I did not realize how much our lives had slowed down until after we moved to our new farm. Wally and I spend as much time here as we possibly can. We take our trips out to get the things we need, we may spend a few minutes prowling around an antique shop (usually coming out empty handed) and then drive back home, taking back roads (the scenic route) because we like to look at stuff.
Yesterday, much of what we ate for our meals came from this farm. Today will be the same (I defrosted a rabbit to cook for dinner). I buy virtually no outside meat now. I canned and froze a lot of local vegetables last year. Unfortunately most of the vegetables came from the farmers’ market instead of our garden, but they were all grown locally by people I know.
That will change this year! The vegetables will be grown HERE.
We take care of the animals. We are both glad that we’ve cut back on the number of animals we are caring for and our facilities are much better. We enjoy our lives here. It is fulfilling, but our time schedule is governed by the animals.
Wikipedia defines Agrarianism as a social philosophy which values agrarian society as superior to industrial society and stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life as opposed to the complexity and chaos of urbanized, industrialized life.
I do not think our lives are superior to living in an industrial society. Let’s face it, we still need what an industrial society provides, at least at this time we do, but we love our simple, slow lives. We get up early, we go to bed early. We sleep well … which is probably due to the spoonful of local, raw honey that we take each night before turning in. These days we look forward to going to bed so we can have our honey.
How silly, h
uh?
Wendell Berry writes: “My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.”
While watching television, and yes, we watch television, but we hate the commercials. We tape as much as we can so we can skip through the commercialism that is television: the fast food ads, the drug ads, the new car ads … it is all about more, more, more. No wonder why so many people are in debt and sick (thus needing all of those drugs). No. We are not going there.
Until later …