The Unforgiving Minute

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.
(from Rudyard Kipling’s If)

This is the next to last in the series of posts on homestead success or failure. Even with the vision of the direct use economy and its zero sum paradigm, the homestead work can seem daunting and overwhelming. The Nearings refered to the part of their work which provided them with food and fuel and such as the work of the world. If you eat, stay warm, and wear clothes someone does the work. If not you, then someone. At best the homestead yields up hard corn still on the cob - still in the husk, a clutch of muddy turnips, a basket of gangly kale leaves, a hank of raw wool reeking of lanolin, a pig still walking around oinking, a tree - not firewood, not planks, a tree. How is it that these things get transformed into the marvels of the homestead - bread, beer, cheese, tender loin, wool socks, buildings, and all the other parts and sundries of the good life?

This is the subsistence dweller’s deepest mystery. Those who want to flip to the last page, look at the bottom line, and skip all he philosophical stuff pass this by and almost always fail at homesteading.

We like work.

Once I was gathering horse manure from the pastures with a manure fork and filling the bicycle-wheeled cart. I was filling the hot bed of a small hothouse with layers of manure alternated with old hay and leaves. It was quite a large bed, 10’ long, 4’ wide, and 4’ high.. I’d been at it for about an hour when a friend showed up at the farmstead and was directed to the bottom where I was working. He observed for a few minutes and said, “I can tell you how to get done with that much more quickly.”

I was taken aback. Get done? More quickly? I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Why in the name of all things holy and unholy would I want to get done, and more quickly at that?

On the farmstead we are not working for sundown or a paycheck. Work is us. As the Prophet says:

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life's procession,
that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.“

They key to work, the work of the world, is this: How do you feel about your own company, are you at ease with your own thoughts? Most people, alas, are not. They do not like to be alone with themselves and so they seek all sorts of outside stimulation and distraction to take away their attention from themselves. They exhibit a loathing for work, but, says I, what they shun is their own company. Because when you work, your body will learn the task quickly and soon cease to trouble your mind about it. Hoeing, plowing, scything, pumping, peeling, chopping, kneading, stitching, planing, drilling, sawing, washing, carding, churning, grinding, scaling, scraping, reaping, thrashing, winnowing, digging, weeding, planting, weaving, are all things the hands and eyes will learn on their own accord and accomplish on their own volition and fee the mind to wander and meditate.

On the homestead the saw and ax are always there ready by the woodpile, corn to be shelled is always there beside the crib, the plane and spokeshave are always there by the work piece, the churn is seldom without cream, the hoe is handy to the garden, the needles and yarn are always at hand, the shovel by the ditch, the dishes close to the sink, the laundry basket by the clothesline. The mind will need a respite from time to time, but the hands are on no such schedule and readily take up the task to fill in that bit of time that presents itself.

We might also ask: How do you feel about the company of your own household, how important to you are their thoughts? Many tasks are purposely set aside so that they can be an excuse to discourse with our fellows. After nearly two decades of marriage and relatively little time away from each other, Et Ux and I find that we still have a great deal to say to one another. The knife moves on its own and well practiced hands dance about the evening meal and as if it had been done by elves unseen, there is supper! We were too busy laughing about something to notice. The evening chores go about as everyone is rehearsing what they will bring to our “Talk like a pirate” night or our “Favorite cartoon character” night. “Great horny toads! Say yer prayers, you long eared galoot!”

It seems that every minute, every unforgiving minute, is filled with something. And make no mistake, the Earth is ours -- and all that there is in it.

Zero Sum

There are places that have been under continuous horticultural cultivation for more than 5000 years and are still producing food enough to sustain the folk. There are the areas in the middle of sterile laterite soils of the Brazilian rainforest that are rich and fertile even after 1000 years of neglect, Tera Preta (Portuguese = Dark Earth, the composted vegetable plots of Amazonian people tended for thousands of years in the same spot.

We have examined the concept of using the coin of another realm to set up the subsistence homestead and then using little or no cash to perpetuate it. With no continuous input from the outside, the farmstead’s modus operandi is as a zero sum equation.

There are no wastes, there are no surpluses, there are no disadvantages that are not also advantages. The zero sum homestead does not operate on a win-or-lose basis, but rather on a win this way or else win some other way basis.

In the agribusiness model, whether it is a giant factory farm or your own backyard, the operation requires inputs and generates wastes that must be disposed of. Not so with a zero sum paradigm. Not even weeds in the garden are to be distained. In a fallow bed they mine up the minerals from deep in the ground and hold the soil firm, then when they are uprooted and added to the in situ compost they return all the soil nutrients back. Some are used as litter for chickens and rabbits and some as feed. All that is returned to the garden beds and hay fields and cycled once more.

They eye of the zero sum huertero sees the world differently. There’s no such thing as kitchen waste, spoiled food, leaves in the gutter, grey water, sawdust. Those are only things temporarily in the wrong place. There’s no such thing as weeding the garden, it’s gathering nitrogen bearing biomass for the compost. There’s no such thing raking leaves, that’s gathering carbon mulch. There’s no such thing as shucking corn, it’s separating the kitchen food from the pig food. The freezer never needs cleaned out, it’s dispensing stored chicken food. There’s never too much milk to get from the cow, it’s dog and cat food. Trees never need pruning nor removed, they are only conveniently at hand firewood.

The Earth and its resources are at hand and Nature contributes the sun and rain. The homesteader turns the kaleidoscope and what to the unaccustomed eye looks like weeds, brambles, litter, and all manner of refuse and offal, in a twinkling and a trice, becomes bread and cheese and wine.

Now the eye of the zero sum economist is bound to wander from time to time and spy resources that otherwise are going to waste. The usual way of operating a agribusiness dairy operation is to grow hay and buy corn. The Amish do the opposite, they grow corn and buy hay. That way more biomass is coming onto their farms than is leaving. The modern world little knows the treasures that are under foot and they are eager to dispose of, municipal leaves, lawn clippings, food disposed of by restaurants and super markets, and all manner of such things. On our particular farmstead we have access to great mounds of old horse stable litter which is very high in nitrogen and carbon. It is a nuisance to the stable owner and is free for the hauling away. After the application of such biological and mineral resources from outside the farm, it is still viewed as a zero sum. Only now the sum is greater!

What Doeth It Profit?

With business as usual in Babylon, profit means the gross cash receipts minus the cash expenditures, the bottom line, as it were. The margin of that profit can be quite small and the larger the business entity, the smaller that margin is likely to be. The best example near to the common conscious now of days is the image of Big Oil raking in obscene amounts of money while gasoline prices continue to increase. I find few people who understand how few cents are profit to the oil companies in the price of a gallon of gas. If the companies became not for profit, or (Heaven forbid) became nationalized, and the profit were eliminated, the price gas would only drop a few pennies. The reason the oil companies are making record profits is because the world is burning record amounts of gasoline.

The small profit margins have other implications for the world dancing dizzily to Babylon’s cacophonous tune. Most of the world’s food is produced on this same corporate profit scheme and the margin of profit is tiny. No longer is farming the vocation of millions of people but rather depends on the investments for profit by the stockholders of the giant agribusiness corporations. If (or when) we reach a point where farming just isn’t profitable, doesn’t give a cash return on cash invested, then the giant corporations and their stockholders will just stop doing it. Sound unlikely? That’s pretty much what happened in Zimbabwe and the people are starving.

Described above is one definition of profit. A synonym for profit in this sense is usury, the lending out of money to someone who is doing the work for a part of the results of his labor returned in the form of more money. This concept and practice has become so central to modern society, especially western society, that we accept it as the natural course and order of things. But very many, probably most, cultures in the past considered it morally reprehensible. If fact many of the world’s prophetic teachings, including the Bible, promise that a society based on usury will fall:

“ Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.“ Ezekiel 18:13

Modern believers want to make the Biblical term usury to mean high or exorbitant interest on a loan, but it doesn’t. It means any interest or increase on a loan.

Another definition for profit in the economical sense is increase. I have a great aunt named Comfort from a time when people were named after Christian virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Chastity, Temperance. At that time a popular man’s name was Increase. In a direct use economy we live by increase rather than usury. A farm or farmstead managed by Babylon’s economics calculates the cash cost of operating the farm and the value of what’s produced. If the value of what’s produced is greater than the cash expenditure, then the farm is profitable. Profitable, perhaps, but in a most precarious and vulnerable position. The profit margin tends to be slim and at any minute the operation can dip from being in the black to being in the red with disastrous results.

The fascination with exotic breeds and cultivars, oddments of nutrition, odd management systems are all functions of the miniature agribusiness paradigm. If you are raising, say, chickens and the expenses are $5 per bird but the selling price is $4.95 per bird, then a rare breed or odd feed supplement that can increase production by only 3% means the difference between making ten cents per bird or losing five cents per bird -- the difference between prosperity and disaster.

But what about on the direct use homestead? As we have described, the paradigm is to write off the cash startup expense as a loss out of Caesar’s purse, and then operate the enterprise with little and preferable no cash. Instead of feeding (medicating, housing, etc,.) the bird to the tune of $5 as above, suppose we use the natural increase of our place to let them forage and feed them the surplus and scraps from other farmstead goings on. Why, you say, that scrawny bird wouldn’t sell for $2.25! Fine. I’m not selling it.

I am putting some meat on the table with no cash. Viewed in Babylon’s terms, I have an infinite profit margin. I am earning my sustenance by increase rather than by usury.

The same holds true whether it is meat, corn, cabbages, turnips, firewood, bread, beer, house, quilts, or a pair of shoes. The least money (preferably none) in with something out and depending on the natural increase comes closer to a right livelihood.

And a wiser livelihood. I once read a story paralleling two rice farming families. One was in Japan on a ½ acre farm and the other in Arkansas on a 5000 acre farm. The Japanese family was holding a celebration that the “farm” was being passed onto the next generation and it’s productivity and ability to support the family was as high as it had ever been for generations. During good times they sold some of the rice, during all times they ate their fill of the rice. During that same month the father and son of the 5000 acre farm both committed suicide. The price of rice had fallen slightly and for too many years in a row, they lost money and were deeper and deeper into the usurer’s debt. In one paradigm ½ acre is cause for year after year of celebration, and in another 5000 acres isn’t enough to live for.

In the usury based agribusiness model, the cabbage farmer sees that circumstances have reduced his yield by 10% and with his 5% margin of profit he is ruined. The direct use huertero sees that in the patch where he planted 20 cabbages, only 18 remain, a 10% loss! What difference does it make? A couple less bowls of slaw this winter? His reality is the 18 heads of increase. The two heads that were lost? Did they really ever exist?

History, philosophy, and religion teach us that there is something unsavory about usury and soon or late it comes to a foul end. Likewise there is something wholesome and deeply profound about partnering ourselves with the natural increase of the Earth.

Corn and grain, corn and grain.
What falls to the Earth will rise again.

Hoof and horn, hoof and horn.
Whatever dies will be reborn.

Nature's Pace

My tale has wound its way to the point where the subsistence small holder is ready to increase his lot through direct use economics. We have some small capital as startup funds from our dealing in Caesar’s lucre and we then have an eye toward closing the purse strings and coaxing along our increase to some other tune than the clink of coins.

In this paradigm your wealth increases at Nature’s pace, best to be familiar with it. There is only so much biological growth that is going to take place on your bit of truck and that is the dividend, wages, and interest you get for your labor and investments. Forget all the MBA blather and talk of bottom line and profit. None of that obtains; Nature is not interested in it and never has been.

Look about on your farmstead and you will see what might be viewed as an unused resource, or else it might be viewed as a vacuum. Climate, water, soil condition, the happenstance of plants and animals all contribute to it, so somewhere there is an opportunity that Nature offers the observant. Begin there.

Here is an example: Our corners, oddments, and waste places support a natural growth of some very nutrient rich plants: lambs quarter, plantain, purslane, dock, dandelion, clover, poke, and many more. Here is an opportunity. Of course while they are in their prime, which is just about all spring, summer, and fall, we eat them directly and better was never had. But Nature is much overly generous. Gather all the abundance you can for your own table and abundance remains.

So we began with rabbits. As the previous post describes, we bought some breeding stock and materials for cages with the money in the mason jar designated for such things and wrote it off and forgot about it. Contrary to what you might read about rearing rabbits, the do fine on “weeds” and scraps so long as you have some knowledge of their nutritional requirements and the nutrients in the plants.

Soon there is an increase, and if a little skill and wisdom is used, there will be quite an increase. The rabbits are meat for the table; but also the rabbits have been creating piles of manure with its fixed nitrogen. Also processing the rabbits has yielded offal, skins, and bones. Now we have two more assets, or “vacuums” to fill. The byproducts go to provide cat food and dog food so we can have the use of those indispensable animals about the farm. The manure goes to the garden. It is rather high nitrogen but can be used directly to fertilize plants.

The increased growth of organically fertilized plants is something to behold. This year some old horse manure was piled on a garden bed to further compost and beside it some volunteer parsnips germinated. By midsummer they were over 6” across at the crown. Once a cartload of rabbit manure was dumped on a compost heap and it contained a single pumpkin seed which germinated. The vine ran more than 50’ and made several hundred pounds of pumpkins.

The surplus of garden produce from the animal fertilizers creates other vacuums. A family can eat a couple of score of pounds of squashes and pumpkins, but it’s not very difficult for the well composted patch to produce half a ton. Likewise with root crops and the tops and haulms of other plants. Pumpkins are excellent chicken feed and goat feed, especially in the depths of winter when the richness of vitamins and calcium will boost egg and milk production. In fact, boost it so far, the homesteader is likely to have too much milk. Yet another vacuum!

A small cow of modest production will give far more milk than a large family can use directly or processed into cheese, yogurt, butter, sour cream, ice cream and the like. Add a few goats to that and you will be positively awash in milk. This vacuum is met by getting some pigs. Pigs will become quite ponderous on a milk diet. Further, pigs confined on a fallow garden will plow it deeply with their rooting and manure it in the bargain.

The agribusiness way of doing things is to come up with a scheme, calculate the cost of the materials, labor, equipment, seeds or stock, feed or fertilizer, the cost of getting rid of the waste, the price for which it will sell and see what is the margin of profit. This is a disastrous formula for the sustainable subsistence farmstead. Each project and enterprise must fit like a puzzle piece into the next one. There are no wastes on a sustainable farm, only opportunities.

In practice the natural accumulation of farmstead wealth cannot be short-circuited by purchasing it. It must be allowed to grow at Nature’s pace. Anything beyond that is greed, and Nature is very quick to punish greed.

Right Hand, Left Hand

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.
Matt. 6:3

Having outlined in the previous post the difficulty in mixing the direct use economy with the cash economy, I should disclose how one goes about transferring the assets of one of the economies to the other.

First, the object of the direct use, sustainable economy it to produce and use what we need and want with a small buffer of surplus for mishaps and miscalculations -- and to do all this with as little cash input as possible, preferably none at all.

In the real world it will be necessary to have some startup cash for each subsistence venture and likewise if we are successful, we will from time to time end up with some surplus in direct use economy which we cannot use but which might be sold. Barter is part of the direct use economy and is not necessarily surplus.

That is, the farmstead starts somewhere. You will need some tools, seeds, plants, storage, fencing, shelters, to begin with. These are most likely going to be bought with Caesar’s coin.

Also when the direct use economy gets under way, it is only natural that at some point there will be too many eggs, too many ears of corn, too much wool to be used directly, And when you get good enough at it and you are making some of your own tools and equipment, it is just as easy to make two or three as one, even if you only need one. Make three and keep the best for yourself. When the surplus cannot be used, preserved, used for animal feed, composted, or bartered to profit, then it might as well be sold. It is rarely profitable to intentionally produce things to sell for cash within the direct use paradigm, but if you find yourself in possession of a surplus that would otherwise be a dead loss, why not sell it?

After being at it for many years now I have found that the transfer of assets from one economy to the other, the exchange of unlike coin, only works when it is done like this:

If you need to use Caesar’s coin earned in Babylon for some sustainable farmstead project, write it off completely as a dead loss. It is just as if you had given it to a hard pressed relative with no prospects of repayment, bought lottery tickets with it, or flushed it down the toilet (which three are the same thing). Forget it. The purse of Caesar’s coins will not see it back. Gone. If you can’t afford to do that, if you can’t afford the grant to the relative, the lottery tickets, flushing bills down the toilet, then you can’t afford the homestead project either. Wait and work toward the time when you can.

On the other hand, if you find your overrun converted into Caesar’s coins, consider it -not profit- but a windfall. Look on it as an indulgence. Spend it on something frivolous, or a luxury.

Do not attempt to mix the assets back together again. Do not try to repay the Caesar’s purse with the surplus of subsistence assets.

If you can’t afford to withdraw the coins from Babylon’s bag without prospect of putting them back, you are not ready to transfer assets from one economy to the other. If you can’t buy the gods a drink with the unintended surplus of the farmstead, that purse weighs too heavily and joylessly about your belt.