Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

As I write this, I am drinking dandelion tea, and simmering on the stove is a vegetable soup, every bit of which I should have grown myself (with the exception of a few optional spices). I've been reading a lot about farming, cooking, building, and every useful skill I can get my hands on lately (partially because I need the knowledge, and partially because I'm just so excited to have to opportunity to take a part in its survival)… and I came to what at least to me seems like an important realization.

In the past, people created their own food largely independently, using simple and relatively inexpensive means. But, as industrialization had its way, our food production shifted to larger corporate farms. These farms are probably able to produce food (albeit lower quality food) for less than a single farmer can, but, thanks to the chain of markups, we are now paying five to ten times (easily) what it would have previously cost to personally produce it. Unfortunately, even if we wanted to go “back to the land”, the skills required to do so are largely forgotten. It was a trick. We were free, and we willingly made ourselves slaves.

That's part of the reason I was so happy to see this book: Stone Circles. First, to those that say that large stone structures like this have no real purpose and are in modern times at best a hippie diversion, let me remind you that large stone monuments are the only record we have of many civilizations. If you want to say something across time, say it with big stones, not some cheap modern replicant. The empty lot next to my house — a huge slab of steel reinforced concrete — has all but eroded over the past five years, whereas every huge stone on the beaches I grew up on is still there, identical to when I last saw it.

Anyway, I'm very happy to see that people are seeing the value in recording — and using and cherishing old skills. There is so much knowledge that we've traded for bags of chips and candy.

Before I start ranting on that subject, I wanted to say that I discovered another “mission” for myself that I feel is important. As I think I said a few days ago, we've recently discovered that the land in New Brunswick is auctioned off by the government for as little as $20 US per acre. My hope is to be able to, via a non-profit group, purchase as much land as I can afford to. Then I'd like to give it all away, along with small building (money) grants, to anyone willing to homestead on it. Yes, that means you.

Now that two-way high-speed satellite connections have moved to about $100 US per month, there's no excuse for not seizing opportunities like this. I actually think that it's two-way satellite internet, made possible by the ever shrinking cost of placing small satellites in orbit, that will be the real key to a 21st century “back to the land” movement. When it happened in the '20s and '60s, people really had to make compromises — that time is over. There is nothing a person has to give up for this kind of freedom any more.

Well, I'll be dead soon and I have a lot of things I still have to do before then!

PS. So do you.