I have lost the ability to interface with the mean of society…
The T.V. people for the local Fox station came out to the homestead yesterday for some show they were doing about sustainability, off gridness, whatever. (My brother in law is the station manager so that’s how I got looked at) This comes at the same time our big spring gathering takes place so all the cleaning and decrapperating came in handy, and I made sure there were nice 150 degree compost heaps cooking, grass all mowed, clean Thunder BucketsTM a maggot bucket foaming returning Mr. Wiggles to the earth via chickens, tinder in the woodstove, milk ripening for cheese, etc. This place was seriously prepped for a full scale demo.
So camera guy and The Guy With The Smile show up three hours late – the goats are screaming to be let out to pasture, Sandy the Goat wants milked in the worst way, chickens bitching about being in the pen, and I’m all hot and dirty cuz there is no way I can be at this place without finding something to work on (I happened to be on the back end of a wheelbarrow full of manure as they came up the drive). He asks where to start first and I said the goats are pretty pissed off so lets get that out of the way. So as I’m milking he’s asking me why I’m doing what I’m doing. Wait a minute – I haven’t even showed you what I’m doing…. I said you see that asparagus in that bed over there? Go eat a piece – that’s why I’m here.
I pretty much spent the whole time trying to show “why” by direct pointing, but he didn’t seem to follow the finger. A grape arbor over the patio – where we sit in the shade and eat grapes off the vine like fucking emperors. The wife had made an absolutely perfect loaf of bread, I had a fresh cheese made up, fresh steeped chocolate mint tea freezer fulla pork etc. Showed him cute little bunnies, month old chicks, the sky was blue and dogwoods in bloom. And for the life of me I couldn’t see a glimmer of recognition or understanding in Mr. Fox – 14. Just that dumb grin and a bored camera guy.
He asked me several times if I knew anyone else living the off grid/self sufficiency thing. No, no, and hell no – I’m the only fucking person I know who grows most of what they eat and ties themselves to a barnyard fulla critters. I’m the only person for miles and miles wanting an asteroid to vaporize the local chicken plant and walmart to belly up and destroy the county’s tax base. I don’t even watch your stupid tv station’s programming for the right wing Simpsonians. I think the best I did was mutter something about not wanting to deal with the asshattery of Plasticland – that out here was real and if you got your hands in the dirt you’d know what I was talking about.
It used to be about doom – now it’s just chores and avoiding toxins from the industrial food manufacturing industry. In July when I’m hauling water out to the garden to keep the corn alive I don’t wanna see some jackass washing his fucking car in the driveway.
Mr. TV left and is probably busy cutting sound bites and looking for other things to fit his story line. I think he missed the story that was there – that if I’m the best he can come up with maybe this sustainability idea is as rare as hens teeth and that ought to scare the shit out of anyone. All I know is that I feel like a crackpot for wanting to show off a 150 degree compost heap, disappointed that the sawdust toilet never got looked at, and astounded that a fresh piece of goat cheese was declined.
It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter at all. Like I told Charlie on my visit to his ’stead at least we eat good and stay warm in winter. If I had a solar array set up I woulda been a celebrity. Instead I’m justa boob fell off a turnip truck.
*Newsflash* ….. the countryside is not fulla food. If this were an actual emergency…
“If this had been an actual emergency, the FEMA train will be bringing you a box of easy-mac…please wait at the station..”
Crackpot, yes, fell of the turnip truck, yes. Starving in the future? No.
You know, as you saw we’re only 2 1/2 yrs into our “project” here, but I can be proud how we’ve “reduced our footprint”, so to speak, slowly moving forward, every year/season improves. My mom has actually asked me before, “why would you want to live like that?” “don’t you want your kids to grow up with better?” Better?!?! WTF?
Huh, yeah, grow up with clean water, fresh air, lots less toxins/HFCS, blah, blah, blah, yeah, I’d say better.
I can understand your frustration, and would love to see the piece they finally come up with….”Fox News at 10, “Anti-Social-Nut-Job-Turnip-Grower, steps back in time…stay tuned!” How in the hell could they not want fresh cheese?!?! Mint tea sounds really good too!
I say F-’em, they can run around selling fancy lightbulbs and drive a hybrid, but the real “Green” movement and sustainability is actually happening right in your backyard. Muddle on, I suppose.
The thing is comrade, you never know.
Years ago, my dad worked with a gal who hated her job and said she wished she’d become a teacher instead. He asked her why she didn’t go back to school and do that. She pointed out she was no spring chicken and by the time she got out of school she’d be X years older. He just said something about in X years she’d be X years older anyway.
Anyhow, he ran into her last year and she told him he’d changed her life. She reminded him of their conversation and said she was a teacher now because of what he said.
The point is, you never know.
Comrade,
Even if these guys weren’t MSM brain washed Morons..you gotta know their bosses will have them portray you as an anti social idiot!
“show up three hours late”!
I’d guess ( if not intentional ) it may have been their extra Bloody Mary after breakfast at the Hotel or their inability to read a map.
I’ve been asked by local media to do a story on my homestead and our self reliant living. If I felt they would print an unbiased story I’d have been happy to do so but knowing their agenda.. I said “Hell No”!!
I’d like to hear about their (twisted) report on your place.
Please keep us informed..
Northwoods
..
‘If I had a solar array set up I woulda been a celebrity.’
Yeah. People think they can have it all without the work. ‘Yeh man. I’ll just live in the sticks with my solar array and work off the internet.’ Imagine their surprise when an ink jet cartridge or a burger means a 30 minute trip. Then they figure out that if they’re working off the internet they’re competing some guy on the other side of the planet with an internet hook up and a dirt floor who’s a bit hungrier for the work than they are.
Ya gotta make it look easy and make it look pretty if you’re gonna be on TV and in the magazines. So easy a paper pushing office worker could do it.
..
I’ll get the segment in some kind of format, Mom will probably tape it. Convert to flv and post it on my utube channel. We’ll see what they do with it.
I’m encouraged. My compost heap is a month old, hot already. All the bionass that would have gone up in the evening burning piles.
Need some chicken or cow manure and a touch of lime.
Solar will come.
Best, turey.
biomass.
The media maggots hardly EVER get a story right. I’ve seen so much idiotic garbage come from the local talking heads that I haven’t bothered to watch them for years. Half the time they’re just plain ignorant, the other half they intentionally “tweak” things to impart a certain viewpoint on the sheeple. They’re all bullshit artists….
Comrade sorry to hear about it but not surprised. Everything on your part was done and ready but you didn’t understand the agenda and actually expected them to come out and learn. That is one thing I appreciate about Mike Rowe…he will get his hands dirty plus he started the mikeroweworks.com project, what is not to like about the guy
. As jB stated most want easy.
Even some hard working people I know ask why we do what we do. You can go to the store and just buy the meat, milk, eggs, etc. They’ll spend multiple weekends putting rock in their yard, fertilizing their lawn, doing an addition to their 2500 sq. ft. house but shovel some manure in the compost pile, milk a goat, etc….why would they want to do that? They state how ‘tied down’ we are to animals and our farm but don’t see the fallacy in having to drive to the grocery store and wally world every other day.
In the future just tell, “Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!”
The Comrade stood up and declared.
“I have lost the ability to interface with the mean of society…”
From a small ragtag group in the corner there was a rumbling of comments. “it’s about time”… “Praise the Lord”…. “This is so wonderful”….
A frail small wizened old woman came forward to address the Comrade. Grabbing his arm she softly spoke. “Join us on the dark side son. The work is hard, and the hours are long. You won’t often be clean or well rested, but the evening fire is warm and there are wonderful organic oatmeal cookies with only the occasional pieces of hull in them.”
Back to reality..
Although I have no interest in greasing the wheels of collapse, I don’t have a hell of a lot of interest in feeding the machine either. I guess that is why I don’t spend much time trying to change the world anymore since it would likely keep me from some of the work that needs done so I can feed myself instead of the machine. Some of that comes from being old and slow and some form just being an obstinate bastard.
Anyway welcome to Dark Side with the rest of us that are a bit confused about what the hell is going on beyond the confines of our property, and have a cookie, but watch out for the oat hulls.
tired john
Thanks john –
a lot of it was just not being able to form words to explain what this or that was, or why something worked this way or that with something else to form a natural loop. How’s it go? Eat, excrete, return to soil, grow…
not a difficult concept but it may as well be quantum theory to those with clean fingernails.
When I was a kid working around farms, I always wondered why all the farmers were always trimming their fingernails. I know a lot more about that having had my arm half way to the elbow in the back end of a goat a number of times. Not a single bit more romantic than filling the dead refrigerator/worm bin with a fresh steaming bucket of shit. Hard to make that the type of lifestyle the thing you want to quit your financial adviser job and trade you new Prius in for a used Kabota. Could have been worse, you could have made an effort to show them where eggs come from.
Your home may now be safe from ravaging hordes of “Whole Foods” customers looking for safe but “oh so hygienic” organic fare as they flee the collapse. I think we are happier to see you her a few times a month than we would be seeing you as the scruffy grocer weekday evenings at 5:00.
The greenhouse is so full of starts we almost can’t get inside, and the garden is still damn near under water. 1.65 inches last night and at least 5 more days of rain coming. Assholes and elbows around here when the sun starts to shine.
t. j.
You can’t explain the beauty of getting clean sweet earth out of a compost pile to somebody who’s never raised a garden in his life. The Fox news people are so much about image that reality is 2D to them. You have asparagus from your own beds and slops-fed pork; you win.
Comrade:
I think you encountered the arrogance of the media.
I never talk to them. They will cut your story to fit between the commercials for tampons and insurance. A bloody insult.
Dude – perhaps some arrogance, but mostly an inability to see anything completely unfamiliar. Convenient blinders.
More on next post…