The effort is tongue-in-cheek and its real purpose is immigration reform, but it made me think about something else.

If you’ve been following my scribblings you’re aware that I’ve been suggesting that many unemployed people could make productive use of their enforced idleness by doing what many employed people dream of, but are too busy to accomplish: homesteading. At the very least, they could grow some of their own food. And you’re also aware that I have been saying (for years) that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from — and that it’s highly subsidized, which is one of the reasons growing your own isn’t always cheaper than store-bought stuff. But this farm workers’ campaign combines all that and more in a neat package, and ties it with a bow.

The U.S. Dept. of Labor says three out of four farm workers were not born in this country, and more than half are here illegally. A small part of this complex issue involves the concern that illegal aliens are working, while American citizens are not. So the United Farm Workers are saying, “come on, take our jobs!” not because they expect very many takers, but because the lack of enthusiasm for that back-breaking kind of labor will spotlight the need for immigrant workers.

I have had some experience with this. The first time in my life I ever made more than $100 a week was as a migrant laborer. That was in 1953, when $100 was big money. The catch: the pay was 90¢ an hour. (Side note: That was a decent wage. I worked many jobs for 75¢ an hour, even years later.) That means an average 14-15 hour workday, although I vividly recall one sweltering June morning when we started at 6 a.m as usual, worked straight through to 2 a.m. the next day, and went back to work at 6 again.

And I was 15 years old. Even then, nobody wanted to work like that, so the 16-year age limit was lowered to help save the crop.

This was in a Wisconsin pea cannery, in the days before peas were combined in the field. Truckloads of pea vines were dumped and forked into the viner by hand. The shelled peas spilled into wooden boxes, while the vines piled up in huge stinking stacks. My job was to remove and stack each box as it was filled, replacing it with an empty. The guys forking the vines into the shelling machine worked a lot harder than I did.

A few years later, I found myself in California, nearly broke and with nothing to do. So I signed on to pick green beans, by hand. We were paid by the pound.

Little kids picked more than I did, and made more money. (They also spoke much better Spanish.) A buddy and I combined a day’s wages to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, which is all we had to live on. Shortly after that I enlisted in the Marine Corps, where the pay was $90 a month, but at least we got to eat. (A few years later I was back with the migrants, but that time to interview César Chávez, founder of the United Farm Workers, for a magazine article.)

Based on those experiences alone, I don’t foresee many average American citizens rushing to become farm laborers, even when their unemployment checks run out. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t really expect very many to become homesteaders, either. We as a nation have become too soft to do much actual physical labor, too dependent to scratch for ourselves, and too mentally lazy to figure it all out.

So the long spiraling vortex down the tube continues, with apparently nobody seeing the tangled webs and connections, much less able to deal with them. I certainly don’t have any answers — aside from homesteading, which is only slightly more popular than picking beans for The Man in triple digit temperatures.

When it all hits the bottom, that’s when things will change. Seems like that time is getting closer and closer.

Note: If you’re looking for work, fill out the online form under the banner “I want to be a farm worker” at www.takeourjobs.org

Queenan makes a strong case with some excellent points. To name a few:

• The average graduate today spent $100,000-$200,000 on a degree, and most are starting out with massive college debt.

• The unemployment rate for ages 20-24 is 17.2%.

• Most middle-class kids are totally unprepared emotionally for the world they are about to enter — and it’s a world that’s tougher than ever.

• These kids are also inheriting costs that were unthinkable in the past. “Who’s going to pay for the health care bill?” Queenan asks. The federal deficit… cops’ and teachers’ and firemens’ pensions… social security?

He notes that many kids who can’t find jobs are staying in school, usually law school. Applications are at an all-time high, even though thousands of legal positions at investment banking firms have disappeared forever. Recent Ivy League law school graduates are now working as file clerks, substitute schoolteachers, census takers. The college grad flipping burgers has become a cliché, and the “hero” of Queenan’s piece is an Ivy League grad working as an intern at a street fair in New York.

Not long ago, young graduates became Henrys: High Earnings, Not Rich Yet. Today not many can claim the high earnings part.

For the past 30-40 years The Establishment — our normal everyday society — has warned high school grads that they had to go to college in order to get ahead in the world. That was true when there was a demand for engineers and other skilled professionals. Now there is some question about the need for more such workers, but also concerns about more practical occupations. If everybody goes to college, who will repair our aging cars and leaky faucets?

Computer programming is being outsourced overseas. You can’t outsource putting on a new roof or unclogging a toilet to a lower-paid offshore worker.

Of more interest to me is seeing highly trained, highly educated, highly successful men and women burning out in the world of commerce and industry, and turning to less stressful, more satisfying occupations. I recently read a story on the unusually large number of politicians who are quitting that arena, which used to be a sinecure! Former executives are becoming artisan bakers or cheesemakers, or they run a small country hardware store or B&B. They have discovered that making a living isn’t the same as making a life.

Then too, it always amuses/amazes me to read about someone who retires… and then does what they had always dreamed of doing, such as gardening, wood-carving, or raising cattle. And they’re happy! So why in the world did they wait so long? (“Life is what happens while you’re getting ready to live.”)

No doubt there are some people who really and truly want to become lawyers because they love laws or whatever it is that turns lawyers on. But there are obviously many, many more who want to become lawyers only because they want to rake in big bucks. These are people who are going to have to readjust their thinking.

Just one more sociological note, of the many that could be used in my argument: many experts are now saying the current generation is likely to be the first that will not achieve the financial success of their parents. The importance of this is that it will have an inevitable effect on our mood: It will create a feeling of desperate hopelessness… or it will create a challenge of the make-lemonade variety… on a national scale.

At this point it all comes together so seamlessly it’s almost embarrassing to state the obvious: Why don’t more young people skip all the middleman nonsense and cut to the chase? Why don’t they decide what really and truly matters, then go for it, right now?

Not everyone will accept that. But those opting for an opulent lifestyle must recognize the challenges they face. They will have to fight even harder for jobs that will support them in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed — meaning even more stress. They’ll face the bitterness of the losers. They will have to face the wrath of those already up-in-arms about outrageous compensation and conspicuous consumption.  They will most likely face what some are calling ruinous taxation on their extravagant incomes.

But instead of just giving in and giving up, some of these people will see the light. Doing something they love, they won’t even notice that they can’t afford an annual cruise or vacation abroad. Recognizing that even in mansions, people live in only one room at a time, they will transform their humble cottages into dwellings filled with beauty and love (and without a mortgage — putting even more bankers and lawyers out of work).

And naturally, in my dream world they will produce most of their own food in their gardens, chicken coops and goat sheds. (Those who prefer city living will have acceptable substitutes.) Along with this will come all the other attributes of sustainable living, because one thing leads to another. But someone has to take the first step.

My dream world has glommed onto many other possible catalysts in the past 50 years, all of which turned up empty. Maybe this one will too. But when so many people are lamenting their current situation and future prospects, there is hope. Even if only a few see the light, there could be a massive shift in attitude.

So, should we pity the class of 2010? Heavens, no. Their career prospects might be woeful, but they have an awesome opportunity to save the world. —Jd Belanger

Me, yesterday, in one of my 21 gardens.

Yesterday was a beautiful, almost too-warm day for April 1 in Northern Wisconsin. It’s been over 70 almost all week, and I did quite a bit of work in the garden. So much work, in fact, that I dragged a lawn chair out there for an occasional break. I used to chuckle at the old goats who kept chairs in their gardens. Now I’m one of them, and that made me think.

I remember (a long time ago) when a reader asked what happened when a homesteader got old. “All the work is hard enough now,” she said. “How will I do it when I have even less strength and vigor?”

Many of the answers were practical: Use your head instead of your back, stuff like that.

But most of the answers we got from other readers who were speaking from personal experience were reminiscent of directions on how to eat an elephant: a spoonful at a time.

“I do almost everything now I did years ago,” was the common refrain. “It just takes longer.”

At the time I thought that was just common sense (like most of Countryside). But I had no idea how much longer everything would take!

There’s lots of good advice on using your head instead of your back. I wish I had written down some of the ah-ha moments I’ve had when finding simple ways to do difficult jobs, so I could share them with you. As you probably know, great memories are not one of the shining attributes of the older generation.

And taking things slower? Also great advice, and very easy, when your knees give out and your strength wanes and you avoid getting up out of a chair too quickly (even if you could) because the room starts spinning.

But the mainest thing (spellchecker tells me I just made up a word, but I’ve been using that for years and I’m too old to quit now) is that when you get old, you don’t need as much! My RN wife limits me to one piece of bacon—on the days I’m allowed any at all. (That has something to do with the AFib I had a few years back.) We also usually share a pork chop, and a small roast lasts so long we could write a cookbook on using leftovers. So there ain’t much point in raising a pig anymore.

Half an apple is a treat. Half of a Snickers is a real treat.

I make a big point of this in Self-Sufficient Living. You can become more self-sufficient by producing what you want and need, or you can reduce your wants and needs so neither you nor anyone else has to produce them at all. When you get old, reducing needs becomes much easier than producing stuff to meet them.

I vividly recall the day I first realized I was old.

Son Steve was helping me reroof the house. It didn’t take long before I got really, really tired. I was halfway up the ladder with an 80-lb bundle of shingles on my shoulder when I thought, why is this such a drag? Heck, as a Marine, I used to run up and down the hills of Camp Pendleton all day with an 80-lb. pack plus a 9-lb. M1 rifle!

Then it hit me. That was 40 years ago. I dumped the shingles on the roof, climbed back down the ladder, and never went up again. (Except to clean the chimney, of course.)

That roof is now almost 15 years old. It doesn’t need replacing yet, but when it does, I won’t be up there.

Roofing is a young man’s job anyway. Woodcutting? Eh… maybe. I use the smaller, lighter chainsaw now. But son Dave has a fine oak forest and my woods is mostly popple, so he delivers most of our firewood.

My beloved chickens flew the coop several years ago when I was diagnosed with poultry lover’s disease, a lung infection. When I came home from my second hospital stay due to a collapsed lung, all my birds were gone: chickens, guineas, pigeons, even the cockatiels, thanks again to my life-saving wife and two of our sons. I still miss my birds, which were supposed to be my retirement hobby. But our daughter-by-marriage Elaine (the editor of Backyard Poultry) furnishes us with fresh homestead eggs, which lessens the blow.

Cooking, including canning and baking, is an excellent occupation for an old guy with plenty of time. And of course gardening is the traditional domain of codgers who can’t do much of anything else except fish. To me, fishing is boring, but I could garden 24 hours a day and half the night.

But then there are times when the knees just can’t take it anymore, or the back gives out, or I run out of breath. Thus, the chair. After a short rest I can go back to work again, but it’s also pleasant to just sit and listen to the birds with my new hearing aids.

And in a way, getting that chair out there was a kind of celebration. Today is my 72^nd birthday.

The unemployment rate manages to hover around 10%, but only because more than 660,000 people have given up even looking for work. Since the Great Recession began officially in 2007, more than 8,600,000 jobs have been lost, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The really bad news, according to economists, is that about a quarter of those jobs are gone forever. Many companies have found ways to make money without the expense of wages and benefits, and they won’t be rehiring even if or when the recession ends.

And of course, the really really bad news is that unless or until enough people have enough money to buy all the stuff and junk that props up the conventional establishment economy, there can be no “recovery.” Consumers account for about 70% of that economy, so it’s a vicious circle.

So the idiots in Washington are going to “create” jobs? And the idiots who elect them expect and demand that creation? Anyone who has ever met a payroll knows darn well that jobs aren’t created out of thin air, and certainly not by politicians. Don’t get me started on that.

I could switch my rant from jobs to food: people are eating out less and downscaling when they do, they’re buying more low-cost groceries like pasta and beans, food pantries across the country are seeing record numbers of new “clients,” there is growing interest in eating locally-grown and organic foods, and on and on. But to keep this short, let’s just add a few more ideas, then connect the dots and see what the picture looks like.

Item: During World War II, more than 45% of America’s vegetables were grown in backyard Victory Gardens.

Item: Way back in the 1930s, when Frank Lloyd Wright designed Broad Acre City (and used the term “homesteader” to describe the city’s inhabitants who had the time and skills to be part-time farmers, part-time mechanics [workers] and part-time intellectuals), gardens and root cellars were central to his thinking. He believed every man deserved an acre of his own land, where he could “never be unemployed or a slave to anyone.”

Item: Most sellers of vegetable seeds are reporting record sales, for the second year in a row.

Item: A city feller asked a homesteader what time he went to work. “Shucks,” came the answer, “I don’t go to work: I just get up and I’m surrounded by it!”

This too could go on and on, if I weren’t so weary of the idiots. I’m weary because I can’t see any signs that even in the current awakening — or what should by all means be an awakening — at least some people are becoming aware that the world does not need more cars (and roads, parking lots, petroleum, emissions, etc.), and the highly-paid workers who make those cars and provide all the support services; the world does not need any more resource-wasting McMansions (and therefore the carpenters, plumbers, electricians and certainly not the bankers involved in building them); the world doesn’t need 75% of the crap that is designed, manufactured, transported, sold, used lightly if at all, and trashed — all at the expense of the fragile environment and finite resources of Spaceship Earth. The “happiness” derived from such trash is as artificial as the economic system that creates it: demands it.

In other words, I don’t believe the world needs more “jobs,” in the traditional sense of the economic establishment. What the world needs is a lot more homesteaders.

But try to convince people of that, even in times like these: What a job!

The Al Qaeda leader just released another of his periodic tapes lashing out at the United States. But this time, instead of religion, the topic was global warming.

He’s against it. He said Western industrialized nations are responsible, and challenged the world to boycott American and other products to bring the wheels of the American economy to a halt.

According to the Associated Press, he blamed industrial nations for the floods, desertification and hunger spreading around the planet, saying, “Speaking about climate change is not an intellectual luxury, the phenomenon is actual fact.” His message was “to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions, intentionally or unintentionally, and about the action we must take.

“I know this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America.”

I agree, although with a different slant. For more than 40 years I’ve been writing about “the… means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on,” not America, but the global  Industrial and Economic Establishment. Humanity could be liberated through what we call homesteading. That means boycotting industrial products, not to destroy an enemy, but to save the planet.

In those 40 years the potential disasters have taken many forms, from agricultural crises to stock market crashes to Y2K and Climate Change. The Establishment has always managed to muddle through, somehow, so far. But it weakens with every new blow. (It’s difficult to explain this in a few words to anyone who hasn’t been watching closely, but there are many ways to get up to speed… including reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living.)

To both Bin Laden and me, the means isn’t all that important. Global warming just happens to be a handy, and very likely, current suspect, in a long list of possibilities. What really concerns both of us is what happens next. Not the means to the end, but the end.

In my case, the ideal would be to save the world — civilization, humanity, the planet itself — through reasoned logic and gentle persuasion. That’s why I have always tried to portray homesteading and simple living as a very pleasant, sensible way to live, as opposed to mindless materialism and the waste of life and resources involved in our current (and quite recent) culture of accumulation. If that doesn’t work (and it’s not working), the simple fact is that constant growth on a finite planet—the Spaceship Earth analogy — is impossible. (Stein’s Law: If something cannot continue, it will end.) The result can only be disastrous, whereas the sane, reasoned, homestead approach would allow a “soft landing,” so to speak.

With every new jolt that rattles the established system, that soft landing seems less and less likely. And yet, just try to imagine the vast difference between being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the devastated world Bin Laden and others envision, and actively managing that transition based on homesteading principles.

What would happen if Americans produced 40%-50% of their fruits and vegetables in their own yards, as they did with Victory Gardens during World War II? What if even just the 20% of Americans who are unemployed (yes, the true unemployment rate is 20%) engaged in a few homestead-type activities, such as food production?

And what would happen if virtually every American over the age of 16 didn’t feel entitled to 3,000 pounds of resource-wasting pollution-emitting automotive power? Yes, those who provide cars and their vast web of support facilities — gas stations, insurance, traffic cops and road maintenance workers, to name but a few — would be affected, and the economy would be devastated. But what would that do to mitigate climate change? And how would that be any worse, or different, from how those of us who are over 70 lived when we were young? Or from how the Amish, and in fact, most people in the world, still live today?

In a book I could (and did!) go on and on — about how the average house today is more than twice as big as the average house of my youth (and uses way more resources), how we use much more water and energy than we did then; how almost everybody has more clothing than any rational being could possibly require, and more stuff and junk of every kind and description (all requiring energy, in some form).

Today’s extravagance can be contrasted not only with the America of 70 years ago, but with most of the world today — including not only the Amish, but also many serious homesteaders. It could easily be shown — at least to rational people — that living simply and sustainably is not only no great hardship: it can actually be more healthful, stress-free, rewarding and fun!

That hasn’t worked out. The clock, a time bomb, is ticking. What could have been a glorious new age of sensible sustainable living will sink into a morass of deprivation and terror.

Osama bin Laden and I agree on the likely scenario. If it plays out on the course we’re now taking, he will be very happy. Not me. I know how it could have been avoided.