O
n a crisp and breezy October morning, with school canceled
due to a teachers’ conference, I slept later than usual. My fa-
ther had left for the day, forgetting to leave behind his cus-
tomary list of tasks to be completed before his return. Attending to
my chores, I fed the cattle from a large mound of loose hay accumu-
lated over the summer. Not wanting to remind my mother I would
be home all day (and risk prompting her to generate a list of tasks), I
lingered in the barnyard, then climbed atop the haystack.
On three sides of the stack were corrals with open-faced roofs
where our cattle and two horses were kept. To protect the hay from
the elements, we always built the haystack higher instead of wider,
reducing the surface area exposed to snow and rain. Building higher
was only possible because our baler spit out wire-tied bales compressed
like bricks, each weighing at least eighty-five pounds. When the last
bales of hay of the summer were added, the entire stack was capped
with two rows of baled straw plus a thick layer of loose straw as added
protection.
Atop the stack, I peered over the front edge, wondering if I could
jump far enough to land on the loose hay. And, assuming I succeeded,Chapter 4
An Infinite Supply of Finite Resources
Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the
Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene.
— Carl SaganKevin D. Walker, The Grand Food Bargain: And the Mindless Drive for More,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-948-7_4, © 2019 Kevin D. Walker.