Monday, November 05, 2007

Irony

Land stewardship course offered

The Humboldt County UC Cooperative Extension encourages current or prospective landowners who would like to better understand rural property, develop goals and objectives for possible resource improvement, and produce a management plan to achieve those goals in an ecologically and economically sustainable manner to register now for a workshop and field trip that will take place Friday and Saturday.

The workshop will address topics such as evaluating a property’s potential, establishing economic and ecological goals, formulating a business plan, and additional agricultural or timber-related economic opportunities for a property.

22 comments:

  1. Seems like the real fight here is that the landowners want the option to divide up their TPZ property into smaller parcels, then use the zoning provision to allow for one residence per parcel. Their property is obviously worth more if they could subdivide and develop.

    Would you say that is is accurate Rose?

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  2. I don't see that as accurate at all.

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  3. No. I do not see that as accurate at all. Or at least entirely.

    Many people WANT to live on acreage where they do not have to see neighbors, like that rural lifestyle, don't want to live in a city environment, don't like subdivisions, want to raise livestock or do organic farming, or just own trees.

    You know, I grew up in those forests, and they are more of a cathedral than any church ever built - why do you think that Julia Butterfly Hill is the only one who can appreciate leaving trees alone?

    Sure, there are going to be some people who want to divide thier parcel - maybe they want to divide a 160 acre parcel into 4 and give one to each of their kids - I'd do that in a heartbeat, and it still wouldn't mean sprawl.

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  4. That is sprawl. And has a huge impact on the enviornment

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  5. "The workshop will address topics such as evaluating a property’s potential, establishing economic and ecological goals, formulating a business plan, and additional agricultural or timber-related economic opportunities for a property"

    So,tell me if I understand this correctly. The concerned, responsible citizen plunks down his monies, learns everything he or she needs to in the class, then expends additional monies to create and file and publish all the required reports, plans, etc...

    To be told Nope. Sorry, "We" realize that it's Your property, and you can do anything you want with Your property.........

    Unless "We" don't want you to?

    Wow. Does "We" get to decide the "use" for "We's" properties?

    I'm confused.
    Wollf

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  6. I am sorry - that is not sprawl. building a house on 40 ain't sprawl and if it is...I WANT SPRAWL BECAUSE LIVING WITH SOME PERSON INCHES AWAY IS CITY LIVING! If I wanted that I would move. If you don't want the rural life 11:37, then all you have to do is move. I like the status quo. I hate the city. You live there and quit telling the rest of us what to do with our property, lives and money.

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  7. My sentiments exactly, 3:42.

    It was a bad day when the County started allowing high density subdivisions, and it is worse now that they try to force "developers" to up the density, forcing them to develop future slums. Gone are the old style subdivisions that had 1/2 and 1/3 acre lots, now people are lucky to have a front yard the size of a garage.

    Now, it appears that, by evoking the fear of sprawl, they intend to shut down the very quality of life development you should be encouraging here.

    Jesus, when did real men stop fighting for freedom and start fighting to put people under thumbscrews?

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  8. You would love Phoenix Rose. Everyone has a single family house, and a front and back yard. It goes on for miles and miles and miles...

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  9. Freedom? Freedom to take a share of the earth that belonged to a militarily weaker people about 147 years ago? Freedom to take that 160 acre share of prime earth for one white family while the average share per family on earth now is what? Freedom to add a new road into each of those 160 and if subdivided again another four driveways?

    I'm sorry, but only those who know what they are doing with wildlife ecology should be in the rural backlands. When it's opened up as subdivisions to the general uneducated public, we get the ecological creek over-sedimentation and pollution and overuse of dry season water sources disaster seen in homestead subdivision development all through Humboldt and Mendocino counties.

    Privacy and wealth are not good enough reasons to be where you shouldn't be unless invited or know what you're doing. And then's there's the real history of what happens when a family builds a homestead. How the next generation almost inevitably is so sick of the place they leave to learn something new in life. So working homesteads, with value to the life of the land, yes, but as luxury get-aways? No thanks.

    A family land plot is a fine thing but a family doesn't need to "own" more than it needs. If we don't share, why should any others? And if there's no sharing of resources, what is there in it's place?

    Think about it.

    Btw, we at Heartlands are taking reservations for our energy, food, work, self-development tools, entertainment, self-sufficient communitarian eCo-Castle Community built high on a ridge on seismically stable(relatively speaking) surrounded by forests and meadows with one road in and one road out, a community bus service and a few shared community cars when necessary. High on a ridge..

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  10. Photo is of an Antonio Gaudi building in Spain. Not right architecture for here but gives us an idea of what kind of creative living could come out of village life like the natives had here for thousands of years.

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  11. 160 acres is not a subdivision. And you cannot say the people who buy and choose to build there are the kind who will do damage. Many people I know live very lightly on the earth, completely self sufficient.

    What's more, if you want to go into classism, low income people should not be forced to live on postage stamps, they would benefit from large parcels, with room to GROW FOOD and not have to rely on Safeway, with room to raise livestock, with the ability to feed themselves, the way people did until very recently.

    It's the life the people who came here in communes, like you, Stephen, came for. Back to the land. Out of the city. Out of the rat race.

    Don't you remember?

    It's the life of the owner builder, the people, the craftsmen...

    we don't want to live like ant men.

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  12. I'm not telling you what "to do with our property, lives and money." But it is still sprawl.

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  13. Baloney. Sprawl is what is happening in Cutten. And Mark is all for that. It seems you can only have a quality of life if you have cable TV (and city sewer, city water, city gas, street lights) - if you're "rich" enough to afford land that has no services, you're keeping the masses down, or something.

    I give up trying to understand Mark Lovelace. He articulates his position so well, and he is so flat out wrong.

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  14. Sorry, Rose. I have a different attitude about living on the land than you based on seeing the results of subdivision development. There is no way to develop 160 acre parcels, how many of them? without putting in major roads cutting into more and more of the watershed hillsides, each cut meaning the hillside side of the road is top-heavy and wants naturally to fall down onto the road and does so in bits and pieces with every rain .

    You can only stop the natural erosion that will happen by completely covering up the dirt surfaces with pavement on the roads and rocks or brickwork shoring up the sides of the roads-expensive proposition no developers around here ever do and even the Planning Commission doesn't require such modifications--but without them, the roads all bleed into the creeks below them.

    Rose, I don't want to be part of any "trophy ranches". It's too much like "Bwanavista Estates", the rich white people living in the hills above the poor working stiffs and poorer non-working low income people who really need the natural therapy of wild area beauty much more than you or I but given our class society, they will never see it in their lifetimes.

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  15. Also, I now look at all large parcels of ground around here as rightfully belonging to the local tribes who have never been compensated for losing their land and dying for our European-American Dream.

    The ndns lived in cluster villages lower down in elevations near good water for the most part and with their pre-industrial hunting and gathering "climax" lifestyle, their impact on the life of the land was minimal.

    We need to develop "climax civilization" sustainable lifestyles so that we too can have minimal negative impact on our environments.

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  16. And to some degree that is what the back-to-the-land movement was all about. What happened? It got corrrupted by drugs, the vision was lost, it became the generation of rules and ordinances, and dictating and polarization instead of the freedom of you do your thing, I do my thing and anti-materialism.

    And I don't buy the classist view of the whole thing. Just because some people in Mexico live in houses with dirt floors and no glass in the windows does not mean that there isn't nobility and honor and happiness there. Money doesn't mean happy.

    And not having access to the land - that is a horse that has already left the barn, because of insurance concerns, no trespassing signs, pot growers in the hills who shoot at people - but not just that - lands bought up by "Nature Conservancies" who then shut it off to all human traffic. It isn't what Palco is doing that shuts you out, you have more to fear from the environmental groups who are anti-human...

    But - that's just my opinon, and to quote Dennis Miller, I could be wrong....

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  17. Anonymous said...
    You would love Phoenix Rose. Everyone has a single family house, and a front and back yard. It goes on for miles and miles and miles...


    No - and I don't like infill in the Bay Area either - they have overbuilt to the point that their infrastructure (roads and water) cannot sustain them.

    We are talking about two totally different things, but convenient FEAR of the one is being used to shut down the other.

    The point is we DON"T want city conditions here, but it is being forced upon us by the planners, the Mark Lovelace's, and now, the Board.

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  18. Some time look at a population map of Europe and Asia and then look across to America, Canada, Australia, NZ. Europe is packed with people. They came spilling over to America and because they came over like ants in endless supply, natives here didn't have a chance. Now who do you think has gotten the choicest pieces of property around? The people who had it originally?

    I know what Rose's is talking about and it's a fine dream--if you live in Europe and can find any such place existing outside parks, but if you're in Humboldt County you're talking about continuing the 147 year-old crimes against the local folks and benefiting from their dead bodies and fucked up lives today.

    Only people who know what they're doing, living with wildlife should be in the hills, and very few of them, unless you do ndn style, cluster village living, living the life of the land alone and safe for posterity.

    In short, where's my salmon?

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  19. So Steve lets start a plan to give the park land back to the tribes. Parks can't manage them any way and won't let people including native peoples use them.

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  20. Nah, local ndns aren't that greedy and only want some of what's been taken from them which we are working on with our Heartlands Project.

    Actually, I do have a beef with the way the Parks manage their forests. Because they don't believe in interfering with the trees, very unlike NA forest management, there's only the culling of diseased and unhealthy trees by wind falls mainly and in my 32 years here what I've noticed is that there seems to be far more ancient old growth trees falling to wind storms than are ever going to be replaced by supposedly "new" ancient trees. Perhaps the state of State Park forests is not all that healthy and yet Park old-growth restoration is the model enviros want to put in place for as much of our forests as they can get control of. Not a sound forest management system in my experience.

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  21. Steve,my god man state parks are the worst of the worse. They are fools at best and only fuck up the public trust.

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  22. I just love it. A class on how to be a productive farmer,rancher,timber operator taught by people who never farmed,ranched or logged. Why the F%&* don't they give classes to the regulators and other scum suckers that are forcing real producers out of buisness on how to work for a living and us alone?

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