Yesterday I drove by a farm north of Fairfield, Iowa a ways out on the Pleasant Plain road where they were taking down a farm's field fence, out with dozers rolling up rods of good field fence just to be able to plow up to the road edge and plant more gasohol. Livestock gone.
We are witnessing the end of an epoch. With the demise and succession of the WWII generation farmer of 360 acre farms and the consolidation to 720acres and 1080acre farms to 3, 4, 7,16,000 acre holdings comes the end of very many humans being much close at all to any animal husbandry with large mammals anymore. You can see this now compared even to five and ten years ago at the County level and State Fairs. There are not nearly any animal projects now with the end of mixed agricultural family farming and the collapse of those farmsteads out on the landscape. Farm operation is all going to growing gasohol and corporate animal feeding. It is really quite stunning to see the collapse of diversified agriculture in such a short period of time. Care-taking large animals has always been an important practical and spiritual schooling in humanity, a laboratory cultivating in skill sets towards being a good human being. It just does not work well with animals unless you are a good person. Taking care of animals is always an exercise in humanity. Any effective leader of humanity in history it seems characteristically was once a care-taker of large animals, a sheep or goat herder child, herdsmen with cows, bullocks, horses, elephants. Just using a buggy horse to drive the long district court circuit like an Abraham Lincoln. With equines, like a Grant, Churchill, Marshall, Pershing, Patton, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan each. ...practiced at being good at being a good human being in skill sets taking care of animals in nature. That has mostly come to and end. Inside of 50 years this is a huge change in the relationship of humans with large nature. Now great leadership is only incubated and left to come out of what? Internet and social media forums, social -science, law and business schools, and some on-the-job or interning experience. May the Unified Field Transcendent help us. I hope always that city people will support small farming and people who raise livestock on their own independent of the corporations. The opening of America to small farms and the opportunity for ownership was always what made America what it was. In the last few years with this aggregation taking place in large corporate agriculture and land-holding consolidation that has ended. May the Unified Field Transcendent God save the country, -Buck in the Dome Authfriend writes: Those sure are some gorgeous Jerseys they've got. They make the huge hulking Holsteins that supply supermarket milk look like ungainly monsters. (Not the Holsteins' fault; they were bred that way to give as much milk as possible. But it isn't anywhere as good as milk from Jerseys.) A beautiful key to creating Heaven on Earth for all mankind, the proper treatment of the cows http://www.universalfields.org/index.html http://www.universalfields.org/index.html Jai Jai Jai Jai Jai Maharishi-ji!