Impressed at the Amish

[Wolf]

You left out the chooks. Chooks are very important, they are easy protein and eggs are readily sellable or exchangeable. And they need very little room and can pick up a living foraging in the field stubble . May need a bit of help in the winter.

Yep, forgot the chooks.

We always had chooks when we lived in farm cottages - dad was digging drains, septic tanks, oxidation ponds etc, not share milking (tho' did help out from time to time, also did a share of the work on sheep farms when we were in those areas) but we lived in whatever farm cottages were available to rent. Lent itself well to keeping chooks.

Used to get fresh milk from the cocky when we lived in the dairy producing areas. Now the Fonterra Thought Police try to stop the cockies taking home a billy-full of fresh milk from the vat. Arseholes.

Big business is intent on stripping the soul from this country. No wonder you get the Amish, Mennonites, Krishna Consciousness, Buddhists and others making their own lives...

[sels1]

Yep, forgot the chooks..

likewise. a big vege garden, a few fruit trees, and chooks. Wish I had room for them now.

[mstriumph]

you are shitting me right ???


the basic premise of the Amish way of life is 180 degrees off the basic premise of the US Marine Corps..


hell... they dont drink, cuss, fight or frequent whorehouses..

US MARINES do that?????????????????

damnation - ANOTHER illusion shattered ......

[mstriumph]

...........
Big business is intent on stripping the soul from this country. No wonder you get the Amish, Mennonites, Krishna Consciousness, Buddhists and others making their own lives...

Here too
It actually frightens me to think that here, in West Australia, we get the majority of basics like butter and milk, fruit and veges trucked in from interstate [because its cheaper]

any government worth its salt would be moving heaven and earth to preserve and promote local essential industries and growers

what happens if there's a crisis? they obviously have their snouts sooooo firmly buried in the corporate trough that they are blind to the most fundemental of "what if" scenarios and think that short-term corporate gain is more important than the safeguarding of the ordinary people they are supposed to represent

us pair are luckier than most in that we have the space and ability to be able to work towards looking out for ourselves [on a very limited scale - but it's better than nothing]...

we have chooks
we have vege gardens
we have rainwater tanks
we have planted an orchard
.....we have goats and other ambularitory forms of protein in the 'thinking/planning' stage

but i couldn't be Amish - not if it meant giving up my bike and having to love the french .......

[Wolf]

we have chooks
we have vege gardens
we have rainwater tanks
we have planted an orchard
.....we have goats and other ambularitory forms of protein in the 'thinking/planning' stage

Small scale is good - the less you have to work to sustain it, the better.

Another friend of mine in the semi-self-sufficient but still working scene has the vege garden, chooks, rain water, a few cattle that take very little to maintain and is in the midst of extending/renovating his house, he has two young children. If his land took up too much of his time he would not be able to get everything done and spend quality time with his family.

He also wet feeds some of his neighbour's stock on his land as part of a mutually beneficial arrangement.

You don't have to drop out of the rat race altogether - you can't, anyway, not so long as the local council charges you for services they don't provide (they're not providing water or sewerage treatment, but they still charge rates) and the tax department wants their cut before you start turning over any loot to the local council.

The more you try to drop out of the rat race (produce everything you can including generate your electricity using the methane from your toilet) the more time and effort it takes and you quit the rat-race job that actually pays the rates and the registration fees for the vehicle you need in case of emergencies to "opt out" and to supply the time that your new lifestyle demands.

Then your work load goes up because those crops you were living on now need to be more bountiful and aesthetically pleasing of a certain size in order to sell them.

Forget getting enough money from the hay in your back paddock to cover everything because you need the hay to sustain your own increased stock over winter and before you know it you're working harder than the local commercial farmers because they're only running dairy or cattle while you have dairy, cattle, orchard, vegetables, hens, bees... and you're run off your feet producing everything to the same commercial standard as the dairy farmer, the cattle farmer, the orchardist, the poultry farmer the apiarist etc so the local council won't turf you off the land you bought and paid for...

And then you can't take a holiday because the surplus you've sold would not cover the wages of the people you'd need to hire to look after everything while you're gone.

If you were earning enough to pay skilled temp workers on top of everything else, your steading would effectively be a viable commercial enterprise - a.k.a back in the rat-race, albeit the rural one.

The ideal balance is an energy/money efficiency whereby your hard earned lucre is put to better use because you already have a beast in the deep freeze and a goodly number of veges in the garden and you have electricity saving features in your house (night store, solar water heating, wetback on the fire for winter time, etc) to cut back on living costs and few enough animals/gardens to make tending to them minimal.

Then you work on the community - that farmer who buys the hay you don't need (your three cattle wet feed, his 450 dairy cows need hay over winter) could supply milk rather than cash - providing Fonterra's jack-booted cronies don't find out; the apiarist down the road might want something you have as well - fresh veges or fruit (and not be as finicky as the exporters) - in exchange for honey on the comb; the local home-kill guy's already swapping your beef for mutton and pork on a kilo for kilo basis and the local piggery might well throw some pork your way in exchange for any surplus/rotten crops that are not saleable (I know the pigs won't be as finicky as the exporters). You might not find people who'll turn up at your house and raise a barn or tend your crops while you're ill, but you might just find those who produce what you want so you don't have to...

but i couldn't be Amish - not if it meant giving up my bike and having to love the french .......

I didn't think even the Amish could love the French...