I'm in vilnius for a few days. The rainbow festival was nice. A real double rainbow appeared the first time I went to the big evening meal.. two hundred people sitting in a circle eating traditional rainbow food... Grains and vegetables over- or under- cooked in a huge pot with turmeric, chilli and vegetable oil, often served à la char-burned from too hot fire. Occurred to me that almost all energy at festival is spent constructing kitchen, cooking, eating or digesting huge quantities of food. There are other means of sustenance, I am totally sure, with less strain on stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, etc. Being inspired by love, by the freedom to create a happy and beautiful future.. I mean feeling the real potential to make wonderful dreams into reality, that is a good type of energy, it keeps me moving strong and light all day without need for drugs or sugar or lots of food.. I felt it for a magical week in Victoria. Lasted as long as the loving, helpful, positive interaction with other humans. I know the feeling of being so excited in love to lose the appetite totally.. then really appreciate some good food when the hunger returns.
So I try to use this natural human energy more.. i took a raw cucumber for breakfast instead of porridge.. old men were very angry and kept saying.. "if everyone did that".. I tried to explain that everyone wasn't doing that, that we had leftovers and fresh food literally rotting, but they were very rude, would not listen and kept turning their back on me, talking as if I wasn't there. I asked what I should do if I didn't want porridge and was hungry.. and had contributed euros, labour, organisation and ecological expertise to festival.. they told me to go to town and buy breakfast, so I did.. then I met Ruta who was driving all the way to Vilnius with her two little kids.. perfect lift, and we stopped at a small farm community near Giedraciai on the way back.
They are trying to attract more people to live with them. They have 70 ha and selling plots to like minded neighbours for cheap. Vision of full self sufficiency, new civilisation on earth, settlements of family homesteads. They hold various festivals and host wwoofers and helpxers. For me, they still too curious about technological artificial world.. listening to red hot chili peppers on laptop when I entered house.. and young people all going to university in the city. I think I'm more attracted to people who've seen and understood the world of machines, stone buildings, roads airplanes factories and techno devices, and now looking for something different.. I've noticed this type have more determination to develop natural methods and space to connect with nature, appreciate living rhythm of the forest and animals.. these guys are www.sironija.LT, third generation on that land, grow potatoes, grains and hemp for fibre, milk cows, use diesel tractors often and use time feeding animals with cut hay. They really nice. The mother said she found her husband through Vladimir Megre's books, that she gave it to him and he read it and then they knew they were perfect for each other. She's due for second little one in a few months, very very happy and cheerful little family. Population of their settlement range about 4-18 from winter to summer. 10 km from next village. Water from ponds, heat from wood burners. Houses wooden, or cob with wooden frame. 30 min from Vilnius.
There was another young woman in the car riding back to vilnius with us, vita marija. She is a musician and music teacher, but is also working with her mother, who is buying land all over Lithuania to set up ecological communities with special focus on kindergartens and natural schooling. She called to her friend Simas, and I was dropped straight into a new group of friends. Simas hosted me in his living room for three nights, a really great rest in warm house and nice to meet his friends too. I asked one, how does she like Lithuania.. she says firmly, very very much. I ask why and she says, because if I feel like eating blueberries, in 15 minutes I can be at a blueberry bush in a clean ecological area. These are ordinary looking westernised university students, going to electronic music party and drinking for friends birthday, and they telling me about new ecological consciousness in Lithuania, how young people will live in harmony with nature.. quite amazing. These ones in city often grew up in countryside, still curious about western culture, but the few who I talked to would like natural life with plants, animals on a family homestead when they are older..
Yesterday Simas and I went to friend Indre's house to help build clay wall in their house. She's being interviewed by main lietuva newspaper as a feature on a single mother building her own house using natural techniques. Now she's getting more help.. cob workshop next weekend with a dozen or so helpers organised by ecological organisation in vilnius. Kind of funny, its a suburban plot in a wealthy area, about half an acre, veg garden already cranking with cabbage, salads, potatoes, beets, etc. Having some adjustment issues with neighbours, who are nouveau riches of post-soviet time.. strange that the richer they are, the lower quality food and building materials they use.. imported unripe veg and ugly bricks... At the end of day, Indre gives me three big plastic bags and says, go take whatever you like from the garden, these plants are really so good for your organism. She has a new boyfriend and now they build the house together as a place to raise family. They both musicians.
Last night simas had a small ice cream party. He makes ice cream for events using liquid nitrogen and there was some left over from a function. I met Migles, who grew up in a small village in the center of Lithuania, she told me about the many festivals over summer.. there really are a huge amount for such a small country, all variety of music and then things like handicraft skillshare festival, traditional dance festival. Migles had just come from Mandala festival about meditation, mindfulness, healthy living, combination of sufi, vedic, pagan traditions. She was really happy.. during the party I was concentrating on keeping every muscle in my body relaxed, moving gracefully and carefully. I start to notice small errors of movement in myself and the others.. little tendencies of clumsiness from degraded organism or maybe little birth defects.. I asked migles about her birth, she said it was very frightening, she thought only good things would be here, but there was a lot of bad as well.. she started shaking very much as a tiny baby, and doctors made some injections into her and then she stopped shaking. She says now she's learning to deal with all the bad things in the world, that the future is definitely good. I asked how to say "family homestead" in Lietuvski.. rodnaya pamestye in Rosskyy.. we took some time to translate the concept, she was very happy to create a new phrase for her language.. gimines kaimelis (little family village home place..). She got what it meant, like the place she grew up.
Today heading south towards alytus and marjiampole. To visit another village. I am finding it useful to see challenges and successes of these settlements, and to unify and harmonize our efforts.. still more interested in the villages starting out than the big fancy blue ribbon ones.. maybe Sinegorie will change my mind, but I haven't seen a famous settlement that is doing full self sufficiency or family homesteads with any real purpose to expand happy life to the whole earth.. so the movement in the west is still just starting out! The best time of course to join on the new zeitgeist!
There is lots more to say maybe about the rainbow gathering. It's a good place to perfect interpersonal relations, quite an accelerated international social education, but for me a bit frustrating for its lack of purpose, meaning or unity among people. The communities It's spawned have all fallen apart quickly, overrun with drugs and anger.. there is so much hurt, to my best view, the idea of family homesteads is the only thing strong enough to heal it and lead the planet into a peaceful age on earth..
I'll copy in what I wrote on the last day waiting to leave for vilnius. I have to admit I'm now hesitating on the bits about Australia... I think I've been quite shocked and hurt by life in Aus.. really everyone has. We have a very difficult history as a nation, how we were founded, by military and criminals, taken over by robber barons who killed the original inhabitants and seized the land. maybe I'm sheltered, sensitive, whatever.. but for anyone with ecological conscience, its so much easier to integrate and be happy in a society where a "master" is someone who makes scythes or plays the psaltery.. where many people know permaculture by default.. where young women think about how and where to raise children and with whom, not embarassed or demonised for doing that...where you can buy enough land to own after saving for one year on an average wage...where there is never drought, where the fruit is sweeter because of the cold frost, where all of Europe is a 5 euro ryanair flight away.. where locals hitch hike and villagers invite you to stay when its raining outside.. where the government has a department dedicated to family homesteads and garden allotments (EU government), where the people are overjoyed to receive visitors and immigrants, where there are four seasons, pristine ecological environments, etc. Etc.
Still we call Australia the lucky country and go on as if eastern Europe are soviet paupers.. I hope I'm being polite enough here.. I have a strong connection to where I was born and where my family is.. and in the last year, some people have started to be kinder and even asking me to stay in Aus.. I am thinking about it still, where is the healthiest and happiest place to plant my roots and continue the family line.. I just really wish as a country we could sort out the little things about homestead allotments and revegetate deserts.. as a real priority that will help every aspect of life, bring such social, ecological and economic abundance to our country.. a new homestead act and a total cleanout of corrupt politicians.... On any view of it, Australia politicians are awfully corrupt right now! There is no reason to be making destructive mines and export factory farms, where many profits and produce end up overseas.. please, please can we wake up from this illusion of a responsible, democratic westernised government... These guys are in the pocket of developers, miners and agriculture organisations like FFA... We are slipping into the second world already... Like Saudi Arabia or Chile.. where development is all about foreign investors and scarcely a thought about the wellbeing of locals... Please, please start understanding this... Without blaming anyone in particular, let's think creatively about what's best to do from here.. nothing is more important to me than making land available to any Australian citizen who wants to create a homestead, restore land fertility and contribute healthy produce to society. I think life is meant to be easy, and fun.. wealth and toil no thanks, i prefer gardens and happy families. I not telling others what to do, I know this move is organic and self motivated.. but I cant live among hostile people. Part of the reason for me to write this open and honest thoughts is to see where the friendly folks are, whether there is going to be a safe place for me to live in my homeland.. there really must be.. I would like that.. but have to think and imagine harder about how it can happen.... Yea I notice those little "likes" and comments...
I don't mean to threaten with "I'm leaving!"..really I think all relations are best when everyone is happy and doing what they like most.. I can see a nice future in Australia. But distance is not so much these days. More important is a piece of earth that the family line is connected to.. the ancestors and the homeland.. I don't have that anywhere.. a piece of land to feel safe and provided for, that is a real sustainable, permanent home.. not many people do.. so really I choose the best and nicest place in the whole planet to make one.. to be the founder of such a place, where my children will always have the option, after all their explorations into the world, to make their homes alongside mine, for their children to take over my homestead when we get so old.. to make a real family tree, family homeland, little family village place. So yea I wonder if that idea resonates with anyone...
Here's what I wrote on my last day at Aleksandravele:
I, a citizen of the Commonwealth of Australia and a resident of the planet earth, here declare my intention to create a living family homestead on a plot of land one hectare in size, on which to grow a variety of plants, care for animals, provide homes for bees, and dig a pond to support fish, frogs and water birds. I will preserve or establish an area of mixed forest for air quality and habitat, flowers for colour and scent, and textiles for fabric and rope.
Together with my beloved wife, we will create a self sufficient, ecologically clean environment without harmful chemicals or machinery. We will produce a surplus of natural goods to contribute cheerfully to the well being of our country's population, and promote the efficient and durable use of our natural resources for the long term benefit of public health and economic trade.
I observe that our society faces a great many challenges, including desertification of agricultural land, soil erosion, saliniry and deforestation, leading to an increased reliance on expensive, foreign owned, artificial farming techniques and toxic chemicals whig threaten the healthy existence of our people and the natural environment.
Many countries, not just our own, have made similar mistakes, and it'a no use to blame this or that person. As a widespread solution to these and many other challenges, I suggest we make available unused or degrading agricultural land, to any willing person or family to settle and develop naturally, easing pressure on crowded city areas, restoring the restoring the fertility of the land, and shifting the national focus to the more effective methods of small-scale homestead agriculture and permaculture to provide for our and our region's nutritional and economic needs.
The produce from such family homesteads will differ from commercial farming in its beneficial qualities and pleasant appearance and taste, while the new settlements themselves will offer new useful opportunities for the unemployed, homeless and anyone lacking purpose or enthusiasm for the artificial world. We have seen from the living successes in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan that the activity of creating a family homestead not only produces valuable goods, but also fosters a new a more satisfying connection to the natural environment of our country and our planet. We will benefit from further developing such understandings, on the personal and international level. The idea of family homesteads can unite people from many different cultures and places, leading the way into a new era of peace on Earth.
On my family homestead, I wish to conceive and raise two children, a son and a daughter, who will understand and appreciate the purpose of making our country better and the whoel environment more perfect. We will be happy to be Australians, an cheerfully go about our daily lives for the improvement of living conditions for all our fellow countryment, as well as the people of other countries around the world.
Knowing the difficulty of establishing sustainable and productive settlements in Australia, I would like family homesteads to be a focused national idea, which will bring great benefit to our country, and any leaders who have a vested interest in its flourishing. This might take the form of a national register of available land, and an annual conference on scientific and government insights into the ecological and social consequences of family homesteads, sustainable settlements and small scale farming.
Land allocated by the national register should be in one hectare plots, gathered into village settlements, may be passed on to one's children in perpetual ownership, and may not be bought or sold. Such a system will be scrupulously and patriotically protected against corruption, which threatens the well-being of our country as much as foreign insurgents or terrorists.
Over generations, the methods and organistion of this system will be refined and improved, just as my grandchildren will make our family homestead even more perfect than I am able to make it. They will arrange the living materials of nature, animals, plants, water, microbes, worms, birds, trees, herbs, berries, fruit, bees, vegetables, mushrooms, mosses, grasses, reeds, grains, flowers and soil better so as to live in comfort, beauty, and pleasant relaxation, letting us joyfully contemplate and promote the spreading of this new earth civlisation to every part of our planet, until the whole globe is flourishing and pulsating with happy families, splendid gardens and the energy of love. We will connect to each other through time around our family tree, a great Siberian cedar whose nuts will provude sustenance and benefit each winter.
When harmony on Earth is thus completed, then will be our opportunity to travel to another planet and create a living environment yet more perfect than this.
... Yeah anyway i realised I'm unable to imagine a future with depopulation and environment catastrophe.. I really honestly think we can support this population on this earth. It will naturally plateau with development, it is already the trend that developed countries birth rate drops off.. once we have other purpose and projects to give us satisfaction, design and implement better systems to assure basic needs, restore degraded land, huge areas become available.. keep making earth more perfect.. yeah, not giving up...
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gdriv.es/earthnet
Vmegre.com/en/representatives