1. The Hollywood Habit. Someone told me they paid upwards of $10 a head to see the latest mind-numbing “hit” from Hollywood. I can’t imagine parting with my hard-earned money to see anything Hollywood puts out. Ever. All commercial entertainment in this country comes with an agenda. Why pay a bunch of millionaire ideologues for the privilege of being dumbed down? Instead, learn to appreciate the value free activities offer.
2. Going Out to Eat. Why? Anyone who has any respect for themselves at all will avoid commercial eateries at all cost. The food, if that’s a term you’re comfortable using, is contaminated with chemicals and has been handled by hordes of people, many of whom have questionable hygiene routines. Why would you pay good money for nasty food? Instead, learn to cook for yourself. You won’t catch me dropping money at places like Red Lobster or McDonald’s. I don’t do chemical-laden food that comes from China and Mexico. Ick.
3. Buying pre-packaged food. I can’t tell you how many of my “green” friends throw their money away by buying pre-packaged organic food. Sure it’s trendy, and for many of these folks it gives them an opportunity for moral self-licensing, but packaging is still packaging, processing is still processing, and politically correct food is way more expensive than it needs to be. Instead, buy in bulk, grow what you can of your own, and learn to eat sustainably—you’ll find it’s cheaper, and much better tasting. Packaging of any sort makes the food taste funny.
4. Sending your kids to public school. The average family spends $600 per child to get ready for the school year. Add to that all the “fundraisers” that nickle and dime tax-paying parents to death, and the number triples or quadruples. Instead of buying cheap, foreign made clothes and supplies at the big box store, and throwing money down the fundraiser black hole, consider homeschooling or parochial school. These options allow you, the parent, to make sure you’re not paying a public employee to indoctrinate your children. Not only do public schools cost and arm and a leg, they co-opt your values and supplant them with the liberal sectarian doctrine that passes as morality in this country. And in the end, there’s no guarantee your child won’t be killed, bullied, raped, or otherwise assaulted in a public school.
5. Discount stores. Stay out of them. Rarely if ever do they offer any real value. What can you get for a dollar? Nothing that is well-built or useful. Instead, find a couple of second-hand stores and shop there. Besides being much less expensive, buying previously owned items is the one thing everyone can do to save the environment. Recycle and reuse. You’ll get a better value, and you’ll feel better about yourself knowing that soon, you’ll be debt-free.

It can be hard to change your lifestyle from going along with the crowd, dropping a ton of cash on movies and video games, and trying to live like everyone else. When the going gets tough, and it will, remember, your neighbors are in debt up to their teeth. They keep running around the debt wheel, spending money like crazy for the privilege of fitting in. Ask yourself, who wants to fit in with a bunch of people who don’t have the good sense to get out of debt and stay out? Don’t try to keep up with the Jones. They’re going nowhere, and fast.

Some of you may remember that a group of us in my small town (population 898) tried to start a farmer’s market, only to be told by the State of Wisconsin that we need hundreds of dollars worth of permits, insurance, and State-approved electronic scales. Care to guess what happened to the proposed market? The State interference killed it. Proof positive that the government isn’t interested in healthy food or access to it. The only reason they want to establish more state-funded grocery stores is to make sure the food processing and packaging industries continue to thrive. If everyone stopped buying pre-packaged unhealthy foods, it would destroy what is left of our economy.

You can read my article, “At the end of my rope,” in the current issue, which will be on the news stands on September first. Rural people don’t need the government to feed us. Rather, we need the government to quit controlling our food.

We met at the library. It was a small gathering, with a three growers, the gal from the anti-fat group, and the manager of a large farmers market in the next town over. It was all sugar cookies and love for the first half-hour. This could work. Then, just as we were talking about how unique our farmers market would be, the other shoe fell and squashed our hopes into a slimy mass of ooze. There was a contract and a fee involved, of course.

The contract required that each farmer carry a one-million-dollar liability policy at the cost of $250 a year. Then, there was a list of restrictions and terms giving the market manager the authority to remove produce they deem unfit and limiting what items farmers could sell. Only a small percentage of merchandise could be handmade crafts. No live animals like chicks and no selling farm fresh eggs allowed. The list went on for two pages describing what farmers could and couldn’t do. To date, no one has signed it. Who would?

Some of you may know that I’m attending law school, and after looking at the proposed contract, it dawned on me that anyone selling a farmers market or running a CSA should have disclaimer for their customers to sign. I’m not kidding. If someone buys a tomato from you and gets a bad case of heartburn or slips on the tomato and decides to sue you, you could lose big time. That’s the world we live in. There aren’t enough obstacles to getting fresh, unprocessed food; some think we need another road block.

While I’m not a lawyer yet, I highly recommend having your customers sign something that indemnifies you. (How do you like that fancy schmancy lawyer talk?) I’m drawing up my own consent and release statement. It goes something like this:

You, the customer, agree to hold me, the farmer and seller, wholly blameless for any and all adversities that may befall you from buying and eating produce and other products from my farm. While we take painstaking steps to ensure the cleanliness of what we grow (unlike corporate spinach growers and dairy producers), you acknowledge that there is an inherent risk in consuming anything. Sign and date here or I won’t sell you a damn thing.

I leave you with a question. How can anyone hope to combat obesity when the people who grow and sell fresh produce are hog-tied by rules and regulations?

Where do most of the unemployed live? If you go through the smaller communities of New York and Connecticut you will find no starvation, no evictions, few people who have not got an overcoat or a pair of shoes. And if you go into the farming areas you will not find people starving on the farms. On the contrary. There is suffering, there is deprivation; but in the smaller communities and on the farms, there is not the same kind of being up against it, of not knowing where you are going to sleep tonight or where you are going to get the next meal that you find in cities. I venture the assertion that at least three quarters, and probably more of the dependent unemployed throughout the United States today, are in the cities.

Are we not beginning now to visualize a different kind of city? Are we not beginning to envisage the possibility of a lower cost of living by having a greater percentage of our population living a little closer to the source of supply?…

We hope blindly that government in some miraculous way can prevent any future economic depression, that government or some great leader will discover a panacea for the ills that have been hitting the world ever since history has been recorded….

From the October 1932 issue of , Survey Graphic:

“Half of us live in or within twenty-five miles of ninety-five metropolitan cities. And we live badly. They are obsolete.”

I came across the above quotes as I was doing research on America’s historic homestead communities. During the darkest depths of the Great Depression, food was becoming scarce because of a drought, and because of the cost of transporting it to urban areas. As the economy heaved and then buckled under financial pressure, the Federal government decided people would be better off in intentional communities that they built themselves. One such community was the Tillery Resettlement Community, one of only 15 black New Deal Era homestead communities.  Here’s a quick introduction:

• The presence of a chemical in the human body is not necessarily cause for alarm or concern, and this information alone does not help to inform individual health risk.
• Human health risk resulting from the presence of a particular chemical is determined by both hazard (the intrinsic properties of the chemical, including toxicity) and exposure (amount, frequency, and length of exposure to the chemical).
• The presence of a chemical found in biomonitoring data does not necessarily indicate a health threat.
• It is essential to understand at what amount adverse effects occur (i.e., toxicity), and at what amount such chemicals are found in the environment (i.e., exposure point concentration) before an assessment of risk can be made.

CropLife America was one of the organizations that sent a disparaging letter to to the White House when they learned of the First Lady’s organic garden. Apparently Siddiqui is one gifted negotiator. The First Lady gets an organic garden, and the pesticide lobby gets a sweet deal from her husband. Unbelievable. And if Siddiqui and company don’t like cute organic gardens, what do you suppose he thinks about organic farmers?