Soul Deep

This woman is me:

"Modern society has achieved an almost total divorce from the production of one's own food. An abiding affinity for sentient beings which you fully intend to murder, dissect, and ingest, seems horrifying to present-day sensibilities, which have divided the domestic animal world into cherished pets and plastic-wrapped boneless chicken breasts. But this horror is a luxury, based on the assumption that as long as we put enough distance between ourselves and how our food comes to us, any suffering inflicted can safely be ignored. And, it presupposes that eating someone is the worst thing that one can do to them. The first is obviously not true, the second is surprisingly ambiguous." - From the author of the Working Dog Diary, Chapter 9.

"I couldn't imagine a more fulfilling life than living in an Airstream with my dog, spending every day doing nothing but hanging out with ruminants.

Apparently this dream isn't shared by very many people in the United States. When I spoke of it, even to people who worked sheep with dogs, the response was usually that nothing imaginable could be more boring, squalid, and lonely. By and large the only people who will work as professional rangeland sheepherders these days are monolingual Peruvians, whom I suppose have few job options. I don’t understand this. For me, modern life, filled with cars and pavement and electronic entertainments and food shipped from across the globe and frappechinos and nuclear waste and space stations doesn't do anything for me. Quite the opposite. I can think of a few pieces of the industrialized world I have a certain fondness for, such as indoor plumbing and western medicine, but the vast majority of it I wish had never come to pass, and would love to never have to participate in. I had always, since forever, wanted to make my escape, somehow, somewhere. I had never been successful." - From the author of the Working Dog Diary, Chapter 18.

"Family farming is dying for the same reason that people don't write with pens made from the feathers of crows: there's a much easier way to get the same result. Easier, because someone else does it for you, far, far away, with enormous machines. I said the same result, but of course, it is not the same. It fills the same need, but driving your petroleum car to buy a petroleum bag of disposable petroleum ballpoints filled with petroleum ink is not the same as walking out to your hayfield, shooting a crow out of the sky, plucking his primary feathers, and shaping the tips with your pocket knife. In fact they could hardly be more different, in their effects upon the world, their effects upon the writer, and the line they make upon the page.

Everything we do now is broken into pieces. Land is either for building houses and businesses on, or for recreation. Wilderness is prized and fought for. But farming is a strangely dreamy concept to most. What do farmers do? We hardly know. For real farming, living from your land, as opposed to corporate agribusiness farming, is foreign to us. Our activities are divided in the same way: that which we do to make money, and that which we spend money on to soothe the abradedness resulting from our money-making activities. Exactly why and how we have created this way of life is a very, very long discussion, but I would like to make one point: although it appears that we are offered an infinity of choices, one option is not made available, and that is to refuse to participate." - From the author of the Working Dog Diary, Chapter 23.

She says the things that stir in my soul more eloquently than I ever could. The new year always makes people, me included, more acutely aware of our failings in the previous year. I got away from the things that mean the most to me, namely self-sufficiency. But I did have great success in several areas, like school, dog training, and money management.

I feel like it's all relative. We can't be perfect, but we still try, and that's okay. :)

Until next time,