Self-Sustainable Life

In just the past week and a half I have heard the language "global food crisis" uttered more than a few times. I know that part of this may be an attempt to get us worrying about food prices thus encouraging us to spend more since supply might become more and more limited. I find it interesting that our government provokes us with fear in order to get us to spend more money, in this case on food. I'm reminded of an ancient Hopi prophecy that speaks to our current circumstances in America and around the world. It comes from the book The Hopi Survival Kit by Thomas E. Mails:

Industrialized nations will become careless in getting more the resources out of the earth. Believing all these things will last forever, soon natural resources will be depleted. Fuel shortages will occur; industrial machinery will come to a standstill. The machinery used for planting, harvesting and transport will become useless. Supermarket shelves will become empty of farm produce. The farmers and those who grow their own food will not sell their produce. Money will become worthless. The white man with all his intelligence and technology will not be able to repair the damage. We will see extraordinary events in Nature and Earth, including humans.

This has also got me thinking more about living a self-sustainable life. My wife and I are interested in having a small organic farm at some point in the near future. By small organic farm, I mean having a few chickens and goats as well as a diverse garden for our use. If we could produce even 50% of our food then I think that would be a great goal to work towards.

I wonder how many other folks are thinking the same way as we are. Keep in mind we have been thinking about this for years not just as a reaction to the "global food crisis" though it certainly speeds up the possibility of that happening.

I actually have this vision of me spending my days working in the garden, on the farm and in my workshop building projects for my family as well as others. I believe that I am at a point in my life where I long for simplicity and sustainability.

Civilized Animals

Another story that I should have included in my earlier post about the way we walk. One question: When did human evolve from being more than animals?

The "Barefoot Bard" brings this basic hostility to a healthy human gait into clearer focus, as he describes the concern his walking left among friends and family, and one friend in particular who put that concern in very blunt and honest terms.

One of these concerned friends, a religious man, joined me in [the] forest for a walk. On the trail, he was in his boots, I was on my soles. He began to share his concerns about me. He remarked that I was "walking like an animal." Yes, he said, "You walk like a animal!" I stopped in my tracks.

He went on about how, "walking on your paws, is the way an animal walks, savages walk, primitives walk and we are no longer animals. We are highly evolved beings. We are civilized beings!" He walked along side me, landing on his heels, pounding on the path, stepping on a banana slugs, stomping on plants. The more he preached his concerns and marched on the path, the more I could see the difference in our walk. The less I trusted the talk, not him, but his talk. ...

Change Our Politics, Change America

My wife and I just got back from casting our early primary vote here in Indiana. The primary is on May 6th but she won't be here and I decided that since I was there to go ahead and vote as well. Right now, polls are indicating that Obama and Clinton are in a deadlock tie.

I am supporting Barack Obama because I believe that he can best lead the country from these past dismal years of the Bush administration. I personally only see Clinton continuing the Washington politics that we've come to know and despise. I could expound on other reasons for supporting Obama over Clinton but don't feel I need to wax politically on my blog... there are many other blogs to read if you want that. Simply put, for such a time as this, America needs such a leader!

We Walk Wrong

I get a daily dose of stuff in my inbox from Men's Health Magazine and today there was a whole section on the benefits of walking barefoot and why we've been walking wrong all these years. Click here to read this great article.

For the better part of my life I have preferred to walk barefoot. I love the feel of grass and the soil conforming beneath my feet as I walk. In the past two years, I have been practicing fox-walking more and more. When I was at Tracker School last year, there was a whole session on how to walk properly as our ancestors used to do. One of the instructors there even called modern footwear "coffins for our feet." Honestly, other than being barefoot, the only other shoes that I actually like wearing are the hybrid sandals that have become popular in the past few years.

At Tracker School, they offered this insight as to why we shifted from a slower pace to a more damaging one: when we moved from the hunter-gatherer mindset to an agricultural mindset, we needed to make trails/roads to our villages so our walk changed and became faster and in the process we end up damaging our bodies and the earth when we hit with our heel first. Read more by clicking here.

So seriously... take your shoes off and walk barefoot... in the house, the grass, the woods (etc...) you just might start feeling connected to the earth again.