Carrying the torch

I had a humbling conversation today in front of the chick brooders at Tractor Supply Company. My husband and I had stopped in to research options for hotwire, when I heard the irresistable peeping of baby chicks. Drawn like a moth to a flame, I had to go check them out - I confess, I'm hopeless.

As I was standing there looking at the mass of fuzzy yellow chicks, I overheard an old farmer standing next to me say something about farming skills to the woman standing next to him. He then turned, motioned to me and said, "Now someone from this generation... just aren't interested in these kinds of things." Smiling warmly, I mentioned that I was raising my first batch of chicks right now, starting my own seeds, and learning to live the most self-sufficient life I could on my small acreage. His response touched me and humbled me, as he turned to his companion and said:

"See now, so there is still someone who is carrying the torch."

I couldn't say anything in return. All I could do was smile and lower my gaze in respect - and then off we were to talk about wood-burning stoves, the predatory nature of hawks and other important rural matters.

To me, that's a big part about what this lifestyle is all about. One of the realizations that has really been impressed upon me since I started this whole business is the utterly fleeting nature of so many things we take for granted - plants, animals, and personal skills.

Take, for example, heirloom seeds. These seed varieties have been passed down through families, generation after generation, for hundreds of years. If a single link in that chain is broken - if instead of saving seeds from the plant, the cultivator decides to abandon it in favor of a commercial variety - that strain is lost to us forever. Its unique character, its hardiness for the zone it was developed in, disease resistance, unique size and flavor - all gone. Valuable genes are lost, and eventually all we will have left are inbred commercial strains that lack the character of the plants of our ancestors.

Even animals are this way, too. if you really think about it, any breed of animal will die out in just a single generation, if everyone involved in their propagation just up-and-quit all at the same time. In Ohio, there is a heritage breed of chicken, the Buckeye, developed here in the state for extreme cold-weather tolerance, good egg-laying and meat production. This breed used to be extremely widespread in the Midwest, but was nearly lost to us, except for a small group of Amish that had kept the strain pure for the last 50 years. And most homesteaders have heard of the nearly-extinct heritage turkey breeds, that were all but abandoned in favor of the commercial Broad-Breasted White (which has now, consequently, been severely inbred to the point it can no longer breed naturally - go figure).

(It sounds far-fetched to believe that all propagators of a species could suddenly "up-and-quit", but in the spirit of this post, just today a federal bill was shot down that would have prohibited the importation, posession, sale, and propagation of all non-native animals not specifically "whitelisted" in the bill. It would have stopped my reptile breeding efforts in their tracks, and once the current generation of captive reptiles died out in this country - destroyed nearly 40 years of careful selective breeding by hundreds of dedicated herpetologists. So yes, it can happen - sometimes in unforeseen ways.)

And of course, any common personal skill can become a "lost art" once it is made obsolete by convenience. It's too involved of a subject to just tack on here, but in my own personal life, I'm finding that many of the outdated "skills of necessity" (homemade bread, pasta, and yogurt; raising your own food; reading the weather; etc.) were, in their own right, much healthier for both our bodies and minds. Perhaps they were skills of "necessity", but in a completely different way than we had envisioned in modern culture.

Well, today sure saw a lot of philosophical ramblings in this blog. Tomorrow, I promise I'll only post cute chicken photos. Promise.

(On behalf of the old farmer I met today - thanks to all of you out there who are also "carrying the torch". If he could see how many of us there are, I am sure he would be very proud.)