—Contra Mundum—The Christian Worldview

Dateline: 17 August 2013

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

—Jesus Christ (Matthew 5:13)

As noted in the subtitle at the top of this page, this blog is about “faith, family & livin’ the good life.” My faith is Christian, which is to say, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. As such, I have a view of the world that is informed by scripture. 

Such a worldview must be contra mundum, which is to say, against the world, which is to say, against the mainstream worldly system, which is to say, against any way of life or thinking that does not align with God’s law. God’s law is His unwavering standards of right and wrong, or good and evil, as outlined in scripture. The Christian worldview must be contra mundum because the Bible is contra mundum.

But to live and think contra mundum is becoming more and more unpopular in America. Christians who hold to the contra mundum theology of scripture are clearly a minority. That being the case, it is not hard for me to imagine the day when Christians in America will be persecuted for publicly expressing their Christian beliefs about what is right and wrong. To some degree, this is already happening. There is an increasingly intolerant attitude among those in power against Christians who believe the Bible is true. 

Christians (and their beliefs) are tolerated only as long as they don’t speak out against ungodly systems of thought and control. Christians are tolerated as long as they keep their religious beliefs in church—as long as they don’t upset the apple cart of other religious worldviews that have come to dominate the culture. 

Persecution of Christians for expressing their religious beliefs is, of course, nothing new.  It has happened throughout history, beginning with Christ himself, who was crucified for speaking against the religious and political powers of his day. In no uncertain terms, Jesus spoke against the mainstream world view that was in rebellion against God’s law. In fact, Jesus Christ was not exactly polite when it came to challenging and chastising the wicked religious and political culture he lived in. 

Soon thereafter, the followers of Jesus Christ were persecuted and killed, primarily for declaring that the Caesar was not God. The Roman government had no real problem with Christianity as long as Christians conformed to statist thought. But when Christians of that day maintained that there was a higher moral authority than the reprobate moral authority of the central government, that was going too far. 

Later in history, the Pilgrims and Puritans of England were persecuted by the government. They were persecuted because they would not conform to the law when it dictated what they should believe and how they should worship God. By not conforming to the statist dictates, the followers of Christ were seen as a threat to the dominant power structure.

Much the same thing is happening today in America. The foundations for future Christian persecution are being established. Hate crimes are being defined as hate speech. Hate speech is being defined as speaking words that a social group finds offensive. It is a slippery slope into moral, social and economic chaos. The handwriting is on the wall for Christian Americans, or so it seems to me.

Too few modern Christians understand that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the story of a war between good and evil. The war is ongoing and every true Christian is a soldier in the battle. It is not a physical war that Christians are called to, it is a spiritual and cultural war; a war of worldviews. Christians are called to fight in this epic battle with love—not an emasculated, compromising love, but love based on unyielding and eternal truth. 

In a dominant world culture that does not believe in eternal truths—that believes truth to be relative and ever changing—the truth contained in scripture can not be tolerated. It can not be tolerated because it is a threat to the dominant cultural system. God’s love, Christ’s love, the love that frees people from their sin (by pointing out their sin and calling them to repentance) is condemned as hate. 

This warped perception happens when a culture separates itself from the transcendental truth of God’s law. It is like a ship without a rudder. It wanders aimlessly. It is in danger.

To be a Christian warrior is to love what God loves and to hate what God hates. But these days there are more and more modern churches and churchified people who do not love what God loves, nor hate what God hates. Their perception of God is that He is all love and acceptance, regardless of sin. These people pick and choose what they like out of God’s word and mix their christianity with the mainstream anti-Christ cultural beliefs of the world system. 

The word for this blending of cultures is syncretism. Syncretistic  christians are not warriors. They are deserters. They are salt that has lost its savor. 

========

As a Christian-agrarian I am doubly condemned by the dominant world culture. That’s because agrarian beliefs are contra-industrial. Industrialism is the all-powerful economic and social force that has shaped Western civilization for two hundred years. 

I happen to see the centralized, materialistic industrial system as a wicked system because it has almost totally sapped the vitality of families, churches and our nation as a whole. The popular culture we see around us is the spawn of industrial culture. Both anti-Christ cultures feed off each other. 

=======

This last week I have taken a mainstream-media fast. I have not listened to news reports on my satellite radio. I have not listened to the various mainstream talk show hosts. I have not visited the Drudge Report or any other online news source. 

Instead, as I worked in my shop, I listened to contra mundum media. I went to sermonaudio.com and listened to a reading of A.W. Pink’s wonderful book, The Sovereignity of God. I went to Scott Terry’s Christian Farm & Homestead radio and got caught up on the episodes I’ve missed there. And I went to one of my favorite contra mundum, contra-industrial online radio programs. I’ve mentioned the program here before. It’s Generations With Vision Radio, hosted by Kevin Swanson, with his remarkably-cogent producer/sidekick Dave Buehner.

Swanson and Buehner are contra-mundum worldview warriors. They discuss and apply God’s law to the problems and issues of our day, and they do it in a winsome, engaging manner. I’m sure they must tick off a lot of people, but, as I noted above, so did Jesus. 

If you have never listened to Generations Radio, I recommend that you begin your journey (8 years of daily half-hour programs are all online for free) with the following episodes, which were particularly good in my estimation. But I should point out that they are a lopsided sampling because I'm especially drawn to discussions about establishing a family economy. Nevertheless, they give you an idea of what the show is like. I encourage you to search the archives and listen to the past episodes. These shows are edifying alternative media...

The Duck Dynasty
This program looks at the most famous Christian family economy in the world. But beyond the story of Duck Dynasty, Dave Buehner has some true words of wisdom about home business and the proper Christian approach to business. Dave also makes the point that schools these days are "cage-training" kids so they will be happy in their corporate cage when they grow up. Now that's contra-industrial!

From Lesbian Feminist to Christian Homeschool Mom
This episode is an interview with Rosaria Butterfield, a former feminist, lesbian activist professor at Syracuse University. I've listened to this show three times!

Who Killed Family Economies in The 20th Century?
This is a fine interview with Allen Carlson, my favorite social historian and author of The New Agrarian Mind. 

Should Our Sons Join The Armed Forces?
Kevin and Dave provide a controversial and thought-provoking answer.

Building a Family Economy in the 21st Century
This is an interview with a woman whose family has a home-based manufacturing business in Montana  (www.grainmaker.com)

Centralization vs Decentralization
Kevin interviews a Texas secessionist, and discusses the decentralized future of America. 

American-Made ClothespinsAre In Production

Dateline: 16 August 2013

An early prototype clothespin

I drove to Memphis today. No, not that Memphis. I'm talking about Memphis, New York. It's less than an hour from my home, but I've never been there before. Memphis is a very little rural hamlet along what was once the Erie Canal. I'm led to believe the place was a bustling center of commercial activity back in the early to mid-1800s. But there's no bustle of economic activity in Memphis these days. From what I could see the town has a volunteer fire department and a lumberyard. It was the Memphis Hardwood Lumber Company I was interested in. I had ordered nearly 200 square feet of 3/8" thick ash lumber for my first production run of Classic American Clothespins. This day has been a long time coming.

It was back in April of 2012 when I announced at this here blog that I wanted to start up an American-made clothespin company. I had come to the realization that American-made, hardwood, spring-action clothespins were no longer being made, and American line-dryers weren't happy with the, cheap, poor-quality, imported clothespins being sold in the Walmarts and Dollar Stores of the land.

My announcement brought a surprising number of positive and encouraging comments from readers.  I took that as validation that I ought to proceed. I soon contacted a spring manufacturing company and we worked together to create a high-quality stainless steel clothespin spring. I invested in an initial order of 50,000 springs and got them in June of 2012.

Custom-made stainless steel clothespin springs

In retrospect, I am a little surprised at myself for moving so quickly on the idea. I dare say it was almost impulsive. But I was feeling positive and springs are a critical part of the product. My plan was to get the springs made and then develop the clothespin design. 

Then, last September that I posted the following picture...

I made a LOT of prototype clothespins and just about had my final specifications figured out when I posted that picture. But I wasn't quite there. Into October I continued to tweak the measurements and I used up every last scrap of hardwood lumber in my work shop. The last piece of wood I cut up was a short section of wormy chestnut that Earl the Bee Man had given me years ago.

The wormy chestnut clothespins came out just right. I finally had my critical dimensions. I was pleased with that, but winter was coming and I had to get on to some other projects. I stashed the chestnut beauties in a safe place and  determined to get back to the clothespin project after I finished The Planet Whizbang Idea For Gardeners, and that's pretty much what I've done.

Since my little workshop is too crammed to make the clothespins, I've set up an outdoor workshop under a tent...

 

View from the steps of my shop, down into the clothespin workshop. The hat is over a post at the top of the stairs. That clothespin on the hat is one of the wormy chestnut ones. (click picture for a closer view)

Where there's a will, there's a way, eh?  I have a table saw and three router tables set up under the tent. The weather is supposed to be good into next week. Even if it gets bad, the tent sides drop down. 

So I'm on my way with the American-made clothespins. I will be keeping track of my time and material costs going into this first production run. Then I can figure a selling price. I'm afraid the cost of these crafted clothespins will end up being more than most people will want to spend, but they will be heirloom-quality clothespins that are strong and dependable, unlike the cheap imports.

Stay tuned.....

Old Posters & Guiding Principles

Dateline: 15 August 2013

(click to see an enlarged view)

.
For Father's Day last, my sister gave me the poster pictured above. She had taken it off the wall in my parent's house (where she currently lives). I reckon I must have stuck that poster to the dark paneling in the kitchen back around 1975, when I was 17 years old. It hadn't moved from that spot for the last 38 years.

The old poster got me to thinking about wall posters in general, and my younger days. Back in the 1970s it was a popular thing for kids to put posters on their bedroom walls. Some kids had sports posters, some had rock music posters, some had  movie posters, but I don't ever remember buying posters like that. Fact is, I only remember  buying two posters. The one above, and this one...

That crudely-framed poster was in my bedroom when I was a kid, and I tacked it up on the wall of my workshop awhile back.

As I thought about my two old posters, and how they have survived the years, it occurred to me that I've always been something of a counter cultural oddball.

Instead of plugging 100% into popular culture, I eschewed a great deal of it; I embraced lifestyle themes (living simply and working hard) instead of the usual pop icons. And those themes guided me when I was a young man, right up to today.

Though I now realize better than I did back then that the future belongs to God and his sovereign providence (regardless of how hard I may work), the concept of working hard is, of course, biblical (six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work).

What the years have taught me is that there is a difference between working hard to provide for basic needs, and striving hard in the worldly culture to achieve financial success. That striving thing was a total disaster for me.

So I guess I'm older and wiser now, and I'm also more thankful than ever in my life. I'm thankful that, for reasons I can't fully comprehend, I latched onto some fundamental guiding ideals in my youth that have served me well. If I had the chance to do it again, I would not hesitate to embrace those same ideals.

Agrarian FindsAt The Bouckville Antique Extravaganza

Dateline: 14 August 2013

Early 19th Century Sugar Nippers. Price: $585

Marlene and I drove to Bouckville, N.Y. earlier today to spend some time antique hunting at the Madison-Bouckville Antique Week. We had heard from others that it is an amazing assembly of antique vendors, and that it was. I don't think we've ever been to a larger or better venue for antique picking.

I was looking for agrarian tools from America's past and I thought I might find some more old copies of Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal magazine. I didn't see a single Country Journal, but agrarian tools were in abundance.

I am drawn to the old, hand-forged iron tools, to woodenware, and to tinware. The pictures that follow give you an idea of some of the treasures that I found at the show (but did not buy). At the end I'll show you what I did buy.

—click on pictures to see enlarged views—

The tag said, "Very early large piggin." Price: $335

There were plenty of crocks, baskets, and hand-carved dough bowls at the show, all of which were a delight to behold, but that wooden shelf in the picture caught my eye. A closer look at the tag revealed that it was a "bucket bench c.1840." Price: $1,100

I studied the three reaping hooks in that box for some time. I don't see hooks like those very often and I debated with myself (in my mind) about spending $40 to buy one. In the end, I decided not to. But they sure are beautiful agricultural implements. There is no reason they couldn't be sharpened and put to use again for harvesting grain.

Shaker cheese cutter. Price: $550

A jack jumper from the early 1900s. I've always wanted to try jack-jumping. Click HERE to watch a YouTube clip of someone using a jack jumper.

A classic wheelbarrow. Price: $285

Herb "boat" grinder. Price: $525

I've always wanted an old roll-top desk like that one, but I didn't buy it. Price: $3,195

This old cider press was the find of the day. The man selling it said he got it out of a barn in Sherrill, NY. He said that all he did was pressure wash it. I remarked on how well it was crafted and he showed me the penciled layout marks still visible on the wood. I've never seen a cider press like it and I think it is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. I told the man it should be in a museum and he agreed. The asking price was $2,300.

The bottom tray of the press had hand-carved grooves to collect and channel the juice.

French coiled wire sifter (with wooden sides).  Price: $148

What I Bought

In the midst of a sea of so much great old stuff, the only thing I bought at Bouckville was a little, old, "noise maker" toy. It was priced at $12. This toy hearkens back to an age when there were no mass-produced plastic toys for children. It was an impulse purchase on my part but I was thinking of using it as a pattern for making a similar toy for my grandson. When I got home I showed him the old noisemaker and how it worked. He like it it. 

You may be wondering what Marlene bought. Well, she didn't buy anything. I was the big spender of the day. It's not like she didn't see things that she liked. It's just that we don't have room to put much more stuff. 

My Dream Shop?

On the way home from the show I saw this quilt shop and stopped to take a picture. I 'm thinking more and more about someday building a workshop/warehouse/shipping center/retail store for my Planet Whizbang business. I don't know if I will ever actually be able to do it, but I'm thinking and praying about this next step with my home business. It is getting mighty crowded around here, and it seems like a good idea. The quilt shop looked about the right size. I like the batten siding, and and I like the row of windows at the top. Architecturally speaking, that row of windows is called a clearstory.

Sheep-SmellBed Pillows

Dateline: 13 August 2013

photo link

A couple months back, Marlene and I decided to go to the Home Green Home store in Ithaca N.Y. and look at "natural" bed mattresses. Marlene had been complaining about our Sealy Posturepedic mattress that we bought, used, 25 years ago. I was okay with the old mattress, but she has issues with her back and with getting a good night's sleep, and she has been complaining about the mattress for a few years.

Well, ya know, there is an old saying.... "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." 

That is a true old saying, and, fortunately for me, my wife is not normally a complainer. She puts up with me remarkably well (she says she has me figured out), and I've never known her to have a mercurial personality. I'm blessed to have such a wife. But she wasn't happy with the old bed.

In time, we ended up buying a new bed, but I don't want to talk about that, thank you. It's a painful thought when I consider what the thing cost. It's the pillow I bought Marlene that I am most impressed with.

I always thought that if you wanted a good, natural pillow, then goose down was the stuffing to get. And, fact is, I bought Marlene a goose down pillow several years ago. She appreciated getting the gift, but she didn't really like the pillow. It was too soft.

At the HomeGreenHome store, I saw that they had several different natural pillows. They had pillows stuffed with kapok, pillows stuffed with cotton, pillows stuffed with buckwheat hulls, and pillows stuffed with lamb's wool.

photo link

Lamb's wool? How come I had never heard of stuffing a pillow with wool from sheep? It was a completely new concept to me. I bought one..... for Marlene.

The pillow I bought is a 20"x 26" "standard soft." It has a zippered cover, like the picture above shows. It is made by White Lotus Home and cost $55.  

Thus far, we like the pillow (I borrow it sometimes). It's a comfortable pillow. I can see where it might mat down, or get clumpy after some time (maybe not), but I would suppose that is just the way wool pillows are. We'll see.

The thing I like best about this wool-stuffed pillow is the smell. It isn't an overbearing smell, but when you get your nose up close to it, there is an unmistakable sheep-barn odour. I happen to like it, and so does Marlene.

That pillow got me to wondering why people who raise sheep don't use their "homegrown" wool to make pillows. I mean, this could be a great little homestead business idea, don't you think? It turns out that the wool in my pillow came from New Zealand! Now, don't get me wrong... I like New Zealand, but don't Americans still raise good wool? Of course they do.

I was talking about wool pillows to the girl who I bought the pillow from and I found out that she started raising sheep a couple years ago. She is building up a flock of some sort of hardy, heirloom sheep breed. I asked her if she was going to make pillows with the wool, and it turns out that is her plan.

Are there small-scale, home-based, wool-pillow-making American folk out there? Have I been totally out of the  loop on this idea? Does any one reading this know of any homestead sheep-pillow makers? I'd like to know about them. And does anyone else have a sheep-smell pillow? I'd like to get your opinion about them.

You can learn more about the White Lotus pillows at This YouTube link. And a Google search will bring up numerous other wool-pillow companies (not home-based operations) on the internet.

Considering The CultureOf A Home Business,And ReversingThe Industrial Trend

Dateline: 12 August 2013

One of several benefits to leaving my wage-slave job and coming home (six months ago) to work my homestead-based business full time is that I have a lot more control over my work culture. 

What is culture? "Culture is the total way of life of a given people at a given time, as passed down from generation to generation." That's the definition I learned in 9th grade social studies class. I remember it still (40 years later) because the teacher (who I don't remember) gave that definition on the first day of class, and told us that we needed to learn it because it would be on every test.

But I much better prefer the definition that culture is religion externalized. Or, perhaps we could say that culture is the outward expression of a particular worldview. With those thoughts in mind,  it's interesting to ponder about what religion is reflected, or externalized, in different work environments, because every business does have it's own unique culture. 

If you work in a state government agency, as I did, a political-statist worldview and culture dominates. The State is the ultimate authority on all things. The State recognizes no higher authority than itself. What the State decrees as right and wrong must be adhered to. All employees must conform to the cultural expectations of the bureaucracy... or else they're in for trouble. Political correctness is, of course, a subject of paramount importance. I think some version of this same culture pretty much holds true for any corporation or institution where a lot of people are employed.

And then there is the usual endless gossip, interpersonal foolishness, tension with supervisors, and resulting stress that is a daily part of most workplace cultures. 

I don't deal with any of that anymore, and it is a great relief. These days, my work culture is a reflection of my worldview as a follower of Jesus Christ. It is a much, much different environment I now work in.

My days are now full of hard, focused work, creativity, and production. Such actions flow out of my religious faith, and every single one of those things were anathema in the bureaucracy I came out of.

There is virtually no gossip in the culture of my home business. Though my wife and I do talk with each other about other family members, I don't think that qualifies as gossip. 

There is no friction or stress coming from incompetent and disrespectful supervisors in my home business because I 'm my own boss. I do believe, however, that I answer to God, that my business is actually His business, entrusted to me, and that He has certain expectations—but they are not the expectations of an earthly bureaucracy. 

There is absolutely no interpersonal foolishness in my home business. I get along with myself and my family remarkably well. They respect me, and I respect them. That's what families do, or should do.

There is no swearing, no perverse speech, and no coarse language in the culture of my home business. It is an environment where it is so much easier for me to think according to Philippians 4:8.

I have no concern at all for political correctness in my home workplace. My concern is biblical correctness, and I'm free to believe and act on my biblically-based beliefs in my home work environment.

And then there is the whole aspect of family. When a man works out of his home, he is there, for and with, his family all day. This is no small matter. From my biblical point of view, this is the primary reason to have a home business.

It is a rare thing these days for a man to be home and working a business that, in itself, will supply the financial needs of his family, but it used to be a normal way of life within agrarian cultures. If people were not farmers, they were craftsmen, like potters, or blacksmiths, or cobblers, and their business was in, or next to, their home. The industrial revolution changed all of that, and it ripped apart the fabric of traditional family life. 

I recently listened to Decentralizing Economies at Generations With Vision Radio. I like what Kevin Swanson says in the beginning of the program. I appreciate the vision he often casts on his program for reestablishing family economies in order to strengthen Christian families as we are facing the collapse of Western civilization.

It took me a lot of years to break free from the bondage of a job in the city, and come home to work, but, by the grace of God, it happened. If my story, and the idea of coming home to work resonates with you, I encourage you to embrace the vision.

Garlic Harvest2013

Dateline: 11 August 2013
(click pics to see enlarged views)

July 3

I grew one wide-row of hardneck garlic in my garden this year. I planted it with a template, as explained in The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners. The straw mulch (applied after planting) kept the weeds in check.

July 19

I dug the garlic after only a few of the bottom leaves had died. The tops were still mostly green. A lot of people wait too long before digging their garlic.

August 11

Immediately after digging, I tied the garlic into small bundles and hung them from the rafters of my wood shed. They were sheltered from rain and out of direct sun, but had lots of air flow. The picture above, taken three weeks after digging, shows the garlic plants have dried down nicely.

The tool in the background is an inexpensive bandsaw I bought years ago. It is not a necessary tool for cutting dried garlic roots and stems off the bulb, but it sure does do the job fast and easily.

August 11

The picture above shows my garlic harvest in a Whizbang wood-and-wire garden tote. That tote is now several years old and it has been a very handy tool. Instructions for making it are in The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners. You can also purchase an inexpensive ($1.50) pdf download of the plans At This Link.

August 11

Since the garlic cloves in the tote are for home use, I did not put a lot of effort into peeling away the outside wrappers. But if I were selling them, I would take the time to peel away the outer wrappers to reveal the clean, rosy-hued inner layers, as the picture above shows. The toothbrush is a big help when peeling. 

I'll separate out the largest cloves for planting come October. 

Introducing...Grape Trellis Fittings(another product from Planet Whizbang)

Dateline: 10 August 2013

A week ago I blogged here about how my son is now helping me with my Planet Whizbang home business, and because of that I was able to produce and start selling a new product—Planet Whizbang Y-holders. I also announced the new instructional web site I created to explain how the Y-holders are used. This blog post is to announce that I have now added a new page and a new product to the instructional web site....

Introducing The New Planet Whizbang T-Post Grape Trellis will teach you how to make a simple, sturdy, freestanding T-post grape trellis using the Whizbang grape trellis fittings I  invented.  
.
If you have a copy of The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners, you already know about my T-post grape trellis idea, and you have specifications for making the fittings. If you don't yet have the book, the new web site gives you a peek into a couple of the ideas in the book. 

If you have never grown grapes before, you're missing out on something special. We've had Concord grapes vines on a trellis for several years and have found them to be very easy to grow. Fact is, they grow like a weed. If you keep the vines trimmed back each year, you should have a bounty of fruit. And now the job of making a support trellis for your grapes is downright easy.

Mrs. TReviews My New Book

Dateline: 9 August 2013

My Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners has been kindly reviewed over at A Separate Path. 

As part of the review, Mrs. T. posted one of the more intriguing quotes that I put in the book. It was gleaned from the old agrarian writings of the 1800s. Those old-timers were using biochar before biochar was cool.

The Pumpkin Watcherby: Castle W. Freeman, Jr.

Dateline: 8 August 2013

This photograph, by Richard W. Brown, accompanies "The Pumpkin Watcher" in the October 1980 issue of Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal magazine

Today's blog post is something different and special. It came about after I bought 21 old issues of Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal magazine yesterday at the Steam Pageant flea market in Canandaigua, N.Y. (I wrote about it HERE). I started looking through the old magazines and realized many of the articles were a great resource for agrarian-minded people. But, sadly, the magazine has been out of print for many years.

I went to the internet to see if I could find any archives or articles from the now defunct Country Journal, and there is practically nothing, though I did find the obituary for Richard M. Ketchum, who owned and edited the magazine back in it's day.

It's a shame that the information, and inspiration in those old magazine issues are no longer available, and that situation got me thinking about re-publishing some of the articles to the internet. 

One article I came across and felt was well worth reprinting is "The Pumpkin Watcher," by Castle W. Freeman, Jr., in the October 1980 issue of the magazine.

Mr. Freeman's article touches on themes that are, or should be, important to rural people looking to be more self-reliant, (especially as we head into the probable collapse of western civilization). Besides that, the man is clearly a polished writer, and it is always a pleasure to read something that is well-written.

When the idea of re-publishing this article came to me, I did a Google search for Mr. Freeman and found His Web Site. I sent an e-mail, asking permission to republish The Pumpkin Watcher here. Permission came quickly and I had my son type it out for me this afternoon. 

We all tend to breeze through what people have written on their blogs, but I encourage you to take a few extra minutes to absorb and enjoy this excellently-written and thought-provoking perspective on growing pumpkins...and so much more.
.

####

The Pumpkin Watcher

by: Castle W. Freeman, Jr.

What do we garden toward? A neighbor of mine shakes two hundred pounds of potatoes out of her garden in September. She has said, in disdain at another neighbor whose orderly, middle-size garden is given to lettuce, peas cucumbers, each in a half-dozen varieties, “He’s a salad gardener. He might as well be growing zinnias and petunias.” 

There are salad gardeners and cellar gardeners, it seems—optimists and pessimists—gardeners who are thinking about July and gardeners who are thinking about February. Which are you? Which am I?

I’m a salad gardener with promptings toward the sterner, later crops that lie closer to the earth. I have my potatoes, keeping squash, and roots, but never in sufficient quantity to get me much past the winter solstice—if I cellared them, which I too often fail to do.

I grow pumpkins, too, though I grow them more to look at than to eat. Pumpkins aren't much good, really. Still, they are my favorite thing in the garden. They answer to some idea that we have of home’s abundance from the land. I plant them in their hills, and keep a special watch as they appear, spring up, spread, flower, bear, and grow. Pumpkins are the most nearly animals of the garden vegetables; watching over their progress through a season is like watching a calf come along. At the end of the day, when I get home from work, I grab a child if any is around and we head up to the garden for an inspection.

Our garden is narrow, laid out on a hill. The pumpkins are at the uphill end. This arrangement is intended to keep the pumpkins from taking over the garden. It has the consequence that our tour of the garden ends each evening in the pumpkin patch.

There we spend the cocktail hour in pumpkin watching. In July, when the fruit has begun, we poke around in the patch for the unripe pumpkins. They are well hidden. I never discover one without a little surprise on making out the dappled, rounded flank lying in the shadows like a pike at the bottom of a green pool.

I wouldn’t be without  pumpkins in my garden, but few of my neighbors will suffer them in theirs. Those who do plant  pumpkins do so apologetically; they put in a hill to have a couple of pumpkins for pies and a couple more for the kids at halloween. My own extensive and unruly pumpkin patch is a tip-off that in gardening I am a trifler.

Practical gardeners dismiss the pumpkin. They see it as a Texas longhorn among vegetables—an anachronism, unsuitable from every point of view that values efficiency or real productivity. Growing pumpkins for food, the serious gardener objects, is like raising elephants for meat: there’s a lot of meat there, all right, but how good and at what cost? 

Pumpkins are a fair source of Vitamin A; otherwise they are nutritionally nothing special. The pumpkin’s vines and leaves take up a great deal of space in the garden that could better be given to other crops. Therefore, if you calculate the ratio of space required to usable food harvested, pumpkins are unproductive. Furthermore, the dark recesses of the pumpkin patch, beneath the profuse and closely growing vines, harbor all manner of mice, snails, slugs, and worse.

And anyway, how many pumpkins can one gardening family find use for: one? three? six? Like every pumpkin gardener, I wind up with eighteen or twenty when I can use maybe four. I could keep the excess in a root cellar. I don’t. They rot on the ground. I could feed the excess to goats or pigs. I have neither, want neither. Altogether I’d do better to procure pumpkins for use in season at a roadside stand. My friends and neighbors have pointed this out to me. They are cellar gardeners, expert and dedicated.   For them gardening may be fun, but it’s no game. They aim to take from their gardens some important part of the food their families will eat during the course of a year, and so get around the nation’s food producing and marketing system, which, in their view, is organized to deliver bad food at high prices. From that system their gardens give them a  degree of independence.

Independence is what my neighbors are gardening toward. They look backward to a time when rural  America was mostly a land of small, self-sufficient farms. In Vermont, where I live, those times are by no means remote antiquity. Down to the turn of the twentieth century in much of this country plenty of people lived on small or middle sized farms that produced everything anybody on them wanted except for salt, pepper, and a few other odd spices.

These old farmers lived completely the kind of independence that today’s cellar gardeners seek to approach. Furthermore, I suspect that in some cases they did so in much the spirit as that in which my neighbors today garden. That is, the old farmers grew their own potatoes—latterly, anyways—not because they couldn’t get potatoes at market, but only of cussedness. They were damned if they’d pay a dime for a potato at a store when they could grow a better one for nothing.

My cellar-gardening neighbors honor the independent farmers of our great-grandparents’ time, and there are resemblances between them. But there are contrasts, too, and one of them has to do with pumpkins.

In one of the towns of northern Vermont there is a Pumpkin Hill. The story of the name is that at the time of the region’s earliest settlement the community survived a hard winter by eating pumpkins after a plague of grasshoppers had destroyed all the other crops. Another version has it that the grasshoppers destroyed all the crops, pumpkins included, of the settlers who lived at the foot of the hill. Crops on higher ground  were spared. Settlers rolled surplus pumpkins down the hill to their unfortunate neighbors below, and so everyone got through. 

The point of the story for my purposes is that Pumpkin Hill got its name in a time and place that had plenty of use for pumpkins. The implication of Pumpkin Hill is that the old Pumpkin Hillers—self-sufficient farmers like those whom my neighbors admire—had a good place for pumpkins. Yet my neighbors won’t touch them because they aren’t practical. Evidently there are different ideas of what’s practical at work here.

Different ideas about things are also behind another contrast between the independent gardeners of our day and those of generations past. We have different ideas about independence itself, and about community. The differences, for some reason, come to me most forcibly at harvest time.

I have a picture of the harvest of the old Pumpkin Hillers. It’s October, after the frosts. The prostrate vines are a dead tangle, the pumpkins ripe and hardened off. Today they are to gathered in. A gang of men and kids—family, neighbors—bring a farm wagon up from the house. Together, they go among the dry remnants of the patch, cut the pumpkins, lug them to the wagon by the score. Everybody pitches in. They load the wagon, then creak back down the hill. Perhaps they waste one or two pumpkins by rolling them down, in a ceremonial re-enactment of the legendary season when their forebears supposedly supplied the bottom settlements in the same way.

In my garden these days the harvest proceeds differently. My harvest is solitary. My neighbors don’t help out, except by advising me not to plant so many worthless pumpkins next year. They are gathering in their own gardens. I don’t help them, either. We are every man for himself. We want it that way, I guess.

By contrast, the old Pumpkin Hillers, who do rely on their own gardens and fields for food, had no idea of being individually independent. In their isolated settlements they were self-sufficient collectively; but families or households in the same settlements were very far from being independent severally, as we are. They were bound up with one another, dependent on one another, in ways and to degrees that we must find hard to imagine, and that we would be reluctant to accept for ourselves. If the men were haying over at Jones’s on Friday, you went to Jones’s and hayed, too. It didn’t matter that you had important work unfinished around your own place, or that you felt sick or out of sorts, or that you didn’t like Jones or he you. You helped Jones hay, or maybe when it came time to make your hay Jones wouldn’t help you.

We don’t want this kind of life. It sacrifices privacy. It implies a regimentation that we find repugnant. Also, I think, we don’t quite believe in it. We would rather rely, for example, on the oil dealer and his employees for our winter’s heat than on the collective labor of our neighbors and ourselves freely contributed, as in a firewood bee. We distrust complicated obligations. Our obligation to the oil dealer is a simple statement of account: cash for goods and service. Our debt to our neighbors for their help would be harder to define, and harder to discharge. And then, if the oil dealer fails us for any reason, we can buy from his competitor; if our neighbors fail us, we have no remedy.

Still, some of us seek a measure of independence through our gardens. The hitch is that we have independence confused with individualism. We think that each man must make it on his own, bail his own boat. We all believe this. But if times should ever really become hard, and our self-sufficiency be put to the test, it will fail for its insistence on the separate, isolated individual as the only possible unit of salvation. Then there will be much work to be done, and we will need to learn to get it done together.

It may never come to that, of course—probably won’t, or anyways not all at once. For my part I hope it doesn’t.  Any hypothesis on which the individual American was suddenly obliged to grow his own food—all of it—or rely on his near neighbors to grow it is a hypothesis on which scores of millions, in America and elsewhere, would perish in a year’s time. I would be one of them, without a doubt. I’m a salad gardener and a pumpkin watcher, as I’ve said, not a pumpkin harvester. It’s a harmless, solitary pursuit. I wouldn’t want the whole town up in the patch with me on one of those bright October days when the great ripe globes, like expiring suns, lie among the wreckage of another garden year.

Front cover of the October, 1980 issue of Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal