Author: KenshoHomestead

Creatively working toward self-sufficiency on the land.

Agorism Update

It’s been a busy few weeks processing all those pears—I canned over 30 jars of them, we’ve got 15 gallons of pear wine brewing and 9 jars of pear-ginger marmalade. I also harvested our first honey, a whopping 4.5 pints!

(I consider leaving out this part where I admit I did not mean to harvest so much, but I made the novice mistake of lifting out a bar full of capped honeycomb, which in a topbar hive should not be done in high heat, because the comb can pull right off the bar and fall into the hive, which is exactly what happened.  It then smashed onto the neighboring comb, killed lots of bees, and meant I had to then harvest two combs and pull out dead bees with tweezers.  Not my finest hour.)

Also, we’ve had another agoristic experience I’m happy to report: 3 wild hogs from a friend traded for a half-dozen dressed ducks. No cash exchanged, that means no cash to line the banksters’ pockets or to pay for more illegal wars. I love the idea of agorism, it makes so much sense to me. But, like with all things, the theory is always easier to come to than the practice.

In fact, I could have several more occasions for bartering if I felt more comfortable simply asking.  We had a dump truck load of mulch delivered, the perfect missed opportunity.   There are many skills involved that require me to up my game and learn things I’ve spent my life avoiding, because I’ve never liked doing them–like marketing, networking, various other entrepreneurial-type skills. I’ve never been that comfortable or concerned with money and I automatically zone out whenever numbers come up. New challenges pop up over the simplest things that hadn’t much occurred to me before, like how to assign value to things or services. What is a dressed duck worth compared to an undressed hog? This is a question a suburban girl never expects to ponder in her lifetime.

Also problematic is distance. I see that bartering sites are popping up quite a bit now in urban areas and folks are exchanging even more now using old standbys like Craigslist. But Austin, Dallas, and Houston are all about a 3-hour drive one way, which make regular trips there un-economical and far too time-consuming.  While I’m thrilled to see how popular bartering is becoming, it’s not a decent short-term solution for us.

Now that I’m pleasantly and perhaps permanently unemployed I like the idea of trying to find other ways to exchange and earn that wouldn’t set us back so far that Handy Hubby would give up the plan of an early retirement. That’s our five-year plan. We don’t want to start a business, not in the traditional sense anyway. We like the simple, uncomplicated sort of life; we’ve adjusted to it now. I think it was once referred to as “subsistence farming,” maybe even without the negative connotation. That’s another concept I never expected to ponder in my lifetime.

I guess the criticism from a reader that I am a neo-luddite was valid after all.  I’ve changed in our nearly seven years here.  Our paradigm has shifted.  Cities are too crowded, even social media is too crowded.  I hate to think the only option for selling our surplus would be to go back into the matrix and try to navigate the (meta)physical marketplace.  Not that I don’t appreciate it now and again, but I’d much rather go for inspiration than labor.

Such thinking of short-term solutions led me to surf the dark web, to research the black and gray markets. It was a very educational journey full of potentialities. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about that here.

I’d love to hear from y’all–your links, ideas, thoughts, ramblings, all welcome, both practice and theory!

🙂

honeycomb

Our first honey harvest was an accidental success, I learned so much about what not to do!

hogs

Of course it’s Handy Hubby who does the real heavy lifting.  I’m one lucky unemployed redneck wannabe!

 

 

Predators and Passivity

I wish I could say I was not guilty of it. I watched on two different days last week as a coyote trotted off contentedly first with a duck, then a chicken. The latter time I was outside, with our very large Dane-Mastiff guarding, reading on the deck as the coyote pranced by 200 feet from us, without any chicken ever making a sound to alert our attention.

I did shoot at it, far too late, but I was so slow and stunned I hardly had a chance. I asked on social media whether, had they been faster than me, if they would have choosen to shoot the thieving coyote with their cameras or their guns. Most chose cameras, which demonstrates a double-bind, I believe.

We have lost sight of the predator/prey relationship. In fact, when we look closely into New Age groups and the major push in education currently, the prey has been deluded into believing they can transform the predator into something ‘better’ or “safer” or at least less scary.

The prey goes into school and later even therapy so as to come out better adapted at the game and to his role as prey. The predators understand perfectly this relationship can be best described by the old parable of ‘the frog and the scorpion.’  Since at least Biblical times, it has always been the same game.  The predator/prey relationship is easily paralleled to our more civilized equivalent of Master/slave, which can be extended further to our current neo-serf system of Parent/child and State/citizen.

I fancy myself aware, self-reliant, pro-active, resourceful. Yet, in my ‘truth quest,’ which a great many of us have been on for many years now, I’ve demonstrated my talent at pointing fingers, shifting responsibility, projecting, and most grievous and destructive of all, further nurturing an identification complex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_%28psychology%29

An identification complex is plaguing seemingly all of society right now so I have plenty of company. We are all pointing our fingers at the 1%, or in the case of “truthers” or “conspiracy theorists” the .001%, as the core problem with the world. We criticize from one side of our mouths and go along with the other. We go along in hundreds of different ways every day. We fall for their fashion and entertainment, we sit in their schools and on their boards and in their governments. On the surface there seems to be little other choice. When someone opens their eyes wide enough to see this is the same master/slave relationship indoctrinated and institutionalized at ever level of the system that has existed since the beginning of history, we are then met with the next inconvenient truth:  We are only looking at the gameboard, we are not understanding the game.

We the slaves both despise and envy the master, and the master knows this and uses it against us.  Obedience is the price and the master sets the terms.  Our role is to remain passive and uncomplaining against the unspoken contract.   When the noose tightens, some slaves become restless and resentful, while others adapt by learning to breathe more shallowly.  Livestock breeders use identical methods.  This is how the system perpetuates and exacerbates to such an imbalance that an excess of predators disrupt the natural order until collapse is inevitable.

Of course the game is rigged!  And if you had your way, it would be rigged in your favor.  Your preference might be: I want it to be fair and safe for everyone, for there to be no predators or prey, no masters or slaves, and many might support you, to the point they’d be willing to become the predators in order to preserve your collective safe-space.

What we see politically we are also allowing in our personal and professional lives. We feel the boot, there are fewer in denial everyday. We know we are being surveilled and minimized and made obsolete. We know we are victims and we react in one of the many ways they know we will, as prey always will: Fight, Flight, Fawn, or Freeze. If one can find another courageous enough to rebel, he is also lost eventually, because to rebel is to remain still inside the game. They have plenty of room for rebellion, they count on it, they thrive on it.

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” Jay Gould

Obedience is the prey’s cost in the master/slave, State/citizen relationship, making the passive society become increasingly easy prey; little more than a flock of smiling depressives. These easiest of prey develop a quintessential need for their one-season world, for un-natural order, until passivity replaces fear and we all become the woman watching the coyote trot by with one of her ducks, too slow and maladapted and untrained to stop him.

When one is lucky enough to find another who has the courage to change the game, or at least give it a go, one has met the Fool soon to replace the Father. The game changes when we ourselves change, it’s an inside-out process, not an outside-in. We choose en masse, to not be prey or predator.  We choose to have no rulers. We choose Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-government.

The ones who understand you must stop the predator or soon all your poultry will perish are the ones rebelling, which the masters then flaunt in front of the more passive prey to get them focused toward each other. The fawns point fingers at the fights, the freezes blame the flights, and around and around we go.

Where will we stop? Does somebody know?

When the most passive meets the predator en face they realize their only hope is one they’ve been trying to avoid all along.  Because the most unpleasant truth of the human condition from the mindset of the frog is that not every frog has to become aware of the nature of the scorpion, they just have to become aware faster than the last frog.

Here’s some research links I know could really benefit some of my fellow frogs.

For your personal life and relationships: Ollie Mathews, an ingenious entrepreneur helping victims of narcissistic abuse by reading their often painful letters on Youtube.  Understanding this co-dependent dysfunctional relationship is crucial to understanding how it’s playing out in the Big Game:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVFJBbBcV6akw8M1YuDo-Yg

To dig into the Big Game, prepare yourself for the most complex, multi-faceted work of your life.

https://www.unslaved.com/

https://tragedyandhope.com/

https://www.corbettreport.com/

 

 

 

 

Success is Overwhelm

Is this true for most people, most of the time?  Does success always lead to overwhelm?  Is that why some of us have an intrinsic fear of success, whereas others fear failure?

So I’ve canned, made hooch, made syrup and various desserts and even got a welcome barter for raw milk, fresh from the cow with our surplus of pears.  Pears still litter the living room and fill the fridge and are starting to ripen faster than I can keep up.  The pears are starting to depress me.  My wrists and forearms ache from peeling.  Other chores are being neglected.  It’s no great difficulty to sit in front of the TV or Youtube and peel for hours on end without any real stress or rush, and yet still I feel the need to curl into a fetal position and pretend I’ve managed it, rather than being only about half-way through.

I just submitted my last grades for my last class at APUS forever.  I should be celebrating, because I’m really glad about it.  And, I should be thrilled for the new hobby that this pear surplus has made me start digging into:  wine-making.  From what I’m able to gather so far in my novice stage, what we’ve been calling “hooch” is actually what winemakers call ‘must’.  I think.

While I am thrilled for the new hobby and the last grading, overwhelm has tainted my success.   It feels something like grid-lock.  There are still many, many pounds of pears that need processing, and once processed, need to find a semi-permanent storage spot, and then we need to learn to really love eating canned pears.

I think I don’t know the difference between success and overwhelm, really.  To me, they are two sides of the same coin.  Handy Hubby will not be pleased to learn the only thing I can imagine now is we need to add a hobby room to the house, and a cellar.  I’m going to need lots of wine-making equipment, then in a year or so once I’ve got that down, we’ll need a still, for cognac and such.

He might also be reconsidering success.  😉

piesuck

A failed pear-blueberry galette from Baking with Julia.  I just plain suck at crusts, there seems to be little hope for me, no matter how I try!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Victims of Random Success, Failure

Sweet potato success two years ago was two wheelbarrows full.  This year, not a one survived, though slips filled two healthy rows at one time in early June.  Two years ago, no pears to speak of, in fact only one  and a half crops in 4 years.  This year, a bumper crop from a single tree that will fill my afternoons for the next week in processing.  Peppers one year, tomatoes another, melons everywhere like weeds three years ago, to this year, where are all the damn melons?!  I don’t see how the farmers do it.  Or, did our farming ancestors count on such extreme variations, whereas today there is an unrealistic reliance on consistency?   Hence all the hybrids and GMOs?

I wish I knew.  I suppose this has long been the struggle of man and nature that dimwits and intellectuals alike try to grapple with.  I read and observe and attempt eternal patience, but in truth it is terribly aggravating all this not-knowing.

It’s baffling and annoying and funny.  I try to keep records, but half the time I have no clue why something succeeds or fails, so I don’t know what to record–the temperature and rainfall and seed source and planting dates, ok, but that does not seem to get me very far at all, even when I manage to do it.  One year an invasion of squash bugs, another year white flies, another year some unidentified wilt, this year, five different persistent grasses growing like bamboo mats engulfing everything in their path.  This has been the most depressing summer for the garden I’ve yet experienced, but I get the sense now I’m repeating that mantra in some form every year.

I get hunches sometimes, for better or worse, and this year I thank the pear success to our beehives.  I know timing of the last frost and first good rains fit in there somewhere too, but don’t ask me how.  Also failed this year were the figs, one, like sweet potatoes and okra, also failed, were all ones we once called a fail-proof crop for the south.

Back to the drawing board, green thumb.   Success in one area, as temporary as it might be, leads to thoughts how to better benefit from such success in future, only in future to find that was quite futile.

If I can get myself past the programming to stop focusing on either success or failure, I might get closer to seeing the bigger picture.  Or so they say.

Pear hooch is bubbling happily in the crock.  That might be my zooming out solution.  One good solution surely leads to another.  🙂

 

rootcellar1_copyWe might need a root cellar.  Or then again . . .?

 

Meat Day!

I have my cheese days and Handy Hubby has his days at the smoker. Usually it’s a Sunday, because we try to always take a day off for lounging in the hammocks and over-consuming adult beverages. Cooking, writing and researching deep politics we don’t typically consider work. It’s more that we just agree to ignore the heavy labor for a day.

It’s raining again today (thank heavens!) so we’ve got our real redneck on, swinging under the carport, dogs at our feet, noting we have too many roosters–we have to yell to hear each other over the crowing and the drops echoing off the tin roof.

On today’s meat madness list: Hubby’s own pastrami, a couple of ducks, lots more duck necks for future soups, and some sausages. Yes, we are just two here.  We cook in bulk, just like we shop. By the way, we are awash in ducks. I’m scouring every cookbook and online site for new recipes and hoping somewhere, somehow to find someone to trade with for something.

Today we are experimenting with our ‘hard-core homemade’ menu by crafting a Reuben to reckon with. The recipe comes from Julia Child, but we kick it up more than a couple of notches.

Everything about it is homemade—the rye bread, the pastrami, the Muenster cheese (I’ve been babying that baby for two and a half months now), the mustard, the mayo, the ketchup and the saurkraut. (As I side-note, I had no idea ketchup used to be a very healthy condiment, because it was fermented, and nothing like the corn syrup concoction with seemingly unlimited shelf-life sold today.) Before finding this recipe in the gorgeous cookbook Baking with Julia, I didn’t know a ruben had ketchup. The Eastern European rye bread recipe also comes from this book. Normally I make a sourdough rye, my own painstakingly-crafted recipe, that is delicious.  But this one is made with yeast and looks so awesome in the photo (see below, mine is rising as I type, but I’m sure it won’t look quite that pretty), I just had to try it.

On the dark research front we have another score, and quite a synchronistic one.

Yesterday I was confronted with a compelling contradiction. I spoke with my mom on the phone and normally the conversation would not swerve into politics at all, but these days it’s front of mind for a lot more of the population than usual. She is concerned, as so many are, especially about ISIS. Her source of information is the mainstream news, known in ‘alternative’ circles as the lamestream news. I tried briefly to convince her that she is watching State-run propaganda and we might as well be living in the USSR, that’s how bad it’s gotten. She had not heard of false flags, of course, how would she?

Conversely, a friend on social media concluded this is a positively wonderful time for anarchists/voluntarists/agorists/libertarians and free-thinkers in general, because Americans are really waking up en masse. People are engaged in the elections and Trump is spilling the beans that the whole game is rigged and folks are listening, was just a small portion of her lengthy don’t-be-so negative-and-see-the-silver-lining lecture.

To her, I would like to say the same thing I’ve been saying at the university where I’m thrilled to be teaching my last class ever: Engaged is not educated!

I tossed in my sleep considering this great rift in understanding and reactions, and to my very pleasant surprise when I woke a brilliant piece of insight had been posted on Youtube by Truthstream Media, which I promptly sent to Mom and re-posted across social media.

This couple does excellent work, and if folks are really waking up, it’s thanks to them and those like them, boldly and courageously speaking truth to power, and putting their youthful exuberance into righteous anger, expressing a proper amount of snark and frustration, usually, but always deliberate, creative action, and especially oh-so-many undeniable facts for the lamestream watchers to reckon with.

Manufactured Civil Unrest and Regime Change: Is America Next?

 

 

bread

Breads from Julia Child’s book: Baking with Julia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enforcing Happiness

This is not a positive, solutions-oriented post. Trigger warning. Some readers are likely to become offended.  Continue reading at the peril of feeling negative and/or critical. Feelings of hopelessness may also arise. More sensitive readers may feel overcome with a sense of dread or an onset of depression. This post is not recommended for those who are taking prescription medications, or are self-medicating, have children or are planning to have children. In fact, no one should read this post.

Enter the Traumatology Zone. Dual reality. Duel reality. Forced choice, double speak, group think, mass manipulation. Polarity Pattern Processing.  Perpetual Propaganda.

With one hand keep the populace undisciplined, uneducated, disorganized, distracted, deluded, and with the other hand convince them that they’re happy in this state.

The goal: A populace that is predictable and conditioned to obey. Participating in their own destruction. Policing one another as they battle one another.

The vision: Total Spectrum Dominance.

The means: Anything and everything.

Current regimen: Poisoning from Stratospheric Aerosol Spraying, fake food, fluoridated water, toxic vaccines, intellectual and cultural nihilism. Permanent undeclared war.  Deliberate dumbing-down.

Publicly shun dissenters as ‘haters’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’.  Eliminate them from mainstream discourse.  Preach love and unity at every opportunity.  We are all one.  One big fake-happy family under oligarchical domination renamed democracy.

Don’t look up!

Current enforcement shaped through the corporate model. Brief description follows.

“. . .the ideology of modern corporate management, which uses therapeutic forms of social control and calls for group harmony to impose rigid conformity.
This magical thinking is largely responsible for our economic collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as “negative.” This childish belief discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion. And it has perverted the way we think about the nation and ourselves.
The corporations enforce a relentless optimism that curtails honest appraisal of reality and preserves hierarchical forms of organization under the guise of “participation.” Corporate culture provides, as Christopher Lasch pointed out, a society dominated by corporate elites with an anti-elitist ideology.
Positive psychology, which claims to be able to engineer happiness and provides the psychological tools for enforcing corporate conformity, is to the corporate state what eugenics was to the Nazis.”

For further reading:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090726_happiness_consultants_wont_stop_a_depression

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/category/global-meltdown/

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/chuck-norris-a-government-cover-up-of-epic-proportions/

Agorism, continued

I used to consider myself a Liberal, back in the days before liberal politics officially embraced the Military Industrial Complex and the eternal war machine.

Then I called myself a Libertarian, until I realized the movement had been completely co-opted by the Right and been bought by the likes of the Koch brothers.   The so-called “New Right” proved itself to be exactly the same as the old Right, not exactly the Neo-Con version of the last several decades, but harking back that of my grandfather’s generation.  No thank you!

Then I called myself an Anarchist, because it was obvious to me no good was coming from politics at all.  I stand by this still, as misunderstood as it is.  Anarchy does not mean “no rules” it means “no rulers.”

It seems very much in line to me with Agorism, but I’m still learning and am not at all afraid to change my stance once again if I discover I’ve been misled or deceived or the movement has been co-opted.  The concept of the counter–economy is particularly appealing to me, because I absolutely abhor the effects of my labor going toward such criminal endeavors as war and lining the pockets of elected criminals, banksters, and their very many minions.

“Agorists regard this counter-economy as a form of nonviolent direct action, a method of simultaneously challenging and evading state power, in the process building a free society based on the principles of unrestricted voluntary exchange. Counter-economics underscores the fact that given the volume of rules, regulations, and licenses already choking economic relations, almost everyone has already participated in the counter-economy in one way or another, perhaps quite unwittingly. By simply paying no heed to arbitrary rules that attempt to prohibit completely voluntary, mutually beneficial trade, agorists are engaged in an attempt to change society without resorting to political action, which agorism regards as capitulating to the existing power structure. Agorists believe that by becoming politically engaged, running candidates and attempting to reform governmental structures and lawmaking, libertarians fall into the trap of politics — the delusion that if we only elect the right person or pass the right law, we can attain freedom. For agorists, the processes and institutions of politics are inherently and unchangeably corrupt and coercive.”

http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/black-market-activism-samuel-edward-konkin-iii-agorism

I first learned the learned the word and the philosophy from my most-trusted news source James Corbett.  His most recent article on the topic reassures me further that not only am I aligned with the message, but that it’s happening, for real.   With his typical sardonic wit, he writes, Dear Government, Deliver Us From Freedom!

In this good news piece he highlights the booming peer-to-peer economy, community exchanges and the other fantastic efforts of like-minded folks doing all they can to get the corrupt government out of their lives and livelihoods.  He lists many examples and resources, so I hope you’ll check out the entire article.

In the end he surmises sarcastically, “Do you realize what this means? It means that the plebs are actually starting to spontaneously organize in new and innovative ways to help each other. This is a disaster! What if they stop believing that all charity on earth must be provided by the government? What if they start creating self-sufficient communities? Or collaborating without corporate middlemen? Or transacting around the world without the knowledge or oversight of our tax collectors?”

Oh I do, James, I really do realize what this means!  And thank you for your years of work and ‘leadership,’ in the way that leadership is meant to be.  You have inspired me and millions, and our numbers are multiplying by the minute.

“Freedom. Terrible, terrible freedom. What if there’s no putting a lid on it?”

Amen, Brother!

nif_pray

 

 

 

Cheese Day!

I’m not really sure why I love making cheese so much. My sister noticed one reason it’s not like me at all–‘it’s a lot like chemistry,’ she said.  I know! I don’t like numbers, or recipes, or chemistry. At least, not that kind of chemistry. Or, maybe I do, but school sucked the pleasure right out of it for me.

Cheesemaking has a pretty high learning curve, which does suit me. I took three good courses not too far away in Waco, Texas and I’ve been at it a couple of years now.

What I’ve learned as most important in cheesemaking is a good life lesson for me, so maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to it. Most cheesemakers, if asked the most important aspect of cheesemaking, might say, sanitation, or quality of milk, or aging capacity. I don’t deny all these are crucial, but for me personally, it’s patience.

I’ve had success from poor sanitation! If you’re curious about that dirty story, you can read it here: http://www.grit.com/food/kitchen-techniques/a-tale-of-two-cheeses-part-2.aspx I’d love to repeat that process, but don’t know how exactly, because I don’t know all that went wrong to produce it.

I’ve had some limited success with poor milk quality, though I don’t care to repeat it, because the failures far outweighed the success. Now I drive five hours round-trip to the nearest Jersey Grade A Raw Milk available in our region:  Trimbel Farms.  I do wish it were closer, but quality is not something I’m willing to forgo.

Aging capacity is always a challenge, unless you are lucky enough to have your own mountain cave, which is impossible in Texas, as far as I know. Affinage is the correct terminology, and if I wanted to do it correctly, I’d move to Switzerland. Not really an option.

Patience is the real challenge for me. Process is everything. This is not something that comes naturally to me. I’m a natural step-skipper, I don’t follow directions well, never have. My motto, what can I get away with not doing? So I always test the system. While this works for many things, it does not work for cheese. Typically, there are only four or five ingredients.  You only really need four–milk, rennet, culture and salt–which account for a good chunk of all the cheeses there are.

Not only that, but to know if I’ve failed I must wait two or three months or longer, in most cases. So much for instant gratification. Of course, there is always 30-minute mozzarella, which for the beginner with no cheese press and no way to properly “affine” is an ideal way to go. And, it’s delicious, better than anything you’ll buy in your average grocery in this neck of the woods. I still make it regularly and it never disappoints. Three ingredients: milk, rennet, citric acid. Well, and water and salt, if those even count.

I’ve had limited success with my all-time favorite, Camembert, one for the more advanced cheesemaker. I’m still not sure why I can’t succeed consistently at it, though I use the same techniques each time. For those interested in trying, I direct you to my cheesemaking and beekeeping friend, the lovely Rashel of The Promise Land Farm, who has mastered this fine art.

Maybe I love cheesemaking because it requires undivided attention for a couple hours, and peripheral attention for days, or even weeks and months. I’ve tried to multi-task while in the process, like today. I had grading to do, I forgot the flame was still under the pot, and over-heated the milk by 15 degrees.  Big mistake! One that cost me about three hours. Luckily, it was early enough in the process I didn’t ruin it altogether. A mistake to remind me:  Patience dear one, focus, prioritize, slow down.

Listening, learning, forgiving myself. And never, ever giving up.  Maybe it’s my commitment that drives me to succeed at it.  But, why this commitment for this particular process?

Maybe I just love a delicious challenge.

 

cheese

 

East Texas farm sources for raw milk, etc.

 

 

Traditional Foods for Great Health

I’ve loved cooking for as long as I remember.  As a young girl that meant macaroni and cheese or Hamburger Helper from a box.  Being from the mid-west casseroles were of course an early specialty.  But we did not eat healthy.  We were like most suburb-dwellers since the rise of supermarkets and fast food.  Canned vegetables, TV dinners, bologna sandwiches, I’m sure you get the picture.

My palate and preferences have evolved significantly over the years, a good deal of it thanks to Handy Hubby, who is a fabulous cook.  What we like to cook differs, but usually compliments one another, and our time cooking together is fun and bonding, usually.  That is, as long as he doesn’t watch me chop anything.

Our preferences took a big leap when we started growing much of our own food.  This has been a huge and continuing learning curve, but it excites me to learn new things and I find growing and harvesting our own food immensely satisfying.

For newcomers now it’s becoming much easier with homesteading-type courses popping up all over, even online.  City and country folk are really getting organized around important traditional food and lifestyle concerns, like raw milk, GMOs, pesticides, water quality and on and on.  I find it thrilling it’s getting so popular!  In the beginning friends and family thought we were nutcases moving out here and experimenting with this lifestyle and no one knew what “homesteading” meant in the way that’s now becoming quite a movement.  Much more on all of this in future posts!

For now I just wanted to share for those just starting out on the journey to better health one course I just heard about through The Weston A Price Foundation, an amazing resource for the traditional foods resurgence.  My favorite cookbook is written by their President, Sally Fallon, called Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats.  It’s got it all: fermenting, cultured dairy, game and organ meats, sauces, condiments and very interesting culinary history.

The course sounds like it would be a great place to start for anyone just getting interested, and it’s free!

https://foodwifery.com/processed-to-real-foods/

 

 

 

 

 

Peace Corps Remembrance (part 1)

Those days remain for me, over 20 years later, as poignant as Proust’s madeleines.

I often get too mushy or teary just trying to relate the lessons learned and the bitter sweetness that nostalgia just is.  On the negative side of the spectrum, trauma bonding and Stockholm syndrome come to mind. On the positive, a culture that inhabited me, with all the muddy in-betweens that this sort of parallel dysfunction conjures.

When we choose to throw ourselves into chaos, as controlled as that chaos might promise or originally appear to be, we make a statement and commitment we can never really disown afterward.  I f-ing volunteered.  I signed my name.   I was informed in advance of the reality of the program., at least to the degree it was divulged.  Whatever pain was suffered in consequence, I knew very well it was going to be “tough”.  That was the damn advertisement after all.  In hindsight, was it a mistake?  Did I overstate my enthusiasm, did I overestimate my commitment?

My father always said challenge, even to the point of pain, builds character. Maybe this is true, but it makes me question then why those who subject themselves to the most pain aren’t necessarily so strong in character. In fact, there would seem, as often as not, to be an inverse relationship.  How does the Golden Rule play out when what the other wants, what he expects and has been trained for, is manipulation.  My dad talked a lot about character, integrity, family values. He’s been married three times, so apparently he has a good base of experience from which to draw.

Chaos is sometimes mistaken for passion.
Intensity is often mistaken for intimacy.

We are only human. There’s a reason the slogan at the time I pined for the Peace Corps was : “The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love”.  I longed for it for three years before I made it happen.

Love?  Tough?  Got it!  Know it!  Sign me up.

I got one of the easiest assignments possible. I’ve written about that too many times to repeat it here now. Before I was sent just a few hours from Prague, I craved to be sent to rural West Africa, that was my dream. I was to be learning Wolof half the month in a village as I taught French at a university in Dakar. It almost happened. Then, I was threatened to be sent to Armenia, OMG! A clerical error, I hope?

I really hated it at times. Did then, still do, the bureaucracy, what’s not to hate?  The jumping through hoops, the perpetual state of subservience and distancing and stonewalling, well it was just a precursor of all that was to come.  Many events stand out, but what stood out most then and still is to be labeled a complainer from the outset.  I was a huge idealist then;  I wanted to give my skills and capacities to the service of my country and its ideals, as they’d been presented to me, and then and indeed now, the hierarchy meant nothing to me personally.  Unless, as it stands, I can hardly maneuver myself from underneath its obvious and choking oppression.

The message is like a master to a slave: When I ask your opinion, what you are allowed to tell me is only what I want to hear. Or, consequences.

I completed the seemingly endless evaluations seriously and honestly. While others checked “fine” and “no comment” I filled them out for real. It still brings me to tears to remember this truth. This might be nationalistic brainwashing, I accept that, but my devotion was real. It wasn’t for America per se, because already at that time it was all plastic, I didn’t stand for McWorld, or I certainly never meant to, that’s for sure.

I really thought I could make a difference, that others, even those above me who said they wanted my opinions, really did want them, and the message I was getting on the outside was that I could make a difference if I tried, if I “applied” myself.

But on the inside, it was an entirely different game.  Subservience is the currency.  And that’s when I was introduced to the world of politics.

I know now one refers to this as naiveté. The rule is go along with the program, and if it’s too difficult, find another way to cope with your reality, like pain killers or anti-depressants or meditation or a new guru, or whatever. And if you can’t handle that, well, get out. Get out of the game. Good heavens, it’s not Afghanistan, you’re a teacher, not a soldier.

It wasn’t that hard, in hindsight. But, it was a lesson for life. It was a precarious political situation in some ways, and witnessing this was invaluable to me. There was a lot of propaganda, and little trust, and no one, systems, or people, I can honestly say, ‘needed us’ in any real and material way.  We did not help. In hindsight now I know, we only expedited their transition from Soviet dominance to Globalist dominance.  Some honest and more astute friends confided to me at the time:  “We are only trading one big brother for another.”  Intelligent, shrewd and industrious folk, those Slavs.

The level of distrust was at such a level that at the time it seemed absurd to me, at 26. How very foreign it felt to show my passport at every border, to have people question me when I snap a photo. I was so judgmental, but how I feel for them now!  Now that mistrust and hostility plague all of America.  What is happening to me now seeing our political tyranny and police state is so close to what I felt there, it’s like living Kafka.  In the West we think of 1984 and Orwell and Huxley, but there it was already old news.  Those dudes exalted the nightmare Kafka’s world was already living.

On one occasion I was innocently taking a photo of a garden in front of a large family home which I found particularly lovely nearby a friend’s house not far from the center of Prague when an irate woman stormed out and yelled, “What are you photographing here? Are you ill?

This spring at my home on a dirt road there was an unusualrecreational vehicle driving past during the two-month paranoia of “Jade Helm” and the parallel feeling was overwhelming.  Something was off.  These drivers were foreigners. This vehicle was not local or recreational.  What was up with this?  Was it me?  Enter the world of psy-ops. More on that, much more, in future posts.  The goal of the psy-op being always to trade ‘your’ freedom for ‘our’ security.

In those days, in just Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe once I stated myself to be American, instead of German or Russian, I got a better welcome from strangers. “Racism” was practiced openly, that is, if you were discovered to be Western and therfore “rich” you had a gravely augmented price ratio to almost everything. To cheat you, even if you were with other Czechs, was commonplace and expected. There was actually an accepted and stated price difference for foreigners. That was incentive to learn the language enough to fool them. It didn’t take that much really, because few were able to learn the Slavic languages all that well. Even with an accent, if you were lucky, you might be mistaken for Slovenian, or from the Baltics, because after all, what rich Westerners would try to learn your language.

Whatever, I digress. I love nostalgia and I’m wonderfully good at it.  The truth: I was terribly lonely.  In many ways it was an extension of adolescence, and the hallmark of all dysfunctional relationships—as long as you serve us, we will support you. Serve us means don’t ask questions, no personal boundaries allowed, don’t make waves, even when invited, walk the egg shells, and support “us” (we the institution or the personal ego) even when we’re wrong.

I haven’t seen any evidence that’s changed, politically or personally, though my tolerance of institutional coercion, and by default I hope, personal coercion, has consistently diminished to the point at present of, no f’ing tolerance.