A week of living

I just spent week working for room and board at Blue Mountain Biodynamic Farm in Alberta and now I feel like a chump. Not for the week of  free labour but for the 15 years of trading my life for the mountain of junk that is either contributing to the landfill problems, occupying second hand store shelves or worst of all, anchoring me to the wage slave economy.

Sure, some of that stuff will be useful to me when I start living for real but I probably could have accumulated that in 5 years of living frugally. So OK, only 10 years truly wasted making other people wealthy.

The week on the farm makes me more than ever want to make the jump and soon - even if I can't see the bottom. It's not like farming isn't easy, the days are long and not always pleasant and there will always be an inescapable connection to the market economy but the work has some things that no job has ever provided - satisfaction and a sense of purpose. And its not as hard as our elite would have you believe, the hard parts are the same as for any small business.

And maybe farming is not for you, maybe you hate fresh air, getting dirty, manual labour or watching things grow but if you are having trouble finding happiness despite the security or a "good job" consider entrepreneurship. The detractions of insecurity and struggle aren't really detractions - they are living.

Road Rage

Some observations from my recent long road trip.

People who should not be allowed to drive ever again:
1. blind People
2. drunks
3. children, of any age
4. people talking on their phones
5. people texting
6. people reading print material
7. ruberneckers
8. people who do not understand the use and purposes of the external lighting array of their auto mobiles.
9. minivan drivers

Vehicles we need to get off our road system:
1. those silly Chromed up Hummers with race rims
2. low rider pickups (can you say abomination?)
3. all the "full size" SUVs (really just buy a short bus, it would be more appropriate)
4. all the SUVs that don't have off road tires and dirt
5. the Sexima
6. minivans
7. the GTXxx
8. e-bikes

Vehicles we need to see more of more of:
1. micro cars
2. motorbikes
3. scooters
4. vehicles with a matte finish 

Score one for the freaky hippies

What is usually the worst part of my allergy season has passed without me having to use a single loratadin tablet! Sure there were a few sniffles and sneezes along the way but nothing too severe and no itchy burning eyes at all. This is especially impressive since I have started wearing contact lenses occasionally again this year.

I credit the delicious raw honey I've been eating and drinking all winter, courtesy of my hard working girls. The freaky hippies claim that the pollen and such in the raw honey retrains your body to remove the negative associations with that pollen that create the allergies. It makes as much sense to me as the idea that you develop allergies as you get older as your body's defences learn to associate actual airborne toxins with specific pollens. This is the explanation I was offered for why I was allergy free as a kid but have allergies as an adult.

I've even gone to so far as to push the envelope by eating mucus forming blocks of delicious cheese. Still no clogged sinuses. Allergy round two comes in August so lets keep our fingers crossed.