Thread by @homemadeguitars

I went up to Jamesport, my local Amish community, today. It's about the same distance from here as most of Kansas City, but in the opposite direction.
I needed an evener and neckyoke. You can only buy them where people know what they are. In much of America that's the Amish.

2. The evener is the thing that goes between a team and a load. The load - say, in this case, a hay wagon - hooks to the middle bar, and donkeys (in my case) hook to two others hooked to the ends of it.
The neckyoke hooks to both donkeys' harness & carries the tongue.

3. You can see refined versions of these on this video. The crosswise metal parts up front, and the ones closest behind the girls. The ones they pull.

4. If you look at that vid, there is a steel pole running up the middle. That thing is part of the wagon, hooks to its axle and provides motive and turning forces.
Up at the front it pokes through a crosspiece. That's the neckyoke. That's the brakes, it's how they stop the load.

5. That neckyoke hangs from straps that the donkeys carry that put the weight of the tongue on the donkeys' necks via their collars. This is never more weight than I can lift, and I'm elderly, but it's still significant.

6. The neckyoke hangs from straps which can swing forward and back some. They, in turn, are hooked to straps that go between the animals' front legs, under their chest and belly, and Y off to the strap that goes behind their haunches. When we go downhill, they hold the load back

7. That process can be clearly seen here, starting after minute 4. By 4:35 they're holding back the load on a steep downhill.

8. All rolling loads have to have these parts or similar parts to perform these same functions. Working animals are both engine and brakes.
I didn't need nice pretty ones like on that road cart, but I needed to perform those functions on my new hay wagon I'm building.

9. Amish people, as I presume everyone knows, limit their use of high energy machines, in particular cars and (usually) tractors.

10. When I got there, there were a father and son English pair (English being defined as "anyone not Amish") buying a complete riding setup for the son's daughter: saddle, bridle, bit, reins, the whole shootin' match.
I needed a neckyoke and evener, and he knows me.

11. A few other English guys came in, and they were looking for a full harness for a mini pony. He says, "Are you in a hurry?" I said, nah, and he said, "I want to go measure something, and check something, but I can get these guys pretty quick," and I said sure.

12. That's another several hundred bucks for him, and what he's going to get from me is 30 bucks for a used set of homemade work evener and neckyoke of the size I was looking for.
He knows he just sold me the pattern to make my own from now on. He did it on purpose. I'm grateful.

13. But it's the same thing for me every time I go up there. All I can think of, is with this example of technology and systems right in front of us, why is it that only a Sky God religion can induce people to live in the United States today at a minimum carbon footprint?

14. People can go dump wheelbarrows full of cowshit on the White House lawn or whatever, but they ain't gonna park the Honda. Fuck that. Get a Prius or a Musk and be farther ahead.
Do you have any idea how much CO 2 is in a Tesla?
Everybody thinks technology is Immaculate Concept

15. Conception.
It ain't.
The idea that we can live Just Like This Forever happily ever after on Future Tech is a bald-faced lie.
And Michael Mann is pissed because he says we've got the technology NOW!
Hey doc. Point at it. If we've got it now, walk over to it and point at it.

16. Coz from where I'm sitting I can't see it.
And you can't make the energy and resource extraction cost of your magic technology project go away by pretending we already did it in the past and now all we have to do it turn the switch on.
It ain't there.
Point at it.

17. I have hung around young activist ultra agro farmers who put me to shame, most of them got PhDs, and all they can think of is finding ways to sink more energy into their production methods.
Mechanize so they can Scale Up.
Why?
I came back here to Twitter to lick my wounds.

18. Everybody always wants to argue with me about Technology, and - technology is tools. When you're already in a hole is time to lay down the shovel.

18. The Amish are way deeper in everyday modern technology than they were 25 years ago when I sold my draft horses and regrouped. Our magic renewables have seduced them. Cell phones. Cordless tools.
The deal about electricity was, you don't wire yourself to the World.
Wireless...

19. They didn't go into this because of climate change. But they evolved a system, of transportation and also of general energy use / automation level in society. They don't accept the technological imperative. Just because you can doesn't make it a good idea.

20. But I don't understand this sky god thing. Why is there no other force to drive us? All I ever read is hand-wringing over climate change and promises to do something someday.
Yeah, I already heard that one.

21. Between here and Jamesport have sprung up horse-and-buggy highway signs. It seems a new horse-and-buggy Mennonite community has sprung up over there. So I went to the greenhouse and bought some pepper plants.
Young family, about 40 maybe.
Sky god.

22. Everybody else has to go a mile a minute.
And these signs are stretched a long way on this highway. This is a new community. Things aren't handy. Long way to anywhere in a buggy from there.
For a sky god.
Not for Earth we are a part of our very selves. Only for a sky god.

23. I don't understand, that's all.