http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/academicinn.html
There's lots there to think about and ponder. Yes, it was written a little while ago, and yes the world was different then, but not so significantly that it makes and fundamental difference. I encourage you to read it, and comment on what you found interesting.
As you know, I hold a man named John Seymour as the grandfather of Self-Sufficiency, as do many others. He is very highly respected in many circles for his honesty and integrity to the things he believed in. Now there may or may not have been incidences involving him, a field near his farm containing GMO sugar beet grown by Monsanto, and it's unfortunate digging up by the faeries. I believe that when he was asked about it in court and told by the prosecutor that "Faeries do not wear rubber boots" he replied that they must have been in disguise. Gotta love the man!
He gave 2 addresses at the inaugural meeting, arranged by his good friend John Papworth, of the Academic Inn, London. Here's a grainy and a little choppy sounding recording of his speech. His passion for the African people, traditional farming and his concerns over the sustainability of first world agri-business, mechanization and chemicalization make this a must see speech. It's 23 minutes and very relevant to today, though this speech was given by him in 1983 when he was about 80 years old. Probably the quote that stood out as being the most relevant to me was this...
"What the devil is the good of inventing a kind of agriculture that is entirely dependant on soluble nitrogen when you know perfectly well that your sources of it will have dried up in 40 years time, when you can grow perfectly good food, and enough of it, with good old muck that comes out of cows and sheep and things like that? And us for that matter. What's the good of that?"-John Seymour
The speech is a YouTube video at :
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5485958120797215219&hl=en
That's my recommendation for viewing this week.
In the Kitchen today was cereal for breakfast, a mixed up casserole made of tuna, one package of stove top stuffing and 1 cup frozen corn, topped off with home made macaroni and cheese made with wholemeal flour. Sounds weird I know but it went over well and even the kids came from school and finished off the last of it for a snack. Dinner was breaded fish, beans and baby carrots, and buttered rice.
In the coop, all are healthy and happy. The chicks in the basement are eating drinking and digging around in their new home so apparently they are happy. Apparently our local health authority VIHA has deemed it acceptable for us local producers to sell our eggs to restaurants now. That's quite a change and good for many a local farmer. I missed the first swap of the year though I think there was a variety of older hens and chicks for the offering. I'll be sure to attend the next one, hopefully with some chicks to sell. Egg production was 5 eggs today. One silkie egg. Eggs in the incubator are due to hatch starting in a week.
In the garden we had a huge windstorm in the wee hours of the morning that knocked out power to 3000 people locally (but not us) and threatened to take our poly tunnel greenhouse and deposit it the neighbours yard. Luckily it stayed put. I will be going out tomorrow to finish pruning the grapes and kiwi, and sort out what I want to take for cuttings. I will go through the seeds bought and saved from last year to decide what I want to grow, what I want to plant where, and which seeds still need to be purchased. It's March, so time to get things started ready for planting out in May. Peas can go in soon so the garden needs to get turned over this week too. Maybe Steve will help me tomorrow if I'm nice to him. :)
Time to get housework done and then off to bed to plan and dream of the coming spring.
No comments:
Post a Comment