Posted on 05/04/2015 4:17:35 PM PDT by rey
Rebecca Black and Roy Smith, both 44 and native Californians, get to work soon after sunrise. By 7:30 a.m., they’re busy in the cottage they rent on Old Redwood Highway in Cotati, where they live with their two daughters, Siena Smith, 11, and Lillian Black, 12.
This morning, Smith skins and guts a 13-year-old goat, chops up the liver to feed the cats and dogs and saves the best parts for a family meal. Meanwhile, in the backyard, Black tans the goat’s hide.
In this super eco-driven household, almost nothing goes to waste. Nearly everything is recycled and everyone is connected in some way to farming practices that are beneficial for the environment and that provide working models for kindred spirits to follow. Even their daughters take part. This morning, Lillian sits at the dining room table and composes a story on her laptop about Sonoma County apples for the Slow Food Russian River Convivium Website.
Thirty minutes from their Cotati home, on a 10-acre parcel located on Middle Two Rock Road three miles west of downtown Petaluma, Smith and Black raise pigs, sheep, chickens, geese and guinea fowl that manage to look after themselves much of the day and all night long. The heritage breed pigs, Gloucestershire old spots and large blacks, forage and fend without human supervision. They cut down tall grasses, drop manure and work it into the soil with their hooves.
“We harness pig power,” Smith says. “A pig will do all the work of a tractor and more. You don’t have to ride it, use gas or pollute the air. They’re very efficient, very smart and very lovable. Sometimes I think of them as miniature hippos. Like hippos, they love mud.”
F
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
So can CA support this type of lifestyle for 40 million? Many rural Californians grow pot.
And you wouldn’t believe what pot growers do to the water supply.
No problem with this. However, it is not possible for most of the world’s people to live this way. Not at more than a bare subsistence level, and even then probably 2/3 would have to die off.
“”With picks and shovels, he creates mounds and ditches that prevent rapid run-off and that help to disperse the water. Gradually, it sinks into the ground where it filters into a subterranean reservoir built by nature itself. He and Rebecca plan to build ponds that will give them even more water.””
Only until the Department of the Interior or whatever nosy rosy government agency gets wind of it!!
Their children have different last names? Oh, that’s right, marriage is inconvenient.
According to the story, they met because of a mutual interest in homeschool their daughters and became a couple. It doesn’t say whether they were divorced or widowed at the time.
“It doesn’t say whether they were divorced or widowed at the time.”
Not that it would matter much.
“This morning, Smith skins and guts a 13-year-old goat,...”
Yipes, how old his dog? Anyone seen him lately??
Would the hogs pig out on the pot?
So people who have been widowed should never remarry?
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