Why farmpunk?

A farmpunk could be described as a neo-agrarian who approaches [agri]culture, community development and/or design with an anarchistic hacker ethos. "Cyber-agrarian" could supplant neo-agrarian, indicating a back-to-the-land perspective that stands apart from past movements because it is heavily informed by conceptual integration in a post-industrial information society (thus "forward to the land" perhaps?) The art and science of modern ecological design—and ultimately, adapting to post-collapse contexts—will be best achieved through the combined arts of cybermancy and geomancy; an embrace of myth and ritual as eco-technologies. In other words: the old ways of bushcraft and woodlore can be combined with modern technoscience (merely another form of lore) in open and decentralized ways that go beyond pure anarcho-primitivism. This blog is an example of just that. Throughout, natural ecologies must be seen as the original cybernetic systems.

**What we call for at the farmpunk headquarters**
°Freedom of information
°Ground-up action + top-down perspectives
°Local agricultural systems (adhering to permaculture/biodynamic principles) as the nuclei of economies
°Bioregional autonomy
°Computers are optional but can be used for good—see peer to peer tech, social media for direct popular management of natural or political disasters (e.g. Arab Spring), or the mission of the hacker collective Anonymous
°You

Thursday, May 6, 2010

other greenpunks n' some farmpunk news

"The arts are well placed to lead an ecological insurrection by again valuing food as contiguous with cultural production"

This quote is from an article by the author of Permapoesis - thanks @ socialfiction for the link to this blog!

Word!

Also, check out this article in the Telegraph about the influx of the farmpunk/eco-punk meme in urban Japanese culture.

And for some quality mind candies visit Greenpunk on Wordpress, who, in their words
"Envisions a world in which the detritus of consumer culture as propagated by the Elite is appropriated and repurposed by the masses toward the reconstruction of a devastated ecology and the address of social ill.”

I like, I like!

(This manifestoid sentiment reminds me of something I articulated as Re-Sourcery in a previous ramble!)

My prime partner in justice, who works at Chelsea Green (some serious farmpunk headquarters, there!) is the author of Underground, which gives you just a glimpse of her ecologically-inclined and organically-articulate intellect.

***

Well, that's all the jewels I've got in the bag today. I'm currently shacked up at the Tuckerbox in White River Junction, VT - finishing the LAST paper of my undergraduate career. Hooray! This cafe has it all going on - good coffee, great atmosphere, right across from the train station, and it even has a chic website. What's up, White River Junction? Luckily this paper is incredibly fun to write - it has me waxing neurological about group dance rituals. Basically, I had to find a way to write an academic paper about psytrance and doof parties, and now I can consider it done. Woooooot.

I finally get the ol' bacheloroid degree on May 23rd. In the next few weeks my girlfriend and I will be settling into our new place in Woodstock, Vermont (my hometown) on an amazing and magical piece of land that is mostly conserved by the Vermont Land Trust. We live in the bottom floor of a quansit-style renovated dairy barn. Our bedroom is the old milk room. The building is bermed into the hillside so we've got max thermal mass - the place is going to be cool as a cave in the summer heat. Basically you couldn't get much more farmpunk, for a building.

In a nutshell, we gon' do some farming. And BTW, we want to come up with a different word to use in place of "farming", because we want to avoid trying to define ourselves as farmers. We feel that to do that for us is to make a false identity claim that people of our priveledge perhaps should not make. Being a farmer is NOT like being queer, for example, because not everyone who is a farmer considers themselves to be part of any punk, counter or sub culture. Makes me feel like a hipster, or a fraud. I like "food producing", although that is kind of a mouthful. "Resourcery" could work, I s'pose. Farmpunkery? Hmmm. So stay tuned. This blog's about to get hands (and paws) on!