Random Thought of the Day: Subsistence Farming

More random thoughts.  I've been thinking about the use of the term subsistence farming. Subsistence farming is a practice of farming and raising enough animals to feed one's own family without a lot of surplus to share.

So I looked up subsistence, and as I thought, it was defined as " A means of subsisting, especially means barely sufficient to maintain life." That is a term of scarcity, of fear. Subsistence carries no sense of abundance. No one wants to merely subsist! Is that really all farming is?

Okay, It's hard work, farming, and I don't mean to idealize it.  Farms can fail, and poor crop yields can threaten an owner's ability even to pay taxes and hold on to his or hand.

This sort of family farm is necessarily diversified, unless most commercial farms. At its best, it reflects a whole system of interconnected plants, animals, people, and earth. When my children and I went to pick peaches a summer or two ago, we piled the warm fruit in my pouch made from the front my thread-bare oversized T-shirt, and I felt this sense of accomplishment and abundance--even though I had not a thing to do with the cultivation of the orchard. Okay, maybe I do idealize farming.

I just think that it's interesting that we talk about farmers subsisting, but we don't use the same qualifier for low-paid work generally.  And there are certainly many, many people in our urban and rural areas who are doing no more than subsisting, and sometimes not able to do even that.

Farmers bring food from the earth. Family farms can improve the quality of the land rather than deplete it when they are operated thoughtfully. And from what I've seen, farmers often build tight, interconnected communities that offer one another physical and emotional support and hard-earned knowledge.

You can't count on a family farm to make you rich in terms of U.S. currency. In fact, it is not uncommon for farmers today to work another job away from the farm. Again, farming is not a cushy life.

Let's not use earning potential as the only way to judge a life. If subsistence farming offers nothing more than the means to barely sustain life, go do something else! But if it offers something more, maybe subsistence farming needs a new name.

Random Observation of the Day: Laura Ingalls Wilder did not harvest salt or grow orange trees

I've been reading books lately about urban farming, little backyard farms that represent abundance and ingenuity and the productive life I wish I had. I do dream of having such a backyard. I really like our chickens, but the thickest grass in my front yard grows in the flower beds and there's a significant portion of my backyard that grows nothing so well as dandelions (at least they're edible!). So I don't seem to be on my way.

Anyway, a common theme in my reading selections seems to be feeding oneself off one's own little urban farm for one month.  I suppose the significance of one month is that it's long enough to suffer but not long enough to die?

The rules seem to be fairly strict--really nothing that is not from your own little domain unless perhaps you barter with another farmer from your own stock. What exactly is the point here? I mean I love a gratuitous challenge as much as the next person--maybe more than the next person--but is this a test against something real?

This leads me to a beloved story from my childhood--Little House on the Prairie, etc.  I haven't reread the series for a while, but I don't think even they were completely self-sufficient.  I remember an orange for Christmas that did not grow on the prairie, and maybe occasional salt, sugar or coffee? (There are afternoons when I think that a cup of tea is the mark of civilization.)

My point is that they didn't deliberately deprive themselves of things that they could actually get. On the other hand, we can get anything from anywhere now by driving just blocks, so we can't test anything without adopting restriction.

Maybe the issue is about eating locally--as locally as possible--more than it is about being self-sufficient? About testing the limits of urban self-sufficiency? That I like.

But I have no intention of going without tea and salt and probably a few other things.  I won't happen.  Even if I do manage to grow more than dandelions in the backyard.

The Next Big Thing

It's been a big week.

Last night, my sister got married.  Many of you were there.  We threw popcorn and toast (yes, toasted bread), and we booed and sighed and cheered.  (Okay, if you weren't there, the wedding was at a theater that was performing a popcorn-tossing melodrama, Sinbad the Sailor, so not all of the booing and cheering was about the bride and groom). The girls played the wedding march until Rhonda said "Wrap it up!" Rhonda and Larry were silly and giddy, and so absolutely sure of themselves.  It was wonderful to see.

Someone, I can't remember who, said to me that I was losing my sister.  I don't buy that.  You couldn't pry me away from my sister however hard you tried. Not even Larry, who my grandmother calls a "good-sized man," could do that. All I lost last night was my voice. 

But Larry may be losing something--peace, quiet, sanity... 

I have to say, he's adjusted to our chaos pretty well over the last three and a half years.  It's not easy, and you all know I'm not always easy to be around, but he keeps trying.  He adores Andrew and has bonded with the chickens.  I admit it; Larry's a good guy.

Congratulations, guys.  I'll even try to knock before I walk into the house from now on! 

Hurricane Harbor

How does a mother express her love for her children?  Two words: Hurricane Harbor.  At least those were the words for today.  You know when kids are so giddy that their smiles pull back toward their ears and their whole body seems as tight as a bowstring? 

All afternoon, I saw these smiles. 

And it's impossible not to be affected by it.  I mean, it's not like I wanted to spend the afternoon at Hurricane Harbor for myself.  Clearly not.  But seeing the girls like that, laughing and screaming, all of us playing shark in the lazy river, it was wonderful in a way I couldn't have imagined 10 years ago. Sweating and getting deeply sunburned didn't seem recreational in those many (too many) years between my own childhood and revisiting it with my children.

God, I love being a mom.  And where did I leave the aloe vera?

Happy Fourth of July!

We just got home from watching fireworks.  Sitting on an open field above White Rock Lake, we could see firework shows from all over the city.  Leona thought they were beautiful, but Gloria found them a little dull.  Then rockets starting going off right over our heads -- boom! The sparks seemed to be raining down on us.  Gloria lit up just as bright at the lights overhead, grinning and clapping her hands... and Leona burst into tears.  She was sure we were going to be set on fire. 

There are my two girls, the one who would through herself off any wall without a glance at what lay below and the one who didn't want to walk down the smallest steps without holding on to my hand.  Both of them absolutely themselves, both of them so precious.

Today, on their own, they bought a pair of bracelets that say Big Sister and Lil Sister on them.  They put them on and held hands and there were a blessed few minutes when they stopped bickering and seemed to appreciate each other.  Only a few minutes, of course.

Happy Fourth of July!
Misty

Starting on the Adventure.

It wouldn't really be fair to call this the start of an adventure because life with Gloria and Leona has always been an adventure.  We started our first blog (or I started it for us) in May 2007, when the girls and I set out in our minivan and a little travel trailer named Rosie.  You can learn all about that trip at http://www.trailer-mama.blogspot.com/.  But since we settled back home, I lost my drive to blog.  We're not so far from friends and family anymore, so we just stopped documenting our adventures.

After watching Julie and Julia, 10-year-old Gloria and 7-year-old Leona decided we really had to have our own blog.  So here we are, our family: one mom, two daughters, two dogs, three cats, a lizard, a snake, a fish, three chickens and several Madagascar hissing cockroaches (who are very senior and are expected to die soon...please?).

Welcome, take a peek into the chaos of our lives.  Don't mind the dust bunnies in the corners, or the ones in my head, either!