I've been simmering this idea for years, and now I'll let you all know that it's coming to a rapid boil, ready to receive a handful of salt flung in:
I want to buy a farm. Ideally, I'd like to buy a farm with sufficient intact natural resources (like a big stretch of forest) for it to make sense remaining undeveloped. And then I'd like to let most of it just SIT there, and not have four to ten human habitations per acre built on it.
Systemic overdevelopment, hurricane season, and the lawn guys showing up before 8 on a Saturday are working with me to convince Jeff of the advisability of this project.
Consider Tuscany, if you will. Read the rapturous writings of those who appreciate the coexistence of cities and farmsteads. Read about Rome, and how a farmer tills his ancient fields within view of the busy international airport. How connected are these people with their land, and with their food, and the sustaining basics of their lives?
I suspect that in the United States many people do not share this respect for agriculture, for the preserved wild bits, for the land, because permanent settlement here is so new. The Amerinds don't have the disconnection, but the descendents of European settlers seem largely cursed with the acceptance of the appearance of unlimited resources.
Take, for example, the brochures I receive so often, unsolicited pictures of NC mountain homesteads, showing unbroken horizons of trees. Who looks at these things and doesn't understand that, on the ridge depicted as their view, other developers are taking photos of their prospective homesites and sending out similar brochures? I'd like to believe that these untrammeled landscapes will continue. Soon, though, those forest views will be vews of other homes instead.
I believe that eventually America will be developed commercially to the extent that, save for public lands and a few private estates, there won't be those pristine forests. It's up to us to lay the foundations for the future: will we have Tuscany, where business and agriculture and a reverence for land let the residents live in beauty? Where homes are built with an aesthic of grace rather than just thrown up the quickest way possible? Why must we have virtually disposable architecture? In 1,000 years, will our descendents have Tuscany, or some barren megapolis?
There are other factors as well. In the politicos' decrying of our country's "addiction to foreign oil" they're throwing in a modifier that shouldn't be there. Let's cut out the "foreign," shall we, and just admit that we have a culture based on a non-renewable resource. I'd like for my son and his heirs and their friends to have a place where they can experiment living without that unnecessary compulsion.
I recently read Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and find that she mirrors my own fears for our overextended food production and distribution network. Here in South Florida, I feel very vulnerable to the potential collapse of this structure. I'm seen as an oddity in my neighborhood for the very limited edible garden in my back yard. What happens to us all when some natural disaster makes our highways impassible for a while? We've recovered fairly well from hurricane damage so far these last few decades, but we're much more vulnerable in light of our more fragile transportation networks than, for example, the Katrina victims were. Unsustainable development is a very bad thing. Unfortunately, I don't have the power or personality to reform things here in SFL. I do, however, have the disposition that would allow me to help lay careful groundwork in an undeveloped area.
So... is it a selfish desire to get out of the crowds and find some greenspace? I admit to myself that this is in some sense true. But I'm driven by larger, soul concerns, that have been nudging away at me for at least the last twenty years. All those nudgings are adding up.
So I'm looking for the farm. The right farm. If you have a farm to suggest, a community or area to suggest, please fling your words my way. I'd like to stay in a temperate area ... nothing north of DC, please, unless you've got some weird geologic feature that shelters the area of which you're thinking. I'd like to raise chickens and a couple of goats, and have enough flat land that my husband won't worry about falling off the side of a mountain. I'd ideally like a creek and a pond, although I can build the pond so it's not critical. There doesn't have to be a house in place ... I wouldn't be taking full-time occupation for about 12 years! I'd just like to get the fruit and nut trees started.
moonsownsister