Making the Most of Our Financial Winter

ON a traditional farm, when winter comes and there’s no need for planting, fertilizing or harvesting, it’s time for infrastructure projects. Farmers fix their barns, build fences or dig wells — important tasks that could be done in any season if there weren’t more pressing jobs to do.

If the winter is unusually long and cold, planting time is delayed and additional projects are undertaken. It’s all very simple and sensible: the idea is not to let people sit around idle, and to use down time to get important things done.

The farm needn’t go into debt to do this. All able-bodied people on the farm are expected to contribute their labor, an imposition we can view as an informal tax. Later, everyone on the farm enjoys the benefits of all that work, by participating in the various benefits — the economic growth — it helps to create.

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