More reflections from Walden Pond.

How I envy the man. In some ways at least. He was able to extract himself from the clutter and hone his attention on the aspects of living that he found to be the most important. HDT was a philosopher, so he thought about the nature of living a good life. This is what philosophers seem to do. Though he put aside his thoughts and words and went out an acted.

This is the hard part for me personally.

Henry David Thoreau called his approach “living the simple life.” As he forswore everything that he didn't actually need to survive. There were no luxuries. Instead of tea/coffee/wine he drank the cool clean water from Walden Pond. He labored on his own, where his fancies took him. Taking only the bare minimum of what he NEEDED in order to survive and devoting the rest of his life to enjoyment of the natural world.

Then, he came to the conclusion, all those things that a man doesn't need can be happily 86ed as they only hold him down and bring poverty and unhappiness. In fact at one point he considered spending his nights in a tool-chest by the railroad to avoid the burdens of rent and property. His thoughts cleave to the enlightened path of the Buddha that wanting more than you need to live is the ultimate cause of unhappiness in the world.

Tea, meat, fine clothing and all the other fripperies should be laid at the wayside.

But I like tea and fresh meat. Then there are the modern joys of video games. Who could live without the internet in these modern days? Owning a car is fantastic, how else does one get to Chicago in three hours? Well I suppose that there is the train. Not by walking Henry, not by walking. But one has to labor at unpleasant things in order to acquire and maintain these luxuries. And really luxuries they are.

The problem is that the world has changed dramatically in our post-industrial society. Where HDT's world involved a proto-industrial economy where 80% of the population was still working in an agrarian based economy. We've forgotten the skills of old and have laid down the tools of the trades. Who knows how to weave cloth anymore? We survive on trading haircuts and hand-jobs while less than 5% of the population is invested in growing our food.

I suppose I should focus on the problem of getting my own food(and water) first and clear up the rest later. The chemical foundations which power our bodies are the single universal need amongst humanity. We all need a daily intake of food and water or else we'll die. There are places on this earth where a human can survive without clothing, shelter or fire to provide warmth. But let even the craziest airatarian go without some proper nosh for very long and you'll be planting another corpse.

I've devoted a fair sized section of the Post-apocalyptic survival section of my library to the questions of food production and homesteading in general. Most of the books are encyclopedia types of volumes that cover a broad spectrum of topics that are linked to raising crops and cattle. Very few go into much detail. I suppose I need to track down better volumes, but this will require more study on my part as I discern what I might actually need to branch into.

*A note about the library, the intent was to build a base of knowledge that would be useful for a community that is attempting to rebuild. I have focused largely on skill subjects with the aforementioned food production as well as some traditional crafts such as pottery and metal work that seem to be the basis of most civilizations. Not to mention the books on mathematics. I suppose that one could consider this a capsule. I really should find some material about teaching people to read. How does one acquire that skill without another to guide them? So far acquisitions have been driven by subjects that I was interested in at the moment.

Very few people grow their own food in this day in age. Even those who garden as a hobby aren't self-sufficient. It is faster, cheaper and easier to pick of a can of Spaghetti-Os at the local big box than it is to plant even a small garden. A meal costs a dollar, though the meal is of questionable nutritional value and loaded with chemicals which may just be killing us.

I know, as I just consumed a can of Chef Boyardee's ravioli. A fondly remembered staple of my childhood that, much like Kraft Mac and Cheese. All of these canned an boxed conveniences have some delightful qualities that quite resemble real food, and maybe at one point they started as such. There are few times when I ingest said fare that I actually feel glad that I ate it.

In the process of processing food, much of the actual flavor is stripped away through the rather harsh treatment of high temperature cooking(to kill parasites). The companies are forced to add a bath of chemicals that interact with our sense in order to reintroduce those flavors. Really, why does every can of ravioli taste and smell exactly the same? They are constructed to be so. Corporations have food production down to a science.

For those who own the land, Even small scale Gardens are labor intensive. For those who don't own land? Well gardening is out of reach for most of us. In Medieval England an average of 30 or 40 acres were required to feed a family and their livestock. Keep in mind that not all soils or climates are equal to the task of keeping a farmer alive. Will I be able to grow the various foods that I enjoy? Bread alone requires flour, sugar, yeast and water. Various flours can be substituted here, but wheat seems to be the most common and has been since it's discovery some 8000 years ago. Sugar is the same. Water is usually easy enough to find. I'm pretty sure that wild yeasts can be gathered.

What about potatoes and the like? They'll grow in some of the worst soils and climates, and you can use barrels and tire-stacks to force them to grow vertically. They did well enough for the Incas and the Irish(at least until the potato famine). And there are a thousand varieties that have been developed to address various nutritional needs. They come in all shapes and colors and sized. Sadly we really only rely a half-dozen commercial varieties (which is the case for most of our food production).

Technology has improved in the last 1000 years, for better and worse. More importantly, the science behind agriculture has improved. There is a better understanding of soil chemistry as it applies to foods and the need for crop rotation and the best methods for fertilization. As a result we grow more food than we need and are able to devote tons and tons of it to making fuels and sugary drinks.

Last spring/summer my roommate and I attempted an experiment in indoor planter gardening. We filled several 5 gallon buckets with potting soil and placed them in behind our large south-facing window. The experience was delightful, but came to little. I think that we got a total of 5 grape tomatoes, no string beans, a half dozen peppers that grew smaller and smaller(the pepper plant lasted into December) and a fair sized collection of herbs. Of these plantings, only the basil is still with us. Some of the failure is due to inexperience on the part of the farmers(over-watered), while the rest stems from a poor situation of not enough room or direct sunlight.

I guess how we do things as a society is fine, when the system works. But sooner or later it will break and a whole lot of people will go hungry. And it will break. Great. We're efficient! Yay. The next problem is our increasing reliance on mono-culture crops. Basically most of our food plants are clones and many of our animals have had variation inbred out of the stocks. We've done this to increase productivity of our food stuffs and it has worked quite well in that respect, our yields have increased drastically over the last century. Even if it has some problems (tomatoes, I am told, used to be delicious, now they taste like Styrofoam).

The largest looming pitfall(what it does the the environment aside) for our mono-culture is the advent of a disease. According to the experts, when a disease appears that is deadly to a culitvar, it is uniformly deadly and can cause vast crop failures. True, we breed new crops to resist known diseases, but this takes time and doesn't help the present. Take for an example the fungus that is once again destroying banana plantations in Central and South America.

On a personal level, one can resume cultivating heirloom plants. Those ancient breeds of yesteryear that have been husbanded by dedicated hands. Yields will drop even as flavor, nutrition and security increase. Many of our crops have been bred with yield and endurance(for purposes of shipping) in mind. As well as uniform appearance.

That's all good for plants. What about animals? Many of the same issues seem to be applicable I'm afraid. Hogs have been engineered to bulk up in weeks where it took months. They are fed the same diet and loaded with antibiotics and hormones and driven faster than was ever intended. They live out their entire lives in smelly stalls, until the time for slaughter arrives. Industrial livestock operations seem to be rather mechanical and ugly. The living animal that is sacrificed for nourishment is treated like a product.

I say this from a standpoint of a man who has only intentional slain one mammal (numerous fish have died by my hands – despite the fact I don't like fish personally. The rest of my family is a different story.) in his life. And the life of that lone animal was wasted. I still feel shame over this. Wasting food is in my mind one of the few actual sins a human can commit. I've also not got much hands on experience in raising livestock, so I cannot be sure how widespread these practices are.

But I am not against eating meat, I quite enjoy it. I'm not against raising animals, or hunting them for food. This is just an area of expertise which I plan to personally avoid where possible. I think I should prefer to create goods and earn my meat through trade than to harvest it with my own hands. Honesty, the sight of blood and internal organs have affected me negatively in the past. I'm soft.

Sometimes I even feel a brief pang of sadness when I contemplate the sudden and wasted end of roadkill. These creatures have not died for any good cause, to feed another organism. This seems a vast waste. But nature does not waste. The carcass will be made use of.

All right, to the final point. I feel that it is important for people to take control of their own food production. At least to supplement what they buy from stores. We can never go back to what was, not while keeping what we have. There is little point in returning to the past anyhow and only fools and Conservatives gaze at the past with rose covered glasses.

Still, with the present, it appears that we're building up for some big trouble and I want to get ahead of it.

Welcome to the apocalypse. To be continued.