Natural Resources: The Struggle between Democracy and Liberalism

Husky heavy oil upgrader at Lloydminister

For thousands of years human beings lived in very small communities, commonly referred to by anthropologists as “band societies.” These were egalitarian, democratic societies, based on the principles of reciprocity. Given this long history, one could argue that this is the normal social structure for human beings. The basic moral principles of these societies were altruism and solidarity. Land and natural resources were common to all.

    In these democratic societies there were differences in personal property, but there was no concept of private property in the means of production, which is the standard today. Everyone had access to natural resources and was guaranteed adequate food, clothing and shelter. Customs, rules and moral codes were established on the basic democratic principle of utilitarianism. Political decisions were made by popular participation. Anthropologists have noted that in these societies, sharing among the group increases when there is a shortage of food or a threat of starvation.

    In all these societies, land and natural resources belonged to the people as a whole. The different communities often had territories where they operated, recognized by others, but even here there was no strict territorial notion of ownership. These band and tribal societies have been held up as the earliest examples of democracies. The fundamental value was the recognition of the equal worth of all human beings.  (See Fried, 1967; Hindess and Hirst, 1973; Lewellen, 1992)

Unequal access to land and resources

    Change started to come with the neolithic revolution, the development of modern agriculture. Through the use of improved staple crops, the introduction of draft animals, and the use of irrigation, those who farmed the land were able to produce an economic surplus. The storage and distribution of cereal grains, in particular, allowed the development of a social division of labour. This new social system first occurred in Mesopotamia. 
 
    We see the creation of social classes, the fundamental division between the political, religious and economic elite, who had some form of special use rights over land and resources, and the majority who were the producers: serfs, slaves, peasants, peons, independent farmers who paid a tax, those under debt bondage, etc.. It was common that the producing class was forced to surrender 50% of the crop that their labour had produced. This was called “rent,” surrendered supposedly for the right to have use of the land. However, in reality this was a system of appropriation of the “surplus labour” from the agricultural producers, the surplus over and above what was necessary for the survival of the producing family.

    In these new hierarchical societies, where the farming classes were grossly exploited and often faced starvation, the political state became necessary in order to enforce the social division of labour. With clear class divisions, laws and rules were established and implemented by the dominant classes. The military, the penal system, and the death penalty became central characteristics of these states. It is in Mesopotamia that we first see the use of organized religion as an important ideological institution in the defence of hierarchy and inequality. (Bellwood, 2005; Bottero, 1992; Flannery and Marcus, 2012; Gamble, 2013; Leick, 2001; Weaver, 2003)

    Rebellions by the producing classes had to be contained. But while access to land and resources was unequal, the concept of individual ownership was virtually non existent. As territorial states were developed, land and natural resources became state property, to be allocated by the ruling political elite. (See Harris, 1977; Balandier, 1970; Krader, 1968)

    In Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, the decentralized political system led to the development of the feudal system of ownership and use of land and other resources. Local lords and tenant farmers had rights to land; the serfs paid a rent to their landlords, in the form of products, labour time and then later money. But there was no private ownership of land, and serfs had rights to the use of land.

    The shift to private ownership of land and resources came during the early rise of capitalism, the period commonly referred to as mercantilism, roughly between 1500 and 1750. Mercantilism was characterized by the formation of the territorial state, the development of the modern state political system, and the expansion of European imperialism and colonialism around the world. The territorial state became the new owner of all resources, and the absolutist kings and queens granted land and other natural resources to privileged individuals.

Cameco Corporation uranium mine

Land rights and imperialism

    For Canadians, what is most important is the changes that were occurring in England. The Norman invasion of 1066 began the process of establishing a more centralized political order. William the Conqueror laid claim to all of England by the right of conquest. As the absolute sovereign, he then allocated all the land of the country to a special group of aristocrats. These lords in turn granted land use to other subsidiary lords, then down to the tenants who actually did the farming. Peasants had the right to land use, for which product and services were rendered as rent. But there was still no concept of private ownership of land; lords could not buy and sell land and resources as if they were private property. The Crown still held absolute property rights.

    However, the landlords strove always to increase their control over the land. Parliament was originated as an instrument by which the landlords used their political power to gain the right to private ownership of land and resources from the absolute monarch. By the 17th century men with property had used their complete control of Parliament to establish a new legal system which granted them private property rights. Whereas the feudal system had been based on relationships between persons, by the 17th century this had been replaced by the capitalist concept of the exchange of things. (Hindess and Hirst, 1975; MacPherson, 1962; Vogt, 1999)                                                           
    The other major development in Europe over the mercantile period was modern imperialism and colonialism. England and the other major European nation-states embarked on extensive military assaults around the world. This involved not only the subjugation of the majority of the people of the world but also the imposition of absolutist colonial regimes. In all the conquered areas of the world, which included almost all of the non-white and non-Christian peoples, the colonial powers ended all systems of common ownership of land and resources. As one political economist noted, these acts of piracy “signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.” Not only did the imperial states seize all land and resources, individuals and their families arrived from Europe bent on grabbing “free land” from the indigenous populations. (See Weaver, 2003)                                                            
    Those of us who live in western Canada know this from our own history. On May 2, 1670 the British Crown created the Hudson Bay Company and gave the company “the sole trade and commerce of all these seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks and sounds ... that lie within the entrance of the straits, commonly called Hudson Straits and the possession of all such lands and territories not already possessed by other subjects or the subject of any other Christian prince or state.” The mercantile corporation was declared to be the “true and absolute lords and proprietors of the entire territory.” It mattered not who lived on this land.
   
Liberalism and the right to steal land and resources

    The European monarchs had no problem justifying their conquest and domination of other peoples around the world. The indigenous people were described as barbarians, were not Christians, and were by definition inferior. The Europeans were bringing Christianity and civilization. It took a while for the Church in Rome to determine that the non-white people around the world were actually human beings. The Church then ordered an end the practice of indiscriminately killing these people; instead , they were to become slaves and serfs to work in agriculture, forestry and mining.

    But some English capitalists felt the need for a moral justification beyond conquest for seizing other people’s land and resources and ending their freedom. The most influential defence of the new capitalist imperialism was set forth by John Locke (1637-1704), generally considered to be the founder of liberalism and liberal political economy. He set down the ideological justification for individual rights, the right to own private property and the justification for imperialism and colonialism in The Second Treatise of Government (1690) and Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691).                                                                
    Locke argued that England had the right to seize land abroad as their settlers and business enterprises would be productively using the land and resources. The land not under cultivation by the indigenous population was considered “waste land” and could be seized at will. But Locke went farther in advancing the liberal view of private property. Since the indigenous populations of North America cultivated their lands in a collective or democratic manner, Locke argued that they had no claim to it. Under the principles of liberalism, those who farmed could only establish a legal claim if the land or resources were used on an individual basis; it had to be enclosed and fenced off by individuals. Since this was not the case in North America, new local governments, enterprises and settlers were free to take any land that was being used by the indigenous populations.                            
    Equally important to establishing the liberal capitalist view of private property, Locke argued that those individuals and enterprises which seized land and natural resources did not require the consent of others or the community in general. North America was “wilderness” or “vacant space” and any use of the land by colonizers would be a beneficial improvement. He also stressed that it was not necessary for those who seized this land and resources to pay any compensation to the general public. Furthermore, the indigenous populations could only claim the right to use the land and resources if they were selling their product on the world market.  

    Finally, Locke argued, government was needed to establish rules to defend the rights of the owners of private property. This is the first task of governments. It is only logical that those who participate in politics, those who can be classed as “citizens,” who can vote and  hold a seat in Parliament, is limited to men who own property. (Arneil, 1996; Macpherson, 1992)

Saskatchewan Potash Corporation

The democratic reaction

    The traditional liberal view of ownership and control of natural resources by a small group of men did not gone unchallenged. Over time we have seen the struggle to revive the democratic tradition. In the political area, men without property mobilized in a broad fashion to achieve equal political rights with those who had property and the right to form trade unions. Those who were slaves struggled to achieve freedom. Non-whites fought to obtain the same rights as whites. Colonized peoples took up arms to achieve independence from the European empires and establish their own governments. Women continue to struggle to be recognized as persons with equal rights with men.                              
    As democracy spread across the world  the majority who did not own private property in the means of production took political action, formed political parties, eventually formed governments, and pushed for economic and social rights and greater equality.  Part of this broad democratic struggle  has included the demand that natural resources belong to the people as a whole. Elected governments, with sovereign power, can redefine ownership and how resources are developed and used. It is clear that in the period since the rise of capitalism and liberalism, the central political struggle around the world has been between the supporters of the liberal order of privileges for the few and those who support the democratic value of equal rights for all.

References
   
Arneil, Barbara. 1996. John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press.

Balandier, Georges. 1970. Political Anthropology. London: Allen Lane the Penguin Press.

Bellwood, Peter. 2005. First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Bottero. Jean. 1992.  Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning and the Gods.  Chicago :University of Chicago Press.

Flannery, Kent and Joyce Marcus. 2012. The Creation of Inequality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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Fried, Morton H. 1967. The Evolution of Political Society. New York: Random House.

Gamble, Clive. 2013. Settling the Earth: The Archeology of Deep Human History. New York: Cambridge University Press. 

Harris, Marvin. 1978. Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures. New York: Random House.

Hindness, Barry and Paul Q. Hirst. 1975. Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Krader, Lawrence. 1968. The Formation of the State. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Leick, Gwendolyn. 2001. Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. London: Penguin Books.

Lewellen, Ted C. 1992. Political Anthropology: An Introduction. London: Bergin & Garvey.

Macpherson, C. B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. New York: Oxford University Press.

Megarry, Tim. 1995. Society in Prehistory: The Origins of Human Culture. New York: New York University Press.

Vogt, Roy. 1999. Who’s Property: The Deepening Conflict Between Private Property and Democracy in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Weaver, John C. 2003. The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650 - 1900. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.

Leamington, Ontario: Growing Tomatoes in the Era of Free Trade

H. J. Heinz plant in Leamington

Southwestern Ontario is the historic home of Canadian tomato growers. The bulk of the crop goes to processing, and since 1909 the dominant corporation had been H. J. Heinz, a food giant based in Pittsburgh. But in 2013 the Heinz Corporation was bought by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (26%) and 3G Capital (51%), based in Brazil. It was soon announced that they were planning to close their plant in Leamington. The story has been a snapshot of what has happened to the manufacturing industry in Ontario following the free trade agreements with the United States.

The free trade economy
In 1988 Canadians were informed that their government, headed by Brian Mulroney, had been negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S. government. The push for this had come from organizations representing big business and finance on both sides of the border. The Action Canada Network was formed, representing many democratic organizations who opposed the free trade agreement with the United States. Along with many Canadian political economists, they warned that given the reality of Canada’s branch-plant economy, any free trade agreement would likely lead to many plants closing and their operations moved back to the United States. But Canada’s political leadership pushed through the “New Economic Constitution of North America,” as U.S. President Ronald Reagan termed it.  Over the next 25 years Ontario communities saw factory after factory shut down. The food industry was not immune to this development.

The “free trade agenda” is part of the new political economy commonly known as neoliberalism, a return to the open free market system that existed before the Great Depression and the social democratic governments that dominated the political agenda for thirty years following World War II. The liberal package included the repeal of `populist`national policies which were aimed at promoting domestic manufacturing, the privatization of state owned enterprises, deregulation of the economy, reversing legislation which protected workers`rights and trade unions, cuts to social programs and the repeal of progressive tax systems designed to promote greater equality. 

The goal of the organizations representing the corporate sector was to increase their rate of profit. They wanted the right to produce anywhere in the world, sell their products anywhere, and not be subject to any government controls on the movement of their products or capital. In more recent years, with the world economy characterized by overproduction, excess capacity and limited profitable investment opportunities, the corporate sector has sought to open investment opportunities in all areas of the public sector, including health, education, social services, social housing and government services.

Free trade comes to Leamington

Tomato harvest near Leamington

  In 2013 the new owners of Heinz announced that they were going to shut down the plant in Leamington. 3G Capital had a reputation for taking over companies, laying off many workers, and putting top priority on raising the profit ratio. Warren Buffett, the other major partner in the new ownership, said that the Canadian plant was `not efficient`: it relied on fresh tomatoes grown in Canada, bypassing cheaper tomato paste that could be imported from producers in Mexico and elsewhere.

Was there an alternative? Sam Diab, the plant manager at the Leamington operation, found several investors in the Toronto area and put forth a plan to keep the plant open and operating.  Changes had to be made to continue production under the free trade model.

(1) There would be a major downsizing in the plant`s operation. The regular work force would be initially reduced from 740 to 250. The workers, primarily women, were represented by a trade union, United Food and Commercial Workers. Production workers who kept their jobs would see their hourly wages reduced from $25 to $16. The union accepted the changes as there was no alternative.

(2) The business in its new form survived because of a regulation under the Canadian Agricultural Products Act. This specified that tomato juice sold in Canada must be made from fresh tomatoes and not paste. Heinz had 50% of the Canadian tomato juice market and did not want to give this up. They negotiated a five year contract with the new owners, now known as Highbury Canco. Business interests complained that this type of “trade distorting regulation” was supposed to be eliminated under the terms of the existing free trade agreements. Such regulations will likely be eliminated if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement is ratified.

(3) The number of tomato growers has declined since the plant changed ownership. In 2013 Heinz had contracts with 119 tomato growers; that was down to only 10 in 2015. The tonnage of tomatoes grown in this area of Ontario declined from 555,092 in 2012 to 432,175 in 2015. There remain two other tomato and vegetable processor in the region, ConAgra Foods, a U.S. food giant  in Dresden, and Canadian-owned Sun-Brite Foods which is located near Leamington. Vegetables are also processed in Quebec by Bonduelle North America, a French corporation.

(4) Highbury Canco wants to expand the company`s production by introducing a new class of tomatoes, to be called “industrial paste.” They argue that this could add an additional 250,000 tons of tomatoes and 25 - 30 more growers. Farmers who lost their contracts have had to switch to corn-soybean production, with lower returns. Of course, tomatoes in this new fourth class would bring farmers less money, as the industrial paste would be sold bulk to other processors at a discount. Regular tomato paste in 2014 brought farmers $110 per ton. The company argues that the new class would bring farmers at least $95 per ton, the paste price in 2013.

(5) Standing in the way of total free trade in this case would be the Ontario marketing boards. The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has not approved the introduction of a new fourth class of industrial paste tomatoes. Neither has the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers. They do not have the economic power of the supply management marketing boards (like milk, poultry and eggs), but as marketing agents they do have considerable influence. They are there to provide some power for farmers when negotiating with agribusiness. Corporate interests, and their liberal academic supporters, expect that the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will eventually put an end to the influence of farmer-controlled marketing boards.

(6) In order to try to keep businesses in Canada, governments have increasingly offered them subsidies. Leamington granted Highbury Canco subsidized municipal water and re-assessed the value of the plant, cutting their property taxes in half. The city council abolished all development charges for building construction. The provincial government “invested” $2.5 million in Highbury Canco to help it expand production lines. Such practices have become a normal part of business under free trade. Most people are aware of the huge subsidies that are given to automobile corporations.

What is it like to work in a manufacturing corporation operating under the new free trade, free market regime? Of course workers were not happy when their wages were cut as at Leamington. But they lined up to work at the new plant as there were very limited alternatives.

We can get an idea by looking at the comments posted by workers at the Kraft Heinz plant, as reported at .www.glassdoor.ca. “Previous company was good to work for but not 3G.” “Deep cost cutting.” “New 3G culture . . . very focused on the bottom line.” “Was great place to work . . . until 3G/Heinz merger.” “Daily grind, week after week.” “Great people and horrible Senior Management.” “Go back to Brazil, please.”

Conclusion
The experience of the tomato industry in Southwest Ontario is a case study of manufacturing in Canada under the new free trade regime. As the democratic opposition warned, the free trade regime has resulted in a major loss of manufacturing plants and good jobs in Canada. It is widely expected that the new Trans-Pacific Partnership will only make matters worse.

There is also a new factor on the horizon: climate change. As weather systems become more unstable and destructive, a crisis is expected to develop in the production and distribution of food. There will be greater pressure on Canada to expand our own production of food, especially fruits and vegetables. It is likely that we will need to move to a production system similar to that used during World War II, with significant government intervention. This would be the opposite of the free trade model. A growing crisis will provoke a new political struggle.

I Am Not Dead Yet

Our farm at Bulyea.

What happened? I have not posted on my blog since last June. That would seem to suggest that I am no longer around. But I am still here. However, I have been negligent in letting my readers know what is happening. I do have some excuses, but they may seem a bit lame.

The Farm
At the farm this summer, I once again had to face the problem of flooding and my inability to win the war with the beavers. We would take the major dam down, and they would just build it up overnight. There were too many beavers around, and the eradication process was unsuccessful. We made some tries.

The beavers have built a huge lodge in the lake which has formed in our back yard. Beaver experts (trappers) who have seen it say it is the largest they have ever seen. You cannot use dynamite any more since the events of September 2001. Then there once was the old tried and true farmer explosives made from ammonia nitrate and diesel fuel. Again, it is not a good idea to use this method for it will likely bring down the forces of law and order on your head.

So we went to the local gun shop and bought the latest explosives for destroying beaver dams and lodges. It is a chemical mix which comes in a relatively small plastic jar. The ingredients are carefully mixed simply by rotating the jar which is then placed on the dam or lodge. At a distance of more than 100 yards you shoot the jar with a 22 rifle. I checked it out on the Internet, and videos show that it is supposed to work. The experts do get impressive results.

Not having a good 22 rifle, I asked a farmer I know who does a lot of hunting to help me out. He obliged. We launched his fishing boat in our back yard and paddled out to the beaver lodge. The new lake at this point is about six feet deep. We set the plastic jar with the explosives, paddled back to shore, and my friend got out his 22 rifle with long rifle shells and a scope. A few shots that he took hit the jar, it jumped up, but did not explode.

So we went back in the boat to see what happened. One shell went right through the jar and out the back, but no explosion. We agreed that it probably did not go off because there was not enough force behind the shell. My friend went home and got his deer rifle and we tried that with a new jar of supposedly explosive materials. However, his scope was off and at that distance he failed to hit the jar after about 10 rounds. So we put off further action until next spring.

In addition
In any case, day to day coping with the flooding, and work finishing off the bathroom in the renovated residence,  took a great deal of my time over the summer and fall. I have also been doing research on my new project, the impact of climate change on agriculture and food. I have done quite a lot research and written drafts, but to date I have not published any of it.

I returned at the end of October to Peterborough, Ontario where I will be spending the winter; I will return to Saskatchewan and the farm in early April 2016. Right now I am reconstructing my web page, and the new program I am using is much more complicated that the one I originally used, and it is taking me a lot longer to learn how to do the work. But I will be done soon, and in early January I will once again be posting on my blog. If you are on Facebook, you will see that I am still commenting on the world of war and political economy.

The big change                                                                                             

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool No. 1, Bulyea

Stephen Harper and his gang of mean spirited conservatives are gone. He told an American right wing group one time that “you will not recognize Canada when I am finished.”  He tried his best to move Canada into the right wing conservative camp. But Canadians are basically middle of the road liberals who are not really interested in making the rich richer and getting tough with the poor. While the large majority of Canadians come from a Christian background, most want to have a generally secular society. The mainstream is not interested in fundamentalist religions and their politics. It seems to me that the majority of Canadians are satisfied to just follow along with the Americans as long as the Democrats are in office.

I am one of the solid majority of Canadians who are quite happy that Stephen Harper and his gang are gone and has been replaced with a modern liberal. Right now I am enjoying the Justin Trudeau honeymoon. I am actually quite pleased with the people he has put in the cabinet, especially the women. They are such a contrast and improvement over what we just experienced. .It is going to be a pleasant Christmas this year. The new Trudeau seems to be ready to lead and has indicated that his government is going to do what it pledged in the election campaign. His government will find the money to provide adequate support for the 25,000 political refugees from Syria. As he has said, “Canada is back!”

This is all bad news for the New Democratic Party which is stuck with Thomas Mulcair as leader. He is too much of a neoliberal. They are now down to 14% in the polls. The only way they are going to recover is to get rid of Mulcair and move back to being a traditional democratic socialist party. It wouldn’t hurt if they shifted to being an anti-war party.

In Saskatchewan there will be a provincial election in April 2016. The NDP has a very weak,  neoliberal leader, who follows the precedent set by Roy Romanow, Lorne Calvert and Dwaine Lingenfelter. All across the advanced capitalist world, electors are turning against the social democrats for moving to the right to embrace the neoliberal agenda, including structural adjustment policies. Until the Saskatchewan NDP faces up to this reality, they will be a weak opposition. They are down to 30% in the polls and are currently looking at another major defeat in April.   

Why We Need Good Libraries

For the past two years I have been researching the impact of climate change on food and agriculture. The other day I searched the University of Regina Library for five serious books that I wanted to read. They had none of them. I checked out Amazon, and of course they had them, but the cost of the books ranged between $100 and $200. It is not at all unusual to find that the science books cost even more – up to $400 to $500. That’s why we need good libraries.

However, the trend across Canada is for libraries to buy fewer and fewer books. Some seem to have virtually stopped five or ten years ago. Libraries are also getting rid of books, or putting them in warehouses where access if very difficult. I noticed last year in Peterborough that I was almost the only person in the stacks at Trent University looking for books. Everyone else was on the Internet, which apparently has all the info that anyone needs to have.

Then of course there is the Stephen Harper government which is shutting down and destroying science libraries and research programs. Book burners.

The Library of Congress

Main Reading Room, Jefferson Building.

Here is a real library, from Margaret Truman:

“The Library of Congress ... houses more than 115 million ‘items’ on 532 miles of bookshelves in three large buildings: more than 17 million books. ... There are 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps and 47 million manuscripts. ..The LC has holdings in 460 languages. It has four thousand employees, some of whom serve overseas in offices in Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, New Delhi, Islamabad, Jakarta and Nairobi, in acquisition offices in Moscow and Tokyo.” (Yes, I am re-reading her Murder at the Library of Congress.)

The LC has a huge staff of professionals and scholars whose job it is to search anywhere in the world for good collections and try to acquire them. Even purchase them. But then, the USA is the centre of the unipolar world.

I am pleased to report that when I was a graduate student in Washington, D.C. I worked full time in the LC, 1957-61. I started working in the stacks, then moved up to the Reference Department in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building, the only one at the time. From there I advanced to the Manuscripts Division, where I worked in the Presidential Papers section. It was charged with cataloging all the Presidents’ papers which were part of the LC collection. I worked as an Archivist-Historian on the papers of Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge and Abraham Lincoln. Not a bad job, eh? Left it to join the U.S. Foreign Service and work at the Department of State.

Domesticated Animals

The Agricultural Revolution also created a revolution in the production of meat for human consumption. According to recent estimates, the world can now boast of more than a billion cattle, about a billion pigs and sheep, and around 25 billion chickens. This past summer I was given the opportunity of watching some of these animals domesticated by us Homo sapiens.

In late September I was walking through a pasture about a mile east of our place, land owned by our neighbour Marianne. There were about 40 cattle on this quarter. There had been lots of rain and snow in our area over the past four years, and the grasses are high and the sloughs are overflowing. The animals had not seen a human being since they were dropped off there in April. They stood in a group and all stared at us. Who were these intruders? I was a bit edgy, but there were no bulls around and Marianne had run cattle for many years. This must be much like it was before humans took control of the world.

As I drive into Bulyea to check the mail and go to the co-op, I pass a pasture where there are six cows and one horse, always very close together. I used to wonder of the horse now thought he was a cow.

On the Saturday drive into Regina, I pass a farm where two miniature burros always hang out in a field with six cows. They are the best of friends, never separated. After the wheat was harvested this year, the farmer put the cows in the adjoining field to clean up but left the burros in the pasture. The burros and the cows stayed right next to each other on each side of the barbed wire fence.

Marianne, who has been running the farm since her husband died about fifteen years ago, raises goats and sheep. Out in the middle of one pasture there is a fox den. Early in the summer this year’s small foxes emerged. They soon began to play with the new born sheep and goats, chasing each other around. Being of the older generation, we did not have our I-phones to record this event.

Among the goats and sheep is one black steer. He is distressed when put in a different pasture by himself. One day I drove by the farm and saw the steer in the small pasture next to the barn. The only other animals with him were the chickens and ducks. He was running back and forth along a barbed wire fence, doing his best to try to keep a fox from coming into the farm yard.

A pair of domestic geese had been living on my neighbour’s farm for a few years, hanging out around the dugout and the farm yard. One of them disappeared this summer, most likely a victim of a coyote or a fox. The remaining goose now waddles out every morning with the sheep and the goats and spends the day with them in the pasture.

Norm, who has the farm behind us, runs cattle on the adjoining quarter. He also has four horses there, as he and his daughter ride. The four horses are rarely seen except standing together, no more than two or three feet apart. They ignore the cattle.

A short way down the grid road I had a very productive garden on Dale’s farmstead. It is surrounded with barbed wire fence as the neighbour would run some of his cattle there before and after harvest. One day I drove into the yard and there were around a dozen cows next to the fence as well as three cows on our side of the fence, in the garden. I walked towards the animals as I was going to open the back gate and let them out into the field. They freaked, as they did not know me and feared the worst. An older Holstein milking cow and one of the calves ran and jumped over the fence. The heifer ran and scooted under the barbed wire fence.

I am currently reading Yuval Noah Harari’ Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He argues  that “domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived.”

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