Towards a Sustainable Culture

Brian hosted a retreat here last weekend for some members of the "wine before breakfast" and Graduate Christian Fellowship communities at the University of Toronto, where he is a chaplain. I gave a short presentation on sustainability: a definition, a history of the subject, sustainability in an agricultural context and how that translates into the health of our culture as a whole. I'll be mining some of this material for entries in the coming days as a way of tying into reflections on what I see as the core "principles of sustainability," a theme I began working on last year, although I didn't get very far with it.

A definition of sustainability:

sustain: provide with the basic necessities required to support or preserve life livelihood, or existence; maintain or keep (an action or process) going continuously

sustainable: “Ecology” (esp. of development) that conserves an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources; that may be maintained, esp. at a particular level

- Oxford Canadian Dictionary

The concept was introduced in the late 1970s and was emphasized strongly in the ‘World Conservation Strategy,’ published in 1980 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme and the World Wildlife Fund (now the Worldwide Fund for Nature). "Our Common Future," published in 1983 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), defined it as development that “seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future.”

- Oxford Concise Dictionary of Ecology

Generally speaking, sustainable activities use materials in continuous cycles. They use continuously reliable sources of energy and arise mainly from the qualities of being human (i.e. creativity, communication, spiritual and intellectual development). Non-sustainable activities require continual inputs of non-renewable resources, use renewable resources faster than their rate of renewal, cause cumulative degradation of the environment, require resources in quantities that undermine other people’s well-being, and lead to the extinction of other life forms and cultures.

One of the most elegant models of sustainability for me is the birch-bark canoe. Its materials were harvested in such a way that they did not damage the source. It was a method of transportation perfectly adapted to its environment, and it was 100% locally produced and biodegradable.

When the first white man arrived to North America, he looked out over the land and called it ‘a pristine, untouched wilderness.’ That’s got to be the greatest compliment that anybody could pay to Native people, who have lived here for thousands of years.

- Bill Mason, Waterwalker

As a culture, we are nowhere near this level of sustainability, even those of us who are paying a good deal of attention to the problem. It is helpful to me to think of sustainability as a continuum -- a goal to which we are advancing. In every situation we can ask ourselves, of several choices, which one is sustainable over the long term.

I spent several days in February cutting a new trail in our hardwood forest, harvesting trees that will serve us for stovewood next winter. The most sustainable way to pull felled trees out of the woods is with draft horses, and there are operations in this area that do use them for this purpose, including, but not limited to, our Amish neighbours.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the time, money, or barn space to invest in a team of draft horses for the small amount of logging we currently do. So I used our tractor. This makes us more dependent on fossil fuel consumption, but the biggest problem is that the tractor does not participate in the same cycle of material use and disposal that the horses do. At one point the hydraulic system on the tractor developed a leak, and I didn’t notice right away that this had happened. I had left a trail of hydraulic fluid on the snow behind me for quite a distance. This is not going to have a big impact on the health of the forest, but it will have some, whereas a birch-bark canoe or a team of draft horses, well-managed, can have no negative impact on an ecosystem because they participate entirely in the growth and decay cycle of materials and energy. There is no cumulative ecological degradation involved in their use.

This example, for me, begins to get at the fallacy of technological solutions to ecological problems or threats. Our faith in our technology and our own ability to limit our ecological impact without limiting our appetite has been shown consistently to fail. It is for this reason that I will never believe that oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge can be pursued without compromising the viability of the ecosystems the refuge is intended to protect. We haven’t learned the lesson of the Titanic which is, really, the lesson of the tower of Babel. Our faith in our own ability to be god is entirely misplaced. Our infallible towers fall, our unsinkable ships sink, and our unspillable systems for transporting oil spill.

It is no thought or word that called culture into being, but a tool or a weapon. After the stone axe we needed song and story to remember innocence, to record effect – and so to describe the limits, to say what can be done without damage… a man with a machine and inadequate culture… is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.

- Wendell Berry, “Damage” What Are People For?

Posted by Henry Bakker at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The second Saturday of every month, beginning in April, has been designated as an open house date at Russet House Farm. All the dates are as follows:

April 8; May 13; June 10; July 8; Aug 12; Sept 9; Oct 14

The August date coincides with the Practicing Resurrection conference we are co-hosting with *culture is not optional.

The open house dates will provide an opportunity, not just to see what we do here on a daily basis, but also to get involved in organic vegetable and grass-fed beef and poultry production. We will also be offering tours relating to every aspect of our attempts to live in a more ecologically and economically sustainable manner, including wind and solar-voltaic energy production; passive solar design and heating; forestry; and agriculture. Most importantly, we hope our open house dates, and especially the August conference, will serve as an invitation to relationship and restoration. Visiting Russet House Farm will involve sharing meals, meeting new friends, walks in the forest, and good campfire conversation.

If you live in Ontario, or are planning a visit to the area in the coming months, consider dropping in for a visit, either on one of the dates listed above or any time, if you contact us first to let us know you are coming. Feel free to e-mail me at hwbakker@hotmail.com for directions or to set up a visiting time.

I’ll be conducting a bit of a virtual tour on the blog over the next few weeks as an introduction to what we are doing here, as well as for interested people who will not be able to visit in the near future.

Posted by Henry Bakker at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

”I didn’t know there was but one idea about work – until it is done, it ain’t done, and when it is done, it is.”

- William Faulkner, "Shingles for the Lord" quoted by Wendell Berry in an interview with Mindy Weinreb

“It is.” Those two little words at the end of that quote can be read in the fullest sense of the verb "to be." God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3 as "I am who I am." Thomas Cahill writes in "The Gifts of the Jews" that we can also read this name of God to mean, "I am who am," which is to say "I am all there is. All that is, is me." This reading is reinforced by the first chapter of John's gospel: "Through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made." Annie Dillard, in "For the Time Being" (which title, by the way, can also be read as "For the Time, Being") makes a useful distinction between pantheism, the belief that God is everything or, more correctly, that everything is God, and panentheism: the belief that God is in everything and its being is dependent on him, although his being is in no way dependent on it.

When we work well, when we find our work to be good as God found his to be good, we participate through his grace in the act of divine creativity, of bringing into being. Our work, and the fruit of our work, "is" as God's work "is," as God "is." Bad work, work that is merely done for an end that is not related to the outcome of the work, for money or prestige or power, is merely destructive. It takes away from the world and its apparent gains are illusory. It can not create. Good, creative work and the desire and willingness to do it must be at the heart of any understanding of sustainability. This is the work suggested by the psalmist in Psalm 90, which happens to be "a prayer of Moses;" a prayer prayed in exile, out of a longing for home; a prayer prayed in the face of the grim reality of the shortness of our lives, and the futility of so much of our effort:

"establish the work of our hands for us -
yes, establish the work of our hands."

Posted by Henry Bakker at 6:00 AM | Permalink

A friend of mine has an electric fence around a piece of his land, and keeps two cows there. I asked him one day how he liked his fence and whether it cost much to operate. 'Doesn't cost a damn thing,' he replied. 'As soon as the battery ran down I unhooked it and never put it back. That strand of wire is as dead as a piece of string, but the cows don't go within ten feet of it. They learned their lesson the first few days.'
Apparently this state of affairs is general throughout the United States. Thousands of cows are living in fear of a strand of wire that no longer has the power to confine them. Freedom is theirs for the asking. Rise up, cows! Take your liberty while despots snore. And rise up too, all people in bondage everywhere! The wire is dead, the trick is exhausted. Come on out!

- E.B. White, One Man's Meat

That’s all well and good for Mr. White, but for a while this winter we were having a heck of a time keeping a couple of calves inside of our fence. The problem is that snow, ice, and general dampness messes with the current, causing shorts and also insulating the calves from the ground, so that they feel next to nothing when they touch the wire. Our fence charger is also fairly old, and not particularly powerful as, for a number of years, it was only being asked to contain a couple of the kind of well-behaved cows Mr. White describes. An electric fencing system is really designed to work best in spring/summer/fall when cows are generally on pasture. This wouldn’t usually be a problem in winter, because once cows have learned to respect a fence, you can unplug it. The calves here are fall calves, however, and they had not learned a proper respect for fences prior to coming here for the winter.

I have to admit, grudgingly, that I admire the calves who are not willing to accept the limits that their elders have grown accustomed to. I do, however, (as the farmer in this equation) have a responsibility to try to keep the calves where I want them. A neighbour showed me how to set up a two wire system where the top wire is live and the bottom wire is dead, but connected to a steel post in the ground. When a calf sticks its head between the wires -- as they like to do right before they walk through them and tear up forty feet of fence -- they complete the connection between the live top wire and the grounded bottom wire. My neighbour also lent me a more powerful fence charger to help get the message through to the calves' learning centres which are, much like our own, in their ass.

It seems to have worked, because the fencer has been disconnected for the past week and the calves are still keeping their distance from the wire.

Now if we want to talk about a metaphorical piece of wire with no charge left in it, how about systematic theology...

Posted by Henry Bakker at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I prepared the following book summaries for an upcoming *cino “road map” on food. I’m sure Kirstin won’t mind too much if I go ahead and post them here. Especially if I encourage you to order them through one of *cino’s affiliates so *cino can make a little much-needed and much-deserved cash (I am not in any way paid for the preceding plug, except for the warm feeling it gives me).

“Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating” - Jane Goodall, Gary McAvoy & Gail Hudson. Warner Books, 2005.

Jane Goodall turns her attention to the place of food in our consumer culture in her latest book, co-written with Gary McAvoy and Gail Hudson. This is an extremely thorough treatment of the subject, beginning with Goodall’s observations on the role of food in chimpanzee social dynamics and the ecological and social impact poor food choices in the rest of the world have had on Africa. The co-authors cover topics from the history of food in human culture and current challenges we face such as chemical-dependent agriculture, genetic engineering, factory livestock farming, fast food and childhood obesity, the “looming water crisis,” and the corporatization of organic standards; to healthy and hopeful alternatives we as producers and consumers of food can embrace including understanding the difference between “deep” and “shallow” organic food, grass-fed meat, vegetarianism, protecting family farmers, and the importance of seasonal and local commerce. Many of the chapters end with sections titled “What You Can Do” and the book includes an extensive list of additional resources.

“Farmageddon: Food and the Culture of Biotechnology” - Brewster Kneen. New Society Publishers, 1999.

This book is for anyone who wants an in-depth discussion of the history and development of biotechnology and genetic engineering. Kneen provides an expert critique of the biotech industry as the empiricization of food and the reproductive principle itself. Kneen also provides an articulate, but limited, discussion of the Christian theology that underlies the modernist drive for technological “dominion” over nature. Highlights include a tongue-in-cheek “Farmageddon Lexicon,” a discussion of the science of GE (“genetic engineering” not “General Electric”), and solid recommendations for further reading.

“Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on my Family Farm” - David Mas Masumoto. Harper Collins, 1995.

In the early 1990s David Mas Masumoto, a California peach and grape farmer, almost tore up his remaining Sun Crest peach trees because there didn’t seem to be any place in the industrialized fruit industry for a delicious peach with no shelf life. “I have a recurring nightmare of cold-storage rooms lined with peaches that stay rock hard, the new science of fruit cryonics keeping peaches in suspended animation,” he writes. This book is a lyrical and passionate account of a year in the life of a farmer struggling to find a new way to farm, and a new market among those “who still appreciate the wonderful taste of a good peach.”

“Living at Nature's Pace: Farming & the American Dream” - Gene Logsdon. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000.

Wendell Berry writes in the foreword to this book “Gene’s best qualification is that he loves farming. Most people who have influenced and written about farming in our time have not loved it at all; they have held it in contempt.” A lifetime in agriculture informs this collection of essays on topics like the difference between the income of small family farmers and tenured university agricultural “experts,” and what it suggests about the health of our culture’s relationship with our food producers.

“Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm” - Nicola Smith with photographs by Geoff Hansen. The Lyons Press, 2004.

This is a very handsome book documenting a year in the life of Jennifer Megyesi and Kyle Jones’ small-scale organic farm in Vermont. The book celebrates the real joys of a rural lifestyle, without slipping into romantic clichés or pulling any punches about the economic realities, hard work, and sheer willpower involved in life on Fat Rooster Farm. The book also provides a fresh perspective on rural culture, as well as the ways the politics of agriculture play out in the lives of ordinary families.

Posted by Henry Bakker at 10:58 AM | Permalink