Lina Joana

Joseph Fabbri wrote:
But seriously I feel like we are going all over the place and although I am enjoying it and you are fun to talk with I am likely done.  You all are great and enjoy carrying on without me on this thread.  These topics can and do fill volumes.  Seems every paragraph and many sentences here are completely loaded with potential rabbit holes.  Hope it is beneficial to some people reading through here.  Love you all.

Thanks for a stimulating discussion! I agree we were getting off topic. I would summarize my position by saying that our system, imperfect as it is, came about in response to levels of misery we just don’t see in the USA. Food insecurity is bad, but watching your small child starve to death is a lot worse. The churches and charities of times past did not solve the problem.
But I too am willing to leave the side conversation. It was fun!

One interesting and on topic question your post raised is the difference between charity and gifting. They often get conflated, but I believe there are important differences.

My understanding of a gift is that it is an expression of affection for me. It doesn’t have to be something I need, or anything big, it just says that the giver is thinking of me and is there for me. This makes me feel loved and respected and strengthens the social fabric. While a gift may not be reciprocated right away, there is the assumption that it could be - that it is a two way street.

Charity is different. The giver may not know the recipient at all. The imbalance between the giver and recipient, especially when we are talking about charity to people with chronic needs (ie, stuck in a poor situation rather than a temporary disaster). Essentially, charity patches holes in our society, which doesn’t necessarily make it stronger.  There is often a stigma associated with receiving charity, which leaves the recipient feeling bad about themselves.

My parents’ house recently burned down. The generosity if the community has been immense, and has engendered complicated feelings in my parents. On the one hand, it has made them feel less alone, and very grateful to their community, which has been very good. On the other hand, the fact that they need help has left them feeling vulnerable, and getting money and things from people they don’t know well has left them feeling like the recipients of charity. It has been an interesting study on the line between gifts and charity.

It is funny, this thread restarted just as I was listening to Paul’s recent podcasts about permaculture thorns and community. It all comes back to how to create a system in which people are lovely, kind, and generous without using coercive measures. Intentional communities, with or without a gift economy component, usually fail because it only takes a few unlovely people to bring it all down. Paul’s experiments seem to get around this by having a defacto government- like an hoa: you don’t have to live here, but if you do, you follow my definition of kind and lovely. Societies that run on gifts would, I expect, have both cultural homogeneity and strong societal norms regarding how much one person should accumulate.

Joseph Fabbri wrote:
I find it easy to imagine a modern lifestyle without government as we see it today and with sound money with a completely free market and even competition in money.  But that doesn't mean it will happen.  A sound monetary system would not be offensive to me really, I'd be more apt to engage and be involved and have a bank account and other such things.  We do not have a free market capitalistic society anywhere really.  Early on there were many examples but it's all been corrupted.

Whenever I hear about “competitive currency” I think of the song Sixteen Tons, and the coal mining company store system it is describing. There wasn’t much government outside the mine owners in those towns. But the owners had enough wealth that they could write the rules and force workers to accept company issued currency, despite the theoretical ability of workers to leave.
The idea that in a free market society, we could rely on people who amass wealth to give it away to jumpstart a gift economy instead of using it to their advantage is a lovely one. I just haven’t seen many examples.

Joseph Fabbri wrote:
Here is an example of what I mean in how we could work on getting from here (an extremely coercive top down authoritarian government) to there (a voluntary society with a free market and sound currency).  One thing would be to make whatever is palatable to the people of whatever government that rules over them a voluntary choice.  I think something like the food agencies, the USDA in the USA a voluntary program could work out quite well.  Where people can voluntarily pay for the stamp of approval "USDA grade-A."  Raw milk is another fun example of this game.  The milking industry wanted to crush the small farms so they lobbied to get pasturized milk a legal thing.  Many small milk operations wanted to be able to sell their raw milk, they didn't care if big dairy pasteurized just leave it legal for them to sell raw.  The big guys won.  It didn't need to be that way, just make it optional.  Let the USDA grade-A dead and crappy milk be an option, and let the small farm raw milk be an option.  Or something that is already functioning is certified organic, that's an optional program and it's not that amazing but at least people don't have to do that to sell quality produce.  So if people want these services and certificates just, pay for it as a business and in turn the consumers.  If they don't want it then let the people have that choice in a free market.  Alternative certificates can come about (and some do) and the free market can balance things out.  The FDA and EPA (in most things) could be turned into the same sort of thing.

One of the best summaries of the complexities involved in raw milk is here: https://lizreitzig.substack.com/p/fascinating-story-of-raw-milk-in
While arguing for raw milk, she doesn’t ignore the history of “swill milk”, its role in killing children in the cities, and the reasons the government stepped in to regulate what previously had no regulation. If you want literal crappy milk, a poorly run raw milk dairy is the place to get it…

I am a huge fan a raw milk, to the point that I bought goats and bred them to start milking. I learned how hard it is, even at the smallest scale, to keep crap out of the milk. At this point, if I were visiting a dairy with an eye to buying milk, I think I would know what to look for. I would not have before keeping goats myself. As for the FDA and EPA - again, knowing what events led to their formation is important. It only takes a few idiots to ruin it for everyone…

Interesting and thought provoking post.

Joseph Fabbri wrote:

Ideally in my view no one would be bartering and trading this-for-that in a micro community.  Instead they would be gifting, sharing, giving in charity to their loved ones.  Like parents to their children while they are young.  This is the prototype:  A family without coercion based on love and charity.  

I spent my morning bringing various forms of mental pressure on my 3 year old to get him to pick up enough toys that we could walk through the room. It was my own parenting philosophies that kept there from being yelling or punishments involved, not any ability on the part of the child to resist. So plenty of love, charity, AND a massive imbalance of power, with aspects of coercion and manipulation thrown in. We call it teaching, raising, what have you, but the child has no choice in his situation. Coercive by definition.

For the rest - I find it hard to imagine a modern lifestyle without government/money, because we have all gotten used to a way of life that requires capitalism. Here is what I mean: each of us can produce a certain amount of stuff with our own two hands. We can produce more than we need to survive - but I don’t think we can produce more than we have come to expect. For that we rely on industrial capital equipment. So I might be able to grow enough food and fiber to gift or barter for clothing and shelter. But how would I get a washing machine, electricity, and indoor plumbing supplies? What about electric fans, refrigerators, computers- you get the idea, just look around. All of these things, if they are to be affordable with my labor, need to be made at factory scale. Maybe its a lack of imagination, but I cannot visualize it happening in a gift economy.
Can we live without it all? Sure - but I don’t wanna…

I agree with the statement that cows are not driving global warming…. But…
The methane that cows produce is a result of the rumen bacteria breaking down cellulose in grass, a famously difficult food source to digest. A cow that is fed grain, while generally not as healthy, actually produces less methane because digesting carbohydrates doesn’t require the methane producing bacteria.
Now, this is complicated by the fact that there are methane eating bacteria in grassland soils, which may in fact consume the cow’s methane before it leaves the area. But that may be an “it depends” type thing.
In any case, the 15% number refers to the total methane produced by human activity. If you ask what contribution cows make to global warming, the models put it at less than 2%. Hardly the lowest hanging fruit.

George Mogil wrote:

Anyone in the Pre-Cambrian shield (the Laurentians of Quebec in my case) has had success with this type of agriculture?

It's heavily compacted soil overrun with competing root systems and rocks that make hand digging nearly impossible; I normally remove a three inch thick layer of the 'top spoil' and replace it with store bought organic earth. Works but not so well because the growing season between not just last frost but warm-enough soil temps and first fall killer frost is approx. 90 days in a 'normal' year.

Some years ago, I watched some videos by Jack Spirko, from the survival podcast. I can’t find them right off, he has a lot of unrelated content to search through. He was in Texas, on nearly solid rock with maybe an inch of soil. I believe he worked miracles with pioneer trees (like locust) planted on contour. Maybe he also did hugel? Can’t remember but you might try tracking him down for soil building ideas.

I would love to hear how people have developed with the livestock integration. My study of agroforestry has turned up the fact that in the USA, there are pretty stringent rules about selling even tree food crops if livestock share the space - as in, you can’t do it if animals have been grazed in the past 9 months there, unless the product is cooked.

Forgive me for being a curmudgeon- but what would be covered? The concept feels pretty simple - and it is being sold as such: plant stuff that keeps pumping out food without a lot of skill or work on the gardener’s part. What is there to talk about in 6 or 12 sessions? I mean, it sounds like fun to get on with like minded folks and chat, but what valuable information will be imparted?
Obviously not saying you shouldn’t do it - maybe some folks need this to feel empowered to try it. You just might consider in the marketing that if this is a super simple concept to put into practice, why does the adopter need 6 consults?
Makes a lot more sense foe rmh - there is technical know how needed with risks if you get the build wrong.

Are there previews available anywhere? I typically like to see if the style resonates before I spend money.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:
If the information I got is right, the staple crop growing here, and harvested since prehistory, was a wild parsnip. When potatoes were 'discovered', and came to Europe, everyone changed to potatoes. I don't understand why parsnips now are a 'forgotten vegetable' (starting to come back since a few years, mostly in the organic food stores). They grow easily, at least at my allotment garden. Better than potatoes, which get blight and colorado bugs.

i bet parsnips are an excellent one for certain climates!
The challenge as I see it, is that we are looking for calorie dense foods that stick around without attracting other critters who are also looking for calories. Nuts won’t work because they have a crazy short harvest time before squirrels and such nab them.
    Honestly, I can’t think of many crops in this area that are calorie dense enough to serve as a staple and stable through the winter. Maybe ground nuts? Turnips? Persimmons - I have seen examples of the fruit drying on the tree and being edible long into the winter.
If you include crops with short harvest windows but minimal storage requirements, then hazelnuts, walnuts, and winter squash can be added to the list. And storage fruits like winter apple.