Читать книгу The Self-Sufficiency Handbook - Alan Bridgewater - Страница 4

WHEN GILL AND I MET IN ART SCHOOL in the 1960s, the whole place was buzzing with a new kind of freedom. Somehow, we all felt that we could do it—life—better than previous generations.

I remember one evening, sitting in a college common room, listening to two young American hippie lecturers animatedly talking about how very soon we would all be forced by the failure of oil supplies to return to some sort of Amish-type self-sufficiency—log cabins, horses instead of cars, communes where groups of like-minded people pulled together to create a better society—and it was very exciting. As they saw it, and as many other people saw it, our consumer society was living off the fast-shrinking capital resources of the earth. Their thinking was that ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution, we had been taking good and leaving behind bad: taking the coal and leaving the waste, taking the oil and leaving pollution, taking the goodness from the soil and leaving it barren, taking down trees and leaving nothing in their place, and so on.

The big question at that time was, “How can we change from being a greedy, grabbing, take-it-and-run, dirty, despoiling society to a greener, more giving society?” The general consensus of opinion among college students was that the best way forward was not to try to change things from the center outward. As Timothy Leary said in the 1960s, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” meaning that we should look inward at ourselves, look outward at society, and then, in light of our knowledge, select and reject. The idea was that changes were best made from the edges inward.

My reading list at that time was topped by two books: Cottage Economy by William Cobbett and Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Cottage Economy, first published in 1821, is one of the very first self-help manuals in that it describes in blow-by-blow detail how “a large part of the food of even a large family may be raised . . . from forty rods, or quarter of an acre.” In Walden, published in 1854, Thoreau describes how, upon deciding that he was going to set up his self-sufficient home in a hut in the woods, he started thinking about the implications of every minute detail, from the orientation of the hut in relation to the sun to how he could survive on fish and beans. Further, Thoreau attacked the way things were being done at that time: the rip-tear-slash-and-burn farming, the development of the railroads, and the growth of the cities, all at the expense of nature. Gill and I read these books avidly, and we found the notion of being completely independent with no electricity, no plumbing, and the like so stimulating.

By the end of the 1960s, we were married and living in a ramshackle house in the middle of a field with no running water, no electricity, no mortgage; in fact, nothing much at all except our two toddler sons and a clear and certain knowledge that we were going to be self-sufficient. It all seemed so beautifully simple: I would continue teaching pottery, Gill would do her weaving, and along the way we would fix up the house, establish a craft workshop, dig a well, build a windmill, grow our own food, have chickens, and generally live happily ever after.

As I saw it at that time, our progress from bare plot to self-sufficiency was something like being Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. The general idea was not that we would go back to some sort of preindustrial, rural, horse-pulling basics, but rather that we would utilize the best of what was available—like Crusoe did from his wrecked ship—and use it to create a new world. All a bit romantic, I know, but that was the way we felt.

And so it was, when we were living at Valley Farm, that we tried to view every obstacle analytically through Cobbett-Thoreau-Crusoe eyes. We looked long and hard at each problem and then, over the ensuing days and weeks, did our best to figure out how to remedy the situation. For example, when it came to our water supply, we looked at the existing well, pumped it dry, timed how long it took to refill, and had the water tested. Then, in light of the fact that the water was grossly polluted, we went through various stages of collecting and storing rainwater, fitting various pumps and filters, drilling a borehole, and so on until we had potable water. It was the same with the wastewater, the livestock, and everything else. We looked at the problem, did the research, talked to people with experience in living off the grid, considered how each change or procedure would impact the environment, and then shaped our life accordingly.

Later, in the 1970s, we were influenced by two more books by British authors: Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour and The Autonomous House by Robert and Brenda Vale. We were also inspired by the American publication The Last Whole Earth Catalog and the Canadian publication Harrowsmith.

Naturally, we had many failures along the way, such as stock dying, running out of money, and taking advice from the wrong people, but every experience, good and bad, added to the sum of our knowledge. When we first started out, people like us were labeled “hairy hippies,” but gradually, with the 1970s oil crisis, the various American back-to-earth movements, and the British sitcom The Good Life, the media and the establishment came to accept that there was another way. While most people didn’t know precisely what that way was, they knew for sure that society at large was burning up irreplaceable resources and poisoning itself in the act.

Here we are, decades later, and have things significantly improved? The oil supplies are running out, there are more cars on the roads than ever, there is more pollution, the forests are being hacked down at a faster rate, people are stressed out by fast-paced living, and mass-produced, low-quality food is making people ill. On the positive side, whereas terms like ecological, eco-friendly, and recycling labeled their users as some sort of weird vegetarian egghead back in the 1960s, today they are a normal part of language and thinking.

People are asking really practical questions: How can we go off-grid? How can we heat our homes without gas and oil? How can we grow food without using chemicals? How can we maximize our recycling? The good news is that not only do we have the answers, but governments and think-tank groups are also urging people to be self-sufficient. For example, when I was looking around for a wind turbine back in the early 1970s, there were only one or two very expensive, hit-and-miss machines on the market; now there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of reliable wind turbines to choose from. Better yet, there are government grants!

Just in case you are wondering, self-sufficiency is not about becoming all long-faced and wordy about the theoretical possibilities. It is about rolling up your sleeves and having fun in the course of cutting living costs, eating better, and generally doing your part in the “green revolution.” Of course, we know about not having enough cash and not having enough space, but we like to think that if everyone made some small change, we would be so much closer to the goal. If ever there was a time for self-sufficiency, this is it.

We hope that you will find this book both helpful and inspirational as you start on the exciting path to self-sufficiency.