confessions of outlaw chickener

The following is a guest post by the outlaw chickener. His name, for obvious reasons, has been withheld.

"Eating is always at least two activities: consuming food and obeying a code of manners. And in the manners is concealed a program of taboos as rigid as Deuteronomy." -Guy Davenport

It been just over four years now since I first hatched the idea of raising backyard birds in my small town neighborhood. I liked the idea for all of its reasons- raising chickens for the fertilizer, the farmliness, the bug control, the cuteness, and of course the eggs. I liked the idea of having my own source of eggs and knowing what went into them- and what didn't- as I scrambled some for breakfast for my daughter. It made me feel more secure and sounded fun; as if I would be a little more responsible for feeding my family and able to enjoy raising some of my own food. There was just one problem with my plan. Where I live raising chickens is illegal.

As a land planner I know all about city ordnances and zoning laws and how they’ve come to shape communities all across America. The process isn’t centered on community gatherings where by city planners and concerned citizens write up elaborate rules to govern the look, feel and touch of their town. No, what happens more often is that municipal officials copy existing zoning rules from other municipalities, make a few changes, offer a public input session or two and largely adopt the documents wholesale without enough consideration of the details. This sort of generic governance doesn’t sit well with me but nonetheless, I read the rules, found that they did indeed exclude chickens from my backyard and decided to inquire about what sort of variance it would take for me to bring birds home legally.

As a long time citizen of my small town I know enough about the politics of my area to understand that if I tried a frontal attack on the establishment I was likely to run up against knee-jerk resistance. Four years ago when I was exploring the idea of backyard chickens, the media, tired of reporting on the 30,000 people who die of regular influenza in America each year, was focusing diligently on the incredibly small number of avian flu cases around the world and offering pandemic predictions about the wildfire of disease that backyard birders in Asia and elsewhere might ignite. Never mind the evidence that it is in fact the commercial poultry industry who is more to blame. The only avian flu outbreak on record in America happened at a commercial poultry operation in Virginia. All surrounding backyard birds tested negative. It’s likely that if backyard birds and small scale chicken raising operations were the way most people got their meat and their eggs, bird flu wouldn’t be nearly as big of a problem. But terror is more contagious than bird flu and I was afraid that fear would outweigh fact in any variance hearing I might attend and that my chances of ever having my own chickens might be gone for good if I approached it in that way.

Still curious, I poked around the periphery of local governance to see what my chances were. I requested an acquaintance of mine to ask all the right people, hypothetically, what the chances were of allowing someone like me to legally raise chickens in the city. The results of my informal investigation were disappointing. I seemed likely to lose any appeal, said my trusty informant, reporting that prominent councilmen and commissioners sounded ready to up hold the letter of the law, which said rather straightforwardly,

“No livestock [which includes chickens by definition] shall be kept, maintained or stabled within any Residential Zoning District,” with the caveat that, “The provisions of this section shall not apply to dogs, cats, or other similar household pets.”

My plan was already taking shape. If caught, my neighbor’s cockatoo would serve as my main defense.

While I do believe laws like these that summarily dismiss my ability to safely raise certain foods for my family in my very own yard are foolish and out of date, I do understand one of the reasons they have been in enacted. These days they serve as a stand in for neighborly communication. A rule against chickens in a neighborhood takes the place of a good old fashioned democratic meeting where those in favor of chickens debate those opposed. An agreement is reach where by the basic rights of the minority are hopefully protected but the majority vote takes the day. These days though we mostly have mandated rules, heavily influenced by insiders. (You can decide for yourself whether I'm talking here about my city, my state or my country) But I did understand that if I was going to ignore the rules that meant replacing their authority with consent from my neighbors. I talked to each of them and was given permission, emphatically as I remember, with one caveat- no roosters, to which I agreed. My wife wouldn’t allow one anyway.

So having gained permission- in fact whole hearted support- from those who lived around me, I got ready to raise a flock. I did what most new backyard birders do. I looked over the Internet for information on how to raise chickens and downloaded images of clever chicken tractors. I read a few books and talked to a few people. I built a coop, bought a little gear and brought home a few chicks from the local feed store around Easter. I settled in with my outlawed birds.

Now that I've done my best to convince you that I had no choice, that it was way too risky to try and confront the mechanically adopted rules against raising chickens inside my city's limits I should come clean and let you in on another fact. I like being an outlaw chickener. I should not tell a lie. It's fun to be part of an underground movement raising healthy, responsible food and I enjoy all the other trappings that come with keeping city chickens. Something about breaking the rules feels especially invigorating.

Anyone who looks at the food industry up close in this country will undoubtedly come away angry. Sure we've given up our control over what we eat. That is, we were on watch over the years as multinational corporations came to dictate what we eat. But take a spin through the US Farm bill and I can't imagine you won't come away completely pissed off. It's corporate welfare straight from the mouths of a government that seems not to concern itself with the fact that more than 35 million American live food insecure in this country. 72% of the billions of dollars Doled out in the farm bill go to the 10% largest companies growing 5 crops: corn, wheat, soybean, rice and cotton- in virtual lockstep with the processed food industry. And if that's not enough to get you riled up, stand back and take a look at the grocery store, held up as a model of choice. Take a look at the supposed bounty of food we've received in the deal. Here I'm going to borrow from Helena Norberg-Hodge et al because this passage from _Bringing the Food Economy Home_ explains it so well.

"It's easy for Northern consumers to believe that industrial agriculture and global trade have actually led to an increase in food diversity. A well-stocked supermarket can overwhelm with its apparent food choices: fifty different kinds of breakfast cereal: eighty feet of shelving devoted to fruit juices, soft drinks, and other beverages: six different brands of cottage cheese; ten varieties of potato chips...Much of this apparent diversity is illusion, however, since 80 percent of the supermarket that consists of processed foods offers little choice. A close look at several different packages of crackers of canned soup will reveal virtually identical lists of ingredients. In many cases... the only diversity is each one's distinct packaging. ...dozens of apple varieties once may have grown within a few miles of a supermarket that today sells just three or four- those favored by large growers."

Then start to look at all the health problems with the way we eat: the chemicals, the hormones, the antibiotics, the genetically modified organisms not to mention the lobbying by specific sectors of the food industry. Read up on the politics of the food pyramid and you'll realize what a corporate controlled joke that campaign really is!

Whew! Look what I've gone and done- gotten all worked up just writing a little post about being an outlaw chickener and I guess that's my point. Our relationship with food in this country is all kinds of screwed up. At the heart of the problem is people making boatloads of money off of this sick system. And, I might add, sticking it to the farmers who grow food as well. It's enough to make a person want to do something radical, to throw caution to the wind, to purposefully break a law that seems to support this broken system of eating. I promise it is a good feeling to knowingly participate in a counterculture revolution by being someone who knows raising eggs in the backyard is illegal and does it anyway. There is a sense of sanity, a sense of retribution, a sense that I can do it anyway even if the entire system seems stacked against me and my ability to be in charge of my families nutrition. And it feels good. It's also infectious as others talk about my underground operation as if I'm a resistance fighter, and in a way, I am. Plenty of others want to join, even if that only means using some of my eggs. In my town, those eggs are starting to grow a following.

The process of becoming a successful chicken outlaw has been great. Eating great tasting eggs and showing off my hens to delighted small children has been great. I have learned about roosting, about dust bathes, about getting the hen house up off of the ground. I’ve met other people with a passion for raising chickens, I've chased off hawks and I’ve had a few close calls with law. The people in my neighborhood enjoy eggs and I give them away to others in my community too; especially those whose silence is best bought with the makings of an excellent omelet. There’s nothing like good food to keep people quiet.

My yard is certainly too small for a cow and even goats would require an enormous act of marital compromise even Jimmy Carter couldn’t help my negotiate. It is true that there are both proper and improper places to keep animals in our neighborhoods. But those decisions should be made on the basis of meeting the needs of our neighbors and the resources available in any given yard. They should not be based on an aging notion that houses are dormitories where we sleep between shift but rather that our homes can help us become more than consumers. They can help us regain our status as producers and sharers- whole citizens capable of talking and acting in ways that foster self sufficiency and interdependency in our respective communities. I’m looking forward to the day when more people in my town and in others raise more of their own food including their own animals, and can do so without violating superficial laws. Until then I will keep my underground flock in my backyard. I will share eggs with my neighbors who are happy to have chickens near by and I hope to inspire others to do the same- to be prepared and ready to help many more of us raise backyard birds in the future.

Because I think this is really important and because it feels so good, I will remain...

the outlaw chickener.

you can reach the outlaw chickener at: outlaweggs 'at' gmail . 'com'

hunger means some business is booming

So it looks like while the price of food is skyrocketing, average farmers aren't exactly raking it in.

"When it's all said and done, we're still making what we did before," said George Zmitko, an Owosso farmer with about 8,000 acres spread across five counties.

Over the past three years, the price for staples like wheat and corn have risen dramatically. While that has made for painful grocery bills, Zmitko and other local farmers say they are coping with price increases of their own.

Fertilizer, for example, has quadrupled from $200 a ton to $800 while diesel fuel is more than $1.50 a gallon higher for farmers than it was a year ago… Costs for buying seed and crop insurance are up, as are the rates for borrowing money to operate a farm.

The net effect? All of that extra money people spend at the grocery store is not going straight into the pockets of farmers.

This is important because it suggests that even if the price of food continues to rise, there is no guarantee that the conventional method of growing food is going to get more lucrative. Amidst rising input prices, a linear system like industrial agriculture might become even more of a seasonal gamble with pricey pesticides and fertilizers- not to mention fuel costs- the ever more expensive 'ante up' on the bet of a big harvest. The article mentions higher interest rates on loans for those inputs and higher insurance premium on crop insurance. That makes sense given the increased stakes. But I wonder, are those bankers and those underwriters also talking to the climatologists?

I'm also wondering just how come all these guys are making tons of money? From the Independent,

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

It also makes me wonder just where I put my torch and my pitchfork.

Read the rest here and here.

civilization!

Thanks Eric.

what does hunger look like?

image

Question. What does hunger look like? If you live in America it’s likely you don’t know. It’s true that in the US 12% of our population is food insecure, meaning about 1 in 8 of us don’t regularly get enough nutritious food to eat. But the majority of us don’t see those people or their hunger very often. It’s more likely that most of us associates hunger with a dark skinned and dusty child sitting quietly with flies buzzing about, a la Sally Struthers commercials and her plea to save the children. I’d like to speak for a moment to the politicians, the leaders in this country so that they might get a better idea of what hunger really looks like, because not all hungry people are going to sit quietly and die waiting on someone to send donations.

Haiti’s government fell on Saturday when senators fired the prime minister after more than a week of riots over food prices.

Stone-throwing crowds began battling U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police in the south on April 2, enraged at the soaring cost of rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples… The unrest spread this week to the capital, Port-au-Prince, bringing the sprawling and chaotic city to a halt as mobs took over the streets, smashing windows, looting shops, setting fire to cars and hurling rocks at motorists.

“It has not been lowered enough,” said a young man who identified himself only as Givens. “If they don’t further lower the price I think people are going to protest more. There will be problems, more unrest. Even the National Palace could be set on fire because we are in trouble.”

[President] Preval reiterated that Haiti could not afford to cut taxes on food because it needed the revenue to pay for longer-term projects that create jobs and boost agriculture.

And here in lies an interesting point. The future is almost certain to mean less energy available and fewer resources with which to grow food, including less fresh water and healthy topsoil. It’s easy to imagine how hard it will be, in such trying times, to launch a cohesive, coherent, top down change in our model of agriculture. Just as it becomes obvious that change is absolutely necessary, those who currently have the power to institute large-scale change will find their power waning. I remain skeptical that even a major change in terms of who holds office will provide the capability of those in political power to significantly cope with the scope of this problem- the growing shortage of a basic human necessity.

Need proof? The World Bank announced today that, “The world is moving towards a food crisis that may lead to wars and riots…” You think? Thank you for such a clear “prediction” of what lies ahead. Of course when asked about hunger around the world and specifically in Africa World Bank President Robert Zoellick suggested, “that sovereign wealth funds around the world allocate $30 billion – 1% of their $3 trillion assets- to investments for African growth, development, and opportunity,” which means he just doesn’t get it. Mr. Zoellick suggests throwing money at the problem. What a novel idea! The problem is we’re eating their food you moron, with our land export model of agricultural commodity production; to say nothing of the food we are burning in our gas tanks, our overly meat-intensive diet.

Ready for the scary part? The resulting rise in price has already caused instability with only 6.5 billion people on the planet. Population projections point to more than 9 billion people by the middle of this century. The people of the African continent don’t need to grow their economies and develop as Mr. Zoellick suggests in order to feed themselves. To be sure there is ample room for a rise in the standard of living of the average African but what they need more than anything is for us to stop acting like we’re somehow entitles to more than our fair share of this planet.

ABC ran an article today entitled, Food riots ‘an apocalyptic warning‘. What are they thinking? That’s the kind of headline that could ruin a rich world leader’s day. Because anyone with half a brain must realize that people are not going to just sit quietly and starve in the real world. This is not a television commercial. Recently there have been food riots in Haiti, Morocco, Egypt, Bangladesh, Mexico and in others Countries. Last October the Director of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization had this to say. “If prices continue to rise, I would not be surprised if we began to see food riots.” There’s at least one leader who saw this coming. But the rest of them, and to be fair many of us, haven’t given much thought to the day when our gluttonous eating habits might bite back. Because of our abusive attitude towards our environment and its resources, which we have taken for granted, that day might be arriving shortly.

But here’s another question. How long until we see food riots here in our country? Do you think the citizens- ur, ah, consumers in this country haven’t noticed the rising price of everything, including food? Do you think we still believe in the stupid core rate of inflation thingie that doesn’t include the cost of food, let alone the cost of the gasoline needed to drive to the store and buy that expensive food? The following is from Forbes (that leftist, conspiratorial, commie rag)

Kimberly Stevens, a 42-year-old resident of Lewisville, Texas… is also refusing to buy into the official Washington line that the nation’s inflation rate is only 3.4%. This outraged reader says, “As far as I am concerned, Bernanke, President Bush, Clinton, Obama and the rest of them live in a fairy-tale world. They do not go shopping each week and have no idea what the cost of goods is.”

A gallon of the Horizon organic milk she buys for her two boys has soared from $1.99 to over $5, an increase of 250%. In the past year, a loaf of bread has surged nearly 50%–to $2.29 from $1.59. Her Kraft cheddar cheese has gone from $1.99 to $2.50 for an eight-ounce package–a 25% rise. A dozen extra large eggs are up from 79 cents to $1.19, or about 50%, while ground beef, Stevens insists, is up more than 60%, from $1.79 a pound to $2.99.

Croesus’ source in small-town America doesn’t think “people will be able to afford to go to work this summer” when she predicts gasoline will hit $4.50 a gallon. “My Jeep cost $35 a week to fill in 2005 when we bought it. It is now over $60 to fill. In the past month gasoline has gone up over 75 cents (a gallon).”

The cost of food and fuel for a month are $1,300 higher, “a big hit in a family budget,” she insists. “American people cannot continue to survive and fund our great economy with more and more of our income going to pay to get us to work and home again.”

“You cannot tell me that is 3.4% inflation,”

Please don’t assume I am actually in favor of food riots or that I condone them. I think that form of violence is counterproductive, not to mention a calorically expensive activity! Better to stay home and grow your own. But I’m wondering, as food gets more expensive everywhere, including here in the United States of America, will everyone think like me- that we should have a homegrown agricultural revolution in light of resource depletion, energy descent and widespread political impotency- or will they come for those who play politics while the world begins to go hungry? Perhaps those in charge should stand aside and allow us a more peaceful revolution. We’d like to grow our own food in local communities all over America. And we’d like to work with others all over the world who would like to do the same. When I talk about WWII Victory Gardens people ask me what victory might look like this time? Perhaps it’ll look like anything other than people rioting in the streets over food.

The following are all really interesting, at least to me.

Russian oil production drops for the first time in a decade.

Potatoes! A staple food that isn’t getting ridiculously expensive. Note: They are also ridiculously easy to grow. And don’t forget about sweet potatoes. The good news is I still have sweet potatoes from last year. The bad news is I still have sweet potatoes from last year.

A great audio recording of Tim Robbins almost speaking to, and then yes, actually going through with his speech to the National Association Broadcasters. This is one of THE BEST bits I’ve listened to in a while. Highly recommended and an excellent example of the power of the Tubes.

How might the gov’t best assist in food rationing, even if it will never come to that here.

Quick, leak-proof and consumer-oriented distribution of affordable food is critical to our nutritional security in these inflationary times. But a tectonic shift in efficiency will only come when two drivers stop controlling the same car.

And lastly, good news! Brazil might have located enough petroleum to power us for all of 2018!

converging environmental crises teach-in

Converging Environmental Crises:
A Teach-In on Energy, Climate Change, Water, Agriculture and Population

Thursday, April 10, 2008
11:00am to 4:00pm EDT
http://sg60.oar.net/Environmental_Crises/
Select "Converging Environmental Crises" in the Pull-Down Menu

If you're having trouble use the following directions.


The presentations are archived. Take advantage of this wonderful resource.

sprouts beget sprouts

We have a new sprout in the house. As many of you know (because I haven’t posted anything new in almost a month and returning visitors have been greeted with her photo during that period) my wife gave birth to a baby girl in early March. Her name is Salem and we’re quite pleased. Her arrival coincided with the beginning of the planting season here in Southeastern America.. I know that sounds weird for those of you in the Northeast or in colder climates throughout the world but so does the idea of solid water floating down from the sky. What do you call it, snow? Sadly another winter has pasted with almost none of that white stuff and spring is fast approaching here in the South. Officially our last frost free date is April 15th and it’s usually a good idea to get potatoes and onions and some spring greens in the ground early in March. This is made more difficult though if you have a precocious two year old and a new born, even if you have an understand wife. Not to mention the fact that this spring I have the extraordinary opportunity to write a book about where we might ought to be going in terms of growing food and eating it in light of peak oil, climate change and widespread social injustice.

All of this means less time to actually spend in the garden which is a reasonable price to pay for a beautiful new baby daughter and the chance to finish this book with Ms. Astyk. It also got me thinking about all the people who are strapped for time and who might balk at the idea of having enough time to start garden. Now as I’ve mentioned before that there are a considerable number of us Americans who say they don’t have enough time to garden because they spend so much of it watching the idiot box. Just because they call it reality television doesn’t necessarily make it so. Reality will be on display when the world wakes up to our enormous dependency on petroleum, a nonrenewable resource which largely peaked in global production almost three years ago. Reality will settle in as we begin to recognize that burning petroleum (and the other fossil fuels we send up in smoke) is causing unpredictable and potentially devastating changes in our climate. Yes that is the sort of reality that will eventually trump the kind we can flip back and forth from this channel to that eating packaged processed foods and thinking about how well we would do on Fear Factor or American Idol. There is an enormous amount of time we waste in this country every year as we pretend to live by watching other people act out made up scripts.

However, as evidenced by my lack of a television and my still rather busy schedule it seems possible to fill up ones time without the idiot box. It also seems likely that as the growth economy falters under the weight of limited resources and the resulting rise in prices, many people are going to struggle to keep up. I was talking with a friend recently who argued that what we won’t see is a large number of people suddenly starving to death as food becomes more expensive in the US. What we will see is an increasing number of people eating cheaper, less nutritious food. It’s reasonable to expect that more people will try to work more hours to earn more money to be able to buy food as it gets more expensive. This will leave them less time to spend on projects like learning to grow more of their food. I think in part this means helping to share the message that more self-sufficiency means less of an obligation to make money which can translate into less time needed for making money and more time available for even more self-sufficiency.

This requires, as I know from experience, a transition however. One does not simply wake up and stop going to work and instead head off to tear up the lawn to plant potatoes. For a while at least it will be necessary that those seeking a higher degree of personal food self-sufficiency keep one leg in the formal economy and one leg out in the garden. Decreasing dependency on the cycle of: spend time, make money, buy food requires a stretch. And so with that in mind I am using this busy spring season of mine to stretch and to try and feel a bit of what it must be like to try and do lots of stuff and still have time to devote to growing food. IN thinking of how to do this, one idea jumped to mind early on- sprouts. Sprouting seeds in any windowsill takes very little time, a low level of green thumbness and requires a very low level of financial investment. It’s a pretty quick, easy and cheap source of excellent nutrition. So let’s start with that last part.

During the process of sprouting, most seeds because more nutritious as a food source. "Sprouting grains causes increased activities of hydrolytic enzymes, improvements in the contents of total proteins, fat, certain essential amino acids, total sugars, B-group vitamins, and a decrease in dry matter, starch and anti-nutrients." Eating sprouts is actually more nutritious than eating the seeds themselves. This isn’t a reason to give up on legumes but it is interesting to note that sprouts, one of the most nutrient dense foods available on the planet, can be grown indoors on any windowsill by even the busiest of souls.

And as I mentioned above, is doesn’t take much money to start sprouting. All that’s needed is a jar or several jars if the seed sprouting process is to be staggered over several days, making sprouts continuously available. A wide mouth jar will make extracting the sprouts easier. The jar will need a lid that is porous so water can be flushed out without losing any of the seeds. The low tech, super cheap version is a strip of old panty hose stretched over the opening of a mason jar , held in place by a rubber band. Or you can upgrade to a mesh lid that is easier to get on and off, allows rinse water to move more easily out of the jar and is easier to clean. I purchased my jars with mesh lids for about $5 each; not an exorbitant investment.
Next you’ll need a sunny windowsill. It seems reasonable to assume that almost everyone will have one of these. Any seeds to be sprouted will need to be rinsed and then soaked over night. Drain them the following morning and then rinse and drain at least twice a day. That’s it. It is possible to mess up sprouts. You can leave too much water in the jar for too long and the sprouts will rot. You can let the sprouts dry out and they will die, but that’s about all you can do wrong. If you stagger your jars you can keep an ample supply of sprouts around for a consistent source of healthy greens.

And this is important because when I talk to people about food storage there is often a focus on the stables. People naturally focus on storing carbohydrates and proteins and some stable fats. And this is reasonable because it doesn’t matter how nutritious your food is. If you aren’t getting enough calories you aren’t going to have enough to eat to stay healthy and happy. But it’s also important to have a steady source of the vitamins offered by leafy green vegetables. This could be tough to accomplish for those of us accustom to having such vegetables shipped to us in the winter in areas where it is harder to grow such greens with snow covering the ground. It is possible however, to grow a reliable source of nutrients, including those all-important B-vitamins with a low investment of time and money, in any climate. And the seeds themselves are cheap to ship, being dry, and they store for relatively long periods of time. It’s possible to order an enormous amount of nutritious green food for your diet for relatively little money and store it in a small amount of space in your pantry. Sprout when needed.

Now, I’m sure there are at least a few of you thinking, "I think sprouts taste yucky." And this is not just a problem I’m suggest others might encounter. My wife is one of you. Currently she’s a nursing, hormonal mother who is working to keep our older daughter from being, um, overly helpful, which is just another way of saying she keeps her from force feeding the baby carrots, in addition to all the other things she does. This is not a woman to whom I am willing to suggest stuff she doesn’t think she likes to eat; not right now. ;-) The goal instead is to find methods of presenting the sprouts in yummier ways. The task of finding a way to grow nutritious food in a pinch has become the task of finding a way to cook this nutritious food in a way in which my wife and daughter will eat it. Luckily it isn’t illegal to eats sprouts in other ways rather than just on a veggie sandwich. Stir frying them has been my most successful accomplishment on this front although I’m scheduled to try them in a few loafs of bread real soon and next I’ll dry dehydrating them and making crackers. Everyone like crackers right?

I will continue to experiment with different types of seeds for sprouting, different combinations of those sprouts and different ways of using them in meals my family will enjoy. I was excited though that out of a desire to do more to feed my family without investing much time or much money I found another way we can be more self reliant and healthier. This past month, while enjoying the labor of being a new double dad and a bread winner and an author I cast about for a way to quickly grow something good for me, and I remembered sprouts. Even as we deal with the chaos of life at the beginning of the 21st century- peak oil, climate change, small children who’ve learned how to shift the car into neutral- it is necessary to make change even while we deal with the current realities of our world. As we learn how to do so we become stronger, more flexible and more resilient. Imagine what we’ll be capable of when the spit really does hit the fan.

a new daughter

Salem Reynolds Beatrix Newton

A baby girl born on March 6, 2008

I am blessed.

can we stay in the suburbs?

sketch from Brisbane Ecovillages

There is little doubt that during that last 60 years we here in America have transformed our manmade landscape in a way that is fundamentally different from any form of human habitation ever known. While many have flocked to this new way of organizing the spaces in which we live, critics have noticed the shortcomings and have loudly pointed them out. It’s been suggested that the development of the suburbs here in the U.S. was a really bad idea. Author James Kunstler describes suburbia as, “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” The ability of most citizens to own and cheaply operate an automobile means we’ve had access to a level of mobility never before experienced. The outgrowth of which has been a sprawling pattern of living that changed the rules about how and where we live, work, and play and how we get there and back. We are now more spread out than ever before, mostly getting back and forth from one place to another by driving alone in our cars. This could turn out to be a really bad thing.

As the cost of fueling those cars increases, it’s becoming obvious we’ve foolishly put too many of our eggs into one basket. And as America wakes up to the realities of a changing climate, it’s also painfully obvious that soloing around in a huge fleet of carbon emitters isn’t the most thoughtful way to transport ourselves from one side of suburbia to the other. The question is, as the expansive nature of suburban life becomes too expensive, both economically and ecologically, what will we do with this great “misallocation” of resources?

Will we, as some suggest, simply abandon this experiment? The likelihood of moving everyone out of suburbia and into mixed use, walkable communities is quite remote. Likewise moving everyone from the suburbs out into the countryside and onto farms is unlikely. To be sure many, many people will move. Some people are already choosing to move to places where they can safely walk and bike to meet more of their daily needs. Others are choosing to reruralize, but completely depopulating suburban America is a project we have neither the fiscal resources nor the fossil fuel energy necessary to accomplish. It seems reasonable to assume that lots of people are going to continue to live in the suburban communities we’ve created all over this country during the last 60 years.

Will these places simply devolve into slums with roving bands of thieves stripping building materials and other valuables from abandoned homes and formerly homeless drug addicts burning them down while trying to keep warm? They’ll probably be some of that especially if the housing crisis worseness (and it will) and the government continues to address it largely by bailing out banks. The following is from a recent article in The Atlantic,

At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”

That is to say, this is already a problem. And with more people defaulting on their mortgages and losing their jobs as the economy slumps we’re likely to see this scenario play out repeatedly. But it’s important to take a moment and assess the possibilities presented by the problem. That is, if we’re going to do anything other than whistle while a large number of the communities in this country turn into the slums of the 21^st century, we’re going to have to comprehensively address the problem and that means starting with an assessment of not only the disadvantages of suburban America but the advantages we might have in this arrangement of living. Could the problem actually turn out to be the solution?

One of the results of a declining in the availability of oil and other fossil fuel resources will undoubtedly be a rise in the cost of food or even outright shortages of certain types of calories we’ve grown accustom to acquiring quite easily. Lots of people have written about this. It’s seems increasingly obvious that we’re going to have to grow food differently if we have any chance of adapting to a low energy lifestyle with any semblance of grace. Growing food means using land for some sort of agriculture. Exactly what land we use is entirely up to us. It’s worth noting that while David Pimentel et al have suggested that it takes 1.8 acres of land to feed each of us now. That number could be reduced to 1.2 acres per person while still meeting the nutritional needs of the average American. But by 2050 we are likely to have only 0.6 acres person both because of the rise in global population and the loss of land due to desertification, salinization and soil depletion. In the very near future we’re not going to have enough land to feed ourselves in the manner in which we’ve been doing so. Where will more “new” land come from?

The suburbs were born out of an idea that each man could have his own cottage in the forest, his own unmolested paradise outside of the nastys of the industrializing cities and still go to work in those cities each day. (Just how many of the problems we’re facing today are born out of us wanting to both have and eat our cake?) The idea was that a man could still earn a living in the dirty city but return to his pristine piece of land where his wife and children could be free from pollution, crime, brown people, noise and traffic. It never quite worked out that way, which is to say it has, since the beginning, failed to achieve what this experiment set out to accomplish; to say nothing of the negative aspects of this way of developing our countryside. But nevertheless, the end result is that a lot of people live on small amounts of land in communities that aren’t completely paved over with asphalt and concrete. Many of us here in this country have access to land albeit in small amounts. This provides us with the most important resource needed to address the rising cost of food- soil. In other words, the fact that we’ve chopped up much of the existing farmland that once surrounded major metropolitan areas in this country and parceled it out in fairly small sizes to many more people ultimately may or may not prove to have been a really bad idea. But, not only is it the hand we have now been dealt, it might turn out to have been a fairly nifty way of developing and maintaining a moderately democratic land ownership policy here in America. We still have, albeit in another form and with a reduction in the quantity and quality of soil ready for food production, a reasonable amount of land for growing food. Again from the previously mentioned article,

Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that's roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.

What do you do with a surplus of more than 22 million large lot homes during a period of failing industrial agriculture and rising food costs? You establish new microfarms of course. Those people who do continue to live in the suburbs either because they can not move or because they don’t want to, could feed themselves by using this land to grow food for themselves and their neighbors. The food could be grown largely free from fossil fuel inputs and would be produced very close to the people who will eventually eat it. This solves two of the really big problems associated with the industrial model of agriculture. It provides a ready land base not for the reinstitution of plantation style farming whereby wealthy landowners who profited from energy descent reintroduce a horrible form of feudalism that enslaves the former paper pushing population of America who are likely to lose their jobs as the American economy continues to decline. No, this land has already been subdivided into manageable parcels that could serve as the basis for a revolution in agriculture.

Mention this idea to an ordinary citizen unaware of the prospects we face in the near future and you’re likely to get a host of responses about how unlikely or unreasonable such a solution might be. It’s likely we haven’t reached the pain threshed necessary to get the real attention of average Americans, but one response certainly will be that we can’t grow very much food by just tearing out our lawns. This of course isn’t true at all.

Several recent studies suggest that small scale, sustainable agriculture is actually more productive per unit of land than industrial farming. We’ve come to think of farming efficiency in terms of human labor, with the adoption of the idea that the fewer people doing it the better. But in terms of what the land can yield, we’re better off farming it intensely on smaller plots of land and the math is there to back up that claim. Yields can be substantial even on such small plots as would be available to the average suburbanite. The Dervaes family of Path to Freedom provides an excellent example of what is possible in our front and backyards. They live on an urban lot of about 1/5^th of an acre. They cultivate about 1/10^th of an acre or about 4,400 square feet. That’s 67 feet X 67 feet. In other words, that’s not much land and yet they consistently produce more than 6,000 lbs of vegetables annually. The four adults living there eat about 85% of their vegetarian diet from the yard during the summer months and are still able to get more than half of what they eat out of their gardens in the winter. This and they sell some produce to nearby restaurants. It should be noted that they live in southern California where the weather is extremely generous to those who growing food (and have access to water), but Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch point out in Four-Seasons Harvest: Organic Vegetables from You Home Garden All Year Long, even people living in Maine are capable of growing a tremendous amount and variety of nutritional, tasty food regardless of where they live.

And let us not forget all those paper pushers I just hand pink slips to earlier in this post. Our government and a lot of well meaning business-as-usual types are going to put together all sorts of plans to try and reemploy all the people who lose their jobs in the post carbon economy. There is already talk of a kind of “Green Works Project Administration” like the WPA seen during the New Deal era. At one time the WPA was the largest employee base in the country and was designed as a way to build up American infrastructure while reemploying those negatively affected by the Great Depression. Such an effort now could get much needed projects up and run in terms of new forms of energy that aren’t fossil fuel based. To say nothing of conservation and energy efficiency projects such as home insulation that needs to be done on a national scale. But this or any other response that doesn’t include a large measure of self sufficiency for the average American would be missing out on a great opportunity to redemocratize America. It is painfully obvious that we are at our greatest disadvantage when we are in debt to others for the basics we need in order to survive. Growing more of our own food in our own personal gardens, parks, school yards and community gardens is a great way to address this problem while providing for the nutritional shortfall likely to be experienced in the wake of the decline of industrial agriculture.

Luckily the sun is still shining and even those of us who live in heavily wooded neighborhoods have the option of modifying the canopy of those trees to gain access to sunlight. The soil is still under our feet and we can use it going forward to meet more of our food needs. The suburbs also offer a certain amount of impervious surfaces or surfaces that shed water. This is often a problem in many communities. The idea is that if too many roofs tops and too many roadways shed too much water during a rainstorm. The result is a high volume of water after a storm that has to be diverted out of these neighborhoods before rushing into our creeks, streams and rivers. This often leads to flooding and/or substantial amounts of soil runoff, the number one water pollution problem in many communities. I find it annoyingly amusing that while my county has storm water problems to such an extent that we are under EPA mandate to address this problem, we are simultaneously experiencing water restrictions due to the drought in southeastern America. In other words, we have two water problems where I live, too much water and not enough. Is it too simple to suggest that we collect some of what we get where it falls and use it?

The point is that the structures of suburbia- specifically rooftops and roadways- could be used to gather the water we would need to grow food for ourselves. This could be especially important going forward as global climate changes throws weather curveball after curveball at us. The solution is to designing simple, elegant ways to collect this water for use during times between rain storms. 600 gallons of water can be collected from 1,000 square feet of rooftop in just a 1” rainstorm. Many McMansions are much larger and as such have the capacity to gather much more rain. It’s worth noting that 65% of the water we use in our homes each day goes to irrigation, toilet flushing and laundry. Rainwater could be used to do all three with simple filtration. Doing this could go a long way towards restoring the health of our waterways.

In Garden Agriculture: A revolution in efficient water use, David Holmgren notes that “Australian suburbs are no more densely populated than the world’s most densely populated agricultural regions.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that American suburbs are populated in roughly the same way. This suggests to me that it is at least within the realm of possibility that the suburbs could be transformed in a way that helps us: A) take advantage of new soil for growing food, B) foster a redemocratization of America by offering a reasonable amount of food self sufficiency for families during the coming era of change and volatility and C) capture the rain water necessary to address the deepening water crisis being experienced worldwide. We may find that in a time in which we are unable to build out grand new responses to peak oil and climate change, agriculturally at least, we may not have to. We might do best to just stay put.

we should do it anyway

I think there's a terrific psychological difference determined by the frame of mind in which one takes certain actions… There's not much joy in taking defensive actions. But if you can think of it as contributing to "the repair of the world," then you have a totally different view of the action. Now you can really be happy about it: you have made a difference (however small) by this action. Over time, [this point] of view [can] have an effect on your personality and character. The defensive or "forced to do this" motivation tends to harden and closes you, shutting you away from others. The "repair of the world" motivation tends to awaken compassion in you, to soften you towards others.
–Pat Meadows

Of course if we're going to suggest a way of living radically different from the one we've developed in this country in the decades after WWII, it's probably in our best interest to explain why such a change is necessary. It is, as many people have pointed out, very necessary because a decrease in the amount of energy available to human beings is very likely going forward. Many of the other resources that make our way of life possible are also available in limited quantities and we'll be reaching those limits sooner than previously thought. And change seems especially prudent considering the condition of our climate due to the warming of our planet. In other words it seems like a reasonable sound position to take, the idea that we must change the way we live or risk our very survival.

But this is a defensive position. It says we must do this or else. And as scary as the "or else" is, making change in defense is much different than doing it offensively; as a way to gain not as a hedge against ruin. Pat Meadows is responsible for popularizing "The Theory of Anyway," as an early response to those people who are calling for change "or else!" They were and are still right of course. If we don't change we are likely to experience more pain and suffering than need be, but that kind of a defensive motivator isn't always helpful. For one thing it tends to foster resentment. If we feel like we have to do something we're likely to cast about for someone to blame. Or we are likely to do it with a heavy heart and that doesn't promote success. That is, we are less likely to succeed in transforming our own lives and our society in general if we are moping about making change to ward off doom. Likewise we are less likely to experience resistance from ourselves, our family and friends and our community if we can frame the changes as positive in nature and not dreadful sacrifices we must make if we are going to survive!

The good news is that doing this, framing the changes we must undertake in terms of how very beneficial they would be for us is easy. It could be that in our surprise to learn life for Americans will be changing dramatically in the 21st century, we let our dismay overshadow the understanding that this might allow us to fix some really awful realities we'd come to accept as just another part of life. We have tended to think, out of complacency or more likely out of loyalty to our own way of life, that this way of living is the best way of living possible and that there's no need for fundamental changes to our "non-negotiable" American way of life.

Following WWII, the United States experienced a renaissance of sorts. The US was the only industrialized nation whose infrastructure hadn't been bombed into oblivion. In the aftermath of such destruction our farmers helped to feed the world during a time in which the world was unable to feed itself. Our manufacturing capacity was ramped up during the war which meant we were able to make all the stuff the rest of the world needed to rebuild itself, which meant a steady stream of wealth from abroad. The US also remained the largest oil producer in the world during the decades that followed the war. This meant not only an enormous amount of cheap energy available to US citizens but also another source of wealth as we exported petroleum to other countries.

There was a great construction bonanza as this nation rushed to provide a good life for the fighting men returning home to their families. For several decades after WWII Americans increasingly moved to populate the countryside surrounding cities all over this country. Technological advancements led to the creation of all sorts of new appliances to go in all those new houses. War rationing was over and foods and other formerly restricted items, like tires were once again available to anyone who could afford them. Labor laws and government initiatives kept businesses from over exploiting workers. This meant a larger percentage of the work force was able to participate in the consumption of goods and services and the middle class was born into what was described as the American Dream.

So it was from the beginning that the middle class valued not just their ability to keep hunger and the other problems of poverty at bay but that they were able to participate in consuming more resources just like the wealthy, if still to a lesser degree. Of course what we see today is the runaway version of the American dream, a culture consumed by consumption. We are in terms of material wealth, three times better off than we were in the 1950s. Everything from the size of our cars and our homes, to the size of our entrees has grown. In purely materialistic terms we are wealthier than ever before. But polls show this wealth hasn't translated to happiness. The National Opinion Research Center has been asking Americans annual just how happy they are. It turns out that we peaked in terms of happiness in the 1950s and have been growing ever less happy since; despite all our new stuff.

Of course we have been growing more sedentary too. We spend much more time sitting in cars, sitting at work and witting in front of the television than we ever did in the middle of last century. And this has had an effect of both our physical and mental health. As we've continued to adopt more tools of convenience and comfort we've also seen a rise in those chronic diseases associated with such a sedentary lifestyle. All of this material wealth has also come at a cost. As a people we work more hours than any other nation in the world. The level of stress can be measured in studies and conveyed as statistics. Despite our rise in levels of material wealth we still see high numbers of suicides rivaling those of homicides. (That is, in America you're probably more likely to kill yourself than to be killed by anyone else) Or you can just spend time in public and absorb the level of anxiety that permeates our culture. More than half of all American adults have taken some sort of medication for depression, not counting those who self medicate regularly with drugs less regulated by the government like alcohol or tobacco or an entire tub of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. The United States spends more than twice- double!- the amount of money as any other nation on health care and yet we rank 44 in life expectancy. We have an infant mortality rate that is higher than that of Cuba. Who, by the way, has more doctors per capita than we do here in the US. It’s clear from our ailing health that the way we live is not in our best interest.

This may on its face seem like just another defense reason for change, the idea that we must or we will stay sick. It isn't though. Advocating for a change in the way we live that will make us healthier is inseparable from advocating for a change in the way we live that will make us happier.

It will also give us more choices. The myth goes something like this. "We have more choices in terms of what we eat than ever before!" In Bring the Food Economy Home, Helena Norberg-Hodge et al, addresses this directly saying.

It is easy for the Northern consumer to believe that industrial agriculture and global trade have actually led to an increase in food diversity. A well-stocked supermarket can overwhelm with its apparent food choices: fifty different kinds of breakfast cereals; eighty feet of shelving devoted to fruit juices, soft drinks and other beverages; six different brands of cottage cheese; ten varieties of potato chips… Much of this apparent diversity is illusion, however, since the 80 percent of the supermarket that consists of processed foods offers little real choice. A close look at several different packages of crackers or canned soups will reveal virtually identical lists of ingredients. In many cases, the ten different brands are owned by the same food conglomerate- the only diversity is each one's distinct packaging.

These transnational food corporations makes decision that result not in more and better choices for eaters but fewer choices. The decision about what to offer is often governed not by taste or for nutritional reasons but because of what foods will travel best and last the longest on the grocery store shelf. The result, as Norberg-Hodge suggests.

Thus dozens of apple varieties once may have grown within a few miles of a supermarket that today sells just three or four- those most favored by large growers. No matter that a Red Delicious is not as tasty as an heirloom apple variety the Red Delicious looks and travels better.

In China the number of rice varieties under cultivation decreased from 10,000 in 1949 to about 1,000 in 1972. "In the United States 95 percent of the cabbage, 91 percent of the field maize, 94 percent of the pea, and 81 percent of the tomato varieties have been lost." Broadly speaking we've lost ¾ of the world's food diversity in a century.

A return to small scale, sustainable agriculture and local eating would be eliminating some or even most of the exotics we've come to think of a staples but it would could mean a return of diversity over run by the globalized agriculture and decisions made based not on the preference of eaters but on what practices will make food companies the most money.

In addition to the health benefits of changing our lifestyle and focusing more on quality and less on quantity we are likely to see more benefits from a way of growing food that requires fewer chemical inputs. All of the pesticides and fertilizers that allow industrial agriculture to operate on depleted soils come at a cost not fully understood by the medical community. There are studies linking these chemicals to human health problems (not to mention environmental problems) but it seems logical enough to just suggest that being able to avoid foods grown using toxic chemicals will make for a healthier happier life.

And we should be growing food without the use of such chemicals not just because it's bad for the health of those of us who are eating the food but because it's bad for the health of those people growing our food. The UN reports between 20,000 and 40,000 farm workers die globally each year due to pesticide exposure. UP to 300,000 farm laborers in the US have illnesses related to pesticide exposure. If we think that we're not in some way responsible for these illness and these deaths then we're wrong. And again this is not to be seen as a defense posture from which we should act but as a way in which we can make decisions that repair our world. We can take back the notion of morally respectable behavior and apply it to this portion of our lives. We can demand a system of growing food and eating it that doesn't not, as a consequence, include us in moral unacceptable practices.

A similar argument can be made in regards to the current practice of raising animals in this country. This is not the argument that animals should not be consumed by humans but the argument that we do have a responsibility to treat those animals in a humane and morally defendable way. Factory farming of meat is not doing that now and it would be a decent of us to demand a change. Of course that change would inevitably taste better. It’s true that locally raised, small scale sustainable meat comes without the growth hormones, the pesticide residues, the antibiotics and the dubious preservatives but it also just tastier. It's an obvious example of how doing what's right by our bodies, the bodies of other people and animals and doing right in terms of the environment also happens to mean food that tastes better. It's like we've been going out of our way to poison ourselves and the planet. Or more correctly put, we have allowed a system by which a few people get rich by promoting questionable agricultural practices. We need to make changes not as a defensive response to these practices but as a way to transition to a healthier, happier way of eating as an act of repairing the world.

jack works or jack plays

For more than a century we've been doing our best to trash the notion agricultural work. As a result we've come to regard the labor of growing food as a nasty, backbreaking effort best left to all those machines and a few of their handlers. The average age of a farmer in this country, 55 years old, is a reflection of the message we've been sending to our children as they grow up. "Don't get involved in that awful work of farming. Move to the city and find real work." When we further examine this change in attitude though, we find a deeper modification in the way we think about work.

Humans have been developing tools since the beginnings of our evolution. In fact many people think of the advent of tool making as the distinction between apes and man. That is, we were just animals until we started using tools to better out lives. One of the reasons for developing tools was undoubtedly the time savings advantageous of some of our tools. Fast forward a few thousand years and consider the invention of a more modern time saving tool, the cotton gin. Eli Whitney is credited with creating this machine, an updated version of the Indian Charkhi used to pick the seeds and seed pods out of cotton. Before its invention someone, very often a slave in the case of the cotton producing regions of the Southeastern United States, had to pick them out by hand. A very tedious and time consuming job indeed. In the cotton gin we can see a fairly low tech tool that reduced the amount of human labor needed to produce a particular agricultural product.

It is worth noting that because the cotton gin made the labor of removing seeds so much easier and less time consuming, cotton harvests grew tremendously in the years following its invention. This meant more people needed to plow the fields, plant the cotton and harvest it. The net result of the cotton gin was not fewer slaves but more. It is also worth pointing out that our modern way of life offers us more time saving devices than any other society in the whole of human history. We have machines to can food for us and machines to open the cans. We have machines that wash our clothes and bake our bread and dry our hair and transport us out and over the landscape at consistent speeds not dreamed of by the people of only a hundred and fifty years ago. And yet, the average worker in the US works more now than ever. Why, in this age of time saving tools are we still working so much?

If you factor in the time it takes you to earn all the money needed to own and operate a car, and all the time you spend sitting in traffic, the average speed of driving is slower than a human being can walk. Of course walking doesn't offer the range needed by many of us to travel all the daily miles we become accustom to driving. And the actual act of driving is faster than walking. It would take some commuters days to walk to work. But this notion that all our modern tools of convenience have actually given us more time in life is a fallacy that points to the way we think about work.

Before these modern time saving tools were invented, before the industrial revolution led to the invention of all these tool, human activity wasn't divided so acutely into labor and leisure. There were no time clocks to stamp on the way into the office. Life was a collection of daily activities that sustained life. For farmers, which meant for majority of people living 150 years ago, daily activities included what we would think of as chores: putting animals out to pasture, milking cows, mending fences, sewing seeds, harvesting food, etc. These chores were obviously necessary to the continuation of life. That is, the work was required if a particular farmer wanted be able to feed his family so the work was really important. But it was also ingrained in those who did such work in a way we have trouble understanding today.

For most Americans the concept of work is a negative one, associated with a job that is visited where labor is done in return for money with which to buy all that a person needs and wants. The work was required if a particular laborer wanted be able to feed his family so the work was really important. But there is a palpable distinction between the work of directly feeding your family and the work done to buy money to feed your family. It's a distinction that informs not only the way we think about food but the way we think about work.
We work more now than many agricultural societies of the past so it's important to point out that if the goal of getting the farmers into he factories and mechanization agriculture was to offer us more time, then industrial agriculture is a failure. Not just because it is destroying our soil and poison our land and our waterways and our children. Not just because it is warming our planet. And not just because it is unsustainable in the future just ahead, a future with fewer fossil fuel resources to do the job of growing food. Industrial agriculture fails because it's part of a system of living that takes time away from us as it forces us to work longer and harder just to feed our families and meet our needs.

But it robs us of our time in another way, a way in which I alluded to above. Our divisive way of thinking about labor has caused us to compartmentalize our lives and scorn the time we don't consider leisure. It's doubtful that preindustrial farmers worked each and every day while whistling through the easy chores of farming. There are always unpleasant jobs that must be done. That is as true now as it has always been, but the difference is that now we tend to scorn any and all work as the opposite of the way we strive to spend our time. These days we tend to think in terms of having a fixed number of hours during which we are required to work and then we are free again to have fun. We talk longingly about the day we can retire and do no more work at all! (I can't find statistics to back up my claim but isn't it interesting to note the number of people who die shortly after they stop working. I mention this as I note the passing of a family friend and mailman of my town for decades. He had just retired. Most people retire when they are older and therefore closer to their inevitable passing, but might not the regular work of life, regardless of its form, help keep humans healthy in all the many senses of wellbeing?) As the baby boomers, noted for their, shall we say, lack of modesty, drag us all along with them on the story of their most recent life stage, retirement, we are reminded that near the end of life we're expected to stop the efforts that sustain our families and get back to the fun of living- the golden years!

Retirement is defined as "the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from active working life." In the future, retirement as considered by today's baby boomers will not be possible. Sipping Mai Tais on a tropical beach while spending money accumulated over years of work at a job will probably be the destiny of fewer and fewer people. Retirement itself is a fairly new concept, not mentioned in the English language until about 350 years ago and not a common occurrence for most people who, up until the 19th century, worked until they died.

Of course the type of work they did changed as they got older. 85 year old men were not leading teams of horse to work the soil early in the spring. The labor of the elderly in years past fit both their physical capabilities and the wisdom they had accrued. But the notion of contribution went beyond weekly volunteerism or story telling. Older people remained active in the patterns and habits that sustained life on the homestead. Again the idea of labor as a more inclusive part of life precluded the notion that one day older people would just stop working.

The same is true of children of course. Least I be accused of championing the return to labor conditions of the industrial revolution before child labor laws went into affect, let me make it clear that there are jobs both suitable and unsuitable for children. But children adore being outdoors. They love to play in natural settings and work in the garden and grow food. My daughter truly enjoys our chickens. She likes to watch them, to gather their eggs, to feed them and visit them at night to shut them in safely. She is only two and not especially helpful in taking care of them at this age. ;-) She also gets a bit scared when they fly but in only a few years I hope it will be part of her duties as a part of our household to take care of the chickens, a job not outside the skill range of a seven year old. Much of the work of starting seeds, planting and weeding and harvesting, (and cooking! My daughter also "helps" to bake bread) can be done safely by people under the age of 18. Traditional this has been how farming families got through the annual periods of time when more labor was needed. Many agricultural regions of our country historically operated school systems around the need for seasonal labor provided by the younger members of the family. Of course it is important to protect the younger, more vulnerable member of our society at large. And it is important that children have access to education that teaches a wide range of thoughts, skills and ideas. But it would be foolish to assume that means children and those who get too old to do heavy labor should be excluded from the work of feeding ourselves in the future.

Again it is the idea of labor as something other than an integrated aspect of life that leads us to carve up our time and make such a distinction between when we are working and when we are having fun. Life is work, but that doesn't make it less fun. We have the tools, some of them old and some of them new, to keep most of the labor of growing our own food from being the nasty, backbreaking work it is often described as being. But it's important to understand that only when we change our minds about what "work" means in the context of our lives will we be able to fully embrace a change in the way we live. Only after we've become accustom to the notion that working is living and doing that work is just as enjoyable- in some ways more enjoyable- than the mindless leisure we've come to expect from our current way of life, will we believe in a change.