Statement Of Intent
Or How I plan to do my part
This farm will be place of healthy living and learning. A place where viable options for a sustainable life are tried, revised and put to use, as we reconnect our isolated selves to earth. As we create a space that meets our physical needs and is nurturing to the mind and spirit, we discard old habits that have as destructive and unwilling managers of an ecosystem. We return to being an integral part of the ecosystem that provides our lives. This is as it should be.
Desired Farm conditions:
• All food is grown on the property. The end goal that it would come mostly from perennial forest garden, with “extras” coming from interwoven annual patches. While the forest garden is being established an annual garden will be the main source of food, and eventually be phased out.
• As much as possible all other needs, (heat, clothing, money for taxes, ect) should be met by the farm. This is a boundary that will continuously be pushed, both in the sense of relearning lost skills, and in the sense of removing those thing in my life that are too energy intensive.
Possible manifestations of the goal:
The ideals that drive this project are set in stone; the physical realities are still very much fluid. For many reasons I feel that South Hope could be, and is a fantastic location. However I realize that there are other considerations because I don’t technically own any of the land yet. My current vision is of a 2 acre Forest Garden, encompassing the house and a few possible outbuildings in the immediate area, and in the future probably an addition to the house including some sort of barn. I will try to balance a respect for the people who own the land with my need to be active with these ideas.
Some ideas I’ve had so far:
• Terracing or swales on the hill behind house
• Small water storage pond from seasonal spring
• Barn with root cellar for winter storage
• Attached foundry and forge
• Living raft for vegetable and fish production
• “Four seasons” style cold frame green house
• Bucky Dome for food production before forest garden is fully yielding
• Vegetable oil Co-Op
How the Farm relates to the world:
• True sustainability cannot be measured on the time scale that humans are generally are familiar with. This is part of why the word “sustainable” has come to mean “less of an impact then the conventional equivalent” The great law of the Iroquois states ”In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation” To me this is the idea that should be implied in the word sustainability. The ultimate goal then would be to create a sustainable lifestyle.
• This is to be a place where I can start to learn how to live without destroying the ground beneath my feet, where others are welcome to do the same, and/or to learn from my experiences.
• To encourage people to make lifestyle changes on their own by, spreading the information gained by experience, and creating a supportive community those difficult tasks.
Farm Establishment
The Forest garden will be established over the next ten years, with heaviest amounts of work being done the first few years. Work will tend to be concentrated in the spring followed by maintenance through rest of year. The gardens will begin come into its own 8-10 years after start. Early establishment will concentrate on major land moving (if needed) projects, tree plantings, and cover crops as trees and shrubs get established. Aqua culture, cold frame, and Bucky dome projects are on a “as the opportunity presents itself” level. Most likely these projects will happen in the 3-7 year range. As they are no longer needed for my food supply they will be dismantled and site returned to nature (in better shape than found) or evolved into the expanding forest garden. As the farm provides for more of my needs a shift can be made where more time will be freed to spend working on the farm. A personal goal to this end is to have retired from the workforce by the time I am 30. I am planning on creating a garden that will yield more than what I strictly need providing the opportunity for the farm to be economically sustaining.
Basic approaches
• The main desired condition being that of a independent food source, food plants will be the main concentration, due consideration will be given to other characteristics of the plant so that harmful species are not introduced
• K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). Simple solutions often work best, and even better is to eliminate the cause of the problem in the first place. A “simple” lifestyle is to be pursued.
• In this civilization we have very little cultural memory, our gardening “traditions” are very new relatively speaking. While current traditions will be given due reverence, empirical knowledge will be valued above all else.
Motives
How to put my motivation into words? The obvious answer is that I can’t, the level of exaggeration required to pass a feeling along to the reader would render the words unbelievable. In comparison I have not been motivated in anything that I have thus far done.
What I seek to do is something that I am simultaneously drawn and pushed towards. A life without a carbon footprint, providing directly for my own needs, spending that majority of my time outdoors working for myself, are all thing that draw me to do this. This combines with my general dissatisfaction with the modern, distraction oriented, lifestyle, climate change, peak oil, government incompetence and oppression. It adds up to some serious objections on my part.
We have reached a point in these issues where I have realized that I am no longer comfortable with effect minimizing actions. I mean how can you call cleaner ski lifts “good for the environment” they still pollute, right? These things have always come with the asterisk that in the future we will need to be doing a lot more. That future has arrived for me. Climate change and peak oil are now questions, and in a way always have been, of when and how quick of an effect they will have. It is looking like it will be sooner rather than later, with the peak production of oil being in May of 2005 we seem to be on the plateau. Even if I am wildly wrong about the when and this is not on our doorstep where is the harm in being prepared for it a few years early?
These are the facts, off the top of my head, which I am working with:
• We live in a society where things are considered disposable, which is most untrue, everything we have is already on earth and can’t go any place (with the obvious exception of the occasional odd spacecraft)
• The current prevailing lifestyle in this country (and the lifestyle that most people in the world strive towards) is having negative effects on the climate of the planet.
• Oil production to date peaked in may of 2005
• As excess oil supply is used up instead of turning to sensible option (using less energy, using alternative energies) the gut reaction of the governments of the world will be to fight, steal, and embargo their way into “energy security”
• Politicians are ultimately people, as such they are given to looking out for themselves first (not that there is anything wrong with that, just it’s silly to expect any person under normal circumstances to do otherwise, just as it would be silly to follow them for that exact reason).
• The first world economy is based on continuous growth and thus has very limited and unhappy options for facing the physical reality of a finite world.
• All empires end
• Civilization itself is based upon a population density that grossly outweighs the carrying capacity for that given area. Thus civilization requires the importation of resources from other areas. This is NOT A SUSTAINABLE WAY TO LIVE. Meaning that it is a way of life that can not be sustained. This also means that every person in an industrial country still has slaves; we just don’t have to look at them.
I have hope that I can live a life more closely in tune with my beliefs, a life as close to freedom as one can hope to get, that I can live working directly towards my immediate needs and do away with all that I don’t truly need. To live this way would be to live knowing that I would have done my best to change the world in a positive way. I need to be free from this civilization, or to at the very least have tried. If I fail to reach my goal than at least I’ve given the next generation a good starting point. As I live now I am constantly and painfully aware that everyday everything that I do and use is in some way contributing to the destruction of a planet which is important to all those who live. This knowledge is unrelenting and at the same time I find it absolutely necessary to me and in a way a comfort to have. Because from it comes the realization that I alone am responsible for changing myself.
I am motivated by the scope of what I can do. I recognize that this project will require a lot of work. As well as giving up thing that I may like or enjoy from this culture, though for me there is much more to be gained. I am being drawn away from this culture because I find that my fundamental beliefs are at odds with the majority. I believe that everything is connected. I reject the idea scientific idea that something can be singled out for study, or that effects have only a singular cause. I believe that when we live out a certain lifestyle there are both negative and positive effects, these are the direct result of that lifestyle. These effects are not always seen as being connected because they are happening in many different theaters simultaneously. I believe that because they are intrinsically connected we cannot single out a condition that we find unsatisfactory, such as war, and expect to change it; without first changing the whole of our cultures. I do not hold anyone to the standards that I set for myself. We all need to find our own version of right and wrong. I only hope that you can understand it as my unique truth. I in return recognize that if there is any truth to be found anywhere we must each find it of our own fierce will.
Good luck.
