Another inspirational resource is Cato on Farming, written in 2nd century BC by Cato (or at least published by him).
Farming is hard, hard work. Only 4% of Americans are farmers as of 2024. The average age of a farmer in America is now 68. We have had a small family farm for 97 years. We are not going to make it to 100 because we live in California and are being regulated out of existence. There is a stereotype of farmers being hicks who don’t know much. I walked away from the farm in order to make money to help support it and I rubbed shoulders with judges, law firm partners, congressional folks, and high tech executives. And through it all, some of the smartest folks I ever met were farmers. They keep so many balls in the air – budgeting-weather conditions– soil management – labor relations – global commodity pricing – equipment repairing – to say nothing of common sense - physical strength – mental clarity – patience that they have to be Renaissance people at their core or they simply won’t make it.
There is an old Amish saying that “a farmer never plowed a field by turning it over in his mind.” At some point, they get up and get to work, even on the days when they are tired, sore, disillusioned. It may not be the profession of very many anymore, but it sure is a good example for the rest of us.
Farming kills animals including Bambi and Thumper (factory farming) while the plants they grow are trying to kill you. Everything you eat from a farm contains a minimum of 70 toxins, mutagens, carcinogens and anti-nutrients. We don't eat the ones that kill us quickly but they all do harm to the body over time resulting in poor elder health. Don't eat the plants if you want good health.
Jefferson grew Whippoorwill black-eyed peas (African beans), which became the most-grown variety in the US until Americans stopped growing vegetable gardens in the later 20th century, because they produce all season long, and grow in any soil. They are the main variety I grow, but I experiment with others.
"A garden is an opportunity to witness a miracle. " I don't know who first said that, but I found it on a plaque one spring and as a Master Gardener, I had to buy it! :-)
Yes, Monticello was a beautiful and thought provoking historical site, as was Mount Vernon. Agriculture and a self-sustaining lifestyle needs a comeback.
HOW JEFFERSON & Fake 'money' (Greek 'mnemosis' = 'memory' OLIGARCHY COMMANDED AMNESIC COLONIZATION & REDUCED 'INDIGENOUS' (Latin 'Self-generating') PRODUCTION OF FOOD, MATERIALS, ENERGY & WATER-CYCLE BY 100 TO 1000 FOLD
SYLVALIZATION (Latin 'sylva' = 'tree'). As empires spread, hungry for the hardwood Oak for weapons of war, forts, arms, ships etc. the main productivity loss is the carefully cultivated 3-D POLYCULTURE ORCHARDs of all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' ancestors, which because of:
a) Polyculture's 92-98% Photosynthesis compared with 2-D 'agriculture' (L 'ager' = 'field') 2-8% photosynthesis. Agriculture’s all settlers & 1st Nations had left to 'farm' (French 'ferme' = 'contract of servitude by the peasant imposed by the armed aristocrat')
b) Deep Polyculture roots descend many 10s of metres into the substrate mining minerals, pumping water, developing extensive nutrient colonies etc. being 100 times = 10,000% more productivity than agriculture. Actually, this calculation is very conservative. In my experience with both Polyculture & Agriculture such as a 50 square meter (7 by 7 metres) area under the pre-colonial average 100 year old Oak tree produced some 3 tonnes (3000 kg) of nuts/year with little labour except bring wastes to feed the tree. The same 50 sq. M of Wheat, Barley, Oats or Rye will produce only 3 kgs of grains requiring intensive mechanical ploughing, seeding, weeding, fertilizing, fencing & irrigation or drainage preparation.
c) Polyculture's nearly complete ~95% photosynthesis of solar energy into food, materials, energy & water-cycle, creates an energy vacuum which drives warm moist ocean winds inland. 60% of Moisture transfer from ocean to continent is through condensation of these winds upon quadrillions of square kilometres of fractal leaf & bark surface. Only 40% of moisture transfers as rain-snowfall. 2-D Agriculture only photosynthesizes 2-8% of solar energy, creating High-pressure airs which push wind from continent towards the sea, creating permanent desert. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/b-ecological-design/1-indigenous-welcome-orchard-food-production-efficiencies
FOOD PRODUCTION AS CENTRAL TO HUMAN 'ECONOMY' (Gk 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'care-&-nurture') VS the Oligarch hierarchal artifice of Scarcity.
All humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') ancestors use of the TIME-BASED, EQUIVALENCY-ACCOUNTING on the String-shell Value system (eg. 'Wampum' on Turtle-Island / N. America, Quipu in S. America & Cowrie-shell in indigenous Celtic-Slavic Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all islands). https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy
'MONEY' (Greek 'mnemosis' = 'memory'), in indigenous times with memory & honour for everyone's diverse specialized gifts through the String-shell, Production-Society-Guilds & ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complexes (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village). These loving, intimate, intergenerational, female-male, critical-mass, economies-of-scale were worldwide in Economic Democracy. Female tendency to organize the collective Domestic (eg. Healing Medicine, Food Nutrition, Clothes, Accounting, Relationships & Organization, accounted for on the String-shell (integrated Capital, Currency, Condolence, Education, Communication & Costume.)
ECONOMIC-DEMOCRACY & subset political systems. Economic Democracy in the ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complex (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village), specialized Production-Society-Guilds & time-based equivalency-accounting on the String-shell Value System (eg. Wampum on Turtle-Island, Quipu in S. America & Cowrie in indigenous Celtic-Slavic Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all islands). https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy/8-economic-democracy
With Oligarch captured deluded minds since Babylon, Assyria, PHOENICIA, Carthage, Athens, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Washington we spend Trillions on brutal war, maintained by Monologue rather than engaging in formal Dialogue as known by all indigenous humanity as COUNCIL PROCESS or Both-Sides-Now, Equal-time, Recorded & Published Dialogue once (before the last 7000 years of colonial invasion, genocide & ecological destruction) a dialectic-right to raise issues at every level of human living, positive for understanding, agreement, Contract delineation or for Conflict Resolution. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/d-participatory-structure/1-both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialogues.
Multi-Trillionaire multinational family hidden minority Share-owners of the cabal triangulated US-Federal-Reserve, Bank-of-England (City-of-London) & Bank of International Settlements, issue Western money as fiat forgivable loans in a trickledown from their choice of privileged friends, family owned businesses as a system of command & control. Most 'money' is released for Oligarch 'capital' projects, think fake 'Education' (L. 'educare' = 'to-lead-forth-from-within' not to indoctrinate from without) Nuclear, Pesticides, GMO, mRNA, COVID-19 Gain-of-Function, digital centralized autocracy & much more in vast orchestrated worldwide roll-out in typically short months & years across the Complex of control. Over many millennia of control, Every fake centre of Empire including such as Mesopotamia, Athens, Rome, Britain etc have been propagandized as 'Democracies' (Gk 'Power-of-the-people'), as though marking an 'X' (symbolic of 'illiteracy'), once every 4 years, is any kind of empowerment, actually the opposite of real-life & work empowerment. Oligarchy, which is centered in & controls Israel also controls the USA as a colonial puppet regime for 248 years as well as previously as the same Oligarch lineage for 7000 years since Babylon-Mesopotamia (5000 BC), Assyria, PHOENICIA (4000-0 BC) as the Kingdom of Israel + City States of Tyr, Sidon, Byblos & Beirut, then subsequently & in continuity in Egypt, Athens Greece, Carthage, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, USA-Canada today under the same Oligarch control.
Phoenicia is still in Zionist memory & longing today. The top-down colonial Phoenician Empire is the model for GREATER-ISRAEL as well as for a new worldwide Empire.
Great fake metal-coin 'money wealth!?*' was built through invasion, terrorism, colonization of the whole Mediterranean & Black-Sea (Ashkenaz & Khazaria = Poroshenko & Zelensky in Ukraine) regions over 4000 years. History keeps repeating itself simply because we’re kept amnesic of our real history. Phoenician 4000 years Legacy plus the hidden control since, is at the root of Zionist longing for command & control. During all this time such top-down Oligarch control, disempowered the 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') knowledge of peoples & destroyed biospheres into deserts such as the Negev, Egyptian, Sahara & Sahel massive deserts, where once huge productive 3-D Polyculture Orchards, stabilized water retention & climate, with flowing rivers, lakes, streams, rich communities & wildlife thriving in harmony with nature. Palestinians before the last 100 years of 'Ashkenazi' (Some of my family in 3-branches) invasion, genocide, were restoring the Levant into healthy Polyculture.
Greeting GJTL, Short form is 7000 years of Oligarch lies deserves a full response, exactly because the indoctrination is multi-faceted & ingrained with so many false buts. Jefferson as an enlightened Slave-owner, caught in the scarcity of his own making is not a model for anyone to follow in his or our time. Constitutional provisions of the fake slave-owning, male, genocidal colonists is half-baked & designed to be manipulated by $ in many ways under the table. If settlers as refugees from Oligarch mismanagement & perpetual war in Europe had aligned with 1st Nations & immigrated according to the Laws & Customs of the ~110 Nations joined into the ~25 Confederacies as a Continental system, we would be living in harmony with each other, the world & nature according to the 'indigenous' CIRCLE-of-LIFE. such as outlined in the Kaianere'kowa = Haudenosaunee 'Great-good-way-of-kindness' aka 'Great-Law-of-Peace' aka continental 'Constitution' outlined in the Indigenous Circle-of-Life, somewhat related to the Medicine-Wheel in simplifying an inter-disciplinary set of Indigenous factors needed for all of us to become whole again. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/3-indigenous-circle-of-life Didn't you already know this?
It was probably not realized at the time, and even thought to be therapeutic, but tobacco has been one of the scourges of mankind rivaling that of alcohol.
Another inspirational resource is Cato on Farming, written in 2nd century BC by Cato (or at least published by him).
Farming is hard, hard work. Only 4% of Americans are farmers as of 2024. The average age of a farmer in America is now 68. We have had a small family farm for 97 years. We are not going to make it to 100 because we live in California and are being regulated out of existence. There is a stereotype of farmers being hicks who don’t know much. I walked away from the farm in order to make money to help support it and I rubbed shoulders with judges, law firm partners, congressional folks, and high tech executives. And through it all, some of the smartest folks I ever met were farmers. They keep so many balls in the air – budgeting-weather conditions– soil management – labor relations – global commodity pricing – equipment repairing – to say nothing of common sense - physical strength – mental clarity – patience that they have to be Renaissance people at their core or they simply won’t make it.
There is an old Amish saying that “a farmer never plowed a field by turning it over in his mind.” At some point, they get up and get to work, even on the days when they are tired, sore, disillusioned. It may not be the profession of very many anymore, but it sure is a good example for the rest of us.
"The real purpose of Natural Farming is not the cultivation of crops, but the cultivation of human beings" - Masanobu Fukuoka "One Straw Revolution"
"All the world's problems can be solved in the garden." - Bill Mollison "Permaculture"
I disagree. We should all be ranchers instead but it's really hard to get people to see that position.
It should be both. Small farm/ranch operations like the one I grew up on are the best. IMHO.
Farming kills animals including Bambi and Thumper (factory farming) while the plants they grow are trying to kill you. Everything you eat from a farm contains a minimum of 70 toxins, mutagens, carcinogens and anti-nutrients. We don't eat the ones that kill us quickly but they all do harm to the body over time resulting in poor elder health. Don't eat the plants if you want good health.
I assume there's a point in there somewhere
Hoping my fig trees bear fruit future years
Jefferson grew Whippoorwill black-eyed peas (African beans), which became the most-grown variety in the US until Americans stopped growing vegetable gardens in the later 20th century, because they produce all season long, and grow in any soil. They are the main variety I grow, but I experiment with others.
"A garden is an opportunity to witness a miracle. " I don't know who first said that, but I found it on a plaque one spring and as a Master Gardener, I had to buy it! :-)
We need more Thomas Jefferson's right now!
Joel Salatin writes monthly articles for Plaine Values and Homestead Living. I subscribe simply to read his writing based on experience and knowledge.
If we could only remember the Wisdoms of Jefferson & Washington...
Both our Nation & the whole World would be much better places to live in, imho!
Truly one of our greatest minds. If you ever get the chance to go to Monticello it’s well worth the visit!
Yes, Monticello was a beautiful and thought provoking historical site, as was Mount Vernon. Agriculture and a self-sustaining lifestyle needs a comeback.
Thanks for this. Monticello is one of my favorite places. The gardens there are amazing!
I agree! I learned so much on our visits there.
HOW JEFFERSON & Fake 'money' (Greek 'mnemosis' = 'memory' OLIGARCHY COMMANDED AMNESIC COLONIZATION & REDUCED 'INDIGENOUS' (Latin 'Self-generating') PRODUCTION OF FOOD, MATERIALS, ENERGY & WATER-CYCLE BY 100 TO 1000 FOLD
SYLVALIZATION (Latin 'sylva' = 'tree'). As empires spread, hungry for the hardwood Oak for weapons of war, forts, arms, ships etc. the main productivity loss is the carefully cultivated 3-D POLYCULTURE ORCHARDs of all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' ancestors, which because of:
a) Polyculture's 92-98% Photosynthesis compared with 2-D 'agriculture' (L 'ager' = 'field') 2-8% photosynthesis. Agriculture’s all settlers & 1st Nations had left to 'farm' (French 'ferme' = 'contract of servitude by the peasant imposed by the armed aristocrat')
b) Deep Polyculture roots descend many 10s of metres into the substrate mining minerals, pumping water, developing extensive nutrient colonies etc. being 100 times = 10,000% more productivity than agriculture. Actually, this calculation is very conservative. In my experience with both Polyculture & Agriculture such as a 50 square meter (7 by 7 metres) area under the pre-colonial average 100 year old Oak tree produced some 3 tonnes (3000 kg) of nuts/year with little labour except bring wastes to feed the tree. The same 50 sq. M of Wheat, Barley, Oats or Rye will produce only 3 kgs of grains requiring intensive mechanical ploughing, seeding, weeding, fertilizing, fencing & irrigation or drainage preparation.
c) Polyculture's nearly complete ~95% photosynthesis of solar energy into food, materials, energy & water-cycle, creates an energy vacuum which drives warm moist ocean winds inland. 60% of Moisture transfer from ocean to continent is through condensation of these winds upon quadrillions of square kilometres of fractal leaf & bark surface. Only 40% of moisture transfers as rain-snowfall. 2-D Agriculture only photosynthesizes 2-8% of solar energy, creating High-pressure airs which push wind from continent towards the sea, creating permanent desert. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/b-ecological-design/1-indigenous-welcome-orchard-food-production-efficiencies
FOOD PRODUCTION AS CENTRAL TO HUMAN 'ECONOMY' (Gk 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'care-&-nurture') VS the Oligarch hierarchal artifice of Scarcity.
All humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') ancestors use of the TIME-BASED, EQUIVALENCY-ACCOUNTING on the String-shell Value system (eg. 'Wampum' on Turtle-Island / N. America, Quipu in S. America & Cowrie-shell in indigenous Celtic-Slavic Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all islands). https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy
'MONEY' (Greek 'mnemosis' = 'memory'), in indigenous times with memory & honour for everyone's diverse specialized gifts through the String-shell, Production-Society-Guilds & ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complexes (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village). These loving, intimate, intergenerational, female-male, critical-mass, economies-of-scale were worldwide in Economic Democracy. Female tendency to organize the collective Domestic (eg. Healing Medicine, Food Nutrition, Clothes, Accounting, Relationships & Organization, accounted for on the String-shell (integrated Capital, Currency, Condolence, Education, Communication & Costume.)
ECONOMIC-DEMOCRACY & subset political systems. Economic Democracy in the ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complex (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village), specialized Production-Society-Guilds & time-based equivalency-accounting on the String-shell Value System (eg. Wampum on Turtle-Island, Quipu in S. America & Cowrie in indigenous Celtic-Slavic Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all islands). https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy/8-economic-democracy
With Oligarch captured deluded minds since Babylon, Assyria, PHOENICIA, Carthage, Athens, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Washington we spend Trillions on brutal war, maintained by Monologue rather than engaging in formal Dialogue as known by all indigenous humanity as COUNCIL PROCESS or Both-Sides-Now, Equal-time, Recorded & Published Dialogue once (before the last 7000 years of colonial invasion, genocide & ecological destruction) a dialectic-right to raise issues at every level of human living, positive for understanding, agreement, Contract delineation or for Conflict Resolution. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/d-participatory-structure/1-both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialogues.
Multi-Trillionaire multinational family hidden minority Share-owners of the cabal triangulated US-Federal-Reserve, Bank-of-England (City-of-London) & Bank of International Settlements, issue Western money as fiat forgivable loans in a trickledown from their choice of privileged friends, family owned businesses as a system of command & control. Most 'money' is released for Oligarch 'capital' projects, think fake 'Education' (L. 'educare' = 'to-lead-forth-from-within' not to indoctrinate from without) Nuclear, Pesticides, GMO, mRNA, COVID-19 Gain-of-Function, digital centralized autocracy & much more in vast orchestrated worldwide roll-out in typically short months & years across the Complex of control. Over many millennia of control, Every fake centre of Empire including such as Mesopotamia, Athens, Rome, Britain etc have been propagandized as 'Democracies' (Gk 'Power-of-the-people'), as though marking an 'X' (symbolic of 'illiteracy'), once every 4 years, is any kind of empowerment, actually the opposite of real-life & work empowerment. Oligarchy, which is centered in & controls Israel also controls the USA as a colonial puppet regime for 248 years as well as previously as the same Oligarch lineage for 7000 years since Babylon-Mesopotamia (5000 BC), Assyria, PHOENICIA (4000-0 BC) as the Kingdom of Israel + City States of Tyr, Sidon, Byblos & Beirut, then subsequently & in continuity in Egypt, Athens Greece, Carthage, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, USA-Canada today under the same Oligarch control.
Phoenicia is still in Zionist memory & longing today. The top-down colonial Phoenician Empire is the model for GREATER-ISRAEL as well as for a new worldwide Empire.
Great fake metal-coin 'money wealth!?*' was built through invasion, terrorism, colonization of the whole Mediterranean & Black-Sea (Ashkenaz & Khazaria = Poroshenko & Zelensky in Ukraine) regions over 4000 years. History keeps repeating itself simply because we’re kept amnesic of our real history. Phoenician 4000 years Legacy plus the hidden control since, is at the root of Zionist longing for command & control. During all this time such top-down Oligarch control, disempowered the 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') knowledge of peoples & destroyed biospheres into deserts such as the Negev, Egyptian, Sahara & Sahel massive deserts, where once huge productive 3-D Polyculture Orchards, stabilized water retention & climate, with flowing rivers, lakes, streams, rich communities & wildlife thriving in harmony with nature. Palestinians before the last 100 years of 'Ashkenazi' (Some of my family in 3-branches) invasion, genocide, were restoring the Levant into healthy Polyculture.
Could you synthesize your main points into just a few coherent sentences, please?
Greeting GJTL, Short form is 7000 years of Oligarch lies deserves a full response, exactly because the indoctrination is multi-faceted & ingrained with so many false buts. Jefferson as an enlightened Slave-owner, caught in the scarcity of his own making is not a model for anyone to follow in his or our time. Constitutional provisions of the fake slave-owning, male, genocidal colonists is half-baked & designed to be manipulated by $ in many ways under the table. If settlers as refugees from Oligarch mismanagement & perpetual war in Europe had aligned with 1st Nations & immigrated according to the Laws & Customs of the ~110 Nations joined into the ~25 Confederacies as a Continental system, we would be living in harmony with each other, the world & nature according to the 'indigenous' CIRCLE-of-LIFE. such as outlined in the Kaianere'kowa = Haudenosaunee 'Great-good-way-of-kindness' aka 'Great-Law-of-Peace' aka continental 'Constitution' outlined in the Indigenous Circle-of-Life, somewhat related to the Medicine-Wheel in simplifying an inter-disciplinary set of Indigenous factors needed for all of us to become whole again. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/3-indigenous-circle-of-life Didn't you already know this?
Beautiful article and inspirational. I heard it said that food is the new currency.
Joel Salatin has an amazing historical sources about agriculture.
Love his writings, the design of Monticello and his gardens! Thanks for sharing these pages!
It was probably not realized at the time, and even thought to be therapeutic, but tobacco has been one of the scourges of mankind rivaling that of alcohol.
r