Herd Immunity

We just wrapped up the sugaring season, our tenth one. Now that all the syrup is made, we’ll start to pull taps and flush lines, clean up the evaporator and restock wood for next year. There will be a couple of days of power washing and scrubbing, hiking back up into the maple orchard and walking back out again at the end of the day. We’ll have to work with the weather to catch the right mix of the warm sunny days to wash and dry hundreds of buckets, lids, and spiles and scrub the out the totes before we put them back in storage until next year.

It was a so-so year for production but the quality was as good as anything we have ever made. The time up in the sugarbush between the end of January when we started clearing out the deadwood and repairing broken lines and first run in early March was an opportunity to reflect on the past year. That’s one of the advantages of living in tune with the seasons, the ability to apprehend both the passage of time outside of man-made means. I watched as my sons took on ever more responsibility this season, carrying the tool bags slung over their shoulders, both of them taller than they were last year, their hair down to their shoulders now. I have been paying closer attention to the older trees in the stand, trying to identify the ones in the terminal stages of decline to remove from the mainlines and watching for the emerging ones mature enough to take their place. From up on top of the esker, even in the middle of the big stand of hemlocks you could look through the black lace of the bare branches and see the herd pretend to graze on the snow-covered pasture below. Last year’s bullocks are filling out, even at the tail end of Winter, and all of the cows are wide with this year’s calves only weeks away now. For all of the furor that took place out there somewhere since this time last year, everything here has just matured, like a fine wine. I joked early on that we were made for times like these, but it’s not a joke. From where we sit the odd behavior of a collective madness gripping huge swaths of the population, lathered into a panic by professional agitators is more of a curiosity than a threat. The idea that people will continue on with such paranoid delusions for much longer seems highly unlikely despite appearances, but I could be mistaken. People cling to odd notions for as long as it is socially efficacious and then when things go another way, they drop it with equal ease. In the essay Corn Pone Opinions, Mark twain wrote the following-

“A new thing in costume appears – the flaring hoopskirt, for example – and the passers-by are shocked, and the irreverent laugh. Six months later everybody is reconciled; the fashion has established itself; it is admired, now, and no one laughs. Public opinion resented it before, public opinion accepts it now, and is happy in it. Why? Was the resentment reasoned out? Was the acceptance reasoned out? No. The instinct that moves to conformity did the work. It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist.”

He understood the importance of conformity and though he managed to navigate the world of 19th century celebrity as well as any, he saw the world from a distance that afforded him a better view of behavior over time and I believe that he was quite right in this regard.

As a small, independent, family farmer I realize that I live on the fringes of modern American society. It allows me to observe the popular culture from a distance and to form opinions that are not- as Twain quipped- dependent upon where I received my corn pone. We generate our own power, produce our own food, carry no debt, have no mortgage and are not employed by others. What we do we do for the benefit of our family, friends and neighbors and so we are free to express our opinions and follow our own customs without the ever-present fear of being fired or compromised. This was- as long-time readers are probably aware- a deliberate decision on our part more than a decade ago. Having gone through an early version of being cancelled in 2003 for a series of essays I wrote about popular culture we began to lay the framework for our retreat to a rural property where we could, in the words of Nasim Taleb, become anti-fragile. Although we had no experience and virtually no real understanding of what becoming homesteaders meant in the 21st century, we set our sights on becoming as independent and self-sufficient as humanly possible. As each year has passed, we developed new skills and awakened long dormant instincts we never realized that we possessed. We started with a garden and a few chickens, added goats, then sheep, pigs and beef cattle, tilapia and rabbits, and by the time we’d celebrated our 3rd anniversary we’d been named a New Hampshire Farm of Distinction by the Department of Agriculture, featured as Homesteaders of the Year by Mother Earth News, as well as becoming the first farm in New England to be awarded the Animal Welfare Approved designation. I mention these only to demonstrate that by the standards of authorities in the agrarian field, we had displayed an understanding of something that was new to us in a relatively short time. My belief is that most of us possess these innate abilities but due to our disconnect from the natural world our instincts have remained untapped. Our practices were based on the premise that we wanted to live healthier lives in balance with our surroundings, and to do so in a way that was as close to what nature intended. We’ve never used artificial inputs on our fields, have eschewed the use of pharmaceuticals on our livestock and in all ways focused on imitating what has worked for thousands of years rather than to become an extension of the industrial agriculture of the last half century or more. In doing so we began to notice certain undeniable truths about how life is supposed to be rather than how we, as humans, wish it could be. Our animals have thrived without having spent money on commercial feeds, the quality of their diets producing high quality manures that have enriched and built the soils of our pastures and paddocks to a degree we never could have imagined and the meat we produce? I’ve never eaten better in my life. What has happened as a result of our removal from society at large has been a better understanding of how it is malfunctioning. Before we moved here, we felt that something was wrong but we had no means of grasping what the root causes were. I began to see people as simply another species of domesticated animal rather than as something elevated to the level of minor gods. You begin to notice their infirmities and weaknesses that previously had gone unnoticed, perhaps deliberately for reasons of civility. I can easily observe if a chicken is healthy or if a bull poses a danger without a second glance, but until I was well into middle-age when I was dealing with someone who was unfit or exhibited signs of maladaptive behavior, I’d ignore the signs in order to be polite.

Let me state clearly lest I be misunderstood. I have no opinion about what other people choose to do with their lives or their daily behavior as long as it doesn’t require me to be either an advocate or a victim of those choices. It would be hard to distill that view down any further and by extension my only demand is to be treated with the same respect, but it must be stated. Far too few people have a personal code that they can articulate and I think that may contribute to the current dilemma and why so few people seem to be able to resist the enormous pressure exerted on them this past year. Imagine if you had pulled a Rip Van Winkle about a year ago an awoke to a world where healthy people wear surgical masks while driving alone in their cars in order to avoid the flu. And not just some people, but virtually everyone in the Western World. Somehow the fact that it has happened cancels out the outrageous and nonsensical notion that it had to happen. I won’t list the endless litany of unreasonable demands that have been made of a formerly free people without their advice and consent, nor the rhetorical extremes used to justify them by people so obviously ill, both physically and mentally that anyone should clearly see it if they only looked. Unfortunately, we live in the middle of a mass movement, the kind that human societies experience when they are themselves unwell, collectively as a people. If you haven’t read Charles MacKay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, now would be a good time. His examples of these types of unified aberrations on a mass scale pale in comparison to what we have experienced in this most recent spin around the Sun. People spending fortunes on tulip bulbs or a few dozen witches being hung for consorting with demons seems tame after you’ve seen watched the behavior of the class of 2020.

People defer to the experts, so when it comes to herd immunity it’s safe to say that I qualify. We practice the kind of farming practices you’d likely have encountered prior to World War II. No pesticides or petroleum-based fertilizers. We don’t use commercial feeds for our pigs and poultry and our cattle are 100% grass fed, like ruminants are designed to eat. And our herds are healthy- year in and year out, through some pretty severe New England Winters. We eat fresh in season and we preserve by canning, fermenting, curing and smoking for all the rest of our needs. We produce our maple syrup the old way, on a wood fired evaporator and with the exception of our diesel tractor, almost everything else we use is either human or animal powered. We get up when the Sun rises, work together as a family, make 99% of our own meals and take them together. We work outdoors every single day and probably deal with more pathogens than the next fifty people combined and yet we never get sick. No colds or allergies, no sleep deprivation, no stress related issues, and with the exception of an occasional broken bone or a cut requiring stitches, we’ve spent nothing on medical care or health insurance in 12 years. I’ll give a nod to good genetics, but having been an insomnia plagued, stressed out, desk bound slob who suffered from colds and flus every year when I was in my forties, I can say with complete certainty that my turnaround is the result of how we eat, live, and behave. Our lifestyle is not something most people would want to emulate and it isn’t one I would recommend to everyone, but if it worked for us, it could benefit those who want it bad enough.

Maybe I am mistaken. Maybe it’s better for people to repeatedly inject themselves with vaccines, wear masks that cover half their faces whenever they go out, maintain distance between each other, not gather in groups of more than a few people at a time and continue eating as much as they want because obese people are just as healthy as physically fit specimens. Maybe it’s best to take advice from people who are sickly on what’s best for their health, or practice rituals and observe taboos that have never existed before because they might otherwise come down with a flu bug that only 99.7% of the population recovers from. Maybe, but it seems highly unlikely. My own personal belief, based on my personal experience and all of human history says that the best bet for dealing with any type of disease is to first acknowledge that death comes for us all at some point and prophylactic politically driven mandates will never alter that inevitability no matter how healthy or cautious we may be. That fact aside, a healthy lifestyle, a positive outlook, plenty of time outdoors in nature and the society of other people who share similar values provide a much better quality of life than dodging other humans as if they were on fire every time we step outside of our home. Throw in an immune system designed by God or evolution (take your pick) and 99.8% under the age of 80 with a BMI of 30 or less stand a good chance of doing just fine. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time we decide for ourselves rather than to blindly accept the diktats of people who clearly didn’t think of any of this as recently as a year ago. Having raised a family and producing thousands of healthy animals on our farm over the course of the last 12 years I have come to several conclusions about the health of living organisms. We live in a world filled with far more pathogens than any other form of life. Their purpose, of course, is to handle the decay that results from life itself. They breakdown manure and turn it into soil, aid in the digestion of every living animal by breaking down consumed energy of fodder and turning it into waste products in an endless cycle which leads- dare I say it- to even more life. Bacteria, viruses, molds and germs are essential to our life in a way we can hardly comprehend if we live outside of the natural world and ensconce ourselves in the manifest realities of ideologies, religion and politics. Pathogens are- to healthy organisms- a kind of co-worker that perform a multitude of unseen tasks that boost our immune system and aid in our overall fitness and well-being. The only time that they pose any kind of threat is when an organism is compromised, either by poor nutrition, unhealthy environment, stress and anxiety, injury or senescence. While on the human level it is unfortunate to acknowledge that these states of existence limit our lifespan, it is a reality we can never escape from. A physically fit specimen in the prime of life faces virtually zero risk from any type of opportunistic infection and an old, worn down, poorly fed and anxious animal is ripe for illness. In fact, these considerations are, at least metaphorically, the soil in which we are raised. As anyone who has ever attempted to grow a garden understands, the most important factor for the success of any plant is the tilth of the soil in which it is planted. Contrary to this widely accepted wisdom of the ages, modern man has come to believe that people can live lives of complete safety if only the proper combination of panaceas are applied. Fat is healthy, promiscuity is exciting, stress is medicated. None of the essential ingredients to living a healthy life are ever promoted- in fact the signature of the CDC over the past year has been to completely and totally ignore the promotion of healthy lifestyle, but replace it with a pharmaceutical treatment while allowing the individual to continue with their maladaptive behaviors, and even engage in increasingly bizarre and destructive responses such as avoiding human contact with loved ones, hiding indoors out of the Sunlight, and retarding their ability to breathe fresh air. It would appear, to someone standing at a distance, to be a formula to guarantee the spread of sickness among a population that would ordinarily walk it off without so much as a symptom even if exposed to it.

I have been thinking a great deal about the direction of our current cultural slide into totalitarian policy making that removes the voice of reason from the conversation, that disallows dissent in any form. It would be one thing if this was a response to a demand by the people, or even a plebiscite to determine the will of the people, but once again we were left out of that discussion. I do not believe that anyone should be forbidden from wearing as many masks as they like, or remaining inside their homes for as long as they like if they fear illness to such a degree and I have never heard of anyone suggest something like that. Those of us who have never worn a mask because we are able to not only reason for ourselves the calculated risks associated with living a normal human life without ad hoc mandates to do something that violates fundamental human rights, but resist the unwarranted social pressure of a clearly traumatized and frightened public unable to do the same for themselves.

When I made a decision to start writing again and posting it on the Internet, I understood that those who responded would fall into one of two camps regardless of how benign and inoffensive my intentions were. Those of like-mind would appreciate someone being open and truthful about their experience and perspective and those who oppose my general outlook would be either skeptical or deeply offended. I offered to open up our life to anyone who chose to come by and see it for themselves to either confirm or dismiss whatever preconceived notion they may have had. I suppose there was an inherent risk to such a move, but I am not particularly risk averse by nature and as a perpetually optimistic person I looked forward to meeting people I would otherwise never have had an opportunity to encounter. The result has been a unique blessing that I never fully anticipated. The quality and character of the visitors, their generosity and enthusiasm, the fellowship and encouragement have acted as a force multiplier that surprises me every day. In turn I have tried to share everything that we have learned from our experience, from the various tasks and disciplines of living a neo-agrarian lifestyle in the post-modern world, to the shortfalls and heartbreaks of our daily struggle to survive in a toxic culture. I have tried to provide as much encouragement as possible, tempered by a realistic assessment of the difficulties we’ve encountered to anyone and everyone who has taken the time to reach out, drive up, work alongside, contribute, and support us over the years. A few years back we hosted the first July 4th Farm to Table Dinner on the farm and found that people were willing to travel as far away as the other side of the continent to spend a day on the farm. It was the kind of experience you might see in a magazine spread, only better and the relationships formed then have only deepened and grown stronger. This year we will host it once again and like some of the other things we’ve tried in the past we will trust in the basic decency and good nature of the majority of the people to come up and experience both our hospitality and our deep appreciation of their numerous gifts and support. If you are able to come up, you are welcome. If you would like to contribute, you are welcome and if you cannot you are still welcome. If you know someone who would benefit from a visit, tell them to drop me an email or give me a call and I will gladly do whatever I can to extend a hand.

The world has changed irrevocably in the past year and there has been a bifurcation of the nation in a way we have never experienced before. I think that this time, while fraught with challenges and disturbing trends, is also an opportunity of a lifetime and I hope to share a little bit of it with you and show that there may be an alternative to the kind of life we have been living in the past and to learn from others how they see us moving forward.

And for those of you who have enjoyed our syrup in the past and would like to try another bottle or two, we’re about to start bottling up this year’s production; sweet, unique and made by our hands in cooperation with some of the healthiest sugar maples anywhere on Earth. And if you’ve never tried it before, this would be the one taste.

Mahalo!