lifestyle

Work, Rest, Repeat

stress

There’s only so many hours in a day. That is the lesson to learn if one is to try to take a self-sufficient idea to a self-sufficient reality. Some of those hours are better spent resting and some are better spent working. There is a balance and I notice it when I swing by (thanks to J. Mellencamp for that bit of word play). This week was to be the week where both the greenhouse and the woodshed were to be started (not started) as well as my wife’s desk (started), and the cabinet doors and closet door for a new built in finished (done). I did mention to catch a bad head cold.

I don’t believe I’m lazy, but looking back over the week the projects fell short. But is that really the case? There must be time for rest and relaxation; we all know that. Taking time, however, is a different story. Work defines us to a great extent and there is nothing wrong with that, but the guilt of not getting all the projects going is ridiculous. There are those out there that feel this way and know what the importance of rest and relaxation are. They also know how difficult it is to do when there is a list of things to be done.

Self-employment carries the weight of work rather than the joy of work, but this is unfortunate. Often those self-employed become that for the simple reason of making decisions for themselves. However, the reality is often the opposite: the projects needing to be finished make the decisions for them. There is nothing wrong with having to work until late in the evening or even “crazy” hours, but there is something skewed to the thought that one must do this.

I, like many, enjoy working and the feeling that comes with finishing a job, doing it correctly and being able to look upon something built with my own hands. This is a craft-less world that needs more time, not more things. This is, perhaps, a good thing to remember when we wake up in the morning with a list of unfinished projects or unfinished business. The business of rest is equally important and (as I am finding) equally difficult as business as usual.

The Daily Dream

pastoral

It’s interesting watching dreams move in and on, change and morph into new and strange, sometimes traditional and familiar themes. At the end of the day, working to make a dream a reality is like most other jobs: it requires long hours, tough work, compromise, eating crow and learning; always learning.

The snow is on the ground now, and days are spent in the wood shop making cabinets and built-ins, making onion and potato boxes, and planning out woodsheds and chicken coops for the coming spring. With each of these things the drawings and dimensions, the measurements and plans change almost with each passing day. But the days pass, and pass quickly.

Every morning, however, starts the same: make coffee, fire up the wood stove in the shop, and take the dog for a walk. I guess some things never change.

Six months into my dream, reality is taking hold and does so every morning when I get out of bed and feel sore, wanting more sleep but not being able to sleep because of the day’s work that rolls around in my head. I watched, and worked, with my father-in-law dairy farmer for some years and told him this the other day. He just laughed, but it sounded like “I told you so…”

And so tomorrow morning I’ll get up, make coffee, fire up the wood stove and go for a walk in the snow with the dog, and when we get back, I’ll get on with the work of making my dream a reality.

New-Old Lifestyles

When talking to people, especially older people who sometimes don’t understand why anyone would want to “go back” to raising and slaughtering your own meat, growing your own food and working your own land, they often point out that they are “fine” eating the modern products and processed foods of our current world. They are right, of course; at least sometimes, or partially.

But the real point is lost on them; the point is not just the healthy aspect, but also the moral aspect. We humans have somehow lost the necessary respect that life deserves and demands. It is not just for health reasons that we till our own gardens and raise and slaughter our own meat. It is healthier and better (lacking the additives and antibiotics) but is most certainly a more moral choice (respect for life and the living): a better choice.

A respect for life is the cornerstone of the agrarian lifestyle. This does not preclude, but does not necessarily include, a religious adoration of life, but it is a necessary moral choice that does much to define who we are at the end of the day. People that were raised on farms eighty years ago seem to remember the drudgery and forget the community. They seem to remember the hardships and forget the rewards. I’m not sure why and perhaps I will too at some point, but I hope not.

The irony of talking to older people who have had such “lifestyles” is that they seem to look upon the new crop of self-sufficient people as being a bit spoiled, but I would argue that the new farmers of old ideas are not spoiled, but curious and willing to do the work. Although many people will fail at these new old endeavors (because the physicality and harshness of the work have not changed) there are many who have found solace and education in pursuing “non-progressive” ways of life.

I think that when an honest lifestyle is dismissed so easily by others that it is because those that dismiss it have never really thought about their own life. To do so, like the new agrarians will find, is physically and morally demanding; no less than the new- life that they have chosen to lead.

Sustain Sufficiency

sustainability

The fall has come here at our new forest/farm. The renovation on the bathrooms is almost finished and the months past have flown by. The question still remains: is self sufficiency a pipe dream, is it possible? This discussion, I’m sure, is common in households that have decided to turn their backs on the supermarkets, the food-consumer concentration of non-sustainability, and suburbs that offer comfort and the all-consuming security.

First, self-sufficiency. The problem, it seems, is energy. How to sufficiently produce and continue to produce the energy that it takes. There are two possibilities: add to the energy production or take away from the energy consumption. Alone, there is no option: we must take away our need for energy to be self sufficient. So, self-sufficiency becomes a community approach to living at some point, which (in order to be moral, to be healthy and to be virtuous) must be sustainable.

Second, sustainability. The problem is energy. How to continue to sufficiently produce the energy that it takes to be self sufficient. There are two possibilities…

So while self-sufficiency and sustainability are not the same they are reliant upon one another: to sustain self-sufficiency we must have sustainable energy sources. This is the catch and the secret. This is the unending education that I am reminded of as a look out over my new acreage and feel the damp coolness seep in, watching the golden leaves fall.

I throw another log on the fire and sip my hot coffee.

The Workshop Universe Pt. III (Edited)

Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8)

The Big Bench Bang, then the year after the bench was built it is claimed in the tradition of mythology that most of the tools present were in place, had a place and were all accounted for. Of course, this is just a myth because looking at the place now it really does seem impossible. Five years later, the spread of the universe accumulates in the form of an electric welder and the first and only cleaning on record is applied. Organization and then entropy ensues afterwards. Ten years later an assortment of what is now the stuff of the universe is acquired: wrenches, ratchet sets appear and the space between appears as blackness, cleaning is but a faded memory. Fifteen years after the Big Bang, the gas welder appears from the nothingness and afterwards the black hole appears spitting forth hand tools from one end and sucking up all that comes within its reach, cleaning becomes a myth for some and a wish for others. Shelving falls and it and all its contents lay untouched for two years until by sheer force and will organization fights the chaos of the Universe; the act of cleaning is outlawed by the creator himself. There was a few wars fought in defense of organization and a simple wash but all were quashed in the name of chaotic order. There are some that ask about the time before the Big Bench Bang and the answer is simple: it was a workshop for the wagons and horses. Another little side-use was the slaughtering of pigs. It is in fact where I learned to do such things.

Pigs have lost their lives in the Universe long before its inception. Actually, since about 1934 pigs have been slaughtered here. The war-grounds for pork is marked territory with the blood and grease of man and pig. The times that the author was involved in the wholesale fight for meat a large, round metal bowl was used; a left-over from the second world war, a “horn-mine” that was found by the father of the creator of the universe (yes, the creator has a father) on the nearby beach but before that a wooden cask was used to hold the hot water that cleaned the carcass before the hair was burnt off the skin. It is neither a pretty sight or a quaint smell that ensues when pigs are slaughtered and both are permanent parts of the workshop. The pig is killed, hung and bled. Then parted while cats and dogs claw over the innards and the grandfather tool (the axe) is put to use to half the carcass. The head is fought over while entrails are dragged out into the darkness of space by cats and dogs alike. All of this happens within the workshop leaving the place with a different kind of smell. I wonder if because water is used if this is counted as a cleaning.

Today the shop is off-limits to any hired help because of unknown realities and time-warp related worries. It continues to grow both in sight and smell. The black hole grows, sucking in the shelving at times, and at other times parts and tools but it nevertheless continues to exist; a parody to existence itself, a stubborn trophy waved in the face of the belief in design and order. Both and anachronism and a study in the future of mankind itself, the Universe of the shop defies definition and yet defines itself as the matrix of change and the canvas of the future. Entropy ensues and it is good.

The Armchair Philosopher

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