My Farm

So I may not have told you, but I've been going over plans for some time now to purchase land to grow my own food and live a more peaceful life than the one I do now. This has been a dream of mine for years and has only intensified as I have become more and more committed to the raw food lifestyle. Unfortunately, part of the raw lifestyle for me is about balance, and for me that will no doubt mean balancing country life with at least some degree of city life. And I'm fine with that. But what about the farm? Who will tend to the garden and keep things running smoothly while I'm not there?

Well there are several options that would solve this problem. The first is, obviously, to get married and have several kids who could tend the farm in their father's absence. Let's move on quickly to the second option which would be to "hire" some hippie-help to tend to the farm in exchange for a small stipend, a roof, and fresh food. This is the approach most commonly employed by organic farmers around the world. There is a huge stock of willing and able green people (as I once was myself) who are delighted to spend 9 months or more out of the year planting, weeding, composting, and harvesting their way to a natural lifestyle. While the organization Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) has served as a link for farmers and hippies for ages, in the internet age, the hookup can be done even without the middleman.

But then I thought of a better idea. And it has a philosophical twist that I'm sure you will all love. It's wrapped up somewhat with my Southern (U.S.) revival, and then again with my new friendship with Mac. The idea started when I began referring to the hippies I would have work on my farm as "hippie slaves," since, at least when I did it, my hourly wage came out to something like 6 cents an hour for 75 hour weeks.

But after I met Mac, I began to look at slavery in a different way. After all, Mac and his kin have lines out the door of people willing to serve for no money - indeed most are willing to spend money for the privilege. And this got me thinking, is slavery such an evil if people really love doing it - and in Mac's folks' case, actually derive enormous pleasure and satisfaction from it? My answer had to be, at minimum, not completely. And then I found an answer that satisfied both my Yankee, Abolishionist sentiments and my BDSM-sympathetic sentiments: In the Ante-Bellum U.S., the problem was not slavery, but compulsory slavery. If people are willing to give themselves over to the slave lifestyle, then how, as an American, can you object to them exercising their free will to surrender that will? After all, we surrender our will every time we ride a bus or go under the knife. As long as we have a safe word, a right to say, "enough," then it should be between the slave and the master to make their own arrangements.

Well, as a Libertarian, I find this very satisfying. It has been my position on schooling, medicine, and other areas forever, and I am pleased that slavery can now be added to the list of permissible, seemingly harmful activities, so long as it is voluntary.

And so, for my farm, I decided to ask Mac if he might be able to put together a small volunteer cohort of farm slaves to take care of things, just like in the old days. Except on my farm, the people would not necessarily be black, penniless, or truly indentured. They would be free people, making the choice to serve without compensation. Fabulous.

Of course, for those of us on the land, getting our delicious slave-grown vegetables, it would be paradise. I am sure, though, that if word got out, the Feds would want to bust us like they did that Mormon commune in Texas. Of course, there would be no valid reason to do so, but that's not always the point, apparently.

A friend of a friend recently went down to do a report for the New York Times about segregated proms still happening in Georgia. I imagine somebody like that would be sent down. And because I have a journalistic bent to me, I thought I could save them the trouble of a headline:

Mac-Grow-Economics: Grow the Carrot, Get the Stick.

This had me laughing for about a half an hour.
D-Blog