In view of recent weeks’ events concerning an off-season outbreak of a new flu strain in Mexico that quickly spread around the world – and caused WHO to get all the way to 5 on its pandemic alert system before things eased somewhat – it’s a good idea for those of us in the 21st century’s “back to the land” movement to examine some issues with livestock production in general and how we get around those issues on our own homesteads. Many homesteaders avoid livestock, but many others keep chickens, a cow or more, goats, pigs, rabbits, and some pasture a few calves every year destined for the organic beef market. What does all this mean for us?

Thus far the new flu strain, which according to the CDC is a “unique” mixture of human, avian and swine flu strains, looks to have originated in the CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation] system of swine production for human food. These operations, where thousands of animals are confined in close quarters and intensively fed for maximum weight gain in minimum time, can according to researchers and epidemiologists serve as fertile genetic recombination factories for the various strains of influenza due to lack of good waste management practices and regulation, proximity of swine CAFOs to avian CAFOs, water contamination, worker contact with infected animals. Add to that the difficulty of dealing with viral rates of mutation as well as getting effective vaccines into production from one year to the next, and you end up with a situation of concern not only to public health authorities, but also to small producers who happen to live anywhere close to such intensive CAFO operations.

Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, Inc. has been linked to the current swine flu outbreak via one of its “outsourced” CAFO operations in Central Mexico. The number of Smithfield CAFOs in contiguous counties in eastern NC have long been causing problems with water and air pollution that should be of serious concern to residents both urban and rural, whether or not they eat pork (or any meat at all). And the proximity of any CAFO operation in the proximity of your homestead may affect all sorts of decisions about whether to keep livestock, what kind of livestock you will keep, and how all aspects of your involvement should be managed.

If you share a watershed, reservoir source or well aquifer with any CAFOs, or if air currents are such that your family can occasionally smell the waste from an avian (chickens, turkeys) or mammal (cattle, hogs) CAFO, the concerns are serious. If you sell milk, eggs or meat to customers in the community, you may also find yourself afoul of the NAIS (National Animal ID System) – but that’s another story.

There is no vaccine for avian flu in bird CAFOs or on the homestead. It can and often is spread by migrating wild fowl, so the best protection for your free range chickens is to keep their range to a reasonable area (which you’ll want to do anyway to keep them safe from predators), keep their coop and bedding clean even if you drag the coop regularly, keep their water supply separate and apart from ponds where wild fowl water, and cull any chickens displaying signs of illness.

There are vaccines for hogs to protect against several varieties of swine flu, though those change annually as do human viruses. There is no vaccine for the current strain, or the one begun in NC a few years ago, but if you’ve a pig or two each season, it wouldn’t hurt to get them the latest vaccine if you’re anywhere close to a swine CAFO. Again, keep their water fresh and separate from possibly contaminated sources (streams and rivers that bear a waste load from upstream intensives), never feed them raw slaughterhouse waste or uncooked meat/fat scraps.

Goats have their own share of health issues, but nothing like cattle, swine or fowl. Best to call the vet if they’re off their milk or feed, looking and acting ill, etc. You don’t want to be dosing any of the livestock on antibiotics as a regular thing, but if you’ve dairy goats or cows, beware of mastitis and such – they’ll get better with a few day’s treatment, discard their milk for the duration.

Many homesteaders raise rabbits for meat. Rabbits are almost always kept in confinement, so your best bet with them is to make sure their cages are large enough to let them move about freely, and they should also be kept clean. Whenever a cage is empty, clean it out thoroughly with bleach water before putting in new bedding and introducing new animals.

With all livestock, do NOT harvest sick animals. Sick culls and animals that die of mysterious causes should be either buried deep enough to prevent wild animals from digging them up or cremated. There is a lot of information out there for the proper care and feeding of home-grown livestock, and your area extension service will also have good advice, vet recommendations and literature you can get for free. Before going into livestock, get to know others in your area that already have stock, and talk to them at length over some nice iced tea about the details. Most are very willing to help you out, not only with information and good advice, but often with starter stock as well.

And where you get your starter stock counts. Check out the breeder and his/her operations to ensure you’re not getting animals with genetic or disease issues. Some sources are listed below, and I’ll have more information about specific types of farmstead livestock in future posts.

Links:

One Acre Farm: Homestead Livestock
Countryside: Livestock on the Homestead
Small-statured animals
Miniature Dairy Cattle
Swine flu strain has genetic roots in U.S.A.
Swine Flu Story Illuminates Disease and Injustice
La Vida Locavore: Swine Flu

In these times of Wall Street collapses, banking bankruptcies, massive unemployment, homelessness and increasing deprivation, we in the rural sector are already living in Great Depression-II even as the city folk and DC denizens keep talking about mere recession. We have a new President who has promised “hope” to Americans, and who appointed a Monsanto apologist to be Secretary of Agriculture, thereby slapping every struggling small farmer and ardent homesteader in the face.

Hope is all very nice in a made-for-TV movie or light novel, but we all know you can’t eat it, live in it, pay your doctor with it or drive it to a day-job. We’re going to need more than hope and slaps in the face to get through all this piper-paying. And despite Obama’s lousy choice for SecAg, there are some people in DC who do seem to understand that while cities are where the bread and circuses are distracting the population from their deprivations, if we allow the rural backbone to disintegrate people won’t just be deprived. They’ll be starving to death.

Many of us modern homesteaders came to our lifelong labors of love from those cities and megaburbs, once living large with boom economy jobs and the whole rat race. Then gave it all up very much on purpose so we could build new lives for ourselves and our families that really mean something. Those of us with college degrees (some quite advanced), may have even taken a few courses in basic business management and/or economics and/or marketing to help us get those city jobs we left behind when we moved to the hinterlands where the farmers live.

As the various tentacles of the economic stimulus package reach into the states, some state legislatures are working hard to earmark some of the funds for rural business development. Rural, farm-based businesses that produce not just raw materials but finished (or partially finished) products for sale are what is called Value Added Agriculture.

Value added agriculture makes a different kind of business out of the usual small farm business of growing basic commodities and then selling them to buyers representing big food producers and conglomerates. It’s not just selling milk from your cows to the local dairy, but making cheese out of the milk and selling that to grocery stores, restaurants and sometimes directly to retail customers. Instead of just being the raw resource miner, the farmstead becomes the producing ‘middleman’ in the chain of getting raw resources processed and to consumers all over the world.

State land grant universities in all states are beginning to offer these business management courses through their agricultural departments to farmers and homesteaders. Some extension agencies are also offering classes free or very cheap, so a farm family can learn the details and develop their ideas over time while still maintaining their dirt-based day jobs.

Some of the better resources I’ve found out on the web to help homesteaders take this next step toward better income and community job resource come from various sustainable agricultural organizations. Keys to Success in Value-Added Agriculture is a 20-page booklet that offers a very good overview of the issues and solutions involved in adding value to your commodities. The USDA’s Rural Development branch has information and applications for their value-added producer grant program to provide funding for farm-based entrepreneurs.

The Ag Marketing Resource Center, a national partnership of land grant institutions and state departments of agriculture, offers a portal to their gathered resources for those interested in value-added agriculture. These include market research, business development grants and success stories from all over the country.

So if your family would like to expand your homestead’s horizons this year, check out these resources and don’t hesitate to use them as portals to more information and more help in getting started. It’s our lives and chosen lifestyles on the line, and none of us should lose these to the failure of political and economic leadership in recent years. If readers have their own success stories or ideas to share, please do!

Links:

Disconcerting: Tom Vilsack at USDA
Legislation introduced to invest money in ag industry
USDA: Value-Added Producer Grants
Agricultural Marketing Resource Center

Now that the weather’s turned officially cold and the wood stove is going all day and night, there’s time to reflect upon the year and make new plans for the future. I’m still working on how to get “free range” chickens that won’t get eaten by the many foxes and coyotes that haunt our cove, sans the serious fencing we can’t afford. Also working on finding some metal fence poles for the garden fence through our local Freecycle network, nobody’s willing to come off any so far.

I find my mind once again drifting toward renting a backhoe for a week and dredging down in the creek so I’ll have a set of three tiers of pond that I can stock with rainbow trout. So I’ve been looking into the whole aquaculture thing, the issues with pollution and antibiotics and quality of feed, cost of fingerlings from the state, etc. What kind of engineering do I have to do to my creek? What kind of pollution controls? Who gets to police my little trap-falls?

After two days’ worth of homework, I’ve decided that my plan doesn’t fall under the regulatory purview of the state beyond their “stocking rivers and creeks” section. Yes, since it’s private land I’ll have to pay for the fingerlings, but because these pools won’t be anything but slightly-dammed hold-backs the size of my back deck, there should be no issues about waste pollution or anything like that. I will probably need a permit from the state in order to get the fingerlings, but once they’ve determined the operation is so minor as to not really qualify as “commercial,” it shouldn’t cost that much. Sell a few dozen fish a year.

I’ll put fingerlings in the top pool, twice as many as I figure will live long enough to make it to the second pool after a year. When it comes time to transfer with 6-8 inches long. I figure the second tier will be big enough to hold about a hundred small fish comfortably without moving them to cannibalism, and I’ll feed them regularly with quality food.

The third pool will hold full grown trout until they’re ready for market. Now, you (or I) can cook up a fine meal of fresh trout from 6 or 7-inchers, and I’m pretty sure I will. But to sell to local eateries and B&Bs, I’m thinking bigger specimens. That’s a cash crop as well as occasional protein for the family.

The price varies according to where you sell the fish, and how you sell it. I’d not be farming enough to be a big supplier, but there are some fine eateries that already buy whatever organic herbs, veggies, sauces and such that I can produce. A 12″ trout should give two filets of about a pound apiece. This means the facility can offer a a total of four meals, each with 8-oz fresh rainbow filet (plus rice and whatever veggies) from each foot-long trout. Currently, $15.00 per fish isn’t unreasonable even wholesale, as trout is an expensive item in these already-pricey establishments. An 18″ fish could easily go for $20.00, as it will provide two more 8-oz. filets. If I have to do the filet-ing, it’s gonna cost ‘em more! Even though I can put the leavings in the Pogie-Matic (blender) and compost separately for great organic fish fertilizer for the garden…

For whole trout dishes (grilled, top closed in sassafras smoke is the most amazing thing EVER), most restaurants prefer trout in the 8″ range, and these can go for around $10.00 per fish. If I stock new fingerlings every spring, I should have a good supply of the 8-inchers by the second year, and expect to garner approximately $360 per year on this cash crop if I only sell 3 dozen fish, plus however many big ones I can turn into 8-oz filets and sell for $5 apiece (~$30 per fish). And I get the fertilizer, which will save on gardening expense. On a scale of having about a dozen ‘extra’ large trout to filet every year, that’s another $360. Minus costs averaged out, I should be able to clear $700 a year on fish, plus have a ready supply for dinners and entertaining here at the homestead! It’s always nice when your land and labor can return cash for things you can’t grow at home. Every little bit helps!

All this (the herbs and the fish) cost money to produce, even if it’s the homestead that’s doing most of the actual work, it’s till my money for seeds, cultivation, fish food, fingerlings, and my back that takes the abuse. Many people would think this is definitely NOT worth the trouble, but I’ll be gardening anyway, and dipping my toes in the creek whenever possible – there might as well be fish in it. If your dream is a self-sufficient homestead – as mine is – you don’t need all that much income. Just enough.

Links:

Mother Earth: Small-Scale Trout Farming
USTFA: Farm-Raised Trout
NCSU: Trout
BNET: A true fish tale

There is a resurgence of hope across America in the wake of Tuesday’s election of Democrat Barack Obama as President, promising a new direction of change for the future of our nation. Those of us who have been paying attention to the global financial meltdown, increasingly severe food shortages in the wake of global warming, and the outrageous poisoning of our citizens and livestock/pets by corrupt Chinese producers (a glaring example of globalization’s failures), are hoping that a new dawn in America will bring with it the serious changes to our agricultural policies that have grown increasingly necessary through decades of decline.

Now, politicians don’t generally talk much about agricultural policies while they’re stumping for votes in big cities. And they’re often so ignorant of agricultural issues that even rural dwellers – actual farmers – get nothing but pablum and platitudes in response to their questions. Luckily, journalist Michael Pollan wrote a great ‘open letter’ in the New York Times in October entitled, Farmer in Chief. This is a must-read for all of us committed to self-sufficiency, locally grown foods, the viability of family farms and homesteads, and the future health of an environment we all depend upon for life.

Pollan begins his letter to “Dear Mr. President-Elect” with an honest caution -

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Pollan goes on to explain issues like climate change, energy independence, health care and the general health of the economy in terms of our dependence on food depend crucially on sound agricultural policies. He explains very well what ‘went wrong’ with our food system over the past several decades, and how the antiquated, fossil fuel dependent system cannot be sustained. We no longer have cheap fuels and unlimited water supplies, our policies are haphazard, our subsidies unfair, our planning non-existent. Pollan then offers his particulars in this 9-page article, and the reasoning behind them is fascinating reading. He offers a complete rationale for organic farming many of us have been promoting and practicing for years, in three not at all ‘simple’ steps…

1. Resolarizing the American Farm
2. Reregionalizing the Food System
3. Rebuilding America’s Food Culture

I’ve added my voice to the growing calls for our leadership to pay serious attention to the many complex issues of our food supply – which IS our ‘national security’ – by sending this article as a link in a congratulatory email to President-Elect Obama. This is an immediate action issue, as Obama is right now choosing his cabinet and advisors. Agriculture and food policy issues must not fall to the back of the line. So add your voice to the calls for sane policy and firm leadership today!

You can also sign petitions and keep up to date on incoming news at the Organic Consumers Association. Don’t forget while you’re there to sign up for their email newsletter too!

Yeah, I know. EVERYBODY is starting to dream about a whole new generation of cars and trucks for getting around in the 21st century without fossil fuels. But those of us who live in the wider countryside inventing wider, self-sufficient lives as homesteaders usually have to plan a bit farther out than city dwellers. Who, when push comes to shove (or just $5+ a gallon gasoline), can always ride the bus or take their bike or even hitch-hike on crowded roads full of mostly empty vehicles at a near standstill any time of day.

I’m a big fan of Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s Insight, but the hybrid technology isn’t really where it needs to be for my desire to somehow translate someday homestead energy self-sufficiency to transportation as well. For that, I’ll need all-electric. And something a lot more stable, dependable, useful and warmer in the winter than a glorified golf cart.

Something big enough to carry at least a couple of people, safe enough to protect us from bad drivers, fast enough to use the interstate, with enough range to get to and from the nearest regional farmer’s market – that’s about 60 miles round trip – without having to buy someone else’s electricity. Grocery store and other such amenities are in closer, smaller towns, 5-7 miles away (less than 15 round trip). I’ll need either a pickup-style bed – with sides and tailgate – or large luggage space in order to carry tools, machinery, trash (we have to haul our own), groceries (only shop once a week) and general ‘stuff’. Like logs for firewood and lumber for building and… well, you know what I mean. And something that charges in a short enough period of time (whenever gas stations start offering paid by-the-hour 110 and 220 volt chargers) to get 500 miles in one day on occasion.

All that, I’ve discovered, makes for a tall order for what’s actually available out there in the way of electric vehicles right now (or going into production in two years or less). Also, we live in the mountains. We’re going to need some actual power going up steep grades. That too is kind of just a wish right now.

We’ll of course have to just tighten our belts and pay for the gasoline through the next five years at least, but by then I do hope what we need out here will be available at a price we can reasonably afford. If all we needed was a commuter gad-about, there are some very, very cool ones out right now. Cheapest is under $7,000. Some cost as much as high end SUVs do now. Some sleek, fast sports car versions will set you back more than a new Corvette.

For YOUR dreaming-of-the-future pleasure, check out some of the websites I found for EVs (Electric Vehicles). I figure by the time I’ve got the solar panels on the roof, the wind turbine on the ridge and the hydro plant on the creek going and all hooked up to my backwards meter, there will be a pretty fair secondhand market for some of these, and including the current hybrids. Short of getting a mule or horse, I’m going to hold out as long as I can…

Global Electric Motorcars
Offers incredibly ugly glorified golf cart kits if you’re mechanically adept. Top speed is just 25 miles per hour, get ~30 miles per charge on a 72-volt battery using 110. Kind of nice if you live and work in the ‘burbs.

Commuter Cars’ Tango
Kind of cute 1-passenger skinny thing you can park anywhere a motorcycle can. It screams to more than 120 miles per hour, gets 80 miles per charge (depending on new battery tech), and is amazingly stable and safe. It costs more than $100,000, not in my league but will be a big hit with the young execs in the city.

AC Propulsion eBox
This is a strange one. You buy the boxy Scion xB, they’ll do the conversion. They don’t say if you get your actual engine back or anything. It’s exactly the size of an xB (surprise!) and just as ugly. It’ll go 95 miles per hour using an AC induction motor and lithium ion battery. It’s got a 120-150 mile range between charges, and there’s a quick-charge option. The xB and conversion will cost you in the range of $70-75,000.

Myers Motors NmG
The NmG (pictured above) is the cutest little cartoon car you ever laid eyes on! I want one so bad for my college-bound grandson that it’s a good thing I’m not rich (it starts at $30,000). Single passenger, it can get up to 75 miles per hour and accelerates quick, but has just a 35-45 mile range per charge. This is the PERFECT college kid campus town gadabout for anyone who isn’t worried about paying back huge student loans.

Phoenix Motor Cars
These are just what the homestead ordered, but I’m surely going to have to wait until the third-hand market comes around. Phoenix makes full-size SUVs and work trucks that are gorgeous. Selling mostly for fleet use at this point, probably because buyers are taking advantage of capital and tax breaks to do so – you have to email them before you can know how much it costs, I’m guessing $100,000+.

Using new battery technology, the trucks have a 130 mile range per charge, 250 with an expansion pack. They use 220 volt chargers, but do offer a 10-minute quick-charge adaptor.

Universal Electric Vehicle Corp.
The Electrum Spyder 2-passenger convertible is one very classy sports car with a 100+ mph top speed and a 250 mile range. Wowsa. UEV also offers the Electrum COM-V3 2-seater, 3-wheel commuter car. It’s got a 75-150 mile range, an 80 mph top speed, 16 cubic feet of luggage space and not too weird a look. You have to call them for pricing, so expect to bid high.

ZAP Electric Cars
ZAP’s got several models, the most useful-at-a-glance would have to be their Xebra line of 3-wheelers, offering a 4-passenger sedan and a pickup (they also have a 4-wheel pickup). A 40 mph top speed will keep you off the interstate, and the 25-mile range is too shallow for use around this homestead. But it charges on 110, uses lead acid batteries, and starts at just $11,700 – reasonable. Plus it comes in Zebra stripes, which I’m sure is a selling point somewhere.

Here’s a couple of good sources for keeping track of EV developments, as investment has started pouring in and the Big Boyz in Detroit are just not going to be able to stop it any more.

Drive Electric
Electrifying Times: Latest Electric Car News

Most homesteaders know as well as anyone that the current state of the US economy isn’t very good. Are probably aware enough to see that it’s not getting better any time soon, either. Hopefully the homesteader has been wise enough to purchase his/her chunk of land far enough away from the ‘boom’ cities and regions that they got a good deal on it, as it probably represents the only real assets that family has.

Of course, there are the other assets related. The house and outbuildings, the farm and garden equipment and tools, the vehicles that get the homesteader to markets or trade-meets, auctions, etc., and the food (and energy) supplied by the property and proper investments in the property. Outside of actual transportation costs, the wise homesteader should weather the recession and coming depression better than most stuck-in-the-city folks. Our homesteads aren’t rollover investments – they’re our HOMES and security, even in hard times. Especially in hard times.

But there are some issues to be considered as the retail marketplace takes as hard of hits as the banking sector is taking. If there’s a shopping mall within 20 miles of your homestead, it’s likely to be an empty eyesore before the end of the year as retail outlets fall. So far this year the standard mall shops that have filed for bankruptcy include Linens n Things, Sharper Image, Mervyn’s (in California), Shoe Pavillion, …and ever increasing numbers of less universal retail shops.

Then there are the “downsizings.” Starbucks is closing 600 shops, Foot Locker will close 140, Lane Bryant/Fashion Bug plans to close 150 outlets, Ann Talor will close 117, and Zales Jewelers is shutting down 100 outlets. Circuit City is nearing bankruptcy, and even Target is lowering expectations dramatically.

This has so far translated into the loss of roughly 100,000 retail jobs. Not the best paying jobs and usually without any benefits, but homesteaders often get such day jobs to make ends meet as they’re developing their overall self-sufficiency. We can count on the loss of at least that many more jobs before the year’s over.

Luckily for wise homesteaders, we’re not too proud (or too rich) to go ahead and bargain or barter for the things we need. I wrote not long ago about homestead tools, and getting the best you can afford, even if you buy them used. Below are some sources for further strategies making use of established means of barter, recycling, buying used, or getting free. These can prove to be very useful in getting your family through the hard times with both yourselves and your property intact.

Links:

Credit Crunch: How to Survive the Recession
15 Real Ways to Conserve (and save money!)
Living On Less: The Alternative Economies
Putting Old Clothes to New Use
Thrifting: It’s an Art Form!
Craig’s List: Great Resource or Scary Place?
The Payoff: Thrifting and Re-Selling
It’s Better Than Cheap… It’s Free!

Having posted with pride about our new honest-to-hillbilly deck, I thought this might be a good time to talk a bit more about the many tools a homesteader needs in order to keep the place in order, do the gardening and landscaping, renovate and repair home and outbuildings. I can do this because during the deck project we had a total of 4 hammers on hand, and two of them ended up without handles before we were done. Frustrating.

The very best thing you can do, of course, is to purchase the absolute, best quality, longest-lasting tools – any tool – you can possibly afford. Yet in today’s economy, getting the best quality tools is often beyond the means of those of us trying hard just to make things work. Here at my homestead we’ve got a shed chock full of old chain saws, string trimmers, handle-less shovels, pitchforks, axes, mauls, sledgehammers, pruners, etc., not to mention a whole collection of broken hammers, screwdrivers, various saws and power tools bought cheap over the years and which didn’t last long enough to get to the second job.

Worse, I’ve an energetic daughter and some grandchildren who work hard on occasion, but can’t ever manage to put the tools back where they belong. Which means I find rusted things all over the place, often with wooden handles that long since rotted into compost. It’s extremely frustrating, and having to replace the tools every time you start a project is a regular pain in the ass. Not to mention expensive.

My friend and local homesteading hero told us many years ago to “Buy The Best” because that way you don’t have to keep on buying over and over again. Great advice, but not very practical if you’ve got to have an axe (the last one has only half a handle) and you’ve got just $20 to spend right now. And my hugest complaint about ALL homestead tools with handles – when the heck do the handles get to the modern composite resin/graphite world, just like golf clubs?

Luckily for all us non-wealthy homesteaders, There Is A Way. Why, we can purchase ‘best’ quality tools secondhand! There are a number of ways to do this, and you won’t be sorry. Often you can acquire the super guaranteed-for-life item at or below on-sale cheap stuff at Walmart if you just spend some time looking around. There are estate and farm auctions, there are whole secondhand warehouses, and there are a good many sites on the internet where even with shipping costs the ‘best’ tool comes in cheaper than the Walmart Special.

You could go local to the auctions and auction houses that will let you inspect the items and brands pre-auction, you could go to Craig’s List or Freecyclers and hope for the best, or you could check out some of the links below and surf some of their cross-links too. The ‘best’ of our tools is a Craftsman tiller my father-in-law bought for me when we first moved here. It’s still in the shop right now for its 5-year tune-up, but that thing’s a true workhorse that may never really die. We went ahead and put out the bucks for a Stihl chain saw about 7 years ago, and it’s still going strong on its 4th chain. Which is better than the several cheap ones under the shed that didn’t last 2 seasons.

What’s your most elderly tool, and are you glad you bought the ‘best’?

Links:

Used Tools
How to Buy Good Used Garden Tools
Used Snap-On Tools

I spent a lot of time in Eastern Kentucky growing up, it’s where my paternal grandparents, Aunt and cousins lived and where we spent vacations no matter where else in the country (or elsewhere) we were living at the time (Navy brat). I’ve no more relatives there, the last of them died a decade ago and none of us siblings chose to live there for raising our own families or even retiring in our old age.

I do recall several very nasty UMW strikes in the mining region around Harlan, and I recall the black moonscape on the Green River near Paducah’s western shipping point that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, the coal tailings having turned a lovely rolling greenscape into utterly depressing nothing. I also recall learning to shoot my father’s beautiful pearl-handled six-guns at the abandoned strip mine near Laurel, and one touristy adventure in a no longer operating underground mine where we rode through in one of those little coal rail cars as if it were an amusement park ride.

These days they do things a little differently, as the deep seams get harder to work (and miners become more rare, having been decimated by Black Lung) and the easy seams have all been stripped. Now they’re going for the mid-seams, the last of the stored coal, by simply blowing up the entire mountain to get to it.

It’s called Mountaintop Removal mining, and it’s utterly devastating the southern Appalachians in the traditional coal mining regions of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. It’s a horror even worse than Mister Peabody’s tailings outside Paducah. It’s destroyed ~500 whole mountains so far, it’s polluting mountain streams that contribute to the primary water supplies for millions of people downstream, and it’s killing the abundant biodiversity these mountains are so very famous for. Most of all, for those of us who dearly love these gorgeous mountains, it’s very, very tragic. Some of the mines are as big as the Island of Manhattan.

When growing up with strong ties to Kentucky, I learned from my Aunt – a state social worker – that King Coal was an “economic boom” to the people who traditionally made their means by doing things for themselves with what the mountains provided. Yet what I saw was crushing poverty, Black Lung, and a hopeless generation of young people who couldn’t wait to get as far away from their family’s traditional homesteads as possible. It’s not like the miners and their families got any of the great wealth King Coal brought to the mining companies, their stockholders and the industrial consumers of the coal taken out of their ground.

When my family determined to move back to the land 16 years ago to see if we could re-invent self-sufficiency and commune with nature instead of a million-plus other humans in immediate proximity, we chose Western North Carolina instead of Kentucky. Or Tennessee. Or West Virginia, or even Virginia (the most perfectly beautiful and well-maintained state in the union, IMO). We chose it for being Appalachia and beautiful (tourism is our largest industry), for more sophisticated residents and politics, for then-reasonable land prices, and for not being enslaved to King Coal.

But alas, this is the land of Duke Energy, and a thriving piedmont and coast full of large energy consumers. Turns out that North Carolina is the #1 consumer of coal mined by means of Mountaintop Removal. Thus I was greatly pleased when the NC State Legislature introduced a bill in May of 2008 to ban the use of coal mined by this method within the borders of our beautiful state!

There will be a lengthy legislative fight over the bill, but hope in the very fact that we did get a law back in 1983 banning development on high ridge lines – thereby destroying the mountain views from which a majority of residents make their living. Because the mountains are a gold mine simply for their beauty, there is strong incentive to keep them beautiful.

I realize that many or most of my readers don’t live in these mountains, but any of us who love the land and work hard to make our way lightly on this earth should get to know about how desperate the corporate evil-doers are to squeeze (and blast) the very last drop of profit from the earth, not caring how much irrevocable damage they do to it in the process. Educate yourself about the issue by perusing some of the great links below. Write to your state and federal representatives about your concerns, talk to activists about how to ban the burning of this ill-gotten coal in your state, and support some of these efforts to save the mountains. Please!

If there is no market for this coal, King Coal has no reason to destroy the mountains.

Links:

WattHead: Taking Mountain Top Removal On
Appalachian Voices: Geography of Mountaintop Removal
iLoveMountains: Mountaintop Removal
DKos: Mountain Mondays v 1.0
RAN: Bringing the Climate Fight to King Coal
Southern Environmental Law Center: Mountaintop Removal [TN]
NYT: Ravaging Appalachia
Stop Mountaintop Removal

Here we are nearly halfway through 2008, and the 2007 farm bill is slowly but surely making its way through House and Senate disagreements on its way to the chamber floors for vote this week or next. The final compromise, USDA chair Ed Schafer bluntly informs us, will be vetoed by President Bush.

If farm legislation doesn’t directly affect many of us rural and semi-rural homesteaders, it’s a sure bet that it will affect our neighbors who do farm on a commercial scale. Thus it’s something we should be paying attention to. According to lawmakers nearly 3/4 of the spending in this bill over the next decade will be for feeding the needy. Another 16% goes toward commodities, crop insurance and disaster relief. Increasing nutrition spending (feeding the hungry) 8+% over the previous farm bill is reasonable given the worsening food crisis both in America and world wide.

This farm bill addresses biofuels diversion of food crops (like soy and corn) by providing more than a billion dollars to expand alternate use of biomass (like switchgrass and algae) and crop by-products (cornstalks, wheat straw, etc.) rather than diverting the grain itself. It also tightens payment limits, eliminating the “three-entity rule” that the previous bill contained as justification to funneling most ag payments to huge agribusiness concerns rather than smaller farm cooperatives or family farms. It limits subsidies to anyone making more than $500,000 in non-farm adjusted gross income [AGI] per year, and entirely ending direct payments to anyone with an AGI of more than $750,000 from any source. This will effectively put Big Agribusiness in the business of actually doing business instead of simply sucking up free corporate welfare as smaller family farms disappear.

New homesteaders usually aim to grow an increasing amount of their own food, as this is part of the whole homesteading impetus in the modern world. Those who have been at it for awhile – and have managed to secure ~10 or more acres for their homestead – are increasingly producing food for local markets and even joining the CSA movement by allowing individuals and families to “buy-in” to the season’s crops. The nation’s farm bill policies (the 2002 bill expires on Friday, May 16th) usually don’t affect what homesteads of 50 acres or less produce, and nobody from the government tries to tell them what they can or can’t grow. And as long as production remains tied to the local/regional market the government isn’t likely to interfere.

So why, one might reasonably ask, has President Bush promised to veto the legislation? First, he’d wanted a $200,000 AGI cap on ALL farm subsidies, essentially getting the government fairly well out of the business of subsidizing agriculture altogether. The politicians claim their $750,000 figure is more realistic as a way of weaning farmers off support payments. Which under the present soon-to-expire bill allows an AGI of $2.5 million. Surely then the higher cap is reasonable as a step-down without throwing US agriculture into total turmoil just when food is becoming a precious commodity.

And while the amount of money American taxpayers must provide to farmers in order to have a safe and ample supply of food is certainly too much in real terms under the 2002 bill, that’s not the most controversial aspect of the 2007 bill. That would be the “commodity title” – the program through which the government tries to smooth out the financial uncertainty of farming itself. Bush wants those out altogether because they’re a sticking point in global trade deals (and, presumably, because we don’t have any money left from his oil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). These payments usually go to the biggest farming concerns, so serious economic recession should be a factor in their continuance.

However – and most important to rural homesteaders producing or planning to produce within the next few years food for local/regional markets – this bill contains $5 million in annual mandatory funding for “Community Food Projects [CFP]” over the next 10 years. The bill also allows public school to favor local farms in bids for school food supplies, and this can significantly improve both local markets as well as school nutrition in general. It eliminates a major barrier for schools and will make Farm to School programs much easier to establish county-wide or even regionally. This will help producing homesteaders significantly.

While schools are still limited to spending a mere 70¢ to $1.00 per day per student for food, communities could get creative with other subsidies and program funding that would pay local farmers a decent price for their produce (including meat, dairy and chicken/eggs). The Conservation Title in this bill will tend to reward small farmers and producing homesteaders for their land and water conservation efforts too, and since we’re doing it anyway it’s nice to think that we could enjoy a small stipend to maintain the practice.

There are significant boosts in funding for organic agriculture, including a quintupling of payments to cover the heavy price of organic certification, and a seven-fold increase in funding for organic research and extension. It’s not a lot (and nowhere near the cash devoted to industrial-scale agribusiness), but it’s something. Something is always better than nothing, particularly since most of us homesteaders are growing food anyway.

I’ve been encouraging homesteaders to network with their neighbors and communities in a number of ways, and food production, distribution, nutrition programs in schools and for the needy in our communities are important aspects of local governance and planning homesteaders can contribute much to. We don’t HAVE to be paid by the government to love where we live and do what we do, but if our areas can manage to lasso some help from the big guys then we should be attempting to get all we can. Farm and rural policies are important even though we are striving for independence. So keeping up with what affects farmers in our areas is very important.

Links:
Farm Bill Heads for Congressional Passage
Farm Bill Conferees Near Goal Line
Congress (almost) passes a farm bill