Northern Farmer

November continues to be just wonderful here in the north country, sunny day today with little wind and in the lower sixties. It sure could be a lot worse than that. It was a good day to be in the woods most of the day again making firewood. In fact working without a jacket with no bugs bothering a person is a little bit of paradise in this territory.

A few days ago I received the Fall issue of Small Farmer’s Journal and as always it’s as good as it gets. One thing that caught my eye was the editorial. Agrarianism at it’s finest! The food for thought is overflowing. I’m going to write down some questions that were in this editorial for farmers.

#1. Ask yourself if you can get by when the electricity goes down for weeks on end, or when gasoline is rationed, or when your school or church shuts down.

#2. Ask yourselves what happens when the local supermarket shelves aren’t restocked.

#3. Ask yourself what happens if your bank should close it’s doors indefinitely, or the federal government orders a banking holiday should too many people want their money at the same time.

#4. Ask yourself what happens when the local farm supply runs out of your seed, or fertilizer, or tractor parts.

#5. Ask yourself what it would mean if the government, for reasons of national security, should commandeer your production or your young adult offspring for some difficult to rationalize federal war effort.

#6. Ask yourself what it would mean if trucks, trains, barges, or planes were not able to transport your production after harvest.

#7. Ask yourself any such question which you feel contains a seed of insecurity for the future of your farm and family.

Now these really made me think a little more seriously about what we’re doing here on the farm. If these questions were a test we’d flat out fail at the present moment. But the good news here is that we’ve been working on these very things mentioned instead of figuring that society or the government would come up with some answers. In fact thinking what they’d come up with is a scary proposition in itself. Now instead of reading the questions as written above change it a little to a slightly different angle. Such as;

Ask yourself “where and how you might farm so that you can get by when the electricity goes down for weeks on end, or when gasoline is rationed, or when your church or school shuts down.”

You know, we’re only one disaster away from the modern farm system collapsing. Sometimes I wish I was born at a different time in history so I wouldn’t have to go against the modern way of thinking and strike out on our own .If it was a hundred years ago I could just farm and raise a family. But the modern way is clearly so wrong a person isn’t left with much choice in the matter. On the other hand, it sure is good, knowing a person is doing the right thing here for the family and the farm’s future.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 7th, 2005 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.