As a radical homemaker, I want to live within the bounds of our ecosystem.  But to do so, I’ve had to defy impossible odds,  break the law, and quite possibly deny my children something that has been considered a fundamental entitlement in this country.

This blog post is drawn from a talk I delivered in March at a Capitol Hill symposium titled “Rediscovering the Home Economy,” a tri-partisan effort sponsored by The Howard Center and The Front Porch Republic.  Panelists were charged with exploring the policy issues that impact households that choose to incorporate domestic self reliance skills into their household economic strategies. Since Earth day is a time to ponder ways to lead more ecologically responsible lives, I wanted to present these issues for consideration this week.

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Ula turned eight last month.  She likes to make the most of her birthday.  She usually starts outlining her plans at Christmas.  She is particularly fond of surprise parties.  For the third year in a row, she requested one.

So the day before her birthday, Saoirse baked her a cake, and I secretly emailed our friends and asked them to come over to help with the surprise effort.

Then we went downtown to a restaurant where our neighbor, Joe Mule, was making the pizza. His sauce is fantastic. There’s love in every pizza that guy makes.   Interestingly, Joe was making the best pizza when I turned eight years old.  I rode the school bus with his son when he turned eight years old.

We had a great time, then we drove back up the mountain for the surprise party.  And for the 3rd year in a row, we managed to surprise Ula.  Go figure.

Now when you get a group of parents with school-aged children together at a birthday party, chances are pretty good that they’re going to start discussing the education system.  So while kids ran wild around the house, we grown-ups sat around the kitchen table with a couple bottles of wine, beer and cake (it’s a surprisingly good combination), and began to talk about school — about the new common core, about educational  standards, testing, college preparedness, career preparedness — parent stuff.   But as I listened, I recognized that the fundamental question being asked is the same question I always hear whenever America’s future generations are discussed:

Are our children going to be able to compete in  a global economy?

As the conversation heated up, I leaned back and observed.  The birthday cake was still sitting in the middle of the table.  Eight years ago, on that day, the table had been pushed aside, and right about where the birthday cake now sat, there was a birthing pool.  It was where I delivered Ula.

And sitting around that same place in my home, eight years later, were four families; three of whom had roots in this community, who had been here roughly 30-40 years ago, celebrating our own generation’s eighth birthdays.  Reminded of this, I began asking myself what kind of future I desired for my own children.  To answer this question, I first had to ask myself what had I wanted for myself as I was coming into my adulthood?

As I mulled it over, one overpowering answer came to me.  I wanted this moment…To be celebrating my youngest daughter’s eighth birthday in the same place where we celebrated my oldest daughter’s 8th birthday, which was the same place where I celebrated my 8th birthday.

I wanted to be with my family.  I wanted to be a contributing member of the community I’ve known since childhood.   I wanted to be a part of the hills and pastures that have defined my life since I was a baby,  to drink from the streams, feast from the land, and be free to love and protect this place.

Thus, while the grown ups talked about whether our children would be prepared to compete in the global economy (and while there may be some folks for whom the global economy is a legitimate playing field),  I realized that I never wanted to compete in a global economy.  I wanted to learn how to thrive within my ecosystem.

And what do I want for my children?  I want the same.

It seems reasonable, doesn’t it?  The story of my daughter’s birthday is a simple story that many parents should be able to tell.  But in order to live this story of my daughter’s 8th birthday, a story about a life where we try to live within the bounds of our ecosystem, I had to defy impossible odds, I had to break the law twice, and quite possibly deny my children something that has been considered a fundamental entitlement in this country.

Defying the odds:

I grew up in a agricultural community in the height of the farm crisis.  Farm kids were being pushed off the land like weeds in the spray line of pesticides.  We learned it in school.  We learned it at home:  There is no money to be made farming.

But I wanted to do it.  I went to college, I went to grad school.  I was armed with the ability to leave. But I wanted to stay.  Yet there were no jobs here for me.  There were no jobs for my husband.

But we recognized something.  Learning from my Appalachian neighbors who lived very well on farms that had been labeled by the state as non viable, there are two ways to make it on the land.  One is by finding a way to turn sunshine and water into cash.  The other is by having enough domestic skills to reduce the need for cash.  If I was going to rejoin my family on the farm, the first thing my husband and I needed to do was reclaim those domestic skills and become good homemakers.  If we knew how to keep our clothes in good repair, how to cook instead of eating out, how to preserve our food and make, rather than buy the things we needed, we could survive until the day came when our farm would be more profitable.  The trick was simple:  produce more than we consumed.  This was true home economics, the kind that secured our nation’s earliest cultural stability.

This was the kind of home economics that existed long before the discipline was renamed consumer sciences, when keeping a house devolved into knowing about vacuum cleaner models, coupons, and new cleaning products.  If we joined the family farm, there wouldn’t be enough money to pay us a middle American salary.  But if we reclaimed these skills, we wouldn’t need it.  That’s how we beat the odds.

I eventually traveled around the country and interviewed other people who were making this discovery on farms, in cities, and in the suburbs, which led to a book called Radical Homemakers.  These folks were able to live happily and more sustainably, eat well, and have more time to enjoy family and community on a fraction of the the typical American income.  Most of them were enjoying a great quality of life at 200% of the federal poverty level.  The stories I gathered were of men, women and children who were figuring out how to thrive within their ecosystem.  With our culture’s reputed desire to heal the planet, one would think their choice would be an easy one.  But in truth, many of them live on the edge of the law, and on the edge of our society.

Breaking the law:

Ula’s birthday party began, of course, with her birth, which, as I mentioned, took place at home, in our kitchen.  To many, this is a shocking choice for a mother to make.  But to many radical homemakers, who share a common attribute of carefully educating themselves about their health care choices, this is the safer and more comfortable choice. This practice is only legal in very specific instances.  My only homebirth option was an illegal one.  And even if it were legal, our health insurance would not pay for it.  Nor will it pay for the less-invasive, less costly, or more holistic therapies that many radical homemakers feel are most conducive to healing.  With ObamaCare, many more of us have insurance.  But most of us are still paying out-of-pocket for our healthcare.  If we are lucky and our expenses are manageable, then we can continue to live within the ecosystem.  But those who are less fortunate may be pushed into the global economy and into a more ecologically extractive way of life, just to cover their family’s medical expenses.

Evidence of the second incident where I broke the law can be found in the frosting of the birthday cake.  To protect my oldest daughter’s innocence, I will confess it was me who went to the neighboring dairy farm to illegally buy the raw milk that we whipped with butter and sugar.  I believe that raw milk is a safer, healthier product for my family.  I believe that supporting the farm down the road who is grazing their cows is better for the planet than buying milk from factory farms that has been shipped in from far away.  But by law, without exorbitantly cost prohibitive measures, my neighbor is not allowed to sell me the product his farm produces daily.  By law, I would have to drive three hours to legally obtain this food for my family.

As Radical Homemakers, our attention is on the health and well being of our families, our ecosystem, and our local economy.  Thus, a critical issue for us is food sovereignty — our right to culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods.

We – those of us who grow the food and eat the food — believe we should have the right to define our food and agriculture system — not the markets and corporations.  And we want our food system to derive largely from our local ecosystems.  We want to keep genetically modified organisms from our seed supply; we want produce and waterways free of pesticides and chemicals, we want to be free to make the healthiest choices for our children, we want the right to produce our own food if we choose, no matter where we live.  We want local entrepreneurial urban and rural farmers to have the right to produce it for us.  We shouldn’t have to be in violation of the law to achieve these simple aims.

Fundamental entitlement I’ve had to deny my children.

Last year, after I paid my family’s health care costs, our income for a family of four was $20,000.  I really would like it to be higher. I’m working on it. But, I can do a lot for that.  I can give my child a birthday party.  I can  pay the property and school taxes, put homegrown chicken on the table for Sunday dinner, and then serve my family nourishing soups from the leftovers.  I can teach my children, love them, show them how to be in business for themselves.  I cannot send them to college.

But I’m not the only one.  Apparently there have been lots of parents who could not afford to send their children to college.  But they wanted them to be able to compete in the global economy.  So their children were encouraged to borrow money, or in my neck of the woods, the family farm was mortgaged or sold.

The average college debt is currently somewhere in the mid twenty thousands.  I’ve met many people with debts double, triple, and quadruple that figure.  They find me through my website to tell me their stories.  Like me, they just want to be able to be home with their families.  They want to celebrate their children’s eighth birthdays in a community where they will celebrate their grandchildren’s eighth birthdays.

If they were lucky enough to be able to complete college, it is true.  They are equipped to compete in a global economy.  And with the debt they’ve incurred, many have no choice but to do so.  They cannot stay home to care for their babies, they cannot dream of starting their own independent family business – whether it is a pizza parlor, a farm, a craft business, a consignment shop, a brewpub, an independent medical practice or law practice. They are not free to create any of the things that make our most vibrant, economically and ecologically sustainable communities so memorable….because they are forced to compete in the global economy.

And because they are so commanded by the global economy, too many  are barred from the joy of taking care of their own children, or of participating in their local civic organizations – the volunteer ambulance, the fire department, the special interest groups that protect our resources, the church groups that help us to support each other.   In short, they are not competing in the global economy.  They are trapped by it.

So in honor of Earth Day, these are some of the major issues that many families who are trying to live in harmony with the earth face: The cost of education.  Expensive health care.  Food sovereignty.

But we keep going.  Our numbers keep growing.  We keep making connections, finding ways to help each other, building community, finding ways to help teach our children not to be competitive in the global economy, but instead how to thrive within our ecosystem, how to build a life that falls within the carrying capacity of our earth.

If you get a chance, please check out the homepage of TheRadicalHomemaker.net.  There you will see a map of radical homemaking groups across the country.  I get letters from new groups forming almost every week.  The number of pins on the map is expanding. These are men and women who are reaching out to each other in their local communities.  Like me, they want to feel connected.  And when it is time for their child’s eighth birthday, they want to have multiple generations of family and friends come together to celebrate.  Because when life is rich with generations of family and loved ones, it is easy to live in harmony with the earth.