> I can't help but wonder what ever happened to the truly self
>sufficient (and therefore self-sustaining) old style farmers who
>raised a cash crop, but who also always had a good sized vegetable
>garden for the family use and for a few extra bucks of income AND who
>also kept chickens (for eggs and meat), hogs (for pork), and a few
>cows to milk (and naturally would fatten up and butcher un-wanted male
>calves to fill the freezer box with beef). Is this totally a thing of
>the past on the mainland?
Sure it exists here and there, but does growing all your own food make
you sustainable? Chicken is so cheap, you've got to really love to pluck
chickens and be willing to pay more for the feed than you would for Tyson
to do it all for you. That's reality in much of rural America. And if
you spend time feeding and plucking chickens and chasing off foxes,
coyotes and dogs city people abandon in your driveway, then you have less
time to earn money for health insurance and less time to help your
children cope with often lousy schools--which mainly serve to generate
jobs for the well-connected. That's reality in much of rural America.
The social infrastructure once helped Americans grow their own food.
It's rare in the rural America I know to find good schools and reasonably
priced health care and hatcheries which ship chicks by mail (on an
efficient, friendly postal service) and local processing plants owned by
local people and good feed/hardware stores catering to small farms and
just enough small farms to support all that infrastructure and more.
If you've still got it in PR, work to keep it. Too much has disappeared
because we took it for granted while those who value salaried positions
with corner offices were doing what they do best.
But we can bring it back and bring it back better--if we work for
locally-owned value-added enterprises and work to learn and develop the
many skills and relationships needed to realize such enterprises.
Thanks and happy holidays,
Jim Worstell
Delta Land and Community
Delta Enterprise Network