One of the things I find myself spending a lot of time lately is trying to understand the rural landscape and people’s relationship to land and property. The architecture and barns, the livestock raised, how people piece together a living in the country.
Methods of study vary. One is the simple just traveling to rural areas, riding rural roads on my bike. Climbing mountains and peering down into the valleys. Things I’ve done for years now, but now with a much more careful eye, trying to figure out what I actually want to some day not that far in the future incorporate into my life. Styles of architecture, layout of homesteads and gardens, livestock and even toys like ATVs, tractors and trucks.
But at the same time I’ve been doing a lot of reading and listening to e-books about farming and homesteading, books about the wilderness and how people relate to the land. In many ways it’s taking off my rose colored glasses on the topic. I grew up in the country, I know about barnyards and breaking ice to water ducks and feed dogs in the winter and all the smells and hard work that go along. Still maybe I didn’t think as much about stewardship and how much farmers of all stripes struggle to stay on the land, and the hustle to stay afloat selling what they can. Often it really is a fight for life against markets, pests, disease and weather. Or how 5 acre homesteads chew away at once vibrant farming lands. YouTube videos are good to get a look at every day operations of farms and homesteads but sometimes five hundred page books give you a lot more of the back story.
People will say I’m wasting my time in analysis and study, years of my life are rapidly fading away while rent checks fly out the door padding my landlords pockets. But I want to do it right, build the right homestead in the right location, be thoughtful not rushed. The time is not now but will come and armed with facts on all aspects of rural life, I will make better decisions. I grew up in the country and went to school in a small town, yet there is much more to learn.
Regular readers of my blog, may have the impression that I’ve already decided on the truck I will buy come the spring, that I’ve all but picked out the color of Ford F-350 I’ll be driving home in a few months. Then getting a camper shell, moving the kayak rack, camping gear, solar panel and batteries over, adding a cellphone booster, and other equipment. It’s not that I’ve been thinking a lot about what my next rig will be like if I get another truck.
Maybe that’s true or maybe it’s not. Really I’m undecided.
For other audiences like my liberal friends and those on Facebook, I’ve been playing up my new urbanist ideas, with a healthy dose of skepticism about owning a vehicle. Trucks are so damn expensive! Truth is I’ve always enjoyed taking the bus or riding my bike to work, I would be loathe to have to drive to work every day. The commute is a big reason I refuse to buy a house, beyond all of other costs associated with owning a house such a maintenance and utilities.
Truth is a car, even a little Honda Civic, isn’t a great way to get around a city with all the parking restrictions, speed traps and cops every where. A bike is really a liberating way to get around the city. It’s rare even when you break a law in front of a cop on a bike that you get stopped. Run a stop sign in front of a car, you’ll get stopped in a car but probably not on a bike. You’re the one in danger on a bike if you a crash into another car after violating a traffic law, after all.
Or I could put Big Red back on the road in the spring.
People keep asking questions – how do you plan to travel without a car?
How do you plan to get back to wilderness? Out to country? How about the Albany Pine Bush? Pine Bush meetings in Colonie or Guilderland? Doing your wash at laundromat? Taking your trash to transfer station? Going grocery shopping? Getting to work? Honestly, so far I’ve survived, I’ve found work-around that are fine at least during winter. Never did drive more then a few miles in the winter, and truth be told I think I would be fine without camping and traveling. I am sure there are other ways to travel like buses, trains and rental cars. Certainly, I don’t just want a Honda Civic for driving around town, like some kind of mindless drone hauling plastics from the Shopping Maul to the landfill.
Honestly, right now I’m kind of having fun this winter not having a vehicle. It’s nice not having to clean the snow off my truck or warm it up. It’s nice not having to go to the car wash and get all dirty washing off the salt in vein. And nothing gets me as pumped up as riding my mountain bike when it’s cold out, though it’s lame that it’s still too dark in the evening to ride all the way home and Albany County Rail Trail is still snow covered.
Jim Inch’s story began in Snyder County before his father Robert rented a house, then owned by the power company, on White Island.
In 1944, Robert swapped five mules—his farming power source—for a down payment on an International Harvester F-12. He planted 65 acres of feed corn, cultivated it three times, hired men to hand-husk it, then paid them with corn, leaving plenty for his corncrib.
Later that season, he learned that his down payment covered the tractor, and he even received a $200 rebate on it. The next year, he planted 36 more acres of corn on White’s Island.
“Dad said right then that he should have quit farming while he was ahead,” says Jim, 81. “You can be rich one day and poor the next in this business.”
Jim, though retired, still works seven days a week. He lives on another farm owned by Roy Adams & Son, Inc., which now has the unique farming rights to White’s and three other islands in the Susquehanna.
Tammy Wolfe, Roy Adams’ daughter and office manager in Sunbury, PA, says most don’t realize how hard farmers work, where food comes from or how technology-based today’s farming is. “We’re proud of that work and proud to be a part of it,” she says.
