A NEW YEAR NEW PLANS

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OUR BASIC GOAL

Our basic goal is to become as totally self sufficient as we can, as free from the money economy and the increasingly severe difficulties of living in a world with too many people and too few resources. Our planning envisions a future a scenario, the futurists call it where the United States will have run out of just about every resource but the most valuable, a proportion of the world's arable land that far exceeds our proportion of the world population. Louise and I agree with those economists and natural scientists who predict that within the next few decades the United States will become one huge farm producing (probably from improved soybeans) the protein to feed a hungry world of perhaps twice today's human population.

FOOD SECURITY

This means that man's most elemental need, food, will increase in economic value to heights the world has never even imagined; perhaps a bushel of wheat will buy a barrel of crude oil or a new wool suit of clothes. In such a world small scale farming would again be a viable way of life for millions of American families, and we want to be one of them. Even if this scenario is dead wrong, we want to be able to produce most of our needs here on the homestead; no matter what the future holds for the world, we are convinced that the capacity for self-sufficiency and independence, even if unexercised, is the surest guarantee that life will continue to be good on our

little corner of Creation. So, though future plans and projects are pretty mundane in themselves, each is part of a still evolving plan to establish a self-contained and environmentally sound "homestead of the future."

So much for generalities. The first item on the agenda is a very down to earth building, a greenhouse. We've carried lettuce through most of the winter in the cold frame, but salads get pretty skimpy by January. We want to have a complete winter salad garden with lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes all winter long. To date I've picked up some big fluorescent lights, a good neighbor has supplied a pile of old storm sash, and the plans are drawn up. Next winter we'll have it cranked up, insulated with sheets of plastic over glass and heated through a cellar window. I'm sure there will be some mistakes, but with experience we should never again have to put up with lettuce trucked all the way from California or a tomato that was turned red (not ripened) with chemicals.

ENERGY SELF-SUFFICIENCY

On the home heat front I plan to build a combination log splitter and cordwood saw that will speed the wood garnering process. The saw half of the unit will be similar to an antique a neighbor uses to cut his own wood, the splitter from a plan from Garden Way Research of Charlotte, Vermont. I doubt that we will completely discard the central heating unless the cost of heating oil or coal simply goes out of sight. But we have more wood stoves in our future. The little stove in the kitchen will go into my study/workroom as soon as we can find a bigger cookstove with a range and water reservoir. The main part of the house will be heated by one of the modern super-efficient wood or coal heaters such as the Ashley. So far we have reduced our original heating oil consumption by half with the two stoves. The coming heating season, plus two more, should see one tankful last through the winter and in time, as we increase the insulation and finish caulking up the old clapboards, and when the kids are old enough to keep their comforters on at night, we can go to all wood heat.

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