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.