Farming for self sufficiency

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Independence on a 5-Acre Farm

Copyright © 1973 by John and Sally Seymour. Introduction copyright © 1973 by Schocken Books. Inc.

Ah, the vicissitudes of time. Two years ago, when there were NO currently relevant small-scale-farming introductory handbooks available, many of us welcomed the publication of Richard Langer's Grow !t! with open arms. Now that we're all older and more experienced, however, some folks find it increasingly easy to criticize that breakthrough beginner's guide (see the Feedback sections of MOTHER NOS. 23, 24 and 25).

Which brings us to another breakthrough book that is just as important (probably more so) now as Grow It! was two years ago... and which may well come up for its share of criticism in another 24 months or so.

Be that as it may, John and Sally Seymour's record of 18 successful years on a shirttail-sized homestead in England is important now and should ofer welcome encouragement to today's back-to-the-landers... both real and imaginary. I started serializing this book in my No. 25 issue and I'm sure that many readers will want a personal copy for their home libraries. —MOTHER

WHEAT AND BREAD

Without bread, all is misery. The Scripture truly calls it t he staff of life: and it may be called, too, the pledge of peace and happiness in the labourer's dwelling.

WILLIAM COBBETT: Cottage Economy

In case anybody should read this book who just does not know what the cultivation of the land and the growing of crops are all about at all, I will here describe, in the simplest way that I can, what is involved in these operations. Before man comes on the scene land is probably either covered with forest or with grass. If covered with forest men can cut down the trees, burn them, scratch the ground between the stumps and sow seed. In the forested parts of the Tropics this is how much farming is done. It is easy to cultivate this land, because under the trees there was no covering of grass. The land, when the trees have gone, is bare, and there are none of the seeds of the weeds that make arable farming difficult. There is, too, a big supply of plant nutrients in the soil, enriched as the latter is by centuries of leaf-fall. After five or ten years, though, arable weeds begin to creep in, the humus is used up, the land becomes infertile, and the cultivators move on and clear another piece of forest. The piece they have left regenerates itself, trees grow again, and in twenty or thirty years the chena cultivators, as they are called in Ceylon as an example, can come back, cut and burn again, and enjoy another five or ten years of profitable farming. There is nothing wrong with this kind of husbandry at all provided there are not too many people and enough forest. When populations expand, though, it becomes impossible: the forest does not have time to regenerate itself.

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