Move the garden from ideal to real
I’ll go to sleep, this evening, with a new experience under my belt. This afternoon, I had my first contact with the whole world of construction materials manufactured from hemp fibre. Not exactly as I had imagined. Concrete is familiar. Hempcrete is similar. Chipboard is familiar. Hempboard is similar. Linen is familiar. Woven hemp fabric is similar. Is that clear enough?
We spent the afternoon in a seminar aimed at increasing our ease in accepting community-based changes. The keyword for the subject was “degrowth”, and it isn’t new to everyone. Turns out that my own early exposure to Buckminster Fuller, “Small Is Beautiful”, Whole Earth Catalog direction is where I should have stayed. And, where we need to be going, on a community level. The only fix for an oversized “footprint” is to reduce the size of your foot (or your shoes). Here on the Island, we consume large. Much larger that other parts of the world. Unfortunately, the planet has stopped growing…
Our (meaning my) society has exaggerated expectations. My food requires a lot of energy to produce and transport. My home is oversized (for my needs). My willingness to Amazon every “need” is wrong, and expensive. Time to scale back life.
One simple fix will involve taking responsibility for part of the family nourishment. That garden has to go from ideal to real; I’ll need to go and play in the dirt, just like when I was young. Sure, I’ll have better tools; I’ll also have better objectives. Maybe carrots are good, when they haven’t been processed in chemicals and cut to length before sale.
