TRANSHUMANCE

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

According to the archaeological record, human beings have been domesticating livestock for close to ten thousand years. The evidence is a concentration of bones from yearling sheep and goats found in the middens of ancient settlements, proving- at least to those with a need for proof- that our first attempts t domestication were linked to permanence and early forms of urban living. Anyone who has ever lived with livestock can tell you that the interactions between men and beasts have a feel of something much older, something akin to the time of the hunter gatherer. Think about it like this, imagine having to depend upon the flesh of animals for not only your meat and fat, but for their skins to clothe you against the elements, their bones and antlers for weapons and tools, their sinews and organs for a variety of survival gear unobtainable elsewhere.

Imagine how long it would have taken to figure out that the simplest and most efficient way to survive, long term, would be to shadow these herds rather than to depend upon chance meetings of individual animals isolated and vulnerable to hunting parties desperate for a meal. Herds move at a different pace than individual animals, leave far more evidence of their passing, provide a constant source of nourishment through culling of the older, slower, injured or young. The process of domestication has already begun absent the confinement of these early livestock herds. By cutting out the weak, the herds become healthier, by constant shadowing the herds begin to trust their stalkers or at the very least view them as a constant part of the scenery. It would only be a matter of time before an orphaned calf or lamb would become a part of the human camp, and the domestication process taken to the next level.

When I move the herd in the late afternoon in early Autumn the lead animal sprints to the far side of the upper pasture, the rest of them following in a knot of moving flesh, all hooves and tails. It was a behavior I didn’t understand for the first few years, something I overlooked while tending to other chores, but once I realized where they were headed and that it was purpose driven based on the season and past experience, I realized that they wanted the drops from the ancient apple trees that overhung the far edge of that pasture. They knew both when and where the sweet apples fell and they led me to an understanding of our mutual dependence upon one another.

Since that time I have made it a practice to rotate our herds and flocks daily from one part of the farm to another, to make sure they have the opportunity to graze on the orchards after it rains and the winds have cleared the trees of weak fruit. I wonder if it was humans that introduced livestock to these food sources or if it was the reverse. Perhaps domesticated animals predated agriculture, aiding in it’s creation simply because they knew where the best sources of vegetation were located and their human shadows discovered something the dumb brutes knew for eons. With my understanding of our herd today and by using vocalization I have stolen while listening to the herd, we move together with ease, they look forward to my arrival and signal one another whenever I appear with the dogs. In this way we have domesticated each other.

In many contemporary pastoral communities herds are moved from grazing grounds based on seasonal opportunities; highlands full of cool weather grasses in the Summer, the coastal lowlands in the Winter. Their human shepherds and ranchers follow the herds, directing them specifically, but generally following along beside them, providing security during calving and lambing season, when the herds and flocks are most vulnerable and allowing for a constant source sustenance for their keepers.

This, it seems to me, is the far likelier means by which domestication originally began- not the importation of selected animals into fixed settlements, but rather the slow and inexorable process of mutual dependence based on shared environments tied to seasonality. Modern day CAFO operations are based on the concept of fixed urban centers dependent upon a steady input of calories produced elsewhere. Modern scientists see the past through the lens of the present, and thus they assume that domestication required confinement to flourish, fixed settlements and that is where they look for their evidence rather than to understand the intimate relationships of the hunter/gatherer with that which he hunts and gathers.

In an era of specialization we have come to take most of our lessons and learning in classrooms, from professionals. Few people come up in the world of generational apprenticeships where first hand knowledge is passed on in daily doses, day by day as the lessons reveal themselves in the course of life itself. How much information has been lost in our turning away from one style of information sharing in order to focus on another. Whether this is to our benefit or detriment there is likely a variety of opinions, but one thing is clear; there is world of knowledge we have turned away from and that can never be good.

The USDA rates beef cattle based on body shape and finish. The charts are readily available for anyone with an Internet connection. Fitness and health do not fit into the determination between Choice and Prime, only the amount of body fat. If the USDA were to rate human beings, morbidly obese bodies would be at the top of the chart, marathon runners at the bottom. I look at my animals based on their overall look; clear eyes, well muscled backs and legs, shiny coats. A listless and slow animal is unwell, an animal so fat that it cannot move at the same pace as the rest of the herd isn’t a boon to the farm no matter how many pounds of meat it may produce, it is a handicap. My first obligation is to the health of my family and that means clean, grass fed- and apple finished- protein rich beef, lamb, pork and poultry. The flavor, although secondary, is beyond comparison.

The conventional belief is that human beings shape the world and the environment to their needs and desires, so that any need and desire can now be reshaped into reality. We forget- or intentionally overlook- the fact that our environment shapes us in ways we cannot recognize, especially when we are divorced from the natural world. Cities are a product of humans and in turn humans become a product of those environments, increasingly removed from the world outside of the conceptual. We alter ourselves to fit into whatever reality we experience and in doing so becomes something else, something less human than before. Our domestication is now driven by the unseen shepherds who shadow us from afar and we are harvested no less than our counterparts on pasture or in feedlots. The perspective to see this is no longer

I’ve given up a lot of beliefs that I have held for most of my life since we began our second life. I miss some aspects of what we once had, but increasingly the list becomes shorter and less important. We are far more fit, sleep better at night, work longer and harder, but enjoy our down time much more than ever before. We eat the food that we produce, care for it at every stage and have learned how to preserve it for the lean times. I understand the passage of time, the advance of the seasons, and the inevitability of my own demise while my genetic heritage lives on in my children.

I don’t have any definitive solutions for anyone’s life beyond my own, but I can tell when things are not as they should be no matter what the specialists and experts may contend. The archaeologists may be right; urbanization created domesticated livestock and hunter gatherers were simply an outdated mode of human existence entirely dependent upon random encounters with whatever caloric source they stumbled upon, but I doubt this very much, my own experience proving otherwise. I believe that some of our greatest accomplishments were simply mirrors of Nature’s infallible designs, the world’s oldest OJT and that we have a lot to learn before we’ve fully domesticated ourselves.

More on Transhumance-

http://www.ariege.com/pastoralism/transhumance.html

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Stucky

Ute, North American Indian Prayer

Earth teach me stillness …….. as the grasses are stilled with light.

Earth teach me suffering …….. as old stones suffer with memory.

Earth teach me humility …….. as blossoms are humble with beginning.

Earth Teach me caring …….. as the mother who secures her young.

Earth teach me courage …….. as the tree which stands alone.

Earth teach me limitation …….. as the ant which crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom …….. as the eagle which soars in the sky.

Earth teach me resignation …….. as the leaves which die in the fall.

Earth teach me regeneration …….. as the seed which rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself …….. as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness …….. as dry fields weep in the rain.

AC
AC

There is a book called ‘Restoration Agriculture‘, by Mark Shepard that you might find useful. Just keep a pen nearby to edit out the PC/SJW crap he included with the meaningful content of the book.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Random thought while walking from my car into Stater Bros to buy Diet Cola: It is a positive act of self interest to provide poor folks a means of food. Their health impacts the general population’s health.

That’s it. It came and went without a challenge. I have thought like that. Sometimes I wake up with a sense that I have been listening to a long discourse on a very deep subject. I can never recall it except maybe once in a while I can piece together the last oration (sentence).

razzle
razzle

@EC
— “It is a positive act of self interest to provide poor folks a means of food. Their health impacts the general population’s health.”

On the flip side… another interesting aspect of HF’s message is the role of predators in the general population’s health.

OutLookingIn
OutLookingIn

A high point each Summer was to spend a couple of weeks at my Uncle and Aunts (used to be Grandpa’s) dairy farm. There was plenty of time for exploring and larking around, but each day I and my younger brother were expected to do our chores.
My Uncle was a wealth of information which he shared freely. He showed us how easy it was each morning and evening, to take the cows to pasture and to bring them in. He explained that the matriarch of the herd always moved in the middle and the junior animals always led the way or brought up the rear. This he said was a left over from their wild past, to protect the matriarch from ambush ahead or from behind.
Unfortunately my Uncle had to sell the dairy farm a number of years ago, because of government intervention and increasingly onerous regulations, that were too expensive to implement. That and competition from larger and larger, corporate sized operations. I say unfortunate not only for his sake, but for that of the new generation being deprived of that wealth of knowledge and healthy life style, along with the feeling of responsible pride for doing a chore well done.

bb

More random thoughts. Cities in the bible are usually seen as places of godless evil.Many with evil rulers. Urbanization does lead to secularization of society.

More random thoughts.Read an article stating that diet coke will give you cancer.Talk care of yourself

El Coyote.

Gil
Gil

Hard to say. The farmer didn’t get healthier than the hunter-gatherer until the 19th century. Not to mention animals husbandry is a great way to spread diseases.

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

Oh mah gawd Hardscramble, after uh major home run with the whole human processing plant essay, this is uh major dud. 7 comments (now 8) and all from the TBP dipshit brigade. I reccomendation yew git out there and fix yer damn fences cuz yew ain’t makin uh livin off yer writin. Course yew may be tied up makin imaginary candy corn from scratch er some shit, I don’t know, I’m just sayin stucky gits more comments from his sisters damn cockatoo then yer gettin here.

James the Wanderer

I have an education, and wish to pass along results from this year’s experiment.

We have hard water here, and in order to use less soap in bath and laundry and extend water heater life / prevent atherosclerosis of the water pipes, we put in a water softener. For those not familiar, it ion-exchanges sodium (from salt) with hardness (Fe2+, Fe3+, CO3-, etc.). In general, this is a laudatory thing for the reasons above.

Last year’s garden was mixed-poor; a few tomatoes, some peppers, were OK, but the lettuce “tasted bitter” according to eldest child, and not much flourished. So to experiment, last winter I collected snowmelt / rainwater off the roof, and stored it in two 55-gallon plastic barrels from the thrift store (we are not prohibited from doing that here; in a rare display of sanity, our elected officials decided that it was better to collect and store rainwater to water the lawn than use tapwater, which they would have to find & treat. Rare, as I said, but it happens occasionally here). So this year, the garden was watered exclusively with snowmelt / rainwater, which I ran through coffee filters in a strainer to get the bugs and major sediments out (washed off the roof; this is a city).

The snails got a lot of the early lettuce and peas; once banished, that improved until the hot summer weather put the lettuce and peas out of business. My corn did not do well, probably too little sun underneath the trees in that spot. We did get some onions. I may try radishes next year.

But the tomatoes exploded into a JUNGLE of growth! I used the same chemical fertilizers as the previous year, but this time got LOTS of tomatoes, some green peppers and one lone onion that I put in just to try. A ferociously hot June killed two-three hands of tomatoes, but a mild July-August brought them back in large numbers. I am getting some now (in October! Hope the frost holds off) that are bigger and tastier than anything I grew last year. The fall garden lettuce is coming in, the broccoli and cabbage look marvelous and the tomatoes are nearly six feet tall.

Conclusion: sodium-heavy soft water makes a poor garden. Snowmelt / rainwater are the way to go. My mother suggested that sodium makes for poor root systems, so I’m avoiding it from now on. Next year: maybe gibberellic acid for seed germination…..

Billy
Billy

I took a shit in a ceramic pot and then sprinkled leaves over it every day for a month. By the end of this experiment the flies were so thick I could barely eat my microwaved burrito without catching one or two of them bastards in my gums. Then I planted some potatoes in the composted humanure, and waited. Then I realized the middle of my living room was not suitable and so moved the pot to our bedroom window. Still no taters but shitballs it’s nice to be able to deuce without going all the way to the living room.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

Hey Stucky,

I like that Indian prayer. I should ask Llpoh whether I could convert to Indian. I wouldn’t, but I just want to know. That reminds me of this from Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

EL Coyote
EL Coyote
EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Huh, BW is part and parcel of this so-called dipshit brigade.
BW posts more often (and says less) than anybody else here.

BW, your eyeballs are going to be in an ice cube tray and they will chill my buddy Billy’s drink come Halloween. And you call us beaners creative torturers. Hah!

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

HSF, the Page museum has a model of a Native American female, presumably she crossed through the land bridge of the Bering Strait. This pre-historic ‘illegal’ is reportedly 20,000 years old. Nothing was mentioned whether she is LLPOH’s great-granny.

Billah's wife
Billah's wife

Me, you, Stucky, Hardscramble, bb and Billy is basically the core team here at TBP. Well not Hardscrambled anymore after this absolute dud of uh post. Didn’t see this one on Lee Rockwell.

HF, write another post about yer drunk ass neighbor gettin pissed off yer cows screwin up his lawn (and unfairly criticizing yer awesome ranching skillz.) That one got like 47 comments.

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