bibliophile birds
Lovin' The Homestead
thanks for the welcome m&tg! i'm a bibliophile through and through! my poultry business (which will hopefully be expanding to sheep, pigs, and cattle soon) is called Page-turner Poultry. i've got the Literary Layers and the Reading Roos doing their part for my sustainability goal!
my favorite literary example of local traditions trumping "modern" farming is from Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. it's the part where the missionary father is trying to plant a garden with the seeds they brought to Africa from the States. he's making nice neat rows and putting his seeds at nice little intervals. the next morning, the rows have been turned into mounds. the housekeeper went out and "fixed them" for the poor ignorant preacher. he's furious. he just can't understand why these Africans won't listen to his spectacular knowledge! turns out, it's because in that part of Africa the seeds need to be planted in little mounds so that the rainwater will drain away from them instead of becoming a soggy mess and drowning the plants. he just couldn't understand that they might know a little something about their own land.
and then there are all the stories i've gathered over the years from my Anthropologist friends about the spectacular idiocy of Westerners trying to help out poor African farmers. for example, there was a Dutch group that wanted to help farmers in Madagascar. they were bringing in some kind of mold resistant rice, i'm not sure exactly what the specifics were. they called all these meetings of the local men and went on at length about the benefits of the new rice and then gave away tons of the stuff. they went back home thinking they had made great progress. they came back 4 months later and none of their seeds were being used. the problem was that in Madagascar the women are in charge of the crops. these outsiders just saw a patriarchal African society and assumed the men had control over everything. the men just threw the seeds out because they meant nothing to them.
my favorite literary example of local traditions trumping "modern" farming is from Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. it's the part where the missionary father is trying to plant a garden with the seeds they brought to Africa from the States. he's making nice neat rows and putting his seeds at nice little intervals. the next morning, the rows have been turned into mounds. the housekeeper went out and "fixed them" for the poor ignorant preacher. he's furious. he just can't understand why these Africans won't listen to his spectacular knowledge! turns out, it's because in that part of Africa the seeds need to be planted in little mounds so that the rainwater will drain away from them instead of becoming a soggy mess and drowning the plants. he just couldn't understand that they might know a little something about their own land.
and then there are all the stories i've gathered over the years from my Anthropologist friends about the spectacular idiocy of Westerners trying to help out poor African farmers. for example, there was a Dutch group that wanted to help farmers in Madagascar. they were bringing in some kind of mold resistant rice, i'm not sure exactly what the specifics were. they called all these meetings of the local men and went on at length about the benefits of the new rice and then gave away tons of the stuff. they went back home thinking they had made great progress. they came back 4 months later and none of their seeds were being used. the problem was that in Madagascar the women are in charge of the crops. these outsiders just saw a patriarchal African society and assumed the men had control over everything. the men just threw the seeds out because they meant nothing to them.
