https://antifilmschoolsite.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/scream-crop-1.jpg
PLEASE, throughout this blog, when you come across words typed in a reddish-brown color, click on them to see links pertaining to the text they are in.
I have to address something here.
Many people
in my town are acting like the villagers of Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The scene
where the villagers have the monster trapped in the old wind mill and are
setting fire to the structure with hastily lit torches and angry shouts and
emotionally charged attempts to kill the monster with their bare hands, or what
have you.
http://www.vfxhq.com/tvaziri/van/13.jpg
Except in my
town, there is NO monster.
Many people
are MAKING one.
We have a new entrepreneur that came to town, whom I don’t know from Adam, that has set up
an organic food growing business.
Many people
around here have started throwing out accusations about what is going on there,
without taking the most rudimentary steps of:
1. Knock
on this entrepreneur’s business door (call, email, etc.) and ask him all about
it.
2. Do
a very, very, very simple Google (or other search engine) Search on the
internet about (hoop house growing, organic farming with field ducks, soil
building techniques – and this business man and his company).
3. Go
to the Fayette County Public Library and ask where farming /gardening materials could be found to further educate
one’s self.
4. Go
to the various city and county departments and resources such as: Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Group, the Fayette County
Court House, City Hall, the Connersville News Examiner, etc., and ask around
and find out the steps one would take in finding out more about a new business,
its operations, and its owners.
5. AND
one of the most important adult things to do – think about if what you say in a
public forum is actually beneficial to your community, or are you just venting
emotional outbursts without educating yourself first on the topic in which you
are commenting.
Normally, I
am that person that laughs at individuals that want to make disparaging remarks
while the true productive individuals are out actually doing and producing what
the naysayers say they can’t possibly do.
However, I
am tired of many people in my home town running new businesses off, making the
process of bringing new ideas and new ways of doing things almost impossible,
and then those selfsame home town people whining and moaning asking and crying
“Why is our
town in such a horrible mess?!”
“Why can’t
we get new jobs in town?!”
“Why are all
the productive, driven, skill holding, positive young people leaving us?!”
BECAUSE YOU
ACT LIKE CRAZED EMOTIONAL REACTIONARY ANTIQUATED BACKWARD MURDEROUS VILLAGERS
HELL BENT ON DESTROYING A MONSTER THAT DOES NOT EVEN EXIST!!!!!
http://www.wisdomination.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/lynchmob.jpg
Why stay
here and fight battles that never seem to win against an established regime
that is cannibalistic? It is a matter of self-survival to get away from dysfunctional-
thinking and -acting people.
In 1987 I
graduated from Connersville Senior High way out there on “The Hill”.
At that time
it was still a good thing to be able to say you had graduated from this small
city.
True,
factories were closing, times were getting tough, but there was still hope that
we young people could go out in the world and work for our education, skills,
experience, character development, and then later be able to “come back home” and
give back to our community with all of these things we learned to do.
WRONG!!!!
We found we
were labelled
OVER
QUALIFIED
BUCKING THE
ESTABLISHED SYSTEM
MAKING TOO
MANY CHANGES IN THE DEMOGRAPHICS
Sigh……
Where were some of the places
we had to move to just to earn a living to put food in our mouths, clothes on
our backs, roofs over our heads, pay taxes, buy consumer goods, get married,
raise families, participate in a community in positive ways?
All over the
world through military service – as MANY of my fellow graduates had to do just
to know they would EAT, learn a skill, and possibly have a future.
Cities like
Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, Knoxville, St Louis, Dallas/Fort
Worth, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle.
Small cities
near that were similar to Connersville, but were more accepting that we were
willing and able to try new things and WORK and spend our cash THERE - like
Greensburg, Batesville, Shelbyville, Rushville, Richmond, Lawrenceburg/Rising
Sun and on and on and on.
We found
that those labels we got here in Connersville I mentioned above sounded
different in these other areas. It really is interesting, here listen-
BRINGING NEW
CUTTING EDGE SKILLS
DEVELOPING
CRITICAL THINKING TO REACH LONG TERM GOALS
REVITALIZING
OUR CULTURAL MAKE UP
NUMEROUS
times we graduates of CHS from roughly 40 – 20 years ago have tried very hard
to come back home and bring our skills, devotion, and love for this valley back
here and be a vital part of its growth, but we were not only turned away, but
many times, kicked to the curb.
Now we have
a business man who is developing an organic growing business, and instead of
honest to goodness good natured inquiry, research, and an inviting position, many
people here are trying to paint him in a picture of suspicion and neglect.
I hear
people saying he is “cruel” to the field ducks, his farm looks “dirty”, his
hoop houses are left to ruin. So many other accusations that sound just as ridiculous.
The
accusation of him being cruel to his field ducks stems from the fact that
people can drive by and see many ducks in the field during this entire winter.
Seriously?
A
short search on the internet – (because these same people are all using social
media to make their accusations, so they DO have internet access, by the way)
will educate them on the processes of organic animal husbandry of livestock fowl and how those processes take TIME, and actually rehabilitate certain
levels of contaminated soils (which is what he has to work with after over 100
years of our glorious factory industries left us their environmental clean up messes on that and many other sites around town, by the way), so
he is trying to do us a favor, along
with making money for himself- which is, the last time I checked, one of the
last good old American characteristics most of us hold from way back in time
since the American Revolution.
They say his
farm looks dirty because there are piles of mulch laying around his small farm.
This is a concern of some well meaning folks that want our town to look neat, tidy, and Mayberry-ish. Let me remind you all that his farming operation is in an industrial zone - industry means work is being done, production, sales, shipping and receiving, waste management and reduction processes in progress. That is exactly what is going on there.
Every one's buzz word of the day is
TRANSPARENCY
The problem is, when that happens, most people really do NOT want to see and know what is going on inside of their community. They want to see neat tidy covered up processes. Small localized organic urban farming looks just like that spot on State Road 1 folks! It is a process of letting your customers see just what they are getting.
Folks, get this through your heads –
FARMING AIN’T CLEAN!!!!
At the heart of it all is -
DIRT
WATER
ANIMALS
VEGETATION
Put that all together and you get mud and slop.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHYNEgvmhDB9ZSEnOzoQeAIYUst5zlpNMofbRo_RiBRN77kOR96bgNKqPXzNg57HM6uCfZAyWVihWekulXyK6uRSjRZgCAY89BMSAuJxyvANJdeNmgXTOYR2APVJ63xFxVDKorhS2-yyo/s1600/beautiful+busy+day4.jpg
Small localized organic urban farming takes all of that into consideration (and much much more!) The health of livestock that are raised in conditions that their breeds are meant to be raised in are so much more healthy than forcing them to live like something they are not. Same thing goes for the plants grown and the systems created to responsibly sustain them.
It takes a certain type of person who wants to work in those environs to do that. It does not mean that they are bad. Just as with someone who wants to work indoors in a health care facility, a steaming hot foundry, or with small children most of the day, or walking around carrying mail in all sorts of horrendous weather, or in home hospice helping people through the last stages of life.
Mulch is a
wonderful way to naturally control weed growth and it also helps build systems
of soil fertility, fungal health, moisture management, build intricate levels
of beneficial insect and wildlife management,
AND- many
people have been repeating gossip that this entrepreneur contracted with the
city to take the mulch that they produce from waste debris collection projects
all over the community by chipping – if that is the case let me clarify
something very important to note-
The mulch offered
by the city for free to residents was not always the most pure, as they could
not completely control (like a dedicated mulch manufacturer can) what went into
the debris piles that were mulched. I have used this mulch in many diverse
projects over the years. Sometimes there were small bits of trash, stray GMO
corn seed that popped up, weed seeds germinating, very un-uniform bits of
chipped wood that was not the best for landscaping aesthetics, nor for the
casual decay one would want in a small home kitchen garden application. In my
opinion, if this gossip about him contracting with the city for the mulch is true, he used mulch that people were complaining that they could not use
well anyway, so our city can clear it away and start fresh with a new
system of mulching that would produce better mulch for our citizens.
The
accusation of the hoop houses left to ruin? I have heard people ask sneeringly “When
in the heck is he EVER going to finish THAT project?!”
If you look
into organic permaculture farming you will see that remediating soil can often be a
long necessary step in the process. The high tunnel hoop houses were erected in accordance
to a practice of making sure your building structures will withstand a particular
site’s circumstances (such as dealing with constant winds, possible flooding or
drought conditions, location near major traffic ways – St Rd 1- ). Also hoop
houses generally have plastic or fabric covering. If he were to install this
before remediating the soil, growing organic crops just would not work right. Sunlight and exposure to air and temperatures throughout the year are what prevent many of the problems and diseases that can occur in traditional permanent green houses. Also
the hoop covers would deteriorate in the wind and weather while he was not able
to grow crops – would you leave all the electrical running and gas hook ups and
phone and internet access to the old Visteon building when there was virtually
NOTHING going on there to produce a profit? Nah, you wouldn’t, and neither will
he expend materials, effort and cash on things that do not bring a profit but
only expense and waste.
I do believe, in several articles published by the Connersville News Examiner and in other periodicals, this
entrepreneur did explain this. It is NOT his responsibility to go door to door
and educate each member of the community on what organic permaculture and
aquaponics, hydroponics, and symbiotic growing systems are. He made the very
common mistake of thinking that the average adult in a community can research
these concepts on their own in the various ways I have stated previously in
this article. (Here is a recent update published.)
Just because
you do not understand something does not make it a monster.
EDUCATE
YOURSELF BEFORE JUDGING.
Create relationships between members of our community and you will begin to understand
more about what needs to change and how it needs to change.
Judgmental,
closed mindedness is what has crippled this community for over 40 years now. It
is time to change our behaviors and attitudes if our community will ever have
the HOPE to survive. Here is the good point - they ARE changing. Hope is rising again here in the valley and that is a very good thing. You can be sure to start seeing more and more changes in the upcoming years.
(Two of the most respected and foremost authorities on the subjects in this blog post who have talked the talk and walked the walk for over 50 years are Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm and Eliot Coleman of Four Seasons Farm. I urge you to research their collective life's work and expand into other readings to better understand what is going on at Lifeline Farms LLC, in Connersville Indiana. Better yet, go to their Linkedin and Facebook pages to learn more directly from the source!)
As ever folks,
Stay Squirrely, but always informed.
https://splitpease.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/squirrel-its-all-good.jpeg?w=199&h=254
