Northern Farmer

Raining this afternoon. Kinda pretty really, being it’s the first real rain we’ve had here since our flood over a month ago. I’m still finding trash in the pasture where the creek runs through. Don’t think it’s from the folk up river, it’s looking more from what was washed out of the road sides and delivered onto our creek bottom pasture. If a person ever wants to figure out the state of a civilization all you have to do is look what’s washed up after a flood.

There’s the usual drift wood and vegetation but I’m more interested in society’s garbage. Years ago after a flood we’d be picking up about a year or two’s supply of wine bottles from our neighbor up river. He died a few years ago before his prime, I think he was around 85 or so, war veteran from the big one, farmed with horses till the 80’s. Single his whole life. Good guy really, you could trust him.

Now the garbage is mostly from the convenience stores. Mostly those plastic pop and water bottles. With a few pizza or sandwich containers that they sell there. The pasture is full of that stuff. Now some idiot might figure, “what are you doing grazing a bottom land”, all I can say is it’s the best pasture in the world if done right. The reason I used the word idiot is the same people that figure that they are so environmentally whatever are some of the ones that are throwing out all the trash. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

I was reading a book from the library this past week by Wendell Berry and the introduction got to me, he was talking about the “modern” economy. I kinda knew this in my heart but to see it in words is just too good, (or too bad), to be true. The “economy” wants nothing more than to have dysfunctional families. Wow! When a person thinks about it, yup, he’s right on track from my point of view. The dysfunctional or broken up family will always spend more. The “simple” family is tending to their own needs more of the time and is not an asset to the “modern” economy as is the family whom doesn’t give a hoot to where their children are, where the husband or wife is, etc. Everybody is busy doing nothing to help the core unit of the family. But the “economy” loves it.

Remember 9-11? What were we told to do? Was it hunker down and take care of your families and get ready for a fight? Nope, it was get out shopping and go to Disney World. That’ll get ‘em! How times change, and how it saddens me. You know, if I was a betting man, I’d give poor odds on the future of this “economy”, where the dysfunctional family is the goal. What can a person say to such incredible stupidity? I often wonder if the people that make their money this way figure they’ll be safe in the future. Must figure they will, sit around in their little world and figure they’ll be blessed because they screwed enough people over. In the end I figure the joke’s on them. What a mess they’ve made with us basically supporting it.

So what do we do? Well, we’ll keep plugging here. We love our country and if we are considered traitors for not sticking up for the “economy”, (which seems to be god now), so be it. We have the family economy here. And that’s the only one that’ll ever come through in the end.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 12th, 2005 at 8:00 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.