Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] from Our Village by Dmitry Orlov

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] from Our Village by Dmitry Orlov
  • Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:29:19 -0700


excerpt from Our Village by Dmitry Orlov
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dtxqwqr_21gs3rt2


Some people have started to entertain thoughts of returning to a rural way of
life and surviving through subsistence agriculture - like the people in our
village. This is, of course, an excellent idea. If meadow voles could talk,
they would categorically deny that their lifestyle and diet are in any way
affected by fossil fuel prices and shortages, stock market crashes, cities
looted by armed mobs, internment camps run by federal emergency goons, or
what have you. But we are not meadow voles, and when we decide to start
living off the land, as with any new endeavor, it is important for us to
learn as much as we can, and to think things through. However, given the
subject matter at hand, to be of any use, such learning and thinking must be
sufficiently concrete, simple, and down-to-earth.

There is an element to American culture that never ceases to amuse me. Even
when grappling with the idea of economic disintegration, Americans attempt to
cast it in terms of technological or economic progress: eco-villages,
sustainable development, energy efficiency and so on. Under the
circumstances, such compulsive techno-optimism seems maladaptive. I love the
new advances in organic farming, which I find fascinating and very useful,
but why do people seem incapable of doing the simplest things without making
them into projects, preferably ones that involve some element of new
technology? Thousands of years of happy composting using heaps and pits are
behind us: now we need bins - and plastic, oil-based ones at that!

Contrary to the impositions of the whiz-bang-blinded and the gadget-addled
among us, living off the land is not about projects, or systems, or
organizations, but about shovels and buckets and hoes, and it is not even so
much about skills or techniques, as it is about habits. Yes, you too can pick
up the healthy habits of growing and gathering your own food, storing it,
cooking it, eating it, excreting it, and, yes, even composting the end
result. The temporary bounty of fossil fuels has allowed a lot of the former
peasants to live like nobles for a time - residing in mansions, moving about
in carriages, and having people serve them. Once these sources of energy are
depleted, many of these former peasants will be forced to revert back. They
will once more have to live in huts, travel on foot, wield their ancestral
scythes and sickles to provide their sustenance, and do their own chores.

But we are people, not voles, and mere subsistence is not enough. Village
life is about growing food, but it is also about much more. It is about the
sense of security that comes from knowing what you need and how to help
yourself to it. And it is about the profound experience of beauty that only
comes from direct, daily contact with nature. Finally, it is about the sense
of eternity, of the timelessness that comes from knowing that nothing ever
has to change unless you want it to: great empires may rise up and crumble
all around you, but the village will abide.




  • [Livingontheland] from Our Village by Dmitry Orlov, Tradingpost, 11/14/2009

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page