Back To The Land, New York Times Style
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 07. 3.08
The article starts off really badly, with a picture of farmer Dan Gibson's modest little farmhouse with a porte cochère big enough to park a combine harvester, and a description of how the former VP of Starwood Hotels raises Angus cattle but spends his spare time in house that "has a theater that wouldn’t be out of place in a Steven Spielberg residence, a wine cellar and a log cabin annex with a magnificent dry stack stone fireplace, a billiards table and a stuffed bear and bobcat glowering down between beams made of North Carolina pine — each beam an entire mature tree."
It gets slightly better though, as Ralph Gardner describes how "In recent years, as the local food movement has grown and farmers’ markets have proliferated, a new breed of back-to-the-landers has emerged."
Some give up a lot and work really hard; Sheila Flanagan and Lorraine Lambiase (shown above fuelling the wood stove) moved from San Francisco to the Adirondacks to make goat cheese. “I think you get so much better awareness with this life,” Ms. Flanagan said. “You take things like heat and water a little bit more for granted in a metropolitan area. Whereas out here it’s a daily challenge. You come to appreciate what’s really necessary to keep life’s necessities going.”
Organic farming has become all the rage, and The Omnivore's Dilemma is the new bible.
"At an organic farming association fund-raiser in April, some 300 attendees — most of them looking very much like classic Upper East Side ladies who lunch, to whom “buying local” may have previously meant shopping at Bergdorf’s — sat in rapt attention as a panel of farmers and environmentalists described the perils of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers."
I suppose it is nice to have farmers who don't need to work at six jobs, and who can buy their machinery for cash. As long as the dilettantes don't displace the real deal. ::New York Times
More on Organic Food and Farming
Green Basics: Organic Food
Organic Milk Really is Healthier
Organic Ketchup Prevents Cancer!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Cohousing Comes to Brooklyn
- Obama Cites Michael Pollan's Sun-Food Agenda
- Renewable Energy-Powered Billboard Coming To New York's Times Square
- The Best Chocolate in the World on the Shelves at Whole Foods
If Nothing Else Works, Pray for Lower Gas Prices
|
Giant Rubber Snake 'Anaconda' Could Bring Cost of Wave Power Down
|
Here they come, the McMansions and the hummers converted to bio-diesel. Next they will be sending the clip board hippies around to tell those of us that have lived out here what we need to do.
it's "porte cochere"
LA: Thanks.
"Here they come, the McMansions and the hummers converted to bio-diesel. Next they will be sending the clip board hippies around to tell those of us that have lived out here what we need to do."
Christ, that's the last thing we need. I've lived this way for 30-something years, and if I had some biodiesel hummer-driving new-green person come knocking at my door, I'd be torn between pulling out the pump gun or setting the dogs on them. Lord knows, I don't want the dogs to get indigestion.
--Hawk
Great post--buying local and living a traditional lifestyle is the only alternative to the consume-and-throw modern lifestyle.
What is this post about again? Rich people living on farms in some kind of dispute with less wealthy people living on farms?
wow, so bad talk some that want to take their hard earned money and head for the hills? What - can only the destitute be true farmers, or only wanna-be hippies pretend to be green? Does that mean we all should live like the tree protesters in Berkeley, instead of enjoying hard the earned cash won enriching society by now working the land?
I will never understand "liberalism", as just when you think it means "equal rights" you come to see it actually is about selectivity, sticking it to those that have got their life together enough to make more than average. wishy-washy if you ask me
"wow, so bad talk some that want to take their hard earned money and head for the hills? What - can only the destitute be true farmers, or only wanna-be hippies pretend to be green? Does that mean we all should live like the tree protesters in Berkeley, instead of enjoying hard the earned cash won enriching society by now working the land?
I will never understand "liberalism", as just when you think it means "equal rights" you come to see it actually is about selectivity, sticking it to those that have got their life together enough to make more than average. wishy-washy if you ask me"
I think it upsets people because it is a perversion of what the real goal is. A reduction in the impact we have on the earth and it's resources. This is just taking the same high consumption life-style and giving it some green-washing.