into my second general theme for this post. Last weekend I went hiking and bird-watching in Eryri (Snowdonia, North Wales) with my son. Then on Sunday (father’s day) we went rock-climbing. It wasn’t exactly a festival, but it certainly involved some clowning around on my part. Here’s a picture my son took of me on the route. I’m the guy in the white hat, because – clown or not – I’m always the good guy in all of my stories. And actually it’s a helmet, not a hat, because it’s the good guys that get all the flak.
The route is graded ‘Very Difficult’, which in the strange world of British climbing grades means it’s very easy. It was first climbed in 1905, when it probably was very difficult with the knowledge and equipment available then. The last time I was there was thirty-odd years ago when I tried leading it with ice axes and crampons as a winter route. It was too warm, wet and unfrozen, and I was beaten back by a waterfall pouring through a gully I had to climb. Still, that effort was way more badass than my exploits last weekend, where I wobbled up the route with a tight top rope from above courtesy of my fearless son. So maybe there’s a theme here along the lines that the good clown needs to grow old gracefully and learn when it’s time to hand on the clowning to younger generations. Anyway, I’m glad I did the route with him. Though next father’s day I might just ask for a bottle of whisky instead.
Another theme emerges from the historical timing of the route’s first ascent. Mountaineering developed as a leisure pursuit in Britain in late Victorian and Edwardian times. This was partly because Britain’s industrial and colonial economy had only then accumulated enough surplus for some people at least to be able to fritter away their time climbing mountains for no practical purpose (climbing remained an upper-class pastime until after World War II, when a new generation of working-class climbers from the northern cities pushed standards forward).
But the emergence of mountaineering in that era was also partly a Romantic reaction to the march of that very industrial economy that made it possible – finding a peace and a meaning in nature and wild spaces, and in testing oneself against non-human forces like rock and gravity, with their beautiful indifference to our human sense of self-importance and progress. Also, escaping the restricted, tamed and monolithic routines of an over-humanised and consumption-oriented everyday life. In that sense, mountaineering sits within a Romantic tradition that also invests the contemporary conservation and rewilding movement (note the capital ‘R’, by the way – it’s important!)
Heading down from the climb through Cwm Llugwy, our main companions on the mountainside were sheep, some of them nosing around ruined old stone pens. The long association in these parts between human, dog and sheep that’s enabled people to coax high-quality food and fibre from these wet, infertile hills is to my mind one of the more awe-inspiring achievements of human science.
Across the other side of the Ogwen Valley, my son and I had hiked up Y Garn through Cwm Idwal the previous day. Cwm Idwal, as I understand it, has been cleared of its sheep for the last twenty odd years to protect its subarctic flora and promote the regrowth of trees. It did seem slightly more scrubby than when I used to visit in the salad days of my youthful climbing exploits. Only slightly, but then nature moves to a different rhythm than impatient humans. Also, contrary to the billing, we saw quite a lot of sheep in the cwm. Somebody is paid, I think, to keep clearing these marauders from the cwm, but I daresay it’s not an easy task.
On my way home, I saw a roadside sign – ‘NO to Rewilding: Save Taxpayers Money’. I’ve written before about the great rewilding debate and I don’t plan to rehearse all the issues here. Suffice to say I’m not averse to the idea of cutting sheep numbers in the Welsh hills, provided there’s some like-for-like redress elsewhere in the economy – cutting traders in the City of London, for example. But I do wish the pro-rewilding camp would take more trouble to see the Romantic roots of their own position, and the oddness from an agrarian perspective of paying farmers not to practice forms of local farming that cannot be dismissed themselves as a romantic carryover from the past.
A final observation to close. I’ve been making some modest efforts to learn Welsh lately for various reasons. One of them arose from Carwyn Graves’s book Tir and his remarks in it about the Welsh language and the way it richly encodes knowledges of nature and human implication in the landscape (I have quite some way to go before I’m in a position to comment further about that). Another is that I’ve visited Wales often for many years without ever feeling the need to learn anything about this other and more ancestral language of southern Britain. Alas only recently has that struck me as quite arrogant.
As I said, I have a long way to go yet, but I was pleased to be able to pick out a few words on this recent trip. A man in a whitewashed cottage called Tŷ Gwyn was pottering around its small ornamental garden as I passed. How on earth have I spent all these years in this country without even knowing what that meant? Coming back to the theme of my opening sentences, I only wish other men in other Tŷ Gwyns (sorry, Tai Gwyn) were likewise tending to their own gardens.
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I did not get the clown farming comment either. I figured it was AutoCarrot thinking it knew better.
Real farming is hard to define. Perhaps making a living and leaving a little piece of the world in better shape than you found it. Creating a sustainable system for producing food, fiber and fuel.
Politics here are a mess. Mostly it seems to be about gathering power, stealing everything that you can and staying out of jail. It is not about a better life for we the people.
Ahhh Glastonbury , went to the first one , good music , good weather , good cider , soft ditches , good times !
Loved the climbing photo.
The “restricted, tamed and monolithic routines of an over-humanised and consumption-oriented everyday life” could apply to the ecomodernist type of city living I am trying to preemptively escape. It could also apply to the reasons why festivals like Galstonbury’s are popular “escapes”.
Although, like the rating of that climb, it’s “very difficult” to escape a consumption-orientation, as such festivals usually require tickets, and mountaineering usually requires gear and travel, etc.
Like that climb, the “very difficult” escape could someday become “very easy” with a turn to a localized agroecology, leading to fulfilling lives with orientations that balance the production and consumption aspects.
margiprideaux.substack.com/p/the-hands-that-sustain-us-on-skill?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Thought you all would like to read this from a blog I follow .
I liked it and subscribed to her blog.
Chris you splendid chap! I learned some beginner’s Welsh a few years ago, when I was hoping to work at the Centre For Alternative Technology – well that was my excuse, really I just wanted to do it, because I wanted to do it. It’s a lovely language – with a thought-provoking grammar. Though I’m also aware that I’m just some mad english git. Still, it’s the ancestor of the ancient language that was spoken in what is now england … so not unreasonable to learn a little of it.
Anyway, I can now pronounce the names on maps with some confidence and without going all “ooh, how do you say that? There aren’t any vowels!” and I can still construct some basic phrases, and understand odd sentences in overheard conversations.
The note about the old man pottering about in his garden was a good wrap-up to a well-done, widely-ranging article. Do we need to BE farmers? Of course not. We just need to grow food. And then the pottering about sometimes scales up too. Sometimes I grab a cup of coffee and go out to the garden to check on things. “I’ll just be a minute,” I say. Then, two or three hours later I come back in for another cup of coffee or a bite to eat or to maybe read something. It is fashionable nowadays to say that the System is running on auto-pilot and out of our control. Nate Hagens calls it the Superorganism. If you follow this idea, keep in mind that mindlessly “pottering about” in your garden gets a lot of positive things done, just as “pottering about” at a phoney-baloney office job keeps the System chugging along in its current negative manner. One does not have to be fully engaged and indeed, most of the time us humans seem to be on auto-pilot, going through the motions, mimicing the cultural behaviors that were foisted upon us by our parents and peers. BUT if you cannot be engaged at every moment, you can pick the things upon which you “potter about.”
[Side note: This idea of the Superorganism owes some credit to Alfred Kroeber’s idea of the superorganic back in 1917. That is, Culture with a capital “C,” existing outside of us; instead of culture with a small “c” that is housed in each individual. I reject both Hagens’ and Kroeber’s concepts, mostly due to the problems of reification and determinism. Per his own admission, Nate’s bias in anthropology comes from Marvin Harris and cultural materialism, which is widely critiqued as deterministic. The sequence therefore is: superorganic –> cultural materialism –> superorganism.]
We don’t need to have a fully-fledged theory or some grandiose nomenclature. We just need to grow food.
… and also, this term “identity” which you used:
my self-identity over the years…. the identity of ‘farmer’
“identity” can be a useful, even necessary concept, but tbh, it has been inflated to the point that it has become unhelpful. I don’t think there’s any need to “struggle” over “your identity” because how does “your identity” differ from “the way you describe yourself”? In this context, “identity” is redundant – you do what you do – grow stuff to eat and sell some of it. No biggie. Is it perhaps residual angst over how other people “see” you?
I’m probably not sounding very clear about this …
You have touched on a very important point Martin. We now struggle with identity politics, having exchanged issue politics for identity politics a long time ago. I saw this happening in the Left in the US around 1973. (It may have started earlier, but I didn’t pick up on it until 1973.) This could be linked to ending the military draft I suppose, but 50+ years later, identity politics has given us a false focus, which wastes a lot of time and energy that could instead be used to solve problems. (Or “adapt to predicaments” if you follow the false dichotomy of Chris Martenson and others.) While the Democraps in the US fall into the pit of identity politics, the Repooplicans still have a ground game and spend their time accumulating power at the local, state and federal level. They do this by focusing on issues! One could probably make a similar argument about Labour and Reform UK in the United Kingdom. As for France, there is more focus on issues and the LFI (La France Insoumise) seems to be working on the ground but are constantly suppressed by the center-right and even the socialist/green center left. To be blunt, identity politics = impotent politics.
People (generally people who are not agricultural workers themselves) call me a farmer if they are impressed with my horticultural yields or wish to flatter me, and a hobby gardener if they want to belittle the significance of how much food comes forth from the land I tend and the patches I forage, often for the sake of some tired argument about how only large-scale extractive monoculture industrial farming can feed the world. The map is not the territory; the labels are not the person. Neither of these labels really encompasses the whole of who I am (which would also need to include musician, crafter, transport cyclist and preacher, among others), just like “farmer” doesn’t really describe your activities as a writer or previous career as an academic. So I don’t tend to wrong my hands over it too much. Instead, I hope people identify me as thoughtful, caring, and generous — and that I live up to such impressions. These labels matter more to me than whether someone thinks eating a squash-based diet because that’s what grew well last year is a valid winter activity.
All that said, I like “subsistence gardener” quite a bit for myself, though, even if I’m not sure I meet the technical definition of subsistence (some definitions seem to be based on the proportion of produce that goes to the household rather than being sold at markets, while others say it isn’t subsistence unless at least 50% of your food intake is your own produce, and it isn’t always clear whether that means calories or volume); I think it captures that I am producing primarily for my own household, that I am producing substantial quantities for my own household, and that there are entire categories of food I just don’t purchase any more because we grow them instead. (Now that the harvest is in I can say it looks like we’re good for garlic this coming year, which is a relief after the 2024 “it all rotted, even in the raised beds” crop failure. And I’ve been through the ever-changing list of other things I no longer purchase before: berries, French beans, runner beans, beetroot, celeriac, Jerusalem artichokes, plums, winter squash, winter squash, winter squash, winter squash…. I brought home 2.5kg of cherries the other week and pitted and froze around half, so we’ll have those to look forward to. And I don’t want to speak too soon but the fancy grape vine in the back garden, unproductive in its first few years, is this year loaded with fruit.)
At the allotment, people will refer to another plot holder approvingly as “a good grower” and I have found myself mentally applying the term “grower” in other contexts. Some neighbours on my street are away at the moment and the person they have in to cat-sit is not managing to keep up with irrigating their garden, which seems ornamental at first glance but actually has squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, mint, sage, rosemary, runner beans, rhubarb, raspberries, a fig tree and a pear tree. I did some auxiliary checking on the cats today, and ended up coming home with some raspberries and peppers. My neighbour, despite generally not thinking of herself as a food producer, is a grower, albeit one who goes away for several weeks in summer, which I can hardly fathom.
I do very much enjoy the podcast “Two Clowns in a Closet”, in which two clowns answer listener questions about….well, clowning, but also performance art in general. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn just how serious the art can be.
Enjoy Glastonbury — I’ve never been — and enjoy learning Welsh!
culling sheep- well,….. be it sheep or traders ( or lawyers!) , culling can have various goals and often unexpected outcomes. A biome’s timescale is hard for us clever apes to sit still long enough to get a fix on where things are going.
And so it is with determining what avocations, social priorities, and acts we choose now will be for the better in seven generations. More than ever we are a short sighted culture that only sees what is on our screens and gives a bit of endorphin rush. We truly are cosseted in ease and comfort well beyond that of the Edwardian era.
I think all here would advocate for a new emphasis on the practical and local, but we are decidedly a minority. Hopefully Chris’ efforts will bear fruit.
no true farmer- An important topic around these parts, as back to the landers, conventional farmers, state legislators all have a different opinion on what farming is and where it should be heading. An uneasy patchwork evolves………
I think it is ok for a range of methods to be explored, many hobby farmers and recent inhabitants like myself are trying to break the extractive commodity model, but what was the right approach 400 years ago is not fully known, and the terrain is different now anyway. Over time, we will figure out a new equilibrium. Plus, it is might hard to fully disengage from the status quo.
I like Greg’s simple definition of farming, but human hierarchies for centuries have commandeered the farm output to feed nonfarmers and left farmers as the bottom of the power structure. How odd that the ones working to provide the very foundation of more complex societies get shafted so often.
In related sheep news, our neighbors, who have slowly been building their sheep flock, and have now agreed to run a rotation through our field. We moved them over this week. This will be the first time domesticated animals have grazed there in like 40 years. It was in soybeans when we bought he place, and has been in hay and nut trees for the last 12 years.
Well done on getting up that scary-looking ‘rock’, Chris! 20+ years ago I helped a 70 year old woman climb the not-so-scary rock which overlooks the valley I now live in. (No ropes required.) At one point I was pulling her from above while her son Jeph pushed from below. When she got to the top she said happily “My other sons wouldn’t let me do this, but Jeph encourages me!” Way to go…
Your linkage of mountaineering with upper-class ‘recreation’ of the late 19th century put me in mind of leafing through a copy of Edward Fitzgerald’s 1896 book ‘Climbs in the New Zealand Alps’, which had been annotated in pencil by a New Zealand mountaineer. He noted that Fitzgerald’s NZ guides had been airbrushed out of the photos of Fitzgerald’s ascent of Aoraki Mt Cook. (Probably because one of them had been up the mountain before him – the first ascent thereof – and he was a plumber by trade.) Details in this story – Peak performance
‘Maoriland alpinists’ take top prize – https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/peak-performance/
I agree with Walter that ‘identity’ is a political dead-end – we are all multiple beings who do multiple things. But insofar as issues have been linked to identities, and are multiple as well, they also look like an increasingly blind political alley to me. (Much more could be said on this, but too much for a blog post!)
Thanks for the comments, as interesting as ever. I will respond next week, and also report back on my Glastonbury experiences.
Unsettled science . as in new research .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/19/earth-temperature-global-warming-planet/
” At its hottest, the study suggests, the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) — far higher than the historic 58.96 F (14.98 C) the planet hit last year.”
The clown in question may well be at Glastonbury himself, his name is Barney and he studied at a famous Clown School in Paris, fell in love and through a process of divination found the land we visited in the Ariege. He came to animal and land husbandry later on in life.
Great post, amazing climbing skills, good luck at Glastonbury. If you find your way up to ‘the Green Crafts Field’, look out for a wagon with aluminium can tiled roof (silver) and say Hi to James, a lovely forester from Wiltshire ( I’m sending him to your talk also!), sadly we are not there this year – we have our own clown farming to do with the rabbits!
My mother was born to English parents in Sketty and my father spent just over 10 years living in Cardiff and Swansea. As children we holidayed in a farm near Cardigan so I feel at home in Wales.
By contrast my wife – a Scot wont visit without me as she cant pronounce the place names!
I was just looking up another well known farmer who you may well be meeting soon, Michael Eavis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Eavis
Interesting to see that he went to sea with Union Castle (A posh liner company) with the plan of serving for 20 years so he would have a pension to subsidise the farm in his later years. That didnt work out as his father died and he ended up as a miner in the Somerset Coalfields instead to help fund the farm – labour shortages plagued tghe latter years of the coalfield
I’ve gone back and forth on the farmer label myself. Out here if you mention farming the next question is how many acres? And then you have to say less than 1 and fight to be included in the farmer group. Of course you can also get into a good conversation sometimes when you explain you’re growing 2,000lb+ of vegetables and really how much food do they think one person needs to grow? etc. Organic farmer got closer to the mark.
I used to use the metric of if you grow enough food to sell to people you’re a farmer. But since I think food needs to be de-coupled from the commodity market now I’m considering if you grow food for people you’re a farmer full stop. (Conversely the ethanol corn growers(?) would be out)
I’m not sure about grower as I don’t do any of the growing, that’s all credited to the plants.
This has all been complicated by the fact that I’m not farming/growing/tending as much this year and have also shifted to foraging more, and now I’m wondering why we ever bothered with the work of farming? It feels like a whole new world despite the fact I’ve lived here for decades and already considered myself pretty plant savvy.
I’ve also considered the idea of subsistence-farmer, and just simply peasant. The latter mostly thanks to you.
At some point yes it’s all just words that don’t capture the reality. But if we’re going to try and make room for a SFF even in small ways, people need to be able to picture those farms, and the farmers to go with them. (And be able to see themselves among them)
Congratulations on your climbing endeavors, sometimes just being outside is more important than any farming.
My one brief trip through Wales I detoured to go by Llyn Ogwen and I have to say I loved Welsh mountains/highlands. The park ranger seemed very concerned with letting me know the wind gusts might be as high as 40mph that day, which a younger me dismissed being from the Great Plains. To no ill effect at the time but I might have more respect now.
I must say I’m surprised about the only recent learning of Welsh, it seems like a good way to be in and off a place.
And a little good news , Texas along with 7 other states has made it illegal to manufacture or sell fake meat ( aka goop ).
I’m back from Glastonbury with a lot to digest and my in-tray piling up, so just a brief comment in response to those above for now, and hopefully more sometime soon.
Thanks for the informative contributions to the farmer/identity discussion. Indeed, the difficulty mostly comes when I have to represent myself or am represented by others in public settings usually connected with my writing, where I can’t find a single word others would likely recognise to describe doing what I do. My friend P calls himself a trainee peasant, but that scarcely ticks the ‘would likely recognise’ box.
The wider discussion about identity politics and the direction it’s taken politically is also very interesting to me. There was a lot of politics at Glastonbury (see the newspapers), and I’m wrestling with how to make sense of some of this stuff. I continued my slow progress through Musa al-Gharbi’s fascinating book ‘We Have Never Been Woke’ while at Glastonbury, which kind of added to my sense of mental dissonance.
Great points from Walter on pottering about, and also on Nate Hagens and the superorganism. I hadn’t thought much about the lineage from the likes of Marvin Harris (and ultimately from Marxism) lying behind that idea. Perhaps a distinction to explore is the idea of the superorganism as a cultural ideology, where I think Walter’s criticism bites, and as a kind of autonomous material being – it’s really difficult to tame the fossil energy and material guzzling beast, even if you really want to.
On which note, the Energy Institute’s 2024 figures were released while I was at Glastonbury. I’ll write a post about them soon, but the TLDR is nothing to see here – more fossil fuel use and carbon emissions than ever before, and the much heralded ‘transition’ postponed for at least another year.
Regarding Welsh, re bluejay’s point yeah I feel a bit bad that I’m so late on it … on the other hand, most Welsh people don’t speak it either and a common response I’ve had from family & friends when I’ve mentioned I’m learning it is ‘why?’ Which maybe brings us back to Martin’s point about doing what we do. Hwyl!
Coming as a old hippy I was appalled by this years festival , yes in my time some were protesting the Vietnam war , trying to stop the killing now it seems that killing Jews has become the aim . Stiring up Fachists never helps as we saw in the 1940’s .
I really hope this is the last one , farmers of all political colours should not get involved in antisemitism , it gives bullets to those that already hate farmers . A good anti Fachist rant by the head of a revered festival might do some good .
Anyway I hope to hear more about your time there !
Badly informed, muddled thinking, old gittery. Literally the worst most hilariously depressing old gittery of all. Lorde help us, even Rod.
The era of the Small Farm Future has moved one step closer; with the UK stock market, UK bond market and pound sterling all rattled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s distress in Parliament yesterday (July 2nd). For a look at why I say this, consider the following. 1) If the bond vigilantes and other financial masters of the universe can be rattled by Rachel Reeves’ tears and Keir Starmer’s obliviousness, the UK economic system is under a lot of pressure and unstable at its very core. 2) Starmer has said that Reeves will NOT be sacked (We shall see!) and that her two fiscal rules to get the U.K.’s debt pile and borrowing under control would be implemented. The two rules are that day-to-day government spending will be funded by tax revenues and not by borrowing, and, secondly, that public debt will fall as a share of economic output by 2029-30. Both these rules are not only impracticable, but impossible. 3) This is just one reason I say the UK economic system is hypercomplex, just like the US economic system. Reeves is attempting to institute a complex adaptation when a hypercomplex adaptation is needed. [What that hypercomplex adaptation would be is not in my brief.] Ergo, the UK will implode and collapse just like the US – rather than just contract like Germany and France and Russia and other countries. 4) So . . . given a more desperate decline in the UK and the US, the opportunities for system change will be greater in these two countries than other places on the global map. 5) Consequently, if you live in the UK or US, the faster YOU move into a Small Farm Future at the individual and local levels, the better your life will be. 6) This is not just happy talk either. The only reason I survived a very difficult and dangerous life up to this point is because I did the research and analysis AND because I used it to avoid problems.
I agree entirely , both the UK and the USA plus Europe are in horrendous trouble , the economy is not growing in any useful sense , financial shenanigans make it look good but in real terms aka goods is falling adding services just muddies the water . taxes have hit the wall , higher tax does not mean more revenue , the most simple example is smoking , 50 % of the UK used to smoke , so they taxed it into oblivion , now only 5 % smoke and tax revenue has collapsed . did fewer people die of cancer or heart trouble ? Nope , what they saved in the nhs they spent in pensions instead . higher tax on employment means more redundancies as companies either go bust or move overseas .
Borrowing money only increases the debt load with the interest rates , (1 trillion a year in US debt ) , printing money just lowers its value aka inflation , ( gold has moved from $ 500+ to $3300 in a decade or so ) western economies are circling the drain and they are throwing money at anything
that may give growth , AI is the latest wheeze which I doubt will do anything useful .
Buying land is imho the safest way to insure your future , inflation will drive the cost of land up , buying it locks the price .Hoping you keep your job and get inflation proof pay rises the %pay of the mortgage will come down every year , ( I bought a house that took 40% of my monthly pay just before 1980’s inflation hit in the UK , 12 years later that % dropped to 4_%of my monthly pay ) .
I totally agree with buying a small piece of farmland as the ultimate hedge against economic unraveling, but buying land with debt keeps the purchaser dependent on the rest of the economy for the income needed to pay off the debt. It’s going to be hard enough for smallholders to find the money to pay property taxes, saddling them with debt payments may be too much.
As you say, inflation may come to the rescue of debtors, but putting one’s life in the hands of inflation is very risky, especially if there is a deflationary period before inflation really takes off.
The best thing to do is buy land outright. If everything you have saved, including retirement funds, has to be liquidated to do it, so be it. If you have to borrow, borrow from sources that are unlikely to forclose if you temporarily lose an income stream, like friends and relatives.
Or join forces with other back-to-the-land types and share everything. That process often ends in tears, but in light of what’s coming, the risk of tears may be worth it.
I just feel so fortunate that when my family bought a homestead for the first time in the mid-1970s we were able to do it without debt. It was a slash-covered, logged-over parcel on a mountainside, but it was ours. My wife and I worked for a year after the purchase, saved enough money to buy lumber and built our first house by ourselves. It was small and bare, but it was ours.
Making a homestead was a lot easier fifty years ago, and I pity the young people trying to do it now, but the young should realize that it just has to be done. Every effort must be made to get away from the city and prepare for the end of modernity. Time is short.
I guess my worry is……that if the UK economy crashes, who will defend your “right” to the small portion of land, you have invested in?
It’s the “State” that ultimately grants ownership of land. Once “the law” is no longer enforceable, what’s stopping someone else deciding they want your plot?
You are right to worry John. That is another reason to build community. In strictly pragmatic terms, if YOU have value and the “other” does not, then the community will defend you. There are more creative ways to do this than one can possibly imagine. Helping your neighbors out now will likely have a salutary effect on your situation when you need help. Giving food away now will likely have a salutary effect down the road. Doing something positive to build community now will likely have a salutary effect in the future. This whole community-building schtick some of us have been on for years and years is not just airy-fairy, feel-good pipe dreams. It is a pragmatic, concrete strategy. “Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.” McCartney/Lennon
{I have my own views on the Captain Midnight/home intruder question, but I like to keep it under my hat.]
Regular readers here need no convincing, but in case there are some folks who worry about life in the country, as someone who has lived in a city growing up, I can attest that country living is much better!
Not only is a small farm the safest place possible to face the future, but it’s likely to be the prettiest and most peaceful place you will ever live in. It comes with the added benefit that no gym membership is ever needed.
consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/07/03/someone-elses-job-someone-elses-problem/
This is a eye opener to those that think things will go on as usual , this is the UK but the USA has the same problem .
England is in the painful early stages of De industrialization , all the services are slowly failing , its the canary in the coal mine that the rest of us should watch and learn from .
I would like to clarify your remark. The UK has been going through deindustrialization since the seventies. The real economy of goods and services has shrunk so far that the earnings and taxes raised from it can no longer pay the interest on the debt heaped apon it. What we face in the next few years is the probability of a massive de-finalization. I.e a collapse of the money economy, which can take various forms; bank failure, inflation, collapse in the pound, collapse in tax revenue etc. As Chris says the best way to ride out such calamity is a small farm providing the necessities of life outside the money economy, plus a bicycle! The money economy will come back, but will be much smaller and far more conservative in culture.
For myself, I began reading of the troubles we are now experiencing back in 86. I have a small house paid for. 12 volt PV solar system, wood fired stove and oven, veg and fruit gardens and a five acre woodlot and nut orchard down the road, hence the bicycle!
I look around me, at family and friends who all thought the wealth would never end, and what a shock it will to them when it does. I will help as best I can, but it will be a time of tears.
Yep totally agree , I saw it coming around the same time , jobs started to dry up , workers were blamed for inflation , it seems to be accelerating , finance news is saying Britains no 1 company Astrazenica Britains highest valued company is thinking of moving to the USA . That’s A smack in the eye for the stock exchange .
You have to Want to be a farmer and no matter what anyone else thinks you gotta be ready for a long grind, a lifetime. The stock gets fed twice a day , every day, 365 . If you are a small farmer that task is yours alone and some stock like horses live 30 plus years . Learning your dirt and your weather takes time , raising animals is a joy with intermittent bouts of horror. You may end up carrying a million lbs. of feed and walking tens of thousands of miles in your duties over a few decades of use. But for today the garden is full, the weeds are getting away from me and the soil is as happy as I have ever seen it. The sweet corn is corn green without a hint of yellow. Putting all this in context I am in the process of finishing a hand hoe plot of red Durum , 1350 sq feet, hand harvested , no till, hand threshed and winnowed resulting in 30lbs. cleaned berries so far and another 10-15 lbs. still on the threshing tarp yet to be threshed. A bit less than a bushel of cleaned berries worth $6 at commodity prices. So I am quite pleased with myself and the pasta is quite good . The land is worth a fortune but I will never sell. I am an old farmer.
Happy for you Bruce, but do tell, what is your trick for for pasta made from whole grain flour milled at home? Even with sifting a bit of the bran, my flour still makes wonky pasta.
I’ve done a bit of experimenting myself, will be hand harvesting a bit of oats soon.
http://viridviews.blogspot.com/2020/07/
Glad to hear Bruce and Steve are doing the practical stuff. I cut a bit of volunteer rye today. I also had some volunteer 2-row barley come up in a nice patch from the straw I bought last year and laid down as an after-harvest mulch over a bean plot (4 rows) and a tomato plot (3 rows). (Why there is so much grain left in the straw is not known to me.) I weed-whacked (strimmed) it down and raked the chaff over the corn plot in between (4 rows). So now I have eleven rows of barley chaff with seed. I will let it sit and till it in on a low setting after Septermber 15th. [The common date for fall grain because of the Hessian Fly lifecycle.] The birds will get a bunch of it, but since I only need 10-20% to survive, I anticipate a nice cover crop of barley for next year. The ancillary advantage is that next year I could harvest the barley if I wanted to, just like I could have done this year. The key for me is having extra food sources IF I need them.
I bought a #50 sieve to sift the flour. I use the fine flour for pasta and the bran I keep for pancakes. #50 = 50 holes per inch. I might try a #60 but I need to order one to see. I use 1 1/2 cup flour and two eggs. Make volcano, + eggs , mix then kneed . I roll out the dough with a rolling pin , very thin, try to not use much flour to roll it out. Then roll into a tube and cut , unroll for noodles.
I made 100% buckwheat noodles with water instead of eggs. Buckwheat soba is a real challenge from homegrown buckwheat but the flavor is better when buckwheat is very fresh. I use the same #50 sieve to sift the buckwheat flour. To make noodles you need to dust the noodles with tapioca starch to keep it from sticking together. Making phyllo dough also uses starch to keep the layers from sticking.
@Bruce, Questions:
What are you using to mill your wheat ?
What kind of sift out do you get with a #50 sieve ?
Can you tell how thick the wires are ?
Does it get all the black specks out of buckwheat flour ?
I have never grown or harvested wheat or any grain, so I had to do some internet research for a comment in which I estimated that harvesting, threshing and winnowing of one bushel of wheat with hand tools only would take about one man-day of labor. Does this seem reasonable?
The point of the comment was that one drum of diesel run through a modern combine does the same work as ten years of hand labor. For this reason, I expect agriculture will be the last activity to de-industrialize (except perhaps for water pumping).
Your number of one man-day for a bushel of wheat is reasonable but a bit optimistic. But efficiency increases with growing skill in cutting and threshing, well-managed fields, higher fertility, etc. See my comment below with my results of 4 pounds for an hour of soil prep + an hour of harvesting, threshing and winnowing. That is 2 pounds per hour in total, or 30 hours per bushel. This is still a worthwhile EROI, considering how energy dense wheat and other grains are. Grain growing in the ancient and medieval worlds required a lot of slaves and/or serfs.
Thanks Walter.
Yes, 2 pounds per hour was also my result when hand planting, harvesting, threshing and cleaning wheat on good soil.
But one must be relatively fit physically and not prone to heatstroke.
And yes, the labor was worth it for the bread (and cookies) that resulted.
30,40,50, and 60 are pretty standard sieve sizes. I don’t know the wire gage. I still get black flecks in the buckwheat flour but the fine sieve results in grey/white flour. The course leftovers and shells go to the chickens to sort out. I have an old Excalibur Flour Mill. It is over fifty years old but you can still find them used. It’s an electric stone mill with the gap between the grinding wheels adjustable.
It’s easier for me to explain what I do, and what yields I can get than trying to explain why. Staples that I can dry and store are easy to convert into calories to see how much one man can do re. self sufficiency. The soil seems to like the low/no till and composting efforts. The soil is happy, we are well fed., the soil is well fed , we are happy.
I did some experiments and calculations 15 years ago. In the quotation below, a correction should probably be made of 1550 kilocalories per pound of wheat instead of 1600. Different types have different food values. Also, 125 kilocalories per hour for my labor included all farm activities like doing spreadsheets, selling at market and on the farm, driving to market, packing CSA boxes, etc. A better number for the labor just in production and processing would be 200 kilocalories per hour. This would give an EROI of 15.5:1 instead of 26:1. Halving that would still be an EROI of almost 8:1. As an aside, my calculations for the EROI of slave/serf labor is 8:1. This EROI was advantageous enough to build pyramids and temples. My best EROI for all food produced using my labor and a little bit of gasoline for my tiller was 3.5:1. In 2024, it was 2.03:1. This also includes growing green manure/cover crops and other soil-building activities.
From: Haugen, Walter (2013:49-50) The Laws of Physics Are On My Side, Charleston, SC:CreateSpace.
The ease of growing, cutting, and threshing indicates the time spent growing wheat 10,000 years ago yielded an advantageous energy capture. Since grains have around 1500 kilocalories of energy per pound (1600 for wheat), growing grain (cereals) became an attractive proposition. The latest archaeological theories focus on people harvesting wild cereals (wheat, barley and rye) before the 1200-year cold snap of the Younger Dryas (10,800-9,600 BCE). They then turned to grain growing – not just gathering – as the world warmed up because they already had experience with the benefits of cereals in their diet. This theory can be tested.
Using my hands to pull weeds and a shovel to dig and level, I can dig up 100 square feet in an hour, enough land to grow 4 pounds of wheat (I grew 5.5 lb./100 sq.ft. in 2010 and 3.0 in 2011). In addition to the hour to dig up the ground, I will put in another hour to sow, cut, thresh and winnow these 4 pounds, or 250 kilocalories of labor at 125 kilocalories per hour. For my 250 kilocalories of input, I get 6400 kilocalories of food, an EROI of 26:1. Of course the tools were different in the Neolithic (the term for the agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago), but even if I arbitrarily halved my EROI to account for using a stone shovel and a sickle with microlithic blades instead of a steel shovel and sickle, I get an EROI of 13:1, still a good energy return.
Ian Morris mentions experiments with wild grain foraging from SW Asia yielding a ton of edible seeds from 2.5 acres for an EROI of 50:1. [Footnote: Morris, Ian (2010:85ff), Why the West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, New York:Farrar, Straus and Giroux.] This yield calculates to 800 pounds per acre, or 1.84 pounds of wild grain for 100 square feet, a little under half of my yields. This is not bad, considering there was no soil preparation nor sowing involved, only harvesting. In my present-day example, I get twice as much grain, but put in twice as much work. What stands out in my mind is being able to get more output simply by putting in more labor. This is significant and it really is the foundation of civilization. A final point is that Morris does not mention the technology used, but another series of experiments was conducted in eastern Anatolia in 1966 using a crude sickle with flint blades set in a wooden handle. In this experiment wild emmer wheat was harvested at the rate of 6.25 pounds per hour, which would yield an EROI of approximately 80:1 (1600 kilocalories per pound * 6.25 pounds ÷ 125 kilocalories per hour for the labor to harvest). This seems a little high but my modern experience indirectly validates how easy it could have been to get wild grains from foraging. Also, a yield of 800 pounds per acre compares favorably to Roman yields of 1000 kg/hectare (890 lb/acre).
The most important part of these experiments and my own experiences growing grain is the high EROI due to the kilocalorie density. It is easy to imagine a group of hunter/gatherers taking advantage of these energy-dense grains as part of their seasonal round. Then after a long period of colder weather lasting for 50-60 generations, the grains appeared in abundance once more and people not only harvested but grew the grain. It is also possible people were harvesting grain all through the cold snap of the Younger Dryas, but lived in dispersed communities for which we have little archaeological evidence
Thanks for the interesting ongoing discussions.
Just briefly, on the cereal harvesting point my take home is how easy it is to produce a big nutritional return at any given level of technology. At present, for this reason we have a massive global overproduction of cereals with mechanised methods on cheap but ecologically sensitive land, resulting in a lot of negatives – destruction of small-scale local farming, bad diet, ecological destruction, too much meat, too many biofuels etc.
I don’t think cereal production inherently generates forms of unfree labour – historically that doesn’t really seem to me to be the case. But, as per James Scott’s arguments, the easy surplus is eminently taxable, which does tend to favour centralized politics and forms of status differentiation.
We need to hear it for the grain legumes in this discussion too!
Regarding the UK’s collapse, yes I think it’s one of the more vulnerable of the wealthy countries for a bunch of different reasons, some of them to do with its terrible governance over recent decades, although it’s hardly unique in that. Still, on the political-economic front, I doubt we’ll see collapse restricted for long to single countries.
Regarding Glastonbury and anti-semitism, we-ell, much as I dislike calling for the death of anybody or anything I think conflating a call for ‘death to the IDF’ with anti-semitism involves an ill-judged weaponisation of the latter which could backfire badly, much along the lines of the way it was weaponised by Labour Party centrists to oust Jeremy Corbyn, as critiqued here by the late, great David Graeber: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/first-time-my-life-im-frightened-be-jewish/. The IDF and Jewish people are not the same thing. IMO it’d be good if the IDF weren’t killing so many people at the moment, although of course it’s under instructions from the Israeli government – the latter also being not the same thing as Jewish people.
To be clear, I did not say that “cereal production inherently generates forms of unfree labour.” What I said was, “As an aside, my calculations for the EROI of slave/serf labor is 8:1. This EROI was advantageous enough to build pyramids and temples.” My position over the years has been that cereal production allows the elites to enslave people. There is nothing inherent about it. Çatalhöyük seemed to be marked by equality and a shared increase in wealth. By the time of urbanization in Sumer, this had changed and the elites were in control. Scott’s arguments about taxation as the driver may be valid but it still requires a military or paramilitary police force to enforce taxation. The modern focus on business plans and masses of sheeple just buying into the modernist narrative in order to make a better living than working as a wage slaves does not change the fact that “this world is built on violence” as Bob Dylan once said.
Pulses serve as a cover crop and usually the volume of it is hoed in green because it breaks down quicker. Lima beans are a dry land crop and because you wait till the soil is warm to plant you also know the moisture content . Before agriculture wells became prevalent beans were an important agriculture commodity in S. Cal.
Wheat is planted during wet season , or just before, but once it is in the ground you kinda have to pray for rain. You don’t really know if you will get a crop or not. Limas only go in if there is enough soil moisture to bother planting. So with limas you don’t need to worry about losing your seed but with wheat, around here, it’s a gamble. If the limas just don’t have enough moisture to plant you can plant black eyed peas as a last chance crop as they require the least amount of water.
Pumping water is going to be the modern tech that determines future population density , not tractors IMO. Without pumps much of modern agriculture is no more. Then dry land agriculture and pastoralist herding return, along with black eyed peas I imagine.
In the US, about 40% of irrigation water comes from wells, with the rest presumably coming from gravity fed sources like the canal from which my grandparents got their irrigation water (Owyhee dam and irrigation district). But only about 20% of US cropland is irrigated, which means that 8% of all arable crop land is watered by pumps.
The production of irrigated land is probably higher than rainfed ag land, perhaps several times more productive, so I don’t know the number of calories coming from pumped irrigation land, but perhaps it’s more like a quarter of all calories, at least in the US.
Just as the last diesel ever used will go into farm equipment, the last grid electricity ever used will go to water pumps. Here in Hawaii, 99% of all domestic water comes from pumped groundwater. Each island has a separate grid, so each one of them needs to function for people to have water. Hawaii Island, where I live, does have about 50% of its electricity coming from non-fuel-dependent sources, so people could probably get water for a while after fuel imports were gone.
Food is another story. Hawaii imports over 90% of its food and it all comes through a just-in-time delivery system. There are no big warehouses and the amount of food in the state at any one time is enough for only a few day’s consumption. Hawaii Island could feed all it’s residents, but even though there is a huge amount of beef produced here (nearly all of it for export as weanoff calves), there would be no way to easily get that beef to the people without trucks.
The “energetic distance” between most modern people and their food and water is huge. It’s a distance that can’t be easily shortened at scale, so any energy disruptions will have very sad outcomes.
My place is unsutable for grains as I don’t irrigate . it does grow grass fed beef, I just put 1000 pounds in the freezers , at the cost of around $1.50 A pound , it will last a while , at today’s prices I wish I had some ready to sell but the drought 2 years ago made me cull the herd $150 A round does not make anything but a hole in the bank account ,( this year being wet I can buy at $35 A round ) it will take years to get the numbers back up . ( 9 months gestation 14 months to start breeding and another 9 month gestation or 24 months to butcher + only 1/2 will be heffers) . the USA has fewer cattle than in 1950 .
Good points. People often forget about the time element.
That’s the advantage of sheep. They seem to breed way faster than they can be put in the freezer, sold or given away. With a near doubling every year, if you start off with 10 ewes and keep all the female lambs, five years later you have 76 ewes and have had 66 males to dispose of during that period.
Sheep are bad enough, I would be terrified of trying rabbits.
Sheep down here are a pain , sand burs are of epidemic proportions and ya can’t get them out of the fleece , then ya need a couple of livestock protection dogs to keep the coyote at bay plus keep a rifle handy , sheep do not like the heat and those that do do not taste good to me , goats are here in large numbers but the market is very volatile , just more trouble than I need .
https://countrysquire.co.uk/2025/06/30/the-labour-partys-fear-of-the-british-countryside/
A nicely written piece !
Yes, but the Tories are just as clothed ear as labour to the country side. Most Tory MPs are urban PMCs types, the countryside is where they have a second home, not where they work. All of the current subsidy schemes and a lot of the sanitary regulations were brought in by the Tories, because of Brexit! They had rewrite wholesale farm regs, because on leaving the EU, EU regs no longer applied! Who to piss off a farmer in one easy move, change the regs and subsidy system all in one go. PS, who introduced net-zero, it was in 2019, guess who was in power then, begins with a T.
To finish my rant, the Woodsure scheme, a scheme supposedly about ensuring logs were dry and fit to burn, and really about corporate capture of the wood fuel business. The scheme consists of attending a course, on how to use a moisture meter (simples!) at the costs many hundreds of pounds, a yearly fee of several hundred pounds, and proof that you you have public liability insurance, more hundreds of pounds, say £1000 in year one for me a supplier of wood fuel, but the cost is not just for the supplier it is also for the retailers who I did supply, a village shop and a farm shop. This is not economic for them and only marginal for me, if I could increase the number of outlets I sold to, but this won’t work since it is not economic small shops I did supply, plus I only have three acres of woodland. I have a sweet deal until the Tories F***** it. The corporate kicker, Tesco’s needs only one license as a retailer to cover all its stores, they already have public liability insurance, they can send a very junior staff member to do the course, and if you are purchasing more than two cubic metres of firewood bulk quantities are exempt from the Woodsure scheme, so Tesco’s is good to go importing container loads of bagged firewood from eastern Europe sure that there will be no competition from the little man. Now this is where it gets really nice. During the last election I had my former MP turn up on my doorstep, a Jeremy Quin, and I gave him both verbal barrels about the Woodsure scheme, which he admitted to knowing nothing about, even though it had been passed by his party in the last parliament. At the end of our conversation he admitted that didn’t think he would win, and he didn’t. I think his departing remark reflected a lot of doorstep pushback. To put things in context, my constituency is mostly rural and before 2024, had never not
returned a Tory MP ever! The Tories aren’t loved in the shires, and are just as clueless as Labour about the shires. End rant. Thank you for reading if you have got this far.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UjsMT_Xp0Jo
A little entertainment from the era I grew up in in the UK Victorian buildings everywhere .
I’m not sure where this fits in but if I don’t put it down, it will be lost –
Just as important as what works is what doesn’t / didn’t. This year we have had two months of rain in June. Sometimes the average amount of rain for the whole month would fall in a couple days. Sometimes it came down at over 2″ per hour. It has been very wet.
About 3/4 of my potatoes got drowned out ( in a part of the field that never sees standing water except in the spring). I still have potatoes in the root cellar so I replanted. It is very late and I’ll be interested to see what comes of them.
Very good article on Resilience today (7 July 2025) titled: Re-Sowing the Seeds of Connection in Switzerland, Part I – Nurturing What We Have. It is about the efforts to encourage local seed production in Switzerland. Here is a blurb from the article. (In the UK favas are known as broad beans. In France they are fèves.)
“Among these legumes, fava bean (Vicia faba) has a long yet little-known history in Switzerland, particularly in mountainous regions. Cultivated since the Bronze Age, it was for centuries a staple food for rural populations. Rich in protein and naturally hardy, it was a valuable crop, well-suited to harsh climatic conditions. It held a central place in Alpine subsistence farming systems until the Middle Ages, before being gradually replaced by crops introduced from the Americas, such as the potato.
In some regions, particularly Valais, fava beans nonetheless persisted for longer, often grown in family gardens. Their resistance to cold and ability to thrive in poor soils allowed them to survive the gradual marginalisation of legumes in Swiss agriculture. Local varieties have thus been informally preserved, sometimes up to the present day.”
Some nice pictures of the Alpine valleys too. Not mentioned is the nitrogen-fixing rate of favas. The University of California at Davis attributes 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre fixed by the favas. This is more than enough for a high-yield corn crop the next year. A rule of thumb is that you need a pound of nitrogen per bushel per acre for corn. (Industrial ag gets 150 bushels/acre.) In fact, one could plant favas in the fall and then till them under at flower stage in March or April, when the nitrogen-fixing is at its peak. Then plant a corn crop in May.
I was particularly intrigued by the intercropping of favas and rye. Since rye makes unavailable phosphorus available in the soil, an intercrop takes care of two parts of the N-P-K fertility matrix. Wood ashes will do for the potassium. This would be good to keep in mind once the fertilizer industry goes into the toilet and the local bio/organic producers have been run down too. Most people only think of an animal rotation for post-collapse conditions, but there are other alternatives.
I have grown a fava, pea, oat cover almost every year for twenty five years. It is winter cover and if we get rains it stands four or five feet tall . Getting all that bulk worked back into the soil is time consuming and it has never yielded enough nitrogen to get a corn crop healthy. I have begun a rotation of buckwheat, then vetch, then a crop. Our seasons are long enough to allow all three in one year. This allows me to keep water
( irrigation) on the soil year round and both buckwheat and vetch are easy to incorporate quickly . But I will gladly go haul pickup loads of rabbit poo or chicken poo for the compost.
I have both alkaline soil and low boron so plants can have micronutrient issues here. I have a begun spraying foliar boron because the plant can absorb it through the leaves rather than from compromised root uptake. The corn is showing miraculous results. So even if you get the NPK right a bit of soil science can make all the difference between a good garden and a great one.
Made 100% durum egg noodles again last night. Same exact recipe gets me dependable, really good noodles. 1 1/2 cup finely sifted durum flour, two eggs. Survival food is not boring, although acorns kinda are. With grains, and maize, and forage you can achieve a zero fossil fuel garden . With some variety in the garden you can have spectacular meals. I think being a good cook gets less attention than it probably deserves.
Bruce;
Another pasta question- do you roll, cut and go straight in the water, or do you do any dehydrating or freezing?
and crop rotation- what climate zone are you in? Which do you do first, and when for the vetch, buckwheat crop rotation? I’ve done vetch and then crop, or buckwheat and then crop, but never all three.
Steve, After kneading and working the dough I let it rest a half hour, then knead again, and rest once more for another half hour. Then roll it out till very thin, flour liberally , roll into a log. Cut then unroll , and right away boil in salted water.
We are 9b planting zone. It does freeze on occasion from Nov to Feb and we can catch a frost into March. So our best rains are often followed by freezes . Vetch ( or fava and peas ) can handle the freezes and love the water. I can follow the vetch with spring Cole crops , beets, artichokes , onions, escarole and veggies that can take some frost. The Cole crops are then replaced with buckwheat. The buckwheat bloom in the fall is great for pollinators as not much else is in bloom then. It can’t handle freezes so I work it in late fall then replant vetch and irrigate it till the rains arrive.
On occasion we do have a hard winter and hard freezes but then some years we get no freezes so the spring veggies are a bit of a risk but still worth attempting. Our weather seems to be losing those hard winters and I have started planting mandarins in protected microclimate areas but one hard winter may thwart those efforts.
The aspirations I am in the middle of are, like Bluejay, a subsistence farmer, or peasant farmer.
And if a conversation about identity politics comes about I will have a lot to say—though I expect it may come near to blows. I disagree with the status quo stance which Walter articulated.
Nice to see you here again, Ruben. Hopefully there’ll be a post soon-ish about identity politics, so I’d be interested in your thoughts. And hopefully the conversation won’t come to blows … but I’ll be interested to see the range of views.