From Our Archives January 2008

The price of gold is going crazy as investors look for a shelter from a dipsy-doodling stock market.

It reminds me of one of my grandfather’s stories. During the bad financial times of the early 1920s in Germany, the peasants (ancestors of ours) traded their potatoes for gems that the rich people were forced to pay to get something to eat.

That story is one reason why in 1974, I took my family out of Philadelphia where I had a good job, bought a little piece of land in my home country, built a house on it, and prepared for a severe economic depression, which fortunately did not come. Yet.

The only requirement I insisted on in looking for land was that it have several acres of woodland on it. I knew I could have a garden producing food in a hurry, but it takes time to grow the wood to keep a house warm and to cook with, if it came to that. I did not want to depend entirely on faraway oil to stay alive, and in a pinch I wanted to get by without electricity if I had to.

Whether I am just paranoid or prophetical I don’t know yet, but as I sit in my woods, resting from the work of splitting firewood, that decision has continued to make sense to me even in times of stable economics. (Is our economic system ever stable?) What I have gained in enjoyment alone makes my investment in two mature woodlots at least as “profitable” as investing an equivalent amount of money in gold.

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