------Original Message------
From: "Andy Lee & Pat Foreman" <goodearth@rockbridge.net>
To: sanet-mg@cals.ncsu.edu
Sent: April 6, 2000 12:56:14 AM GMT
Subject: Lion's Micro-farming fairy tale
<lion> > Two-to-Five acres is a general rule of thumb for
<lion> > obtaining a median income
<lion> > without excessive work-load, by a ruggedly independent
<lion> > farmworker who
<lion> > will not depend on hired help.
<Andy> Dear Lion, I know your message was directed to Liz, but <Andy> since you've placed
<Andy> it on SANET rather than to her privately, I'd like to make <Andy> a few comments.
<Andy> First, I think your advice is worthless in many instances <Andy> too numerous to go into now.
No, No! Please do go into them. Which specific advice was worthless? If they are numerous, surely
you can cite some few
specifics and instances. Because of the emotionally loaded words and deliberate vaguenesses it
appears that you are trying to stifle communications between myself and others by unfounded ridicule
of my work. So, to correct my impression that this is not the purpose of your words, you owe it to
me to produce specifics, which I will then challenge YOUR ASSERTIONS with independent third-party
verifications that my statements have been confirmed by disinterested research publically available
on websites maintained by persons without any connection to me.
<Andy> You are flirting with disaster, based on the actual level <Andy> of knowledge that you
display. Your off the cuff discourse <Andy> reads well, but like a fairy tale. In reality, none of
us <Andy> are "rugged" enough to make $60,000 as you claim on two <Andy> acres, working alone.
I once made $16,000 in two weeks selling my home-made software from a 12'x16' room, and once made
$20,000 in two days in a two-acre exhibition hall with a computer show I put on. It doesn't prove
that money can or cannot be made on two acres of agricultural land, but it proves that different
people have different ways of using space PLUS their intelligence PLUS materials to make money in
ways that YOU have no experience sufficient to properly judge THEIR qualifications. "Disaster" is a
perjoritive word. What is the nature of the disaster? "Fairy tale" is a ridiculing word intended to
demean and discredit.
"In reality, NONE OF US" is your admission that you lack the imagination to conceive it is even
possible. Your opinion is not a certification of what is possible to persons who possess sufficient
imagination to conceive things beyond your powers of comprehension.
<lion> > Employees are a problem wih chicken
<lion> > slaughtering, as federal regulations do not allow
<lion> > farmer-processed chickens
<lion> > if they have employees. It might be necessary to
<lion> > maintain two > separate
<lion> > businesses (including all the paperwork involved) if
<lion> > butchered chickens
<lion> > are offered to customers, with you alone handling the
<lion> > chickens.
<Andy> Lion, please go back to school before you hurt yourself.
<Andy> Federal regulations FSIS 90-492 which you are probably
<Andy> referring to says nothing of the sort.
The information I referred to was obtained reading the SAN website, host to SANET-MG. If the
information is obsolete, or an error on my part, how would I "HURT MYSELF" obeying imaginary
regulations requiring me to be my own butcher of the chickens I grow? Again you chose to use
perjoritive language in phrasing your statement. The repetition of such ridicule is clearly showing
a pattern of intending to drive a wedge between me and other readers who might chose to ponder my
writings as to potential applicability of my ideas to their lives. Just because you chose DRAMATIC
language does not mean that I or anyone else is in iminent danger of "HURTING THEMSELVES" with
"WORTHLESS" "FAIRY TALES".
<lion> > Lest anyone accuse me of promoting a "get-rich-quick"
<lion> > plan or "easy money" scheme, let me repeat what I have
<lion> > been publishing consistently for the past two years:
<Andy> Lion, many of your ideas are good, but they don't fit
<Andy> together the way you think they do. It would be to your
What do you know about the way I think. You have already confessed that your ability to
conceptualize ("In reality, NONE OF US") is limited in following my logic as described in my
published words. If I did not detect active hostility on your part, due to the ridicule and
perjoritive choices you made in language, I might feel motivated to believe that I failed to express
myself in language most easily comprehended by a fraction of my intended audience. I might act on
that feeling by composing an alternative version expressing myself in different words to help get
the ideas across the gulf of misunderstanding.
<Andy> advantage to spend another two years actually practicing
<Andy> what you are preaching, during which time you would no
<Andy> doubt discover that it's not as easy as you make it seem.
And how did you derive the number "two years". When I used it I was measuring full lifetime annual
crop cycles, plus perennials propagation-identification-culturing, plus miscellaneous technical
skills which take fairly known periods of time for student absorption. You just seem to have picked
a number out of the air. I have never in any writings attempted to make it seem "easy" or "hard". I
tell it like it is. To some it might seem "hard" what you are saying "looks easy".
<lion> > Fiberglas panels can be transparent,
<lion> > translucent, or opaque; assembled into quonset-huts,
<lion> > domes, pentagons, octogons, silo-shaped, A-frames,
<lion> > cubes and rectangles, as well as carport-type roofed
<lion> > open spaces.
<Andy> One of the books you should consider reading is the BOCA
<Andy> or CABO building codes. You cannot build legal housing
<Andy> from Fiberglas panels using the methods you describe.
I have not written anything on Sanet-MG advocated using fiberglas for HOUSING. I suggested it had
use for greenhouses, cloches, sheds, carports, animal barns, temporary buildings/covering for
storage purposes. Not only are you vague in details about criticisms (you said "First, I think your
advice is worthless in many instances too numerous to go into now."), but then you go on to DISTORT
what I ACTUALLY DID SAY, to create a straw man you knock to the ground with your superhuman wit and
intelligence.
You are not only besmirching me, but you are raising yourself up AT MY EXPENSE AS YOUR WHIPPING BOY!
Tell me what regulations for HOUSING have to do with the applications I wrote about?
<lion> > I accept and welcome constructive criticism and error
<lion> > correction. If you see something in my writings which
<lion> > I stated badly or is just plain wrong, I will be happy
<lion> > to make the corrections and attribute your help in
<lion> > fixing the error.
<Andy> Thank you for the invitation to speak candidly about your
<Andy> ramblings. If we are to take you seriously, and I hope we
"RAMBLINGS"? "IF WE ARE TO TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY"?
<Andy> will be able to someday, you really need to try these
<Andy> things first. Otherwise you are simply parroting
<Andy> information you garnered from books of other people's
<Andy> experiences. You have no way of knowing if the parts will
Learning from books and other people's experiences is a legitimate path to knowledge. Everything I
know about the moon landings and the middle ages was learned this way because it is the ONLY way to
learn some things. But once things have been learned by "third-hand" knowledge they can be exercised
to become "first-hand" knowledge.
<Andy> fit together in some grand $30,000 per acre scheme as you
<Andy> claim.
You are making an inadvertent confession that you neither have the ability nor the knowledge to
conceive of such an accomplishment yourself, THEREFORE you project your own limitations on all
others, that everything that is impossible for you is impossible for everybody. Keep your
inadequacies to yourself.
<Andy> Your promises remind me of a place called Kona Kia (sp?)
<Andy> Gardens in Berkley, CA years ago. They claimed to be
<Andy> earning $50,000 (or maybe it was $250,000)annually on 1/2
<Andy> acre of grow beds. They aren't in business any more.
<Andy> Another example is a lady in New England who claimed to be
<Andy> making $256,000 per acre from her 1/4 solar greenhouse.
<Andy> She's not in business anymore, either. Then,
<Andy> there's the guy in Florida who said you could make $90,000
<Andy> from a 2,000 square foot greenhouse, growing annual
<Andy> tomatoes. He's not in business anymore, either.
You have failed to point out a causal-connection between claims made and going out of business. 90%
of all businesses filing new business licences are said to be out of business in five years. I am
sure these people had high hopes but up jumped the devil.
I cannot confirm or disprove your vague statements. For all I know you made them up, the same way
you made up out of thin air some claim that I promote fiberglas HOUSING?
Even if all the facts you just stated were true as you stated, the end of the story might well be
that these people made their $250,000/yr for four years, became millionairs and retired? The way you
tell it one is supposed to jump to the gloomy conclusion, but there are insufficient facts to
support either gloomy or happy endings to these tales.
<Andy> And, finally, I think of Ward Sinclair, one of America's
<Andy> most knowledgeable and skilled market gardeners and finest
<Andy> ag writers. In one of his articles, he wrote with great
<Andy> pride that he had joined the ranks of the top 1% of
<Andy> America's farmers, because he had finally been able to
<Andy> earn $10,000 per acre. He did that with a tractor, a
<Andy> rotary tiller, his wife, and lots of hired help.
Mixing Apples & Oranges. $10,000 PER ACRE spread over many acres is not chicken-feed, and deserves
to be in the top 1%. If he had a limited palette of two-to-five acres to work with he would have to
exercise his creativity and energy in different ways to meet his family annual financial goal.
Again, you are telling this story as if the gloomy ending is the most natural supposition.
<Andy> Lion, I don't think your promise of $30,000 per acre is
I never used the figure "$30,000 PER ACRE." Two-to-five acres is the phrase I use persistently,
repeatedly and consistantly.
<Andy> going to happen, for you or anyone else using the methods
<Andy> you describe. However, your combinations of certain crops
<Andy> make sense, so you've got that going for you. Why not take
<Andy> some of those combinations you've developed and put them
<Andy> to the test. You can rent or borrow land if you don't have
<Andy> your own. Or, get yourself hired as a farm manager some
<Andy> where and start demonstrating this stuff. Once you've
<Andy> proven, on the ground, that your ideas work, then publish
<Andy> them.
<Andy> Regards,
<Andy> Andy Lee
Been there, done that. and that too.
Hey, if you don't want to read my stuff, that don't break my heart, just don't tell lies about what
I said when the actual words are archived to compare what I did say versus what you say that I said.
Signed, disgruntledly postal, Lion Kuntz
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