Natural, healthy environments radiate wellbeing in every possible way. When we leave the stress of our artificially loud, unnatural worlds and go out into the woods, or to a semi-secluded beach, or to a natural wonder like the Grand Canyon, we always breathe a huge sign relief. Modern societies and cities give off so many unpleasant, and in some cases, assaultive vibrations that wreak havoc on our human systems that escaping them even briefly shifts us toward health. Even just electricity gives off a powerful and often destabilizing vibration that negatively affects us all, never mind the rest of what we are confronted with. To cope with these daily challenges of modern life, we tend to become hard and desensitized.  

I experienced a profound overall shift in health in myself and family since returning to the country a few years ago. There are many great sights, sounds and smells out here that have a positive effect on the human system.  After some time of living with them, you find yourself softening and getting stronger all at the same time. Your energy level picks up. Your thought patterns clear.

The idea came to me a few weeks ago to share some of the sounds of winter on our homestead. You can hear them on the videos below.

African American athletes now openly speak their minds and express themselves somewhat freely on collegiate and professional athletic fields. We all know that this was not always the case. It took a special person who could smile graciously as white people spit at, threatened and abused him for participating in what they considered to be their sport being played in their country to open up athletics to people of color. That person was Jackie Robinson. There were many great black baseball players in Jackie Robinson’s day, and many great black athletes, but Jackie was special. He was neither hateful nor vindictive. He did not give his ‘haters’ anything to feed on. Jackie was a uniter.

My diaries and essays at dkos and Docudharma are generally about spirituality, homesteading and the in’s and out’s of abuse. I do not believe there is a political solution to the enormous challenges that humanity faces. My small hope from politics is that we get someone to stop the bleeding. I do not view the current candidates as saviors and, to some extent, I believe that most of them have to be corporate puppets to some extent or they wouldn’t even get a second look.  

Cross posted at Docudharma

My horse-loving 8 year old daughter received the Horse-oply game for Christmas. Horse-oply is just Monopoly with a veneer of horses. The board and cards are changed to horsey things but it is basically the same soul-killing game of merciless capitalism. I had forgotten how soul-killing Monopoly is because I haven’t played it for 30 years or more. We, of course, could not deny my daughter playing it at least once before it was buried deep in a closet and marked for Goodwill and somebody else’s problem.  So we set aside a few precious hours on Sunday afternoon to do the deed.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future and Docudharma

My wife, children and I aren’t practicing Christians but we do believe that Jesus was part of the divine hierarchy that has guided the overall evolution of the human being.  We have celebrated a somewhat traditional Christmas as a family ever since Leslie and I got married years ago, but we gradually started making small alterations to the way we celebrated together that were consistent with our spiritual practice. For years Leslie has done an excellent job of working out how to mold our holiday celebrations into something more Sahaj or natural. One example of this she describes in her post about transforming Independence Day into Inner Dependence Day.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future and Docudharma

One aspect of life that gives me hope is the strong effect places, events, animals and people can have on us human beings. I became particularly aware of this phenomenon 13 years ago when I started practicing a Raja Yogic meditation system simultaneously with beginning work as a counselor at a treatment center for children who had committed sexual offenses.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future and Docudharma

I have always been an animal person. In my youth I wanted to be a naturalist or a veterinarian. For years, I used our set of encyclopedias and the library to study one animal after another. One animal I had little interest in at that time was the cow. I guess I thought cows were boring and unimportant because it looked to me like all they did was stand around in pastures. However, my ideas about cows changed dramatically two years ago when our first family cow came to live with us. Now I understand that cows are one of the key animals supporting human civilization.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Futureand Docudharma

Contrary to popular opinion, the Democrats are not spineless. Spinelessness is inherent weakness and cowardice. It means that when a person is facing a malevolent force they are supposed to stand up to, they go completely limp and act as a doormat for the malevolent force to wipe their feet on. Although weakness is abhorred in our society, spinelessness can at least be forgiven. We have all felt weak at one time or another and crumpled under pressure. It is part of being a human being. However, spinelessness is not the cause of the Democratic leadership repeatedly caving in to the bullying ways of the Bush administration and the Republican Party.

Cross posted on Docudharma

A few years ago, my wife and I needed assistance moving our homestead from the world of ideas to the material world. Neither of us grew up on a farm. Both of us had little homestead related hands-on experience. One could say that the first step had been taken years ago when my wife started researching this way of life. We had also gradually begun planning for our homestead, had written a family mission statement which included a homesteading way of life, had had children whose very natures demanded a farm life, and we had at last succeeded in moving to the country. Each of these actions got us moving in the direction of the homestead but we weren’t sure how to take the next concrete step. Shortly after moving to our own place in the country, one particular event put us past the point of no return and that was when our Border Collie, Lucy, came to live with us. She was our first farm animal. With each additional animal we became more and more like homesteaders but it all started with Lucy.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future and Docudharma

Many people are expressing frustration and even outrage at what appears to be a complete collapse of our system. Everything from the erosion of all governmental checks and balances, to our mainstream media giving a free pass to our wayward administration, to a failed leadership are being paraded before us. Most believe that these conditions are new phenomenon but I believe that we are just seeing now what has been in existence for centuries.

Cross posted on Docudharma

A little over five years ago I was working as a clinician at a treatment center for adolescent sex offenders. The clients themselves were difficult to work with but what was worse was that the administration was abusive and exploited staff and clients. It was a bizarre place that asked for top dollar from the clients’ sending agencies by selling a state of the art therapeutic program but in reality treated both therapists and clients with loathing and contempt. One by one my fellow therapists dropped from the stress and hostility at this treatment center.

Cross Posted at Pockets of the Future and Docudharma

So many people understand now that the food they put into their bodies becomes an integral part of them that "you are what you eat" has become a slogan. It is experientially logical that putting something into your system makes that something become a part of you and science has also proven this to be the case in detailed (and often alarming) ways. Therefore, many people also now agree, at least in theory if not in practice, that we should only put natural and healthy foods into our systems.

However, "you are what you eat" has a much broader meaning for our health than just whether or not we should eat an apple instead of a candy bar. What is less well known and much less accepted is that all of our experiences, thoughts, feelings, reactions, the energy or condition at the places we frequent, TV shows, what we read, all of our interactions, everything we say, think, do, inhale, watch, hear, smell and taste also become a part of us and leave a trail within us.

Cross posted at Cross posted at Pockets of the Future and Docudharma

Update I left out the following video the 4th of the pasture series.

During the nearly two years my family and I have been homesteading, we have often found that something we need is not available in the marketplace. It seems odd that in a time in history when we have more stuff than in any previous time, we have to search high and low for simple tools and systems for natural living and homesteading. Often even a thorough search turns up nothing so we end up having to invent or adapt something to meet our homesteading needs.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future

The Shiites and Sunnis have been fighting for 1,400 years. The reason I know this is because about six months ago I wondered how the Shiites and Sunnis first began their quarrel. I Googled it and read through a few sources.They all said pretty much the same thing. Here is one of the examples from my Google search.

"The split between the two main branches of Islam is nearly 1,400 years old, and started with a fight over who should lead the faithful after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. One side believed that direct descendants of the prophet should take up the mantle of the caliph – the leader of the world's faithful. They were known as the Shiat-Ali, or "partisans of Ali," after the prophet's cousin and son-in-law Ali, whom they favored to become caliph. In time, they came simply to be known as Shiites.

My wife, Leslie, had long had the idea to build an outdoor shower inside of a bamboo grove where the bamboo would be the shower curtain. At our last homestead we planted some Stone bamboo but did not have a place for the shower. However, after we arrived at our new place, I found an ideal location for the shower. We hoped to purchase some bamboo after the sale of our old house and plant it and let it grow until it was thick. Then I had a rough idea of what kind of shower I wanted to build.

The bamboo shower itself would give us a back system to our current bathing practices of an indoor shower and bath. The outdoor shower helps to conserve both water and power as the water can be heated by the sun. It would also provide its own gray water system as the water-loving bamboo will absorbing the water running out of the shower. Bamboo shoots can be harvested in the spring so the walls of the shower would also be a perennial food source.

The answer is that they maintain functional groups in which the leaders, the hens and cows at the top of their respective pecking orders, do not keep 90% to 99% of their societies’ resources for themselves.

On our homestead, we recently added 14 new hens to our flock of 12 hens. We knew that there was going to be conflict and some fighting involved as the hens established a new pecking order. Interestingly, the posturing and the pecking were not all that bad on even the first night and it only took three or four days for them to sort everything out. Within that short amount of time, they successfully put aside their differences and came together as a well-functioning, cooperative society. By the way, the 14 new hens were also a completely different breed from the hens we already had. There are videos at the bottom of this dairy documenting the process of these hens working things out.

Crossposted at Pockets of the Future Blog

My family has had rare breed dairy cows for a little over a year and a half now which has totally transformed our family life. Cows have many great qualities but perhaps the most significant one is their presence. They create such a grounding and nourishing atmosphere that just being with them fills you with a deep sense of wellbeing. Given these turbulent times characterized by malice and incompetence, it has been a wonderful haven for our family to be able to milk our cows and then process that milk into a variety of foods.
Below are links to a three part video we posted on YouTube of a quiet morning milking on our mountain homestead. This milking was particularly peaceful and we wanted to share that experience the best we could.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future Blog

Yesterday my five year old son and I climbed into our 21 year old pick up truck and drove through the winding mountain roads of our new home in Floyd, VA. As we passed a mountain peak, my son asked, "How did that mountain get here?" I do not know very much about geology but answered him anyway saying that I thought there were only two ways in which mountains are formed, either by volcanic action or through two land masses slamming into each other. As I thought about these two rather powerful possibilities, I began thinking about how our illusions of safety and stability.

When I click the edit button on any of my diaries accept the most recent one the edit screen does not come up. Only the diary comes up. I emailed technical support but received no response. Is there some reason for this? Is there some other way to edit and delete older diaries? Can anyone help me with this?