TCP: Farmland

CAMDEN POST The Healing Map

PRONOUNCED DEAD ON ARRIVAL....FOREVER FARM
Camden Villagesoup Letter, 7 December 2011

It looks like we've made it, as many have noted the new sign on Park Street, Forever Farm, wondering how that is important. A chunk of land in a financial transaction, presumably for the good of all, has been made between landholders of farmland and a beneficent dot org. I thought as I passed, Farm Dead might be more appropriate. Grieve the Passing.

We as a society are essentially developers now. The best minds know how to exploit resources and human power for the gifts manifest in our life. The balance of aggressive development and preservation is more like disease management. Fewer people die, and more realize that going forward is healthier than embalming emotions. In a town of 40% preservation in land, Forever Farm looks like greed.

Land is not development, rather human resources and planning for the future, becoming the future makes the terrible word of development passe. Banks do not give money away, the huge mental exercise of development has been crunched into dust. Maintaining options is essential, as well as changing the patterns of flow is critical.

You are more likely to see a hedgefunder, one who scored big and is melding into the crowd in Camden, interviewing a gift or loan in the local coffee shop. More money accessible there in that human heart than over-regulated banks, at least one might suppose a certain level of empathy. Who else can you turn to in these days where so much money has been scooped-up and taken into private realms....

It is said money in these parts go to culture, yes that and eliminating the possibility of a neighbor by preserving acres of farmland, for who can criticize the goodness of more farmland, at any cost. So, Federal funds supplied the Forever Farm transaction, as well as beneficent tax minded rich people, but for Rokes to become hallowed, after being denied Federal assistance, money must come from our beneficent rich, and you, and this is my thought. Give heartily, friends, that field you drive past might be developed by someone who values community.

The Good Life (Back to Land Movement, aren't we all?) does not need rich people, we can enjoy the grace of earth without anymore preservation. We can build our own castles in the air, and the love of like minded people can create untold wealth. The foundation of the future is planning and joining our needs, that will create a power far more valuable to our children than a Forever Farm, or any farm that is not our choice. We are community, for that is the harvest, and the gift of our lives. The point is, we can move the society through the intrinsic power of love, and are doing that as we recognize that the town is not community, it is laws, and the rich are not community, they are holed-up, and that community is sharing and giving open hands, and building, really, developing the new world, which is upon us. 2012.

Paul Goodman on 'harmoniously belonging'from his book Growing Up Absurd, 1956.

FOREVER FARM
This Draft for Villagesoup was NOT SENT! but here presented as notes for the above.

People see the new sign on Park Street in Camden, I did, so pretty much everybody knows that Spear Farm has given up their land to Maine Farmland Trust. Given, a gift of sorts that is curiously a function of Federal grants and tax loophole gifts and public support, or a devise of laws to grab and put away the development potential of lands, and in this case as well as in Rokes Farm, neither property has a farmer.

Fraudulent conveyance comes to mind, I'll explain that, or even better, consider that we are native Americans and the government comes in and takes our land away from us, this is what has just happened. Lost to us and by no means missed, because very few people even really see a value to the property. Oh town government does, the potential tax revenues, and jobs, and community building are all lost, you see, the citizens have been hoodwinked out of some kind of sentiment lost to tv and culture. Camden already has 40% land given to preservation, so thank goodness we have plenty of rich dudes to culturally embellish our inability to grasp the future.

Fraudulent conveyance is a legal term not particularly used in this context, but the citizens are forced to a lower tax base and higher taxes as a result, which is explicitly wrong. These .ORGS have gained insurmountable power as result of sentiment, acutely focused but not any longer ethicallyzz up and up, as these vanishing tracts of farmland exemplify. The power to conquer gave the Romans a vast indulgence, and now you see it as the .ORGS look for ways to use their money, their adept positioning between big money and public trust. Neither Forever Farm or Rokes has a farmer or is farmed.

Legally, any rich person can buy these farms from Maine Farmland Trust and be a farmer. All you need to do is lease the haying to Aldemere Farm which is another .ORG that is grittily situated in Rockport, muck and mire cows in a million dollar housing neighborhood. Farming by a thin veneer, and since they need to be expansive and represent farming in a ludicrous way, you see them buzzing about, or eat their burger at local restaurants.

Farming is harvesting off land, so me thinks just about any parcel hereabouts could be called a farm and sold to MFT. The funny thing is that property is really worthless these days, we have pummeled our creative efforts with no vision of the future, so WHATEVER HAPPENED TO OCCUPY MAINE?

Theres always some guy in the crowd that's different..

OCCUPY CAMDEN MAINE

.orgs preserve the past, LOWER THE TAX BASE, and
RAISE TAXES FOR THE AVERAGE TAXPAYER.

[news item]John Piotta of Maine Farmland Trust,
a major .org of tax loopholes,
to speak tonight at Camden Library Green Series, 6:30pm. link
"Are Farms the Key to Maine's Future?"

The question might be better phrased, do we need pro-active .orgs defining the landscape. Taking back farms is a topic related to need. Yes we need farms but not couched in tax loopholes for the rich. The average Mainer giving to this concern is being politically motivated, and the farm land is a sentimental cash cow for the money manipulations which are covert in the loophole system. Why shouldn't Maine have loopholes, everybody else does. Come tonight and listen the smooth talking, and remember the trade is for your integrity, not farmers or farmland.

Governor of Maine wants to cut State Planning Office. What?

NEWS ITEM: here

Quotes from article..
the LePage administration's recent proposal to reduce the size and mission of the State Planning Office,

Since 1950, northern Maine has lost 100,000 people, central Maine has lost 3,000 and Coastal Maine has gained more than 140,000.

Evan Richert, "When suburban land knocks up against rural land, suburban land wins. The dynamics of land economics and of politics, simply will not allow the rural to survive well into the future."

Richert said surburban constituents have the power to shut down proposals for wind farms, or end agricultural practices such as sludge spreading and forestry.

Commentary: The Governor is looking at how we dampen the economy by planning to avoid change, from natural change. Valuing farmland has become over-rated on two accounts, one is the eat local movement to save money on transport and build the farming economy, and the other is the state's politically motivated, preservation movement. The farm community will exist in The Good Life in Maine but not in the magnitude needed to be an effective factor in change, -until flat field farming is replaced by technology and vertical farming. Suburban will trump rural, and create a new paradym, state planning will not. The creation of a fertile area for business will of course coincide with the value of farming. Farming has not bloomed in flat field preservation, only the dot org coffers..

Community Owned Farm

Everybody wants the farmland to exist so that they are reminded of the old days. Nobody wants a neighbor, that's Real Maine. If we as community, as a cooperative, farm it AND develop it as a neighborhood, we become "the good life" and embue our children with values going back to Scott Nearing and the Back to Land Movement. Preservation through one of the non-profit organizations is throwing away our future. While we exist as car drivers and workers, and subjects of bureacracy and the Rich, we can believe in ourselves as self reliant again. Watch one of our teachers, Kea Tesseyman and her dance, The Future, VIDEO.

The farm, nobody wants to farm but everybody wants it to exist. Hereabouts, the farmer of cows is a preservation group, whats good for cows is good for people. THE SACRED COW VIDEO See Sacred Cow video,

here.

Wealth versus Community, Downsizing the Future!

Do the wealthy have a right to spend their money as they wish? Yes of course, and No! because the people have less and less money, and daily, are being robbed by the rich. The only way to tighten-up and downsize is to plan and develop a community of strength. The rich can buy whatever you want, airplanes, businesses, diamonds and jewels. Do not preserve the landscape according to the grandfathered con game of tax shelters and credits that remove income giving property value back to the community. This is common sense. If the loopholes are hurting the main body of Americans, AND THEY ARE, then enough!

hierarchy versus autonomy, OCCUPY WALL STREET

The Lurid Intrusion

The emotional stasis of being mad, unresolvable differences, hoarding nature and riches, all bought with a defunct system garnering the past, "grandfathered," we wonder how we can evolve from a military might to a stream of consciousness, full of goodness. Holding-on is a community thing, and the future is just not seen by everybody unless it is taught and learned. Byways and habits can change. By not condemning and prosecuting our Wall Street obsession of money, reflects on our belief that money is Morally Right Thinking. And when two farm properties, Spears & Rokes Farms in Camden, are set to be sold with an institutional tax shelter of two preservation non-profits in Maine, it is time to raise rebellion.

We focus our anger at government, both state and national, when we need to be concerned at what we tolerate in ourselves, in our community in which we live. Isn't life in Maine/Camden about an ideal (The Good Life) that can refute the lurid intrusion of big bucks? The town(s) as community profits by:
GREATLY REDUCED TAXES,
GREATLY REDUCED WORK,
GREATLY REDUCED social infrastructure,
GREATLY REDUCED GROWTH.
Why plan on the future? Now is the time to deepen a commitment to growth, we need to make choices that strengthen our viability. Do you really think it will ever be as it once was? Money does not grow on trees. We need to create value from community, not Wall Street.

Find (more) out why we need to be concerned about the future..

Four Trees

The farmlands, preserved for cows, are not held by real people doing real farming. Aldemere farm belongs to a preservation trust, with no diversity or point of view or responsibility that is good for the land let alone for Camden-Rockport, -unless you agree a benefit to our town is that the rich can dump their money for tax credit and feel good about it. This is an illusion maintained as 'grandfathered.' Drive-by fields, poorly kept, or inadequately farmed, hapzardly maintained for feeding cows, without any public overseer or knowledge base, for pesticides, waste management, land use or non-use, for fat beautiful cows, rings the bell of 19th century. Farmers once worked the land to eek-out a living.

Videos from Camden Maine,
Experiential Spirituality in
the Center of Maine Culture.

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