21 Things a 1900 Farm Made for Free That You Pay For Now

Ezra Kaine

Ezra Kaine

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Built to Last — keeping a home warm, fed, watered & mended the old way: https://ezrakaine.com

What could a self-sufficient American farm do in 1900 that you now have to pay for?
Two envelopes of tomato seed. One Miriam saved out of our garden, her mother's before
that. One I bought in town. Side by side you get the same tomato. Save seed off both and
plant it next spring, and one comes up right while the other comes up as something else.
That's the difference between 1900 and now. It isn't tractors. A farm then could make
more of itself — its own power, fuel, fertility, buildings and replacements. Today those
same jobs are split among thirty companies.
Number 9 most people get wrong and don't find out for a year. Number 10 is not manure.
And number one took a day and forty people, and you can't buy either one.

Not one of these was a purchase. Every one was a thing the farm could do for itself. Pick
one that's still yours: save seed off one plant this fall, stack next winter's firewood
this spring, or go and find out where your own water actually comes from.
Tell me in the comments which of these your family still did, and what county. I want the
barn raisings especially — whose barn, what year, and who came. Somebody reading this was
there, and that won't be true much longer.
They didn't own more than we do. They just owed less of it to anybody else.

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