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Editorial
ROMANCING
THE GRASS:
How
Many Vermonters Get to Stay and Enjoy the Simple Life?
By James Ehlers
We Vermonters love our environmentalism.
And visitors love us for loving our environmentalism. Like one too many
pieces of chocolate cake at the birthday party, however, there can be too
much of a good thing.
Having tried my hand at living
off the land, my small carbon "footprint" efforts could be more accurately
termed subsistence farming. I am, therefore, constantly fascinated by the
number of us enamored with the romantic notions of an economy based strictly
on carbohydrates—less any dividends bequeathed, naturally—thinking it somehow
reduces our carbon "footprint." "Living simply," taken to its obvious logical
end, is not all that
logical, it turns out. I
suppose there is a reason we import the vast majority of our produce from
other states, let alone other countries. They simply grow better and more
easily, experience gleaned
over the years indicates.
Given the number of people
interested in the quaint notion of agriculture, however, we should take
a closer look at the futility of getting too carried away with the romanticism
of the "simple life" of yesteryear. The agricultural or carbohydrate economy
of the past
needs land. At Vermont’s
height of agricultural production, roughly 80 percent of the 5.9 million
acres of the landscape was farmed. Today, it is about 20 percent, just
the reverse.
The Vermont population in
2006 was 623,908, give-or-take, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Now, according to the experts
in this field of energy, most notably Huber and Mills, the rural American
family of four of the past needed 40 acres to subsist—forest to cut for
fuel, fields to farm, fields for pasture, and fields to grow more fuel.
Doing the math:
-
4.72 million acres (80 percent
of 5.9 million) divided by 40 acres equals 118,000 forty-acre plots available
for average-size families (4 people).
-
623,908 divided by 4 (the family
value used above) equals 155,977 or the number of plots necessary.
A 37,977 plot deficit results,
and that assumes planting and putting to pasture almost all of the state
but mountain tops and swamp bottoms. So who leaves? Which 151,908 people?
Or what part of Massachusetts or New Hampshire do we acquire and cleanse
of its current inhabitants? This is actually how it was done in those days
gone by. And today, still, there are actually government programs designed
to do this with sweet-sounding names such as Scenic Areas, Special Treatment
Areas and Wilderness so it is not as outlandish as it may sound at first
pass. These programs, however, while they get people
off the landscape, they also
keep them out, in perpetuity.
Fortunately, we are not required
to entertain such ridiculous notions, due to advances in agricultural productivity
and energy production and efficiency, although we do for ideological reasons.
Ironically, in our modern society of near 80-year life spans, it appears
to be a necessary thing that people be disconnected from the land on some
level. Of course, this is also what fuels the population control zealots
and some so-called environmentalists—the question—what if all those people—me
and you—suddenly
decided they wanted to be
gentlemen farmers? What then?
The fear.
Again, I say, it is the notion
that people enjoy, for if it were the actual labor people enjoyed, Vermont
would still look as it did 150 years ago. Actions are the best indicators
of people’s interests. The
work is too hard, and unnecessary, actually. Besides, the electric company,
never mind the doctors, would not take the generous baskets of squash that
I offered in return for their services each month. Sick and in the dark
is not exactly the simple life I had had in mind.
There is a reason a majority
of Vermont parents do not encourage their kids to grow up to dig potatoes.
Right or wrong? Not for me to say.
In my own experience, unless
one inherits the land, it makes little financial sense if one wants to
participate in a modern society, which I did, to play pioneer. The numbers
say it would not work any
longer, anyway, as well.
On the bright side though,
during the "good old days" of "renewable" energy and "eating locally,"
with a life expectancy of only about 40 years, twice as many of us today
could pass through the dirt
we would till. That is, of course, if we were not part of the banished
set. Best then to make ourselves useful to the community and do something
worthwhile for our neighbors like invent electricity or laser surgical
tools so they keep us around. Oh, yes, of course, that has been done. Ironic
then that we don’t want to do what is necessary, it would seem, to encourage
the proliferation of modern amenities. Perhaps it is more romantic to think
of living half as long. Vermont, I imagine, is a nice place to die. Maybe
that is why so many of us come here to do just that.
James Ehlers is the publisher
emeritus of Elk Publishing, Inc. This article is re-printed from "Livin
the Vermont Way"
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