Saddling Pita, Slow-Time, and Agrarianism

7/30/07 - 2nd Day - After Breakfast. Yesterday after fellowship Chris Woods and I saddled Pita for the first time. Pita is our mixed breed calf (1/2 Longhorn, 1/2 Watusi). Many of you may remember that Pita was my first calf born here at the ranch almost exactly 1 year ago to the day. Here is a picture of her when she was 9 months... she's much bigger now:


She's quite a big heifer now, so we started getting her ready to be saddled and ridden. We put a blanket on her, then strapped on the saddle. She really handled it quite well, and didn't protest much at all. The saddle was a bit loose and big for her, so when we started walking her by the lead, she tried mildly to toss it off, and it would go crooked on her. We are going to work on either making one of Chris's saddles fit, or we are going to buy a small saddle to fit her. After we can get it to stay on her, I will leave it on her a few days to let her get used to it. Then I will stap some bags of weight on her for a few days. After that, I will try to ride her. She is quite calm, and still leads well. I will keep you updated on our progress.

We have received some rain over the past week. Not much that was really measurable, but a smattering every day; which is great in July. The temps have been spectacular, and we have really no complaints at all about this great summer. We have rarely reached up into the mid-90's this summer, and most days have been in the high 80's up to 90. The last 8 mornings we have had 69 degrees, which is beautiful, and actually causes me to cover up a bit in the morning to stay warm. The humidity has been high, but that is what happens when you have good moisture. I went back through last years temps on Wunderground.com, and we were 100+ (actually about 105+ here at the ranch) for almost every day of the summer, up until September, when it was still in the high 90's.

Our garden is still doing well. The children will be picking green beans again today for us to can, and we are canning tomatoes as well several times a week. On the Lord's Day fellowship we had some incredible food yet again. We had smoked turkey, potato casserole, that fruit salad with marshmallows, garlic bread, pinto beans with ham hocks, toffee brownies, and spice cupcakes with frosting. Is that decadent or what? It is a great exercise in overcoming the natural man, moderation, and self-control. I have to tell myself to eat reasonable portions, and not to fill up. The Lord's Day before that, when we went to the park, I backslid and ate so much I was sick and miserable for a whole day. So I have been concentrating on eating reasonable portions, and not having seconds. I'm afraid if folks found out how well we eat around here on the Lord's Day, our cup would runneth over with new Agrarian converts.

I should have a Q&A Fridays out sometime today (Monday) which shows you how little we emphasize days out here in slow-timeland. For those of you who are new to the idea of slow-time, it is defined thusly:

Slow time is the Agrarian counterpart to the way the world keeps time. The only "days" we really focus on and differentiate are the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. In the industrial world, events, meetings, etc. are identified by "fast time" or the actual time on man's clock that such events occurs; so you would say "I will meet you at 1 p.m.". In slow-time you might say, "I'll be in the garden after dinner (or lunch)", or "in about an hour or so". In slow-time you might hear, "We'll be by after supper, when it cools off". Slow-time works better when both parties are Agrarians. If you use slow-time with an industrial dude, he might get frustrated. When my dad is up in the high mountains of New Mexico, he calls it "mañana time" and he finds it very frustrating. If he contracts with a couple of guys to come cut firewood, they may say "We'll be there on Friday", but what they really mean is "we really, really, really intend to get there and cut that wood... some day". They may show up in another week on a Monday. We try not to be like that here, and Agrarian slow-time does not mean LATE or "whenever". It merely attempts to remove the industrial clock from our lives and conversation with one another.

Anyway, one of the Q's I got for Q&A Fridays was actually a statement from a man who is finding it hard to believe that the Agrarian life can actually be lived today:

Michael,

We would love to live off-grid, and people like you make it sound very enticing. But we cannot afford it right now. I don't know if we will ever be able to afford it.

Thank you for your question...er.... statement. I do not generally accept the notion that someone cannot afford to move towards an Agrarian life – even an off-grid Agrarian life. My position, which I believe I can prove in virtually any individual case, is that people who say they cannot live “off-grid”, or that they cannot afford it:

1. Are already spending more money each month than it would take to move off-grid pretty immediately.

2. Have amplified the consequences and hindrances to moving out of the system, while they have ignored or rejected the solutions.

3. Are generally (not in every case, but in almost every case) still too in love with the world and the things of the world to let them go – thus they choose their first love, or that thing that they love more, and then rationalize that choice with excuses or “reasons”.

In fact, most people (not all, but almost all) who ask this question have a failsafe, lock-solid, loop error in their thinking, that inevitably determines for them that they cannot do what they claim they want to do. First, we have to explain what we mean about “off-grid”. When most new folks say, “We would like to live off-grid, but we cannot afford it”, what they actually mean is “we would like to life off-grid IN THE SAME MANNER WE LIVE NOW, with the same conveniences and the same lifestyle, according to the same rudiments, and with the same comforts – but we cannot afford it”. Well, duh. Only about 1-3% of the population can afford to live an industrial/consumer lifestyle completely off-grid. Check out Home-Power magazine, which caters to those who desire to “save the planet” while living a comfortable, western, industrial, consumer lifestyle. I don't know anyone who can fork over $25,000 for a solar power system, and another $25,000 for other off-grid “necessities” (composting toilets, large propane freezers and refrigerators, etc.). This does not include the hundreds of thousands of dollars to plan and build a modern energy-efficient home with all the comforts and doo-dads of modern living. When I explain to them that this whole concept is completely foreign to the culture and lifestyle we propose, and that it is their THINKING and lusts that they cannot afford, they usually kind of dismiss my objections as an extreme example, and assure me that they weren't considering that kind of life. Well... I can't afford half of that lifestyle either. Or ¼ of it. So, I ask, how much of that stuff do you need? How much do you want to live “off-grid”? Define it for me, and I'll tell you that if you define the Biblical Agrarian life properly, and according to the standards of Biblical communities and cultures in history, that you probably can afford it right now. Now the tough question. If I could prove that you could do it, and that you could do it with much, much, much less expense then you possibly can imagine, WOULD YOU DO IT? That is the question to answer. Our website BiblicalAgrarianism.com is about these solutions. There are cheap ways to procure land, to build dwellings, to begin farming, to husband animals. These things have been done for hundreds and thousands of years. It is the modern colonized mind that doesn't conceive of it, not because it cannot, but because it will not. Meaning that it is not a problem of ability, it is a problem of desire. It is easy to say “I want to go back in time and live like my ancestors – with less dependence on the world, and more dependence on God”. It is easy to say, “I want to separate from ungodliness and separate to a more Biblical way of living”. Those things are easy to say, but they are hard to WILL to do. You can easily separate from some comforts and some of the old lifestyle, but the most difficult thing in the world to separate from is yourself and your sins. Sinful dependence on the world, lustful desire for unlawful things, concupiscence, sloth, and idolatry are all sins that are coupled with the carnal man. For man to separate from those things, he must begin to kill the carnal man. That old man must die daily – meaning steadily and increasingly. It is easy to live with 40 acres and a mule (or even 5 acres and some chickens), but it is very difficult to live with these things AND hair dryers, blenders, and air-conditioners.

The most difficult lies to detect are the lies we tell ourselves. Some of you really don't want to live an Agrarian life, or if you do, you want to hybridize it with the stuff you love in the world. Hey, we all love some of that stuff. Some of us have a love/hate relationship with those things. They are tempting, but they ultimately kill us. Last year we ran our air-conditioner in the cabin. It was brutally hot for 6 months, and for those 6 months we spent well over $300 a month on gasoline for the generator. This year I gave the air-conditioner away. Don't want it. God has been gracious, and we have had a preposterously cool summer this year. All the while, I am planning and working to not ever use air-conditioning at home again. The first large-scale electrical air-conditioning was used in 1902, meaning that we have only had it available for a little over a hundred years. Most of our grandparents never had air-conditioning until the 50's, meaning that in our own heritage air-conditioning is only about 60 years old. Somehow, for almost 2000 years, most people lived without electrical air-conditioning. It is only the slave mind that requires it, and we ought not be victims of a slave mind.

We have learned, in trying to live this life, that many “hybrids” are not good at all. They are sinful man's way of trying to do better than God. We are raising non-hybridized pure Longhorn cattle, because we want the best homesteading cow we can get. Mixing the pure with the profane does not make the pure thing better, it only eventually ruins it for what it is truly for. Trying to hybridize Agrarianism with the modern industrial/consumer life will not work. You are right... If that is what you want, you cannot afford it. However, if you want to separate from the world, and live an increasingly Agrarian life as your mind is retrained by God and His way of doing things, then you have to move that direction by faith. Like the Gospel, Agrarianism can be agreed with and pandered to, it can be easy on the lips and sweet on the tongue; but if you really, really believe it, then you can afford it – or God is a liar. And God is not a liar.

If you would like to read the rest of Q&A Fridays, it should be posted on BiblicalAgrarianism.com and my other blog.... sometime today... maybe after dinner?

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker