The Rural Voice, 1980-07, Page 15sow's ration, feeding less corn and more
ground oats and bran. If trouble persists,
give each pig eight drops of tincture of
asafoetida twice a day till the hiccoughing
ceases. (Asafoetida is described in the
dictionary as "a fetid substance concocted
from parsley. It stinks.")
••••••
When pigs are afflicted with "bull nose"
there is no cure. The disease may be
arrested by smoking with camphor -gum.
This is done by placing the animals in a
tightly covered box and placing a little
camphor -gum on a stove -lid. They will
inhale the fumes.
••••••
Eggs contain a#1 the elements necessary
to supply the human body with nourishing
food. One half of an egg is nutriment, while
not more than one-fourth of meat is so;
thus it will be seen that one pound of egg is
equal to two pounds of meat.
••••••
It pays better to milk a four gallon cow
and sell her when dry for two cents a pound
than to milk a two gallon cow and sell her
for four cents a pound.
••••••
Are there any old apple trees in your
orchard bearing undesirable fruit? It is
easy to graft good varieties upon them.
••••••
Much can be done to prolong the life of
trees. Fill up the decayed places with
cement after scraping out all the decay.
KEITH ROULSTON
Farmer low man on
economic and political totem pole
Perhaps it comes under the heading of misery loving company
but farmers' feelings that people take them for granted today is
not a new development.
There seems to come a time in the development of all societies
when people forget how they got to be in the comfortable
position they enjoy. They tend to think of working the land as
something beneath them.
Those thoughts came to mind recently when I was reading a
historical novel based on the period when Attila the Hun was
battling with the Roman Empire to see who would control the
then -known world that stretched from western Asia to the
Atlantic Ocean. Attila spread terror everywhere throughout the
lands controlled by Rome. His raids had been particularly vicious
and he seemed to have endless numbers of soldiers (in one battle
between the Romans and their allies in France and Attila's army
between 115,000 and 150,000 soldiers from both sides died from
a battle that lasted only a few hours. No provision was made to
treat wounded so they were left to die on the battle fields.)
The Huns were a nomadic people, pushed west by the
expansion of the Chinese empire in the east of Europe. They had
grown up on the plateau s and were excellent horsemen. But
they disdained farming as something for lesser people to do.
They looked forward to the day when they would conquer Rome
and would take over the splendid Roman homes and live in
luxury with millions of slaves and peasants to provide their
needs. Not for them dirtying their hands in the earth.
The Romans had built an empire that had lasted hundreds of
years and influenced the history of all of Europe and northern
Africa. A good deal of the strength for that empire came from the
excellent food growing areas north of the cities. It was a rich
farming area with good soil and climate where just about
anything could be grown. But when two different Roman army
leaders were faced with invasions from outside the empire their
strategy was to retreat to the city and abandon the farming areas
to the enemy and leave the farmers to fend for themselves.
This policy worked in the case of Attila because he was even
stupider in his regard for the need for food. His army wasn't
organized properly for travel. It moved faster than its food
supply could keep up. Within the first few days the men and
horses were hungry. The situation didn't improve as they moved
into the area of northern Italy abandoned by the Romans because
an unusual drought had hit the usually verdant area. There was
hardly enough pasture to keep alive the stock already in the area
without hundreds of thousands of horses and men. Although the
path to Rome was open with no military opposition, Attila had to
turn and retreat to his homeland to get enough food to feed his
army.
It was a lesson military strategists both remembered and
forgot again and again. Whenever a regime got a good deal of
strength it tended to forget the lesson. Napoleon when he built
his empire in Europe in the 1800's forgot his own statement that
"An army travels on its stomach" (or maybe he made the
statement after learning from bitter experience). He sent his
troops to attack Moscow and they found themselves hundreds of
miles from friendly territory without food. The Russians applied
a scorched earth policy, destroying everything as they retreated,
leaving no food behind for the enemy. It was eventually the bitter
Russian winter that did the army in but the lack of food started
the debacle.
Hitler didn't learn the lesson of Napoleon and millions of his
soldiers paid a bitter price when they invaded Russia and starved
and from.
We aren't at war in Canada but we have the same attitude of
taking food for granted. We aren't extending our lines ahead of
our food supply but we're doing something even more foolish.
We are forgetting that it was agriculture that first made this
country prosperous. We are forgetting that oil ana steel and
uranium may be great resources but they aren't anything
without food. We are forgetting that it may be nice to have fancy
shopping centres but not much good if there is no food to sell in
their supermarkets. We are forgetting that we are able to lead
our affluent lifestyle because we have inexpensive home-grown
food.
Because we haven't learned the lesson of history we
downgrade the role of the foodmaker. The farmer is low man on
the economic and political totem pole. His product is something
to be bargained off for trade concessions. He is someone who's
work is only important as a raw material to make manufactured
foods, to stock supermarket shelves so unionized clerks can earn
more money a week than farmers. Farmers are important only as
people to buy the machinery turned out by big industries that
employ thousands of workers in the cities.
Even more foolhardy, the land itself is simply a raw material,
something to be used as farmland until we can find something
more important for it, like a site for a new car dealership, a
shopping centre or a subdivision.
When Attila and Napoleon forgot the lesson, hundreds of
thousands of men suffered. Still, the army could retreat and
regroup. But in the invasion that is going on in Canada, the
invasion of precious food -growing territory by urban growth,
there can be no retreat. Once we have despoiled the land with
concrete and asphalt there is no turning it back to food growing.
Will future civilizations look at us as a country that refused to
learn the lesson of history?
THE RURAL VOICE/JULY 1980 PG. 13