We attended two speakers' presentations and talked to a lot of vendors. The event sold out, so I'm glad we bought tickets in advance.
Warrenton VA hosted the gathering at their Fauquier County Fair Grounds. It provided a perfect rural setting. The area there is building up fast with DC commuters, but it's not all awful sprawl. The twee little downtown area, as well as a sentimental favorite of mine, Frost Diner, show that suburban and rural can coexist. I hope they can maintain that balance.
The balance between a hurry-scurry life of consumerism and debt vs. the potential freedom, monetary and spiritual, of the homesteading life was central to talks by Doug and Stacy, the stars of the YouTube Channel "Off the Grid with Doug and Stacy," as well as author, farmer, and rural philosopher Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms.
Now just a moment. Folks living with no internet connection or electric power but with a series of YouTube videos? Oh yeah, and using their own drone to film the event? At that moment, I knew I was in the right crowd: no Luddites here, just, to paraphrase Howard Rheingold's point about the Amish, very clever techno-selectives. Think: farm truck to charge electronics + unlimited data for Verizon cellular users. Makes at least as much sense as me building my own shaving horse to do woodwork.
The couple talked about our culture as one that rewards staying in debt, becoming dependent on technology we do not understand, of severing our ties with the soil and the rest of nature. Salatin continued that with his talk later in the day. I grinned at both of their references to "The Man," which propelled me mentally to the early 70s again.
And yet, they are correct. As Doug put it, "barter is what The Man is scared of," and Salatin later chimed in that we are desperately in need of "relationship rather than consumerism." Fine and good, that, thought I, preaching to the choir. As if anticipating my very snark, Salatin added that the choir did need some preaching-to, so we would be energized to share with others our foodways, our practices that build wealth in the soil and self-reliance in the home. Homesteaders are gentle missionaries of a way once taken but left behind after the Second World War. I was greatly moved by Salatin's remarks, for which he noted Michael Pollan's ideas, that "we know that eating like Great Grandma is healthier and safer."
Yes, I too worry about the slow accumulation of pesticides and herbicides in our bodies without any longitudinal studies of their impact. As Salatin noted, in his Christian-Libertarian way that I found suddenly reasonable, our government now sells us on the safety of GMOs when, just a generation ago, it found that margarine would be safer than real butter and all of the carbs at the bottom of the food pyramid--an innovation of 1979--were equal nutritionally: Twinkies and taters apparently sustain us equally.
It's easy, when on the mass-comsumption treadmill, to dismiss homesteaders as crackpots. One of my colleagues who toured Polyface with Salatin found him to be half visionary, half crackpot. And he charmed my colleague utterly. I agree. It may seem ludicrous to tell a culture seemingly content with morbid obesity, car-based lifestyles, and land-use plans intent of paving our best farmland that "you are insane." Jim Kunstler has been doing so for years. Salatin does it with a different method of delivery, and Stacy and Doug live that vision of a world (almost) made by hand.
So I came away inspired. There is much left to do, but each step adds something in a movement toward more self-reliance. Next year for us? Food dehydration and cooking with a solar oven. We found an inexpensive one available from a vendor. My own plans would cook but not dyhydrate, so having one professionally made tool will be the route I take in 2018. We will also be raising chicks from incubated eggs.
This year we've expanded our seed-saving to tomatoes, begun reloading ammo, and I'm about to hunt deer for the first time in 30 years. Others will pick different skills from our frontier history, but one or two steps at a time will get us closer to what worked for our ancestors. I've critiqued the myth of self-sufficiency here before, so it pleased me that the speakers discussed the need not to build bomb-proof silos but rather resilient communities where we develop some of the skills our grandparents had. In the end we might create collapse-proof communities, if the worst that they and Kunstler fear comes to pass.
I learned a whole lot and, true to the spirit of the event, did not spend a lot of money beyond buying a really nice gardening knife to replace my easily broken hori-hori (replaced once already under warranty). I will use the new tool this weekend to weed as I harvest hot peppers for our one restaurant customer.
A few quibbles about the event are inevitable, and I think the organizers can iron them out. Next year, I hope they offer more food. We plan to pack our own food--very rural-thrifty of us--but a hot cup of coffee on a foggy morning would have been ideal. The one vendor with that beverage was overwhelmed by a long line at his food truck. The same problem occurred at Monticello in September, for the Heritage Harvest Festival. I hope the organizers of each event can lure more food trucks--so often a source of farm-to-table fare--to their gatherings.
We who paid ahead for admissions and speakers got first dibs for seating. It was not a problem but being a "Green Wristband" and thus encouraged to get seating made me uncomfortable. I'd recommend just charging one price next year; luckily no fights erupted because we call got seats. I'm looking forward to my own tour soon of Polyface with my fellow crackpot, Joel Salatin. I just wish I could get that "visionary" part going for me. The crackpot part I have down just fine.
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