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.
