get to know your land

My friend is building her own house. That is not unusual - many people do so, with varying degrees of expert and not-so-expert help. Most of them, probably, go through the process while living in rented comfort. Not my friend. She's in it for the whole experience.

So she acquired a tepee, pitched it on the land & started living there - before any building had begun. My friend is a dear soul, and surrounded by well-wishers - not all of them understanding why she would willingly engage in such a level of discomfort. Busy with my own life, I assumed she had her reasons, and so was happy to admire from a distance.

Then I went to visit, and stood next to her, and saw the place through her eyes, and heard the deep contentment in her voice. I had admired her courage - now I saw the wisdom of her process.

She told me of the permaculturist who advised her: "Live on your land. Get to know your land."

My friend is doing just that. She is getting to know every inch of it, the way the breeze moves across every inch of it, the life in and of every inch of it. She is in touch with the life of her land, and immeasurably enriched by it. It has become her home long before she has built her home there.

Doesn't it seem sad that so few of us get to do this ? Estate agent, price, transfer duty, home loan - if we navigate these issues competently, we acquire a home. And we call it "home" without being particularly acquainted with the very life of the land where we find ourselves.

"Home" can mean so much more - and it's a pity that so many of us, so often, find that we have to settle for a lesser, duller, smaller experience.

Tierhoek Organics

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, 1600 kms from land, there's an area known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's a dump of plastic debris - and it is twice the size of Texas.

I cannot even begin to picture this, and I don't want to. Texas covers 696 200 square kms, so we're already talking about close on 1.5 MILLION square kms of rubbish in the open ocean - expanding all the time. And that's not counting the loose bits floating around all over, and washing up on beaches everywhere - not to mention the unimaginable accumulation of garbage on land...

It's deeply worrying, and it should be. Now my conscience has taken me on a shocking tour of discovery through my household. I am shamed, I tell you. Guilty as charged. And I thought I was doing better than most... Well, sorry, No. Too much packaging, way too much plastic... Better start walking my talk.

So imagine my delight: Tierhoek Organics - Naartjie Bites. A Deliciousness for which I have no words. Weighs nothing (perfect for hiking, or any long-distance packing requiring padkos) and comes in fully bio-degradable, compostable packaging. Ditto their Dried Tomatoes. Don't know how they do it - NO plastic. I read the science somewhere & found it completely convincing & reassuring, and am now happy to indulge what has become a veritable addiction... those Naartjie Bites. The essence of more-ishness.

I like to think of those good people in their valley - hidden among the foothills of the Langeberg - bravely battling all the organic farmer's odds, and so gently and generously showing us the way.

Tierhoek Organics. Naartjie Bites. Go find some.

carbon conscience

Found myself in mixed company (omnivores, carnivores...) the other day, and stuck my neck out by quoting internet-sourced statistics - a meat-based diet requires 7 times more land than a plant-based diet, meat production uses 10 to 20 times more energy than grain production, red meat production uses 100 times more water than...and so on.

Since I was quoting "facts" I couldn't verify myself, I was quickly backed into a corner - but it made me think...

I wonder if anyone has made calculations comparing the carbon footprint of a fruitarian lifestyle with other options. My own experience tells me that the outcome would be very interesting indeed.

A fruitarian kitchen is a very uncomplicated, uncluttered place. No cooking means No need for most of what you'd find in a "normal" kitchen - which means that none of that stuff needs to be manufactured, marketed, transported, powered, discarded... and if your garden (or your neighbour's garden) feeds you - no packaging, no transport, no marketing machinery, none of that commercial madness & misery...

And that is but the beginning... now think of the environmental balance sheet, which begins with fruitarians planting trees, and trees, and more trees, and not needing to cut down trees to fuel cooking fires....

If I hadn't chosen this way for myself a long, long time ago, I suspect that I would have found the carbon footprint issue a convincing enough argument to say goodbye to the bloody fleshpots... if you know what I mean.

the secret of a happy garden...

We've always known that the secret of a happy garden is a generously sized compost-heap. And these days that is also the secret of a happy & well-supplied kitchen, and a happy & well-fed fruitarian. Cape gooseberries everywhere, and in the shade of every mulched tree, some sort of tomato - tiny little cherries, all the way up to heavy fleshy globes. Young papino and avo seedlings, pomegranate, guava & date - right through the household's menu - all kinds of seeds & pips now grown into generous new life.

What a lovely thing to suddenly find, in a most unexpected place, something delicious which required no attention, care or investment, but has been quietly growing towards that moment when the winter sun lights the shrubby corner next to the wide, deep stoep and reveals the little papery lanterns - this year's unplanned crop of Cape gooseberries.

A happy little moment, repeated all over the garden, throughout the year. Simple pleasures which somehow weave something rather special into the texture of an already rich life.

follow your nose

Pretty little pentzia incana - the quintessential smell of the Karoo. The honey fragrance of vygies on a sunny afternoon; delicate sweet-lime perfume of tiny ivory-coloured orchids; the intoxicating, invisible but almost tangible cloud around a flowering num-num; and now, that rich heady, robust note of a pure, aged balsamic vinegar that tells you that, somewhere very close by, under a euphorbia bush, there's a fruiting Hydnora africana. Pushing up through the karoo-soil, its chocolatey bulb opening to deep luminous orange, it glows against the dull dusty grey & green of its hide-away. My delight at finally spotting it, as nothing, I'm sure, compared to the pleasure of the small nocturnal harvester whose tracks I will find here tomorrow morning.

just don't talk about it

Here's something that never ceases to amaze me: You can discuss anything these days - even the traditionally taboo subjects like politics, religion & sex - and you will usually find it possible to have a rational & calm conversation. But mention dietary habits, and you'd better be prepared for some really touchy & defensive arguments. Even if you're not trying to convince someone to change his carnivorous diet, he will act as if you are. I've sometimes been amazed by the fact that a meat-eater can be so upset by the very fact that I am not also a meat-eater - as if that poses some kind of threat - and instantly has to defend & justify his own choice to eat meat.

I have realized the un-wisdom of trying to convert people a long, long time ago. But still, every so often, I will still find that people may act as if I'm trying to do just that, simply by virtue of the fact that I do what I do. As if being a fruitarian, and admitting to it, is equivalent to issuing a challenge to someone - daring him to pick up his club and go out and defend the patch in front of his cave.

Why is Food such a touchy & tricky issue ? It is easy to understand how food scarcity can ignite wars - hunger is a life & death issue. But in a society where there is no lack ? Why should a conversation about our relationship to food so often, and so easily, hit such a raw nerve ?

what will it take ?

It was one of those middle-of-the-night conversations deep in the African bushveld. So many stars that there seemed to be no dark left in the night sky; that deep, profoundly deep stillness, made all the more still & wide & poignant by the gentle punctuations from a little Scops owl somewhere close-by.

After days of walking the wilderness we were awake to the immense wonder of it - and deeply troubled by the deadly impact of the human footprint on the earth's natural systems. The game ranger - a wilderness-man through & through - cut right through our greenie concerns for the survival of the planet.

"Don't worry about the planet. The Earth will continue - we might, and probably will, screw up everything, but the planet will keep going. It'll be a changed planet, but it will survive. It's all this that won't."

And his all this took in the wide African night & all the life in it. And all the Life beyond it. All the unimaginably complex & wondrous beauty of the natural creation - that is what will not survive. That is what we're destroying - as if it didn't matter. The Life of which we are a part - the Life which keeps us alive - that is what we're killing. That is the big betrayal.

For a long time we sat around that bushveld camp fire. No one spoke any more. We could hear & smell & feel the Life in that night. And it was enough.

That was 16 years ago. And today it's as if we're still asleep at the wheel, hurtling to a certain crash. The human footprint is deadlier than ever.

Which leaves me with this question tonight:
What will it take for the human - this crown of creation - to come to its senses ? What disaster will be devastating enough, what threat will be terrifying enough, what danger frightening enough, what hope inspiring enough, for us to stop this blind, head-long rush to our own doom ?

What will it take to wake us up to the magnificence that slumbers in all of us ?

don't fear for your friendships

Are you concerned about the possibility that your fruitarian life may cost you your friendships ? Relax - you may be surprised.

My dear friend, M, who is completely accepting of my way of life, but certainly doesn’t have any desire to change his own very different relationship to food, came to stay with us for a few days. One afternoon I opened the fridge to find something I really didn’t expect and hadn’t had to deal with for many years: a sizable parcel of raw & bloody meat. M was going to have a barbecue.

It took me a few hours, but eventually I felt rational enough to tell him that this was just not something that was appropriate for me any longer. And then what could have remained an awkwardness between friends relaxed into farce. M was contrite, apologetic, shocked at his own insensitivity, and undertook to bury the meat immediately. We considered this for a bit, and then decided that – in a world with millions of starving people – maybe he shouldn’t do that. OK, then perhaps he should find a needy person to whom he could give the meat – he’ll think about it some more.

At that point I had to leave for a few hours. While I was away M found his solution. He cooked the whole lot & ate it all in one sitting. The sacrifices of friends ! It’s most endearing.

a life about something

Remember the Prof from Pretoria ? Prof B J Meyer who risked his reputation and his research grants by going against the establishment with his research into the health benefits of the fruitarian diet...

I remember a telephone conversation with him, many years ago - he'd been retired from some years, and was working on another book. He was passionately concerned about the state of food security in Africa, and felt that what was required was a radical re-think of the relationship between people & their food - otherwise we'd all be in great trouble.

And here we still are - shoring up the old systems, depleting an environment already so dangerously on the edge. Yes, Professor - we are indeed in great trouble.

A couple of days ago I got the news of Professor Meyer's passing. With our sadness, of course, there is enormous gratitude for his work & legacy. And strange as it may seem, envy. His life was about something. There was meaning & purpose & a point to it. How many of us can say that ?

I have always been struck by a story of the great Buckminster Fuller - of the moment when he had to decide whether he was going to live or die. It was night, on the edge of a lake - he had gone there to commit suicide. He found himself reviewing his life, and everything he knew or believed to be true. At the end of that night he had made the decision: if he had to live, his life had to be about something. Every word, every action had to be deliberate, meaningful & congruent. No matter what the cost. (For the rest of the story, I recommend you read his autobiography - or any of the many books written about him - it's inspiring stuff.)

A life about something. I've come to believe that we need to be grateful for the dark nights, the depressions & despair - they're our Damascus Road moments. They prevent us from drifting, only half-awake, through a life, only half-lived.

the Great Work

I am embarrassed to admit that there was a time when I considered any flower which didn't have a fragrance hardly worth the trouble. Those were the pre-Kyloe days. I know better now. Which is why I'm wondering if we could ever have too many Tecomaria's (Cape honeysuckle with none of the classic honeysuckle fragrance) around the place. They're at their best now, and the sunbirds love them.

In gardening - in life generally - it's not the best idea to put humans first... people as the centre & clincher of every argument. This anthropocentric obsession has got us into a lot of trouble, and the way to get out of it is through a recalibration of our place in the scheme of things. A re-reading of what the great, wise Thomas Berry calls, The Great Story - the wondrous narrative of the universal unfolding of which we are but a part. Call it by the smaller, more familiar terms - evolution, web-of-life - we are woven into an ancient, ongoing, exuberantly creative life story much, much, much greater than ourselves. I like that. Look up at the sky on a clear Karoo night, and you'll know the truth of it.

This remembering of our own Great Story, and the re-shaping of our life to be congruent with that, is what Berry calls The Great Work of our time. In a world which - unarguably I think - has lost its way so completely and so dangerously, I have no better suggestion than Berry's. I like the idea of a personal life which engages with The Great Work, which honours & benefits ALL of life.

Start planting, people

Two bits of news today: the first tells me that "the world" has finally woken up to the fact that there is a looming food crisis. People are going hungry, and it's going to get worse. A lot worse. I don't need to go into the evidence here. The statistics are frightening enough for the ever-vulturine disaster-hungry media to have noticed - the facts & the figures will get headlines & newspaper columns, and it'll all be in the public domain.

So now that we know this, what happens next ? Another couple of Task Groups, a Summit or two, a spike in vapour trails over Africa as Delegations flit to and fro - squandering their dollars & fossil fuels in the exciting divertissement of "Find the culprit"...

And then we'll have a Resolution, followed by an Amendment to the Resolution, and a Conclave to vote on the Amendment; and we'll establish a Council to design the Protocols with which to implement the Resolution; after which there will be a rift in the Council over the fact that the entire Strategic Plan for Global Food Security rests on a premise of ethnic/racist/non-PC bias which requires an Ethical Repositioning founded on a Broad-based Grassroots Consensus which can only begin after an Inclusive Consultative Process - and we have another spike in vapour trails over Africa...

While, in the mean time, people are hungry and getting hungrier.

My second bit of news today arrived just as I was reading about the global food crisis. The Man walked in and announced: The pecans are ripe. Well, I would challenge anyone to come and harvest pecan nuts with me, on a day when "the world" acknowledges its food crisis, and not connect the dots.

Plant your own to eat your own.

Living in the margins #2

Discomfort is not the enemy. Fear of discomfort is. Sweat is a small price to pay for the view of a more distant horizon.

Let the Safe & the Sensible have their predictability & comfort. Perhaps they're wise. But they will never know the smell of summer bleached savannah grass, or sun-baked Karoo rock with, overhead, a bluer blue than any they will ever see.

They will not know the exhilaration of wild winter weather on top of a snowy mountain, with the sleet flying horizontally, stinging your wet skin, and the air so clean & crisp it feels as if it had just been newly created.

So - allow yourself to fall in love with the extremes. Discover the winter moods of the beach when all the Gautengese have left. Walk in a high wind. Climb a mountain in the rain. Cross the river on foot. Allow yourself to get wet, sweaty, hungry & lost.

Hear the silence in places that are empty of people. Take your life off-route for a while.

Life is much richer in the margins.

learning the Laws - the hard way

There can be few pastimes more pleasant than a bicycle ride in the country – farm roads, autumn coloured vineyards, all that wonderful clean country air. At least, someone must have spread some kind of super-potent fertilizer around, or maybe there’s a dead rodent somewhere behind the bushes. Not to worry, it’s all nature’s aroma. The choking dust from speeding, disdainful 4x4s – they just don’t know what they’re missing. Just be grateful that they DID miss the humble country cyclist, puffing her way to fitness and all sorts of profound insights. Here’s one of those insights: This is a more effective & personal way to be introduced to Universal Laws than watching The Secret a dozen times.

#1 See that rock or pothole up ahead ? You will not be able to avoid it, swerve as you might – you will connect with it. It is The Law of Attraction.

#2 Halfway up any hill you will notice a merciless increase in both distance and gradient. It is the Law of Growth.

#3 After a certain amount of time on an inadequately padded saddle, an evil stretch of corrugated farm road will teach you that Everything in the Universe is Energy. Everything that exists, moves. It is The Law of Vibration.

#4 Approach a stretch of deep sand, especially on a slight downhill, and you initiate a sequence of doomed events, beginning with the first wild sideways maneuver & ending in utter humiliation. It is The Law of Cause and Effect.

#5 However clearly you envisage your afternoon’s ride along country roads, you will be blessed with a richer and more varied experience than you could have anticipated. The route will be longer, steeper and rougher than expected. Everything will hurt more than expected. No matter how twisty your route, somehow the wind will always manage to be a headwind. You will have a puncture. You won’t have a repair kit – and even if you had, it wouldn’t have helped because you won’t have a bicycle pump. You will realize that, although you do want to get fit, this is just Too Much - it's a h-ll of a lot more than you bargained for. It is the flippin’ Law of Abundance.

honey, sugar & beer

The little Tanquana's are flowering now. Sweetest of honey smells - best enjoyed on hands & knees with the tip of one's nose covered in pale golden pollen. An autumn ritual, in remembrance of the dear friend who created this part of Kyloe. His life was in crisis, his world crashing around his ears - and he did this unbelievable thing. In a blustery, unmerciful, sad wind he came and quietly made us this karoo garden - full of life & hidden treasures. Like the Tanquana's now reminding me of just how much people can bear, and the grace with which they can do it.

Some years ago we were filming in the Eastern Cape - a documentary about people living & coping with diabetes. One day we were working with medics & patients in an East London hospital, and arranged to film with one of the patients in her home in Duncan Village. She'll go with us and show us the way. All very sociable for the first few minutes in the combi - until it became clear that the lady was giving completely random directions. We were criss-crossing all over, in&out of the city - and let me add that the cameraman had turned up that morning with a hangover, and an attitude of thunder & vitriol. And he's driving.

It was complete farce, especially when the penny finally dropped. Our lady was an advanced diabetic, and years of neglect had brought the inevitable consequence. She was virtually blind. She was trying to direct us from memory.

When we eventually got to her home, I was staggered & humbled. The interior of the little house shone with jewel colours. Everywhere. The palette of an extraordinarily happy & cheerful artist. And in the corner, the most massive chest fridge I'd ever seen. Our lady, realizing that her "Sugar" was robbing her of her sight, her mobility & her ability to continue to work, had found a way: she would supply the local shebeen. Now she had an income, and even more importantly - secured by a giant padlock, and at the perfect temperature - a place to store the key to her survival. Among the hundreds of beer bottles, her precious supply of insulin.