MEN Fair 2012 - Retooling For Tomorrow

Retooling for Tomorrow
Presented by Philip Ackerman-Leist

This workshop was presented by Philip Ackerman-Leist, author of Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homesteader and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Green Mountain College in Vermont.

This is another workshop that turned out to have a different focus that I had expected. The description given for the workshop stated that the workshop would "...review a variety of tools and technologies for the modern rural, suburban, and urban homestead". He did mention a few technologies, such as masonry stoves, electric fencing, LED lights, ram pumps, and Sundanzer freezers, but didn't go into any real detail on any of them. The presentation was more about motivation and ideas than practical knowledge about any specific technologies.

Having said that, however, I enjoyed the presentation. There were a few stories that were especially memorable. The first was a story he told about farmers in the Alps who would use baskets to carry soil back up the mountain each season, presumably because it was washed to the valley. One of the farmers had talked about "this field on my back", which is a rather thought provoking statement. Not only is he literally carrying the field on his back, but he was also figuratively carrying the field on his back as the field's survival was entirely dependent upon him and others like him carrying the soil back to the field each season.

The next story he told that stuck in my mind was that of a student who spent Spring Break on the boat of a family friend in Florida so she could write a paper on him as a homesteader. The two of them apparently hit it off, as she became pregnant that week, and temporarily quit school. When she did return to school, she and her new husband built an illegal straw bale home where they lived with their child until she finished school. They grew so use to living without electricity that when they later moved into a furnished house the first thing they did was set the appliances on the curb with signs indicating that were free to anyone wanting them.

The final thing from the presentation that was particularly memorable was the photo he showed of the first time his son hung up his own diapers to dry. The photo was very simple, but what it illustrated was far from simple. I can only hope that when we have kids, he/she is involved in household chores from such a young age and that we are providing a positive example to them by doing things such as using cloth diapers and hanging our clothes out to dry.

One last thing that I should mention about the workshop is that he suggested the book The Carbon-Free Home by Rebecca and Stephen Hren as a good source of information for anyone interested in decreasing the impact of their home by remodeling, rather than constructing a new home.