A few hours north of where I live is Holmes County, Ohio, with one of the greatest concentrations of Amish folk in the country. There are Amish communities in southeast Ohio also, and it's not uncommon to see a horse and buggy on a main road when residents come into town for necessities. I have often heard English people (meaning non-Amish) remark how hard the lives of the Amish must be, and how they are glad they don't have to live as the Amish do.
This view has always surprised me. The Amish eschew electricity and many modern conveniences, but are their lives really harder than ours? If my car and washing machine and electric coffee maker suddenly disappeared, my life would become much more difficult, but comparing that scenario with the situation of the Amish is silly. The Amish never became dependent on such things and never had to adapt suddenly to their absence. Their way of life has evolved over hundreds of years, as innovations in the non-Amish world were either rejected or slowly incorporated.
Not only are the Amish comfortably adapted to living without electricity; they also live in large families embedded in extended communities in which everyone is adapted to living the same way. If catastrophe strikes, the community comes together to help, to rebuild a burned-down barn, or harvest crops when a farmer is ill. This safety net creates a security that is often lacking in the non-Amish world, despite government programs that ostensibly mitigate disasters.
Of course, most days don't include disasters. Is the typical day in an Amish family harder than my typical day? What about the little glitches like a broken wagon wheel or a spooked horse that bolts or a pressure cooker that malfunctions in the middle of canning season? Being embedded in a community where everyone has skills and tools to deal with such occurrences means that they remain minor inconveniences rather than becoming enormously time-consuming problems. They can be quickly remedied and the work continues.
The advantages of living in a community of like-minded and like-practicing people cannot be underestimated. It's because of this salubrious community structure that I don't believe that the Amish lead more difficult lives. In the non-Amish world, attemps at homesteading or even just living a simpler life are hard because of the lack of a supportive community. This difficulty extends to those who are simply trying to raise more of their own food or create more wildlife-friendly yards. In residential neighborhoods across the country, there's increasing interest in replacing exotics with natives, using fewer chemicals, and in general adopting more eco-friendly landscaping practices. Taking this path, however, can be a bit like deciding to swap your car for a horse and buggy in the middle of suburbia. The supportive infrastructure just doesn't exist.
I'm not talking about having enough like-minded neighbors who are also switching to environmentally sound habits, although their presence is crucial in the long term. I'm referring to communities of other animals, as well plants, microbes, and fungi. Residential neighborhoods are often biological deserts: The soils are dead, the good insects have been destroyed with the bad, habitat is lacking for birds, snakes, toads, etc. Attempting to turn a yard into a healthy, food-producing area is a huge challenge. If you stop using chemical fertilizers nothing grows. If you stop spraying insecticides your veggie plants are decimated by bugs. If you stop mowing, the ticks come. You're overrun with deer who are finding lots to munch since you replaced those barberries with raspberries. Your new water feature mostly breeds mosquitoes and algae.
These are the reasons any attempt to "rewild" your yard, or get a meaningful harvest of edibles, needs to be a long-term project, and ultimately needs to be neighborhood-based (or better yet city-wide.) While it is definitely possible to rebuild healthy soil on a very small scale, restoring macro-ecosystems to the point that they support a full contingent of flora and fauna, cannot be done in one yard. A critical mass of linked habitat is necessary to support the birds, toads, frogs, snakes, and beneficial insects that constitute a functioning ecosystem, and thereby keep pest populations under control. Ideally predators such as bobcat and fox would be present as well to keep rodents in check. Until large enough areas are dedicated to this project, and nature is brought back into balance, individual gardeners will flounder, each battling solo against pest hordes.
For those attempting to work with mother nature by welcoming her into your yard, don't give up. Recognize that what you are attempting is extremely difficult, and give yourself a pat on the back. Then make a serious effort to enlist the help of your neighbors. Community-building with fellow humans, with the goal of restoring the communities of the other kingdoms of life, will pay off in spades in the long run, resulting in greater yields and less work. It's a win-win for all involved.
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