I’ve come to an important realization. This blog is all about me.
It took me awhile to notice. But I’ve suddenly discovered that almost all I ever talk about here are things I think or things I’ve done. No detective stories. No how-to. No dramatizations of obscure Belgian folktales (great as the demand is). Just all Bill, all the time.
Fortunately, if this really bothers you, you’re probably not reading this in the first place. So you’re taken care of. But sometimes it bothers me. That’s a problem, since I have to write it.
It bothers me because, in re-reading these blogs, I get the impression that I think I’m the first person ever to tackle the adventure of life on the land. In this cozy little isolated blogworld, Bill does this Funny Thing and Bill comes to that Startling Conclusion About Modern Life and Bill is Cool Enough To Laugh At Himself Yet Again…and meanwhile, the real Bill begins to Get A Little Annoyed At It All.
For I am neither the first nor the last of a long caravan skipping from the shriveled hearts of the cities into the open meadows of God. And the fondest hope of the best of these adventurers is simply to recapture the daily simplicity and peace that was once normal to millions of ordinary people. Nothing to boast about.
Of course, it is slightly more complicated to take up the life of a merry peasant in a world choked with property tax, Mexican slave labor, and laws forbidding the sale of milk that hasn’t been run through a monstrously expensive machine. In a grim paradox worthy of Chesterton, the hardest part of going back to the land has little to do with the land. It will be more difficult for me to survive by selling food to my neighbor than it would be if I were to do something vital to human survival like design web sites or sell imaginary stock-shards of corporate pies or offer legal services to my fellow man drowning in the tangled morass of our laws. I’m not saying those things are evil (well, not designing web sites, anyhow). Even in a healthy society, there’s higher compensation for more specialized skills. But when it is hard to survive by selling food, something’s seriously wrong. So there is an adventure to be had.
But I’m not the first to see this or take the plunge. I have learned both the problems and the solutions from people like G. K. Chesterton, E. F. Schumacher, Wendell Berry, Gene Logsdon, Bill Mollison, and others whom I can’t think of just now (especially as I have get back to work). I have no old-time farmer uncle or grandfather to look to as a role model, but I’ve been blessed instead with these authors.
And this blog chronicles the now, when I move from the world of books to the world of God, a real live farm with real live people who do what I’d only read about. I literally learn something new almost every day. Not just poetic moments like, “so that’s what rain clouds look like when they sweep through a valley like wraiths”, but an entirely new skill like “so that’s how to roof” or “so that’s how to harness a horse” or “so that’s why they wear special boots when they shovel manure”.
That’s my story these days. I like telling it, as long as you don’t think I think I’m the only one who’s ever learned to farm. Lots of people have. Maybe you will sometime. It’s fun.
