A few thoughts on Becoming a Peasant

Let’s face it, I’m way too soft to survive THAT life.

But I have begun to wonder.

How might things look if I decided to live a bit more peasant-like? If I grow more and more of my own food, spin some yarn, make some of my own clothing, sell what I don’t need, and survive on the rest.

Not that I have a whole lot of choice since I quit my job.

Think about it.

No fancy-schmancy new car every few years. Not that I’ve ever been able to afford that particular lifestyle. No cable TV, no eating out every other night and no shopping simply for the sake of filling up some free time. Or filling up a hole in my heart.

What if

I spent my time spinning yarn, or crocheting, and listening to podcasts instead of spending it online shopping? Selling the yarn or making something useful with it?

I grow the food we are going to eat tonight and marvel over how fresh and delicious it tastes compared to the tasteless cardboard from the grocery store?

I reuse a few old t-shirts to MAKE a rug rather than hopping in the car, or online, and filling my home with a rug full of chemicals made by people who can’t make even a peasant-like living?

What is a peasant?

I like this excerpt from the International Convention on the Rights of Peasants – La Via Campesina

“A peasant is a man or woman of the land, who has a direct and special relationship with the land and nature through the production of food and/or other agricultural products. Peasants work the land themselves, relying above all on family labor and other small scale forms of organising labor. Peasants are traditionally embedded in their local communities and they take care of local landscapes and of agro-ecological systems. The term peasant can apply to any person engaged in agriculture, cattle-raising, pastoralism, handicrafts related to agriculture, or a related occupation in rural areas. This includes indigenous people working on the land.”

I am that woman. I grow food, I work the land, I raise livestock, and I have even begun to spin yarn with some of that livestock wool. Dude, I’m a modern peasant!

What becoming a peasant looks like in my current life.

I can’t tell you the last time I stepped inside a mall. But, in all honestly, I have spent too much online shopping. Buying things I didn’t really need. In the last couple of months I have begun to seriously purge. To question before I buy. To delete emails that promise me great deals – simply because I have very little impulse control.

Now I either go into the garden or my root cellar and see what is available or what needs eaten right now, and I go from there. I’m trying to get into the habit of thinking about dinner when I’m eating lunch. So I have time to prepare the foods that take a little longer and to think about how what I have on hand might make a good meal.

I gathered up all of the wool I had collected from the bunnies over the year and sold it at Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Show earlier this fall. Not that it even came close to what I’ve spent on those ladies but it felt good to make a little back.

And my husband and I have recently taken a spinning class and he bought a spinning wheel for my upcoming birthday. It was more money that I’d like him to have spent but it is a good, useful tool.

I’ve attended some marketing and farming workshops to figure out how to best use the land I have and how to get good, healthy food to the people who are looking for it. And some to the people who really NEED it as well.

I’m also amassing quite a large amount of herbal knowledge that has helped with some of my health issues.

There are other changes I need/want to make too but that will all take time. And new habits.

I need some more serious purging to help me clarify what it is that I really need and want to do with myself.

What would your life look like if you lived a more peasant like life?