What an amazing week this has been.  I guess I should be grateful to it for exposing what I had suspected in our system, but wow did this whole week go from an experiment to reality in the blink of an eye!  The neighbor to our south, who also owns our local wine store and raises angus beef cattle, said she completely feels our pain. One does not simply up and leave a farm on a moment’s notice.

We were simply going to check our ability to survive off-grid for a month and all hell broke loose.  1.  Our farm hand had surgery (we knew that was going to happen).  2.  Zina’s father had a stroke and is in the hospital for the foreseeable future.  3.  Zina is now not at the farm as a result and if he passes,  I have to now call my mother here because evidently one layer of farm hands as a back up is insufficient.  4.  Of all the damned luck.  I am seeing yet another therapist.  All I did was take ONE step down from his office and sprained my hip (It felt like a paper towel being ripped off the roll).  Of course, this set off a cascade of panic as I had to literally crawl to the house from the car when I got home because my hip couldn’t take any weight.  That set off all sorts of worry as to whether or not I’d be able to take care of the creatures in the morning.  Fortunately, by using dual hiking poles, like one would do cross country skiing, I was able to get it all done.  The last couple of days have pretty much been lying about, icing my hip, and cursing the universe.  It is mind blowing just how much could go unexpectedly bad in such a short period of time (Oh ya, our youngest Lab had a diarrhea episode last night in our bathroom.  Try cleaning that disgusting mess up while not being able to bend down!).   I’m pretty convinced that the universe is sadistic and it costs too much to live here on this rock because of our “civilization”.  We have a lot to consider going forward.  Please spare me the God and all things happen for a reason BS.

So, obviously, not much got done here the past couple of days.  BUT!  I have made goat milk soap in the past week or so, and just made my own CBD oil from Colorado Catnip grown right here on the farm.

That’s the important take away I think.  So many of us are completely tied to the grid and to corporations to supply us with our needs.  Instead of working towards self-sufficiency, our society has worked to tie us to a dependency system.  This is a Catch-22 in my opinion.  You get educated to get a good job.  Once you have said job, you have to pay for your own transportation, work clothes, housing, food, and insurance, all so you can earn money at a job to pay for all of those costs.  In financial planning jargon we call those “fixed expenses”.  You wake up in your dorm or fancy suburban prison cell, dress, go to your job, do your job and then come home and shelf yourself back into your housing unit to store yourself until the next day – all on your dime.   Essentially, it is the percentage of your earnings that are required of you to keep earning.  The rest is retirement savings (that you can’t use for decades), taxes to pay for military conquests abroad, extortion level medical insurance premiums and then “discretionary cash” – the money used to have a “lifestyle” so you don’t go insane from the treadmill job you spent precious time, money and life to get and keep.  In that venue, under the illusion of convenience, you either go out to eat, or go to the grocery store to acquire your necessary and, in many cases, unnecessary calories, of which you have no control over and which gets more expensive every year.  Because of this frustration, you end up spending more of your discretionary income in therapy trying to figure out how to survive in a world that is completely, and non-hyperbolically,  insane.

What we have discovered on the homestead/farm is just what usury levels of costs are built into the system for this convenience.  Canning, dehydrating and freezing food you grow yourself, reveals just how much of your earnings are being sucked from you because you let someone do it for you – because your slavery doesn’t afford you the time.  Can some food and compare that cost to the cans on the shelf.  Grow some broccoli and compare that to the produce department.  Shoot, even buy the ingredients for bread and compare that to a loaf of bread-like-substance at your so called grocery store.  If that doesn’t show you the stark madness of being dependent on our industrial ag system, not much else will.  Then, if you still remain unconvinced, compare the taste and nutrient quality of your tomatoes to a factory produced can of diced “tomatoes”.  The differences are stark.

Now.  For today’s lesson.  My cannabis plants are heirloom.  Which means that you can breed them and the seeds remain genetically true to the parent plant as opposed to crosses which do not.  I planted eight plants and kept the three females.  Those plants created close to 10 lbs of buds and dried down to just under 2.  That is more than I could use in a couple of years.  Cost……. 0.  The expense of infusing the oils was only the cost of the oils.  In a dispensary, a couple of ounces would run 50-100 bucks.  How long do you have to work to earn that kind of money?  If I could, for all of my physical pain, I would bathe in the stuff. This way, by doing it myself,  I don’t have to pay extortion level prices for something so easy to grow and create.  Why do you think they call it weed?  It grows like one.  Mine reached 7 feet in height……… just like virtually anything on a grocery store shelf, it is stupid simple to make yourself-  Most bread and pastas: 4 ingredients.  Mayonnaise: three.  Canned tomatoes: one…. and that goes for most vegetables, maybe a little salt.  Pre-made meals if canned or frozen yourself:  no preservatives and have a shelf life of years.   What price for convenience?  Pretty much your life.   What do you have to do that is more important?  Video games? Golf?  Movies? Shopping for shit to spend your money on but don’t really need? Hell, gardening could even save you a gym membership fee.

So perhaps we have been sold a bill of goods for iPhones, fancy clothes, and status.  After all, the best way to keep a prisoner from escaping, is to never let them know they are actually IN prison in the first place.

Use your job to plan your escape, not keep you enslaved to a version of reality that has no more depth to it than your flat screen tv.  We did it, and as Robert Frost said, “And that has made all the difference”.

Peace and freedom ya’ll.  This is what it looks like.  Live like a Hobbit.  Re-learn the old ways.  They work better.