I want to tell you about an amazing group of people. They make sure that you not only stay alive, are well-nourished, and that you have your choice of a delicious variety of food that Kings and Queens of yesteryear could not dream of, all at relatively low prices. Contrary to what you’ve been told, prices are still fairly low by historical standards and food quality is high. I know that you or someone you know has recently been to the grocery store and you think the prices are high, but wait until you hear about the state of the farm economy and I will give you some practical thoughts that may help your family in the future. In this article series, I am going to take you on a journey through history until the present where you probably interacted with the products from a family farm, probably three or more times per day.
The full depth of an article covering family farms could cover many volumes. So I will not be able to take you down every interesting road showing you every interesting detour, but I do hope to provide you a comprehensive overview of how a seed planted in the previous year harvested midway the following year could become a component in your breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, or dinner — keeping you alive and healthy. I will introduce you to a farm family that survived the Great Depression including one of their stories of thrift, through using something most people today would discard. There are so many lessons to be learned in these struggles during previous tough times.
Because time only moves forward, I encourage you whenever possible to learn from your elders, talk to them, ask them about their life, also importantly ask them about their ancestors and any stories that they heard going back to their childhood. You can go back very far and sometimes you can learn a lesson that can help you in the future.
The last generation of people who were “born in this century, tempered by war” are quickly passing off the stage of history and the time is short to learn from their lives before they can no longer speak to you with their voice and you can ask them follow-up questions. Most of the few who are still living were children during the years of the Great Depression, with the men serving in World War II, and they came home victorious to a post-war America where decisions were made on farming at a national level that still impact farms today — and by extension you and your family, as well. You may ask what President Kennedy’s inaugural speech in 1961 has to do with farming, but the family farm was undergoing a rapid transformation during the critical decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Because you are likely a consumer of food that someone else grows or prepares, this story is critical as it most likely has much to do with how you are living and what you are eating today.
In my previous five-part article series on retreat properties, there is a lot of information about land and history for survival retreat purposes. Many retreats are actually working farms because an inescapable fact is that you need to eat: you can store food, but eventually you will eat your way through it. The nutritional value of stored food will also decline over time. And, given the right conditions, you can grow more food. It is better to be in a food-producing area — preferably with plentiful water — than in a food-importing region. To understand farming as it exists presently in the United States, it is critical to understand of how we got here.
There are now people trying to figure out how this generation overall of people is less healthy than previous generations. I applaud their efforts. If you want to know how you got here, you have to know where you have been and the decisions that were made along the way have largely determined how and what you are eating. What you are eating is a large and often the primary determinant of your overall health. I like ice cream in the summer as much as any healthy red-blooded American man, but if my diet consisted solely of that I doubt that I would be as physically fit and healthy as I am today. It is best not to look at one thing in isolation as an overview of how people managed to get the food that they needed throughout history is very important to understand the present.
I am a third-generation prepper, survivalist, or whatever name that we go by these days. More importantly, I am a student of history. I want to learn from the past to see how I can prosper and more importantly to prevent tragedy from occurring. Our ancestors had a saying the “burnt hand dreads the fire,” but we do not have enough hands and time for them to heal enough to teach us in the proverbial “school of hard knocks.”
Throughout most of history, you did not purchase food at a store, you grew it or someone you knew grew it for you as you were doing something else that was important to them (such as being the mother of your children), so they were willing to share their labor with you because there was some sort of trade where you are performing something of value to them. For instance, the most able hunter often was able to attract the best looking mate and who was then able to pass his genes on to future generations. The food that he provided, allowed her and their offspring to be able to eventually pass their genes to the next generation. This is a foundational Biblically derived principle of how gender roles were first expressed with the wife as helpmeet to the man. Because people live beyond their ability to biologically produce children, the grandmother actually has a critical role as expressed through the “grandmother hypothesis” where her role actually is involved in providing care and food to increase the second generation’s fitness to be able to reproduce.
During most of human history just getting sufficient calories was the number one priority, so a grandmother gathering food initially or discovering the secrets of agriculture helped increase the overall family’s survival. Humans can fly a hundred thousand feet into the air at multiples of the speed of sound for long distances and land safely, but we have not overcome the basic facts of physics of calories burned have to be replaced: we need to eat regularly or we suffer consequences starting with hunger pangs leading to muscle loss if enough protein is not consumed with enough of these unfortunate malnutrition events strung together often lead to an untimely death.
Food is not free and someone had to work to grow it consistently. I know there is a farm boy out there who either is still in his “Huck Finn” carefree stage with a cane pole or who is now all grown up who thinks back to a fond memory of fishing by the lake on his family farm and takes a snack of some wild blackberries. Maybe some food is free, but that is not enough. I am going to take you back to an unpleasant time, so you can see how good you have it, historically.
Go back just a few generations, there were no “food stamp” coupons or cards allowing you the benefit of the cornucopia of modern life potentially at your fingertips just for the virtue of living in the post-industrial welfare United States of America. This is so historically abnormal, but tragic because it often can lead people down so many bad roads.
Eating without working for able-bodied adults is contradiction of Biblical wisdom in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 in which we are warned: “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” The early colonists at Jamestown actually experimented with a form of “socialism” where everything was held in a common storehouse as that is how their company charter was originally organized. Because the colonists at Jamestown under this system could not individually benefit from their own labors, they often did very little and this contributed to the near collapse.
One of the leading colonists, Ralph Hamor, wrote in his 1615 book “A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia” reflecting back on his time at Jamestown: “When our people were fed out of the common store and labored jointly in the manuring of the ground and planting corn, glad was that man that could slip from his labor, nay the most honest of them in a general business, would take so much faithful and true pains in a week as now he will do in a day.” Food shortages and leadership challenges led to disastrous results with an 80 percent death rate during the Winter of 1609-1610. The colonists made it through the “Starving Time” although in diminished numbers. From that point forward, their numbers never dipped that low again and they became successful.
The treasurer of the Virginia Company of London Sir Edwin Sandys highlighted an important fact in 1620: “The plantation can never flourish till families be planted and the respect of wives and children fix the people on the soil.” The first permanent English settlement in this country at Jamestown only flourished after it had discovered a few inescapable facts both through a lot of trial and error. People need to have a reasonable expectation that they will individually profit from their labor as Captain John Smith was instrumental in changing how the colonists worked and were compensated. Civilizations and their smaller outposts of colonies only succeed when they are able to grow and flourish through feeding themselves and eventual population growth.
As I mentioned in a recent article, importing brides proved to be crucial to the success of the Jamestown Colony.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)
A Concluding Note From JWR: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering a gift of $18,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride, after marriage. For some details, see his recent article: A Quest and a Gift.