Anthony Johns applies his Peasants' Manifesto to two lifestyles - which one works for you?

These homesteads serve different purposes for their owners, and mark opposite ends of a scale, on which many readers might fit somewhere between. At one end, a little land is just another asset in a life that revels in the heady buzz of the consumer society. This is my dear cousin Jane's set-up in the South West. The other smallholding might seem to shun consumerist values. This is my patch here in Ireland. In fact we are not so much rejecting anything as pursuing a different agenda.

This comparison came to mind when considering how country lives are financed. The small mixed farm - a yeomanly lifestyle before the days of cheap food dumping, market rigging and political hostility - now usually requires extra cash. Jane produces good vegetables, fruit, eggs etc for her table, but her income comes from part-time jobs, lodgers, B& B's, child benefit before they left home and suchlike. Jane's economy runs on virtually all cash. My peasant life enjoys unrivalled quality on very small cash.

The first duty of the peasant is to survive and keep station on the land, if only to ensure that nothing worse can happen to it. Depopulation is worse. Amalgamation in a big farm is worse. Coniferous forestry is much worse. Concrete is infinitely worse. Almost any alternative is worse than even a rather dull peasant on the land. And because closeness to the soil germinates hidden resources in people, most peasant folk in my experience are remarkable.

Here is a brief summary of finances at the Glen. I get about on a bicycle. Neighbours are most helpful with other transport needs. With modest sales of produce, barter, part self-sufficiency, home baking and cooking, and avoiding processed foods and waste in general, a small state pension gives me a fine quality of life, with some to spare for building materials etc. To make do and mend is all part of the fun. For many years I have not, myself, used alcohol, smoke or other drugs, but there is wine with meals for visiting family and friends who keep coming back! We do ourselves proud. But a small cash economy could never support an addictive habit in the household. Larger capital outlays are made possible by that honoured Irish institution, the local Credit Union - loans up to five times your savings, at reasonable interest.

Whatever other earnings you have, be sure to claim any benefits not too bound up in red tape. Larger farms have long depended on that dole beyond the dreams of avarice - the subsidy. It is fitting that the state - author of the land's plight - should help to redress matters, to say nothing of the return due on taxes and contributions exacted over the years. Benefits geared to a society of endemic wastefulness go a long way with careful housekeeping. Jane recently expressed real excitement at the opportunity of a trip to France, solely to visit a new shopping mall at Calais - an appalling prospect! I dislike shopping because it means something has either run out, or worn out, before it should. However, the pain is offset by cordial exchanges and people's news in the shops.

And then there is the providential factor. Mull calmly over some seemingly unattainable need, and it may soon be strangely provided for. This is well known among quieter people. Its undoubted efficacy is of great irritation to materialists, who rationalize it thus; 'Need alerts the awareness to random opportunities, otherwise unnoticed...' and so on. Well, perhaps. But those immersed in Nature's realm may see the good spirit of all the earth taking care of her own...

Jane's land is just one of many happenings in her rich life. My life is one of many happenings on this rich land. Most folk harbour some vestige of ancestral peasantry, craving a green dimension. But how many of us languish in towns - where even a window box of herbs strikes a blow for freedom - hardly knowing where our true home lies, or how to find it?