Freeconomy Blog
Sat
17 May
How I feel about it all so far...
| 12 comments |
One of the commentators on my last blog pointed out that I should report back to everyone the results, so far, of my dive down the rabbit hole of ecological living. Which made me realise I have an ingrained dislike of reporting! In my old job I was exactly the same – loved doing stuff but could never be bothered writing reports on it!
Where should I start then? The local food diet is going great in some respects, but hard in some others. I can get all the food I need to survive from UK soil, though my diet is the same thing every day at the moment – oats for breakfast, tomatoes for brunch, rye bread and salad with cider vinegar for lunch and my dinner being a mix of about 10 rainbow-like veggies, with the base alternating between potatoes, rye grain, spelt grain and barley grain – barley being the best I’ve found. Rye grain tastes a bit like rubber bullets (shame I bought a 25kg sack of it!) unless you got 2hrs to cook it, which I haven’t at the moment.
It actually feels like when I first went veggie. For about 3 weeks I felt really energy-less – when my body realised it wasn’t getting all the stuff it used to love anymore, it spat the dummy out! But then, as my body realised it was all for the best, I suddenly had more energy than ever before!
That is the hardest part about it all though – there is enough food for me to eat, the only thing that is scarce is time! I was reading Fergus the Forager's blog during the week – the incredibly brave soul who is living completely off foraged food – and I was really feeling for the guy. If I think I have it hard, it is nothing compared to him. But he was saying exactly same thing – in order to help bring the slow life to as many people as possible, we got to work 18hrs a day. There is never enough time, though that is a very un-Gandhian thing for me to say. It’s one of the ironies of the life a lot of people have chosen though.
Another tough part of it all is the fact it’s now much harder to eat communally – like going around to a mates for dinner unplanned, or to meet up with someone (often for the first time) in a café. Though everyone does make a huge effort, I realise I am not only causing them hassle but also unintentionally prompting them to justify what is on their plates, neither of which are desired. The point of all this is not to make people feel like they are a ‘bad person’ (as if such a thing exists anyway!) because they’ve just had a banana! It’s simply an experiment that has the added bonus of drawing the attention to local food.
The one thing I am finding it difficult to get is oil. Each oil I found has some, er, oil in it (thankfully you may say, but I am talking petroleum here and not the omega-packed variety!). It’s either LEAF certified instead of organic, or organic and local but with a plastic top, or organic and plastic-free but from Bolivia! I think I may have lost a small bit of weight, which I’d rather not. Though now I think of it,that probably appeals to a lot of people out there. Maybe the ‘Locavore Diet’ could be the next big thing, and I could sell it to the world, make my first million and then blow it all on cars, casinos and cashew nut butter!
As regards bins, the answer is simple. I don’t need one anymore. I actually can’t understand why I felt I couldn’t do without one beforehand. It was purely habit on my behalf, and a lack of self-discipline. So yeah it’s been 6 weeks without one thing in the bin. And so if it is possible for that length of time then it is possible forever – I really don’t see myself going back on that front, though I’ve got to say a carton of organic blood orange juice may always be a temptation!
My allotment is going very slowly – I only started planting yesterday. There’s two problems at the moment – one, is that I inherited a complete mess, which is good in some respects. But secondly, there is more bindweed in it than soil, which isn’t good in any respect! The allotment is actually just a hundred metres away from Dave and Andy’s allotment, who are better known as the ’Self-sufficient’ish brothers’. They’ve actually got a great book just out, called ‘The Self-sufficient’ish Bible’ – I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but knowing those two it’s got to be an essential.
I have managed to pot a lot of stuff whilst I dig the allotment though (not very Masanobu Fukuoka’ish really is it!) I was also given some Amaranth and Woad by a friend - the former is excellent for protein, which I will need more of come the summer, whilst the latter is great for dying your clothes and painting you face!
Foraging has been the most fun part, as it usually involves long walks or camping – the harvest hasn’t been big yet, but it isn’t going to be in the modern tarmac-clad spring months. I have found a lot of places though that, given a couple of months, will save me at least 4hrs paid work a week.
As regards the rest, I’m still peeing in the back garden whilst trying to hide from the neighbours, though I am thinking about bottling it for the compost heap at the allotment. I wash once a week now, without soap, and it really is enough. I used to shower twice a day and not only was my skin poor then, I also smelt worse, as all my natural body oils were being wiped out and my body was having to work really hard to replace them.
What else – oh yeah, tooth-brushing. Still using the toothpaste until it runs out, then onto the methods I outlined in a previous blog. I thought it would be even less ecological to just chuck a full tube of toothpaste. The other stuff I have stated I haven’t started yet but plan to one-by-one over the summer – I blog them in order to help anyone out there, who is particularly interested in one of them, to put it into practice.
A few of the other comments have also highlighted to me my on-going dilemma in life - my no-win situation. If I pack up everything and take off to the woods and completely ‘be the change I want to see in the world’, people complain that it is not possible for everyone to do that and so it is not valid and I am a very bad man. If I don’t do it and try to work within the system that most people have for various reasons been handcuffed to, in order to help figure out solutions for the vast majority of people, the other half say I am not fully ‘being the change’ and that I should life it completely! Answers on a postcard regarding that one please!
I will leave you with a great quote from Vandana Shiva whilst she was giving a talk on the pesticide and biofuel industry – “We are now putting petrol in our food and food in our cars!” I think nothing symbolises the insanity of this society more than that!
And remember, try to undertake even the most mundane task with the wondrous joy of a child for this whole thing is just the most amazing experience xxx
By the way, the new ‘COMMENT’ system is now up and running!! Hope you find it much easier! If you aren’t signed in and want to comment, it will redirect you to sign-in page, and once you enter your username and password it will bring you automatically to the ‘COMMENTS’ BOX.
Comment on this Post:
Nicolodean comments ...
I am lost now ,how do I see where my and other peoples comments appear?
Nicolodean comments ...
Ah ,now my comment has appeared, but the long one done at 8 am has disappeared into the ether
Nicolodean comments ...
If this comments have already been posted I apologise, but yesterday I thought you all might be interested in occassional snippets of life in Spain and how the philosophy f our site melds with the current environmental situation as it pertains here.
The picture in general s very mixed, initiatives have been launched but some are disregarded, ignored or depised. We are a rural area with rural practices and often centuries tradition overtakes good practice, overlay this with modern introductions and the potential for confusion is obvious.
Some of you will have heard of the drought we aqre suffering ,long term neglect of the infrastructure (sounds familiar?) means that drinking water remains at a precarious supply level and car wash bans and no filling of swimming pools have been mooted, too little too trite and too late. I measured the amount of run off to bring our shower to tepid for washing purposes the other day, 8 litres now collected in a bucket used to flush solids away in the loo.
The water supply of many of my neighbours has been traditionally from wells, recently our new and progressive ( ina positive way) mayor published a commissioned study that said that approx 60% of wells have now a dangerously high concentration of nitrates. This added to the practice of slurry spreading sometimes leads to unpleasant pools of green shimmers before the evaporation dries them to fetid crusts.
We Mulch our garden heavily ,much to the amusement of our neighbours, who seem content to allow the soil to be eroded by the trimuntana and see my efforts to conserve moisture as the eccentricities of a batty englishman.
On the food front I find the outlook positive, eat local is easy and still relatively cheap, the goos weather leads to an abundance of product and seedlings all of which can be shared and stored. Cropping is heavy and despite the clay soil working the land is easy.
At the moment I am looking for extra land to produce more food and to erect a tepee to use as communal space, and success I have already recruited one member of this movement and have more on the horizon.
Further news if you want it! love to hear from any of you who pass this way or are just curious.
Peace and love
Nick
pi mi comments ...
A really thought provoking post - as ever. It's funny what you say about people you eat with feeling they have to defend their choices - I find this as I try and be a vegetarian (still wobbly), let alone vegan, let alone locan (?). And i have to confess even I feel some of it - thinking I can never live as purely as others are living and so try to find some argument for myself to reject it!
In answer to your question, which is often in my mind, and surely in the mind of anyone who tries to swim upstream or set themselves to live by a higher moral or ethical or holistic or health or whatever set of values than those around them - to either take it to its full extreme, and effectively cut off from a good part of the world, or stay in the society, act within it and effectively by a part of it, in the hope of improving things but risking self-pollution or even making things worse.
i'd like to think that, if we are perhaps approaching some kind of unavoidable ecological/economic tipping point whereby it will be impossible to continue living as we do, it won't necessarily spell disaster. For - unless our leaders literally intend to divide the world into two halfs: the haves and have nots, and build an even bigger wall between us rich, resource-fat northern/westerners and those who work to serve this lifestyle - then we must all at some point soon adjust to having less, eating differently, reusing our possessions and waste, and so on.
But rather than seeing it as as a great sacrifice we have to force ourselves to accept, these posts suggest that it could be something that will actually make us feel better - live healthier and closer to the land, collaborating more, while focusing less on mindless media, material-junkyism or unsatisfying over-indulgence. And no doubt it will get easier as more follow and share their work. So by showing us that this can be the case, by staying in the world and blogging, as you try and live fully sustainably, addressing all the hundreds of aspects of this that would never cross my mind, you're surely doing a great thing.
Against the massive threats to the world, not using a plastic bottle in itself won't halt or change them, but like a coloured slide held up to light, or a ripple after a pebble hits a lake, it perhaps reflects and refracts into the hearts of thousands more who may one day be ready - and indeed excited to make a change.
While the total ideal of a total sustainable, nature-positive existence feels to me a bit like a point of infinity always out of reach, making any move towards it has to be a good thing - a step in the right direction, on the journey of a thousand miles.
Thank you for holding up a light.
Anton comments ...
Nicolodean, where are you in spain? I have just come back from two permaculture projects based near Coin, Malaga. Do you have a website I can look at?
keep up the good work Saoirse, I shall be (figuratively) joining you on your search soon, kind regards, Anton.
disgruntled of Eastville comments ...
"I’m still peeing in the back garden whilst trying to hide from the neighbours,"
tut tut tut
Patrick Travers comments ...
Only 2 showers a day Boyle???/ I think it was more like 3 bordering on4 ....I am amazed you have managed to keep that down,,, and how do you shave your hair these days???
kalimago comments ...
It's true that you can't please all the people all the time so maybe better to not try pleasing any...if your heart tells you to go and live in the woods and experiment with breaking your bonds with the system that destrpys so many - then my opinion is GO FOR IT!
There will be as many who are inspired by your actions as have been inspired by your vision of the freeconomy community and the others will probably always find something to complain about!
MARTACardenas22 comments ...
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TYSONJasmine comments ...
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