[southernskye]

Nice little pice about smallholders, La Via Campesina, SCF et al.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/16/peasants-revolt-to-change-food-production
 
Rgds
Sskye
 

[ferretkeeper]

Brilliant find, exactly what I was just ranting about over in the members area.

[happygolucky]

  I have to smile as I aspire to be a peasant.....

[Fleecewife]

I'm a peasant and come from a long line of peasant farmers - and I'm very proud of it 
 
That little piece got me thinking though.  It mentions that many people who return to small scale farming from a city life are very well educated.  I have never had much of a city life but I do fall into the well educated portion.  I was one of only two children across a generation, so family members without children helped with school fees.  But, how many of those returning to the land from the city and a good education can afford to send their children to a 'good' school once they are living off the land?  I don't want to get into a discussion of the education system here, but school and university nowadays are expensive.  The next again generation could perhaps end up with an even poorer education still, so that within a couple of generations today's 'new peasants' become poor and poorly educated again, as peasants were in the past.  This is a sweeping statement as there were of course plenty of exceptions,  in areas such as Scotland for example, which had education for all, so university educated philosophers  working their land in the Highlands and Islands were to be encountered (apparently - I wasn't there at the time  ).  So, are those who have made a conscious choice today to drop out and make their living in the countryside committing their grandchildren to a poor education and a drop down the social scale? Or will subsequent generations run a mile from the smallholding life, as my offspring have done?  Just thinking 

[RUSTYME]

Not an area i want to get into really , not having kids of my own . But 'education' doesn't have to be in a school , either state or private .
All that can be taught in a school can be taught at home .
 I hardly went to school , 3 half days in the last year and not much more before that . But i had completed the school courses , with the exception of maths , logs , trig and alge etc , by the second year .
To prove to my teachers that i had learnt all i needed to , i took all the mocs and  apart from maths , 70% , my lowest mark was 97% , i think i proved my point .
A massive car smash , leaving me with dire head injuries , wiped the slate clean when i was 26 , and left me with memory problems , but that was nothing to do with the fact i was self taught to top end standards . Even the mish mash that is my head now , is self taught , again .
Education is what you want it to be , and does not need to be state or private . To me that is just derogation of the self , fine if the individual is content with the situation , i wasn't .
 The education spoken of , eludes to the fact that it leads to success ? Success as in money , position , power ?
Well , maybe that is so ,
if success is judged on these factors ?
The above is not a 'dig' at any views of others , just my view of the subject of education .

[Fleecewife]

Yes but Rustyme not everyone is you.  Most children need some kind of formal education, be it at home or in school, and very few parents are qualified to home school their children.  Would they have time, whilst wresting a livelihood from the land?   You have clearly worked wonders in your life.  I agree that informal education can/could be enough for some people, but someone has to be trained up to run the country (haha), do some research, look after ill folk and so on.  It is surely accepted that a large part of human intelligence is involved with building on the knowledge of previous generations, rather than every individual having to start from scratch
 
What I was raising was the question as to whether today's parents are taking, or have the right to take, the choice away from their grandchildren, when they choose  a lowtec, living-off-the-land life for themselves.

[RUSTYME]

No , not everyone is like me , god forbid , but i am at best of average intelligence , and was more than capable of making my own choices in life , be they right or  wrong they were my choices .
Education of our leaders (i have no leader , i belong to no group , club , system or even society that requires one ) , has proved to be woefully wanting .
Their aim is personal wealth , power and control , and they obtain these via threat , coersion  , force and as can be seen on the news everday , war .
Fear is their control method . This , along with the indoctrination of  the 'work ethic' is what formal education instills .
 People may not be qualified to teach , but why should they be ? A qualification is a bit of paper that says a person may do this or that .
I have no qualifications , but i can do anything i choose to do.
 Nothing my grand parents did in their lifestyle controls that .
A basic teaching of knowledge can be taught by anyone with average inteligence . The choice of where the pupil takes that learning is theirs , not yours , mine , our parents or anyone else , theirs .
Nobody has the right to take anything away from their children , but they have a duty to provide love and knowledge to the best of their ability . Whether things like, money , power , position , success should be given or taught to a rich elite isn't even debatable anymore , they have succeeded in gaining huge wealth , high positions with much power but at what cost to the people ?
The system is corrupt , run by corrupt people and formal education as is , is there to continue and indoctrinate  the people to keep status quo .

[cloddopper]

I tend to follow you Rusty education ain't worth a dam if you can't be bothered to use it .
 Several of my millionaire friends  are in there own words nigh on illiterate .. they just do a lot of what makes a few £ and have kept on doing it lots of times. They pay so called educated people to look after the book keeping and writing.
 
 Yet I know of dozens of highly academically educated people who are so constipatingly  full with education they can't get a job as they have become professional students with no idea of social skills, common sense or knowledge of when to keep their gob's shut .. they have virtually become unemployable . They don't even have a clue as to how to set up doing something legal  to support themselves.
 Academic derelict's was one way they were described to me .

[Ina]

Is anybody here a member of the Land Workers' Alliance?

[RUSTYME]

Never heard of it till now Ina , just looked at their site , looks good . Will read more after din dins , cheers mate .

[Ina]

Would be interesting to know how they are different from the Crofters' - they say they are an English organisation, but there's loads of smallholders up here who aren't strictly speaking crofters...

[jaykay]

There shouldn't be a need for any child to have a bad education in Britain, whatever their family circumstances. There are outstanding schools in the state sector that don't cost families much, and those that need help, with uniform, trips etc can get it.

My own school is outstanding and our students are mainly from dales farming families, so by and large, not very well off at all. I've just signed a couple of uniform grants today. The kids round here are lucky as the three state schools locally are all outstanding - different, but all very good quality, and in fact, better quality than the private / public schools around, in pretty much all areas of school life.

The difficulty only arises if you live in an area where the local state schools are poor - there are pockets of course.

University is a different business entirely.

[Anke]

That little piece got me thinking though.  It mentions that many people who return to small scale farming from a city life are very well educated.  I have never had much of a city life but I do fall into the well educated portion.  I was one of only two children across a generation, so family members without children helped with school fees.  But, how many of those returning to the land from the city and a good education can afford to send their children to a 'good' school once they are living off the land? 

Why is the only good education a child can have a privately, paid for by the family, education? Only in Britain can this be even a discussion! There are good schools everywhere, I would think the majority of rural schools provide a good education, maybe not as many specialist subjects, as they just don't have the pupil numbers to justify the budget for specialist teaching staff, but my children are not going anywhere near a private school! As for university, it is a lot cheaper in other countries, just make sure they learn a language and off they go and study abroad! Everybody should go and live/work/study in a different country while they are young - makes them more rounded and tolerant people.
 
I am not sure the idea of more (most?) families living entirely off the land is a sustainable one in the Western world, but more people having part-time smallholdings/productive gardens/allotments, where they produce some of their food but also work outside (probably part-time both partners or full-time one) is a more realistic proposition.

[Orinoco]

we have opted for the live off the land/property option (although needing to work a few more years to finance it, which seems daft but hey ho!), but only after our children left home, state schools are fine but uni is only for those with money nowadays and some careers require a degree so a peasants life reduces options for families and children (obviously for the odd determined young thing it issues a challenge).

I love the idea that the new peasant is the wanna be status of choice and think it says alot about where we have been as a society and what we have discovered about life there, the longing for quality of life and time for each other (or at least the realisation that we need each other and making it alone = comfortably and lonely until you loose your job/ retire), living off the land gives some certainty, that what you can't afford you make, grow, etc.

Here's to good quality food, fresh air and a healthy environment, friends and neighbours who's names you know.

Love it!!!  (until it rains alot )

K

[MAK]

Fleecewife made some good points and particularly how a move to a simple life may remove choice for children and grandchildren.
To my mind there are those of us who can afford to live like a peasant ( becuase we have wealth) and the children have flown the nest. Or we have wealth to use land  to sustain a lifestyle that we had when in work or when we generated income by other methods.
There are also a few of us who were given or used wealth to buy land and "waive" goodbye to a complex, expensive and stressful town or city life.
In most cases you have to be rich to live like a peasant or make some very hard decesions relating to your own lifestyle, choice on how you spend money and the legacy you leave any children.
Regardless of how we have got to buy or rent the land, once established, living like a peasant, to me, means not running a business selling one or more products of a smallholding but seeking to provide as much as you can from the land for as little money as possible. Old proven crafts and methods are key to living like a peasant and with this comes long working days, sore hands, being cold and physical tirredness. No need for an accountant!