Missouri Day Trip: Agricultural Museum

Tumbledown did far too much traveling and far too little gardening this summer. Two of those trips took him home to Northwest Tennessee via Southern Illinois and Southeast Missouri. On one of those trips he was fortunate enough to discover the Southeast Missouri Agricultural Museum in Bertrand, Missouri (Southeast Missouri Bootheel, just north of New Madrid and east of Sikeston).

The museum is conveniently located near the intersection of I-57 and I-55.

Though much of the machinery in the building is poorly labeled, poorly sorted, and unrestored--and none appears to be used even for demonstration purposes--the display is well worth the modest price of admission ($5 per person) for the antique farm machinery enthusiast. The importance of the collection has also come to the attention of the National Park Service, as the listing in the Draft Heritage Study demonstrates.

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Tumbledown hopes that the collection will be made available to persons who are interested in studying, copying and restoring these valuable parts of our heritage and for use at working "living history" farms and demonstration projects.

Address:

Route 1, Box 875

Bertrand, MO 63823

Phone: (573) 471-3945

Hours:

9-4 Mon.-Sat.

1-4 Sun.

The owners boast that they have under one roof "Missouri's largest agricultural museum with over 6,000 pieces of antique farm machinery," in addition to the grounds, where visitors will find two log cabins, one wooden railroad caboose, and a relocated railroad depot.

Readers interested in finding out more about now-antique farm machinery when it was "state of the art," can view sketches and descriptions in the article on crop management in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. Those readers interested in commercial collectors' information about vintage farm equipment, see the Farm Collector.

Tumbledown Farm

Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle

F. Herbert Bormann and Stephen R. Kellert, eds. Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle. Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1991.



In addition to the dated references in a work now 16 years old, this book suffers from the usual shortcomings of academic essay collections. The essays are disconnected and poorly coordinated, being loosely arranged around the three-part theme of ecology, economics, and ethics. The essays are uneven in quality and accessibility; in other words, the book wants the professional editing to be a book. Though most of the authors are notables in the area of ecology and environmental science, few are as well versed in either economics or ethics, so the treatment is often highly technical in its arguments in one of the three areas, but bedeviled by generalities and unfounded assertions in the next. The essays range over a broad swath of issues related to environmental conservation, from biocide (the human-caused mass extinction of thousands of species; the "death of birth") to proposals for financing conservation in five sections: Species Diversity and Extinction, Modern Agriculture, Environmental Values, Pollution and Waste, and Market Mechanisms.

So, why is Tumbledown reviewing the book? First, because a few of the essays are by themselves worth the price of admission. Among these are the essays by Wes Jackson ("Nature as the Measure for a Sustainable Agriculture"; author, Becoming Native to This Place) and David Pimentel ("The Dimensions of the Pesticide Question"; author, CRC Handbook of Pest Management in Agriculture, Second Edition, Volume I). The opening essay, on biodiversity, by Edward O. Wilson (author, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth) also falls into this category, as does Paul H. Connett's "The Disposable Society." The latter, along with sections of the essays on groundwater and wind, had Tumbledown asking whether the next person who unknowingly throws away a flashlight battery be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. (Or is that "crimes against biology"?) Many of the concerns that were front and center in the late 80's have now faded from the public eye (e.g., the landfill crisis and acid rain). That doesn't mean that they have faded from importance. Others have become more glamorous (e.g., global warming, via Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"). This pattern of awareness and response is actually graphed in the essay by Gene Likens (p. 142; author, Long-Term Studies in Ecology: Approaches and Alternatives). Second, Tumbledown would like to see several of the essays updated. Connett's essay on "The Disposable Society," for example, provides model examples of local community and civic initiatives for reuse and repair (reusables), toxic waste exchange (toxics), composting (compostables), separation and upgrading (recyclables), and screening of mixed waste for landfills (the rest). What is the status 16 years later of these model programs? Tumbledown wonders. And are the only effective responses those devised by governments and civic organizations? In Tumbledown's humble opinion all is lost if the response is dependent on governmental action and the will of our political leaders. So is there a place for individual action by those who are convinced of the need to live according to St. Francis of Assisi's way of voluntary poverty? Is there room for "freegans" (dumpster divers) who strive to reduce their "carbon footprint," coordinating their efforts in informal, internet-based communities? Have we eliminated non-reusable packaging yet? (Of course not.) In other words, it would be helpful to have an update of the status quaestionis of this academic debate and another list of best practices and bibliography of works published on this topic in the intervening years.

Still, if you can find it, this book is worth the read. It isn't quick or easy going, but it is definitely provocative.