Farming for self-sufficiency
John and Sally Seymour's record of 18 successful years on a shirttail-sized homestead in England should offer welcome encouragement to today's back-to-the-landers... both real and imaginary. Here's the first article from the Seymour's book on Self-Sufficiency.
January/February 1974
By the Mother Earth News editors
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 It! 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 this and the last two MOTHERS).
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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 offer welcome encouragement to today's back-to-the-landers . . . both real and imaginary. I'll be serializing the book in my next few issues and I'm sure that many readers will want a personal copy for their home libraries.—MOTHER.
Two to three hundred years ago the British came to our shores—their new land—seeking survival and adventure, security and liberty. Many found these goals. Land was cleared, rich farms established, ores dug, factories built, steel smelted. Smokestacks pierced the sky, and cities grew. Wealth poured forth endlessly, and a strong nation developed. Most people called it health, success, and Progress with a capital "P."
But underneath were disconcerting signs. Slums and ghettos in urban centers, rising taxes and costs which troubled farmers. Their answer? Sell more wheat, corn cotton; get more land, plant more acres, buy larger machines, use more fertilizers. There came an onslaught of blight and borers, weevils and fungi. Pesticides and poisons to the rescue!
Always there were more people to feed in cities, so more chemicals were put In the soil for higher yields. Yet there was more disease, so stronger pesticides were used. Eventually came the sad admission that the soil was changing-growing stiff, inert, sick. Later came the sadder conclusion that the depletion and erosion and disease were resulting from the chemical-pesticide regime and the commercial, mono-crop agriculture, sometimes called agri-business.
Now in 1973, into our midst come two British farmers, John and Sally Seymour, with their book Farming for self-sufficiency. Do they speak to our condition? Does Britain, that crowded Isle which boasts one of the largest cities in the world, have something to say to us about farming?
The answer is a decided Yes! The Seymours help us rethink our agricultural—even our whole cultural—approach by reporting the ways and results of a score of years producing and living in an organic, self-sustaining pattern. This is the way of life which, in the 1920s, Ralph Borsodi had christened "modern homesteading. "
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