Philosophy

You know, this whole townhouse homesteading thing is becoming much more than just a hobby for me. It's really becoming a philosophy of the way that I live my life. Over the past few months, I've watched one movie and read several books that I've considered life-changing.

The movie was Food, Inc. This documentary about the food industry wasn't exactly anything new after the reading that I had done, but the images were especially powerful. I had seen a documentary about slaughterhouses before that made me temporarily vegetarian, but this went so much deeper. This was about the people, not about the animals, and that had a much greater impact on me. Because let's face it, to me, people are more important than animals. So, a system that exploits animals AND people has to be changed.

I read Michael Pollan's books The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. I also read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. All of these are incredible books for different reasons. Barbara Kingsolver helped me realize that I should do what I can, and not feel too guilty about what I can't do.

So, here is what I am doing:
-Planting as extensive an herb and vegetable garden as I can on our little plot of land
-Eating lots of vegetarian meals and fish.* We haven't given up meat entirely, or even meat "from the man." We're working on it.
-Planning on doing lots of shopping at the local farmers' markets.
-We've given up buying anything with high fructose corn syrup in it. We'll extend this list over time to get rid of things that came out of a lab as much as possible.
-I've stopped buying produce that comes from other countries, and fruits that are entirely tropical, such as bananas.

That's what we're doing. It's not perfect, and I still don't always recycle. But we're trying.

*Fish is another issue that I am not quite prepared to deal with. I'm rating my meat consumption a little bit on level of intelligence.