Book review
Part 2 of The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Agriculture features An Amish Perspective by David Kline in which he tells us: “For the first 50 years after being deeded, the farm, with the high fertility of its woodland soils (Wooster silt loam), produced enough wealth for the family to prosper. Then starting around 1875 things began to go awry. The health of the soil deteriorated.” “Soon after 1900 not enough income was generated from the farm to pay for the taxes. So the county sheriff ordered the ‘farmed-out’ land and the buildings to be sold at public auction to the highest bidder. It was the old truism: ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations’.” “To restore a depleted farm takes time. Especially a hill farm where extensive soil erosion took place. What took years to harm takes years to heal. It is estimated that it takes nature several hundred years to build an inch of top soil (150 tonnes per acre). With poor farming practices that amount can be lost to erosion in ten years.” “To earn one’s livelihood from a farm while at the same time caring for and preserving nature is sometimes difficult particularly in growing seasons as abnormal as the past four years have been.” “This balance of utility and beauty that I strive for on the farm, my wife achieves so well in the garden, a delightful blend of the domestic and the wild. She has several gardens, but the one I want to mention is practically on our doorstep and its primary food function is as a provider of fresh salad makings – lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, onions, a few cucumber plants, and several early tomatoes – that end up on the table only minutes after leaving the garden. After all, doesn’t the quality of life begin on the dinner plate?”
THE EARTHSCAN READER IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
EDITED BY JULES PRETTY
EARTHSCAN 2005
PART II
PART I: AGRARIAN AND RURAL PERSPECTIVES
Chapter 2: Thinking Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold
Chapter 3: The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
Chapter 4: Ecological Literacy by David Orr
Chapter 5: An Amish Perspective by David Kline
I want to talk about our farm. It is on the 120 acres of rolling Ohio land that the country courthouse records show belongs to my wife and me and our family. It is here that I can do great harm to nature or where I can live, or at least try to live, in peaceful coexistence with the land. Here on our farm I can exploit nature or nurture it. Here is where nature giveth and nature taketh away.
- But first we need to look at the past. Let’s suppose that in early October 1492 a small band of Erie hunters from the Cat nation left their village along the shore of the lake bearing their name and traveled south to gather provisions for the coming winter months.
- In 1656 the powerful Cat nation would be annihilated by the Iroquois, the Five Nation Confederacy. Then in the early 1700s the Iroquois gave this part of Ohio to the Delaware Indians, who were being pushed out of the east by European settlers.
- Following the war of 1812 this land was visited by fewer and fewer Native Americans until by the early 1820s none at all came.
- In 1824 our farm was settled and in 1825 a deed, signed by President Monroe, was given to that pioneer family.
I can only speculate what happened in the next 50 to 75 years. Quite obviously a struggle to control nature took place. From the sketchy history available, most of the vast forests – white and red oaks, chestnuts, hickories, beeches and other hardwoods – were felled into windrows, left to dry for a year or two, and then burned. For many weeks of the year in the early to mid-1800s the skies over this part of Ohio were hazy from burning hardwoods, millions of board feet of the finest oaks on earth. As the trees went, so did much of the wildlife. Around 1850 the state legislature passed a law forbidding the burning of timber to open the land.
- For the first 50 years after being deeded, the farm, with the high fertility of its woodland soils (Wooster silt loam), produced enough wealth for the family to prosper. Then starting around 1875 things began to go awry. The health of the soil deteriorated.
- The marriage between the steward and the land was in trouble. After being mined for too long, the fiddler’s pay came due. And payment was taken in the reduced yields of the crops.
Soon after 1900 not enough income was generated from the farm to pay for the taxes. So the county sheriff ordered the ‘farmed-out’ land and the buildings to be sold at public auction to the highest bidder. It was the old truism: ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations’. One could say that nature won the battle for the farm. But in reality, both humans and nature lost. Both were poorer for the experience.
What caused the farm to fail?
From a number of possible reasons let me suggest just a few. First, the depression of the 1890s did not help matters, I am sure. A second reason was the lack of legumes growing on the farm. When my uncle moved here in 1918 the primary plants growing were Canada thistles and timothy. Legumes play a vital part in the health of a sustainable farm, since the rhizobium bacteria in legumes have the ability to convert atmospheric nitrogen into plant food. The conversion nourishes the leguminous plants as well as companion plants of other species. For instance, blue grass and white clover in a pasture field are the perfect pair.
As blue grass and white clover are to each other, so should be our connectedness with nature, a connection of life that is difficult to put into words. I like the way the 18th century Mennonite clover farmer David Mellinger framed it. He lived in the Palantinate, the section of southwestern Germany squeezed between the Rhine River and the French region of Alsace and Lorraine. This area is where the Mennonites and the Amish learned how important clover is, if you farm, in getting along with nature. Menninger said: ‘I should have already given princes and other great lords a description of my operation and how I achieved it, but I cannot tell it so easily … one thing leads to another. It is like a clockwork, where one wheel grabs hold of another, and then the work continues without my even being able to know or describe how I brought the machine into gear.’ Maybe this wheel of life is one of the mysteries of God.
The Apostle Paul wrote that we should serve faithfully as stewards of the mysteries of God. Perhaps the inference is that the stewards are the ministers of the world. But if we lift our eyes not away from the earth, the mysteries of God can also be His creation. We should be stewards or caretakers of creation.
- To restore a depleted farm takes time. Especially a hill farm where extensive soil erosion took place. What took years to harm takes years to heal. It is estimated that it takes nature several hundred years to build an inch of top soil (150 tonnes per acre). With poor farming practices that amount can be lost to erosion in ten years.
- Quite often the most overlooked and perhaps the most abused part of nature is the life in the soil. The healing process begins there. A gram of good soil may hold as many as four billion microbiotic organisms. These can be nurtured with the growing of legumes alongside grasses, the use of animal manures mixed with straw or fodder grown on the farm, and annual crop rotations.
- The health of a farm and nature is not brought about by some ‘heroic feat of technology, but rather by thousands of small acts and restraints handed down by generations of experience’ to quote Wendell Berry.
- These small acts of stewardship, multiplied a thousand times, do add up. Confucius said, ‘The best fertilizer on any farm is the footsteps of the owner’.
- To earn one’s livelihood from a farm while at the same time caring for and preserving nature is sometimes difficult particularly in growing seasons as abnormal as the past four years have been.
- What might appear to be a conflict between exploiter and nurturer could be more accurately described as farmer and land involved in a sort of dance. It is an attempt to achieve a balance between give and take, without too much stepping on each other’s toes.
- Wendell Berry writes: ‘An exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible. The nurturer expects to have a decent living from his land but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible.’
- A great deal depends on whether we look at the farm as a food factory where nature suffers at the expense of profit, or we look at the farm as a place to live, where – to quote Aldo Leopold – ‘there is a harmonious balance between plants, animals, and people; between the domestic and the wild: between utility and beauty’.
This balance of utility and beauty that I strive for on the farm, my wife achieves so well in the garden, a delightful blend of the domestic and the wild. She has several gardens, but the one I want to mention is practically on our doorstep and its primary food function is as a provider of fresh salad makings – lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, onions, a few cucumber plants, and several early tomatoes – that end up on the table only minutes after leaving the garden. After all, doesn’t the quality of life begin on the dinner plate? However, only about half the garden space – the domestic – is for our culinary benefit. The rest tends toward the wild – plantings for birds and butterflies and beauty. Annuals and perennials.
- Aldo Leopold once said that a good farm must be one where the wild flora and fauna have lost ground without losing their existence.
Even though much has been lost here since that 1825 deed, we need to cherish what remains. And a farm is a good place to do this cherishing. Where else can one be so much a part of nature and the mysteries of God, the unfolding of the seasons, the coming and going of the birds, the pleasures of planting and the joys of harvest, the cycle of life and death? Where else can one still touch hands with an earlier people through their flint work? Sure, there are periods of hard work. But it is labour with dignity, working together with family, neighbours and friends. Here on our 120 acres I must be a steward of the mysteries of God.