Living with the seasons

There was an interesting item on the radio this morning about a man who decided to live without money for a year; he planned it, not by stocking up on loads of thing so he didn’t need to go shopping, but by researching what he should do in terms of growing his own food, and foraging and harvesting from the wild. He sold or got rid of everything he owned and gave up all his bank and savings accounts so he really was dependent on what he could grow of find.

he had an old caravan in an orchard somewhere near here, between bath and Bristol and he kept a journal of his exploits. He received a lot of publicity and was invited place to give talks and meet people to explain how he was living and he said sometimes he would do what a lot of homeless or people living in straightened circumstances do, go round the back of supermarkets and find food that was perfectly good but past its sell-by date – I have written about this before and what a waste it is.

He had no radio of anything like that and in the evenings he, and any visitors he had, would sit round a fire and sing and dance, and entertain themselves. His experiment continued after the one year, and he actually continued this life-style for another eighteen months. It sounds idyllic, but I am sure there must have been times when he was cold, and hungry, and lonely, and times when he wondered how he was going to manage.

I don’t think I would like to do this as a life-style but I think I would be interested in experiencing it for a week… It is not something I intend to do however; he bought nothing, not even soap or toilet paper… I leave it to your imagination how he managed! However, I certainly think there are lessons to be learned, and the idea of ‘getting back to nature’ and living with the seasons appeals to me. I do grow vegetables and herbs, I do gather wild fruits and berries, I do try to preserve excess food we have grown or come by, hence my experiments with drying fruit and herbs (not very successfully last year, perhaps better this summer!) making my own cheese, salting beans (a total failure) and making jam, jelly and pickles.