The Agrarian's Lament: Where Do Farmers Get Their Food From? The answer is logical, rational, and ludicrous

The Agrarian's Lament: Where Do Farmers Get Their Food From? The answer i...:   

Where Do Farmers Get Their Food From? The answer is logical, rational, and ludicrous

 

The last garden I put in, 2017.

This is an interesting item, particularly as information for those not associated with agriculture.

Where Do Farmers Get Their Food From?

The answer is logical, rational, and ludicrous

I've split both worlds, of course, for decades, although more by fate than choice.  Anyhow, one thing that's always amazed me is, to some degree, agriculturalist don't make full use of their own land.

I'm much more familiar with ranching than farming, so I'll start there.  Almost every rancher I know eats their own beef.  We eat our own beef.  For this reason, beef prices at the grocery store are always a bit of a mystery to me.

If you know somebody who raises pigs, and occasionally we do, we get one from them. Again, that means we're paying below grocery store prices.

Okay, all this is common.  

But what absolutely amazes me is that lots of farmers and ranchers don't take advantage of what's right before them.

I used to put in a huge garden every year.  I don't anymore, as my town job took control of my life and I lost the time to do it.  I hope to take it back up if I ever get to retire.  I can't see a good reason that almost every farm and ranch doesn't have a garden.  Yes, it takes time, but not that much time if you are right there.  It'd cut food bills, as they're mostly getting their produce from the grocery store, and fresh produce is always better.

I also don't understand why farmers and ranchers don't hunt, and fish, more.  I know that "time" will be the argument, but I've been around agriculture my whole life and farmers and ranchers have more time than city people do. They simply do.  Their time commitments tend to be seasonal, and intense, but they have the time.

At various times in my pre married life, I used to live on wild game.  And I know for a fact that prior to the 1980s, a lot of ranchers either did the same, or supplemented their meat supply that way.  One student I knew when I was in US as an undergrad was an older (in his 30s) student, and had grown up on a ranch were they lived on wild game. Frankly, they poached it.  I don't advocate poaching, but I also know more than one ranch family that poached pretty routinely into the 1970s.  

Here, farmers and ranchers can get landowners licenses and I just don't see why they don't.  And even if they don't, they usually have time after the fall to hunt and could on a regular license..  Indeed, as noted, they have more time than people in town do.  Outdoors writer John Barsness once noted in one of his columns that when he was a boy, he had a ranching uncle that became a full time elk hunter after shipping.

As noted, I just don't get it.

Shoot, it was my dream, which I will not succeed at.

If I could do whatever I want. . .

If I'd had my way, I would have lived full time in the sticks as a rancher, I'd have gardened in the war months, and hunted in the fall.  If I'd broke even, that would have been fine with me.

The Agrarian Dream.

Related threads:

If I could do whatever I want. . .

Labels: Agrarianism, Agriculture, Alaska, Daily Living, fishing, hunting, nature, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, Work, Wyoming

Foods, Seasons, and our Memories. A Hundred Years Ago: The Last Fresh Vegetable Month

Labels: 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Agrarianism, Blog Mirror, Food, Garden, Localism, Retail, Transportation, World War One, World War Two

Going Feral: A mid summer dinner.

Going Feral: A mid summer dinner.:  

A mid summer dinner.

 

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Pr...: 

Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Dick Proenneke may be the ultimate modern subsistence hunter and fisherman in so far as the Western World is concerned.

Proenneke was born in Iowa in 1916.  His father was sort of a jack of all trades laborer, which is and was common to rural areas.  His father was also a veteran of World War One.  Dick followed in his father's footsteps prior to World War Two, leaving high school before graduation, something extremely common in that era (less than 50% of males graduated from high school prior to World War Two  He joined the Navy in World War Two and took up hiking around San Francisco while recovering from rheumatic fever contracted in the service.  Having the disease was life altering for him, as he became focused on his health.  He received a medical discharge from the Navy in 1945.

After the war he became a diesel mechanic, but his love of nature caused him to move to Oregon to work on a sheep ranch, and then to Shuyark Island, Alaska, in 1950.  From 1950 to 1968 he worked for a variety of employers, including the Navy and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.  He moved to the wilderness in 1968, at age 52, the year that in many ways gave us the Post Post World War Two World we are now seeing collapse.  He lived there, as a single man, until 1999, when old age forced him out of the woods and to his brother's home in California.  He died in there in 2003, at age 86.  His cabin now belongs to the Park Service.

Proenneke loved photography and left an extensive filmed record of his life in Alaska.

There's a lot that can be gleaned from his life, some of which would probably be unwarranted, as every person's life is their own.  Having noted that, however, it should be noted that Proenneke is not the only person to live in this manner in Alaska's back wood, including up to the present.  So he's not fully unique, but rather his high intelligence and filmed record has made him known.

It's also notable, fwiw, that he was a single man.  Basically, if looked at carefully, his retreat to the woods came in his retirement, as he had very low expenses up until 1968, and had worked for the government for many years.  He never married, so he never had a family or responsibilities of that type.  Many of the men who live in wild Alaska have married into native families, so their circumstances are different.

Probably every young man who loves the outdoors has contemplated doing something like what Proenneke actually did, while omitted the decades of skilled labor as a single man that came before it.  And in reality, Proenneke, had lived over half his life as a working man with strong outdoor interests, rather than in the wilderness.  People really aren't meant to live the way he lived, in extreme isolation, save for a few.

Related Threads:

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness part II