Hey dear droogies, and fellow plant-, air- and water-nourished super humans full of power, body, mind and soul health.
This email started as a post in the Sydney Vegan Club, of which, yes, I am a member (it's free to join). They have very pleasant events, film screenings and parties, usually with delicious lentils, hummus, kombucha or all three.
I was researching trade relations between Australia and Russia in preparation for my flight to Moscow in four days. I saw this article about the impact of their recent trade embargoes on Australian industries, which includes some quotes from a beef farmer in Casino, northern N.S.W.
(abc.net.au/news/2015-08-07/russia-trade-ban-on-australian-food-0708/6679520). I guess I wondered whether we can think together about this, because there seems to be a problem...
The article mentions that exports of "livers" are still allowed under Russia's trade embargoes. I checked with DFAT, and found that Australia's biggest export to Russia, worth $50 million a year, is live cattle. Australia to Russia! Live cattle on a boat! How extraordinary...
Live freight is a very stressful condition, for both the animals and the people eating them. By the time they arrive, their flesh must be full of stress hormones and probably very toxic substances. How can we really stand behind an industry that has no qualms with such a thing? Just the thought of that ordeal should make a thoughtful person reassess the situation. Is this costly, unpleasant industry really necessary?
I have spent some time around Casino, about two months total. It was hard to stay cheerful. I think there is huge malnourishment, in terms of food and the air, which is dry and dusty especially in summer. Dense, moist plants and a variety of flowers really help to improve air quality, encouraging better brain functioning and it's easier on the body. There are some eucalyptus forests, but mostly its cleared farmland and paddocks around there. It doesn't have the pollution of the cities, but neither does it have the oxygen and sweet fragrances of more flourishing vegetated places.
I was staying at places of environmental and
indigenous interest, gathering with people and enjoying the rivers and bush. It was a way of seeing my own country, staying with friends and camping at their places.
We think of ourselves as an advanced, developed country, but there are real difficulties away from the coastal fringe. It's so hot, and so far between water sources, you can only get around by car. Mechanics do good trade and most people know how to fix up their own vehicles.
In town, the buildings are decaying, and there's very little fresh produce. It's expensive, and there's not much way to make money. Farmers are mostly in debt to agricultural supply companies for machinery and fertilizer, which is imported from oil-rich places like, as it happens, Russia. In each town, the pub with its pokies is the most frequented premise.
I've never had an in-depth discussion with locals. Any talk outside of the weather, wheat fields, soy fields, corn fields, beef cattle, cars, booze or the rodeo is rare. In a 1 hr ride with a local mechanic, we talked about money and a new blueberry farm that was starting
up, run by a bigshot agricultural entrepreneur from America. He said I should work there but I didn't take up the suggestion.
Right now in a ninth floor flat of a Soviet apartment building in Vilnius, Lithuania, lying on the bed of my friend Miglė, who I met a week ago (no sex, just friends, I'm saving for my children). It looks over the city to one side, and a pine, birch, hazel, maple forest. I've been walking in it every day, among the understorey of nettles, shrubs, wildflowers, mushrooms and raspberries. The apartment complex looks a bit like Pruitt Igoe, for anyone who's seen Koyaanisqatsi.
I dearly want to share a few feelings of this central European culture with you, my friends. Firstly, most people here eat from their own vegetable gardens. Those who don't have a garden usually have some treats from their parents, the grandparents or their neighbours: a bag of potatoes, some sauerkraut, pickled beets, cucumbers, eggs or honey. In the two student flats I've been in, both have a collection of fresh-picked wild herbs which is what they drink for tea. I asked Miglė if she knew how to grow plants, and she said, "Of course, it's how I grew up."
There is no concept of pesticides or fertilisers. They're not available and simply don't exist in small towns. They barely even water, just a little on the very hot days. And it's a huge amount of food. It grows very fast with the long days and high rainfall.
They've embraced the modern ways too. A lot of people eat meat, probably most, and there's plenty of dairy. While some of it is homemilked and fresh, supermarkets are ubiquitous, even in small towns. They import produce from around Europe and the world, though they always have Lithuanian cucumbers and tomatoes, which are the best.
Like all the former USSR, there are oldsters who smoke and drink a lot. Like any EU country, there are youngsters who smoke and drink a lot. And now they eat processed foods and listen to loud, stressful music, too. So there's that side to it, of course.
But people keep telling me that the real root culture is different. I do feel the old indo-European pagan understanding of the world here, in the inner city meadows that grow tall with mixed grains and wildflowers, in the stone circle at the top of a hill in the middle of Vilnius, where someone has made a wooden gateway, woven with sheaves of wheat.
I love these reminders of a natural culture where everyone is equal and God is in nature, in all the living things and the relations between them. It's a plant-based way of life, and the family line is at the centre of consciousness. I can feel it even in the thriving nasturtiums at the foot of this drab block of flats.
Factory farming, animal agriculture and plastic products are there, on the surface. Beneath it, the roots of thousands of years of history pull the people back to a more balanced way of life, with plants as the basic material. In this culture, animals are helpers and friends.
We sat in a linden grove yesterday, to the sound of two old Russian men mowing the lawn with a whipper snipper. Despite the noise, Miglė said to me real energy, "Our culture is deep in nature. People appreciate trees. We lost it only for two generations." Impulsively, I started applauding.
We walked down the main street of the little village, she sharing anecdotes about all the varieties of plants. The big, sweet, scarlet rose hips they used to find and eat as kids. The purple clover that tasted so sweet when her grandmother gave it to her to try. The lilac where children would search for four-petalled blooms, because eating them meant all your dreams would come true.
I asked if she ever found one. She smiled warmly and said, "I always found them!"
Every house on the street has a garden, a greenhouse and a cellar to store food for the winter. At -20 C, refrigeration is less the matter than keeping the
veggies warm. They keep carrots, onions, potatoes, grains, beetroot, pumpkin, turnip, garlic, apples and parsnip in the cellar all winter. Cucumbers and tomatoes are jarred or put in a barrel to keep the same way. To keep them even longer, slots can be built into the cellar to catch snow and ice that stays frozen well into spring the next year, right until the next season's vegetables arrive.
I reflected that it was quite hard living in Sydney, without this basic knowledge about growing food and providing for ourselves. And that we didn't have the chance to innovate, because land is so expensive. Miglė was amazed to hear that most people don't grow their own veggies in Australia.
"Is the land not good for it?" she asked.
I had to say... well, a lot of the land is great for growing. But people choose to buy plants from big nurseries that you can't eat, and sometimes lay concrete on the ground, too.
I told her that sometimes people poison or cut down trees because they spoil the view, and she shook her head, disturbed. I also told her about a fellow who began building a house and planting a mixed vegetable garden near Casino. His neighbours, beef farmers, swerved threateningly towards his van as they passed on the road, running him into the nature strip. Another time, they shot their rifles towards his property. The police were called... I hope the situation got better but the last I heard he was really stressed out and decided to stop posting anything on facebook.
"Why did they do that?"
I wasn't quite sure. Maybe because they didn't like vegetables, or didn't like the guy growing them. Something must have happened. Maybe they were brought up by aggressive alcoholics in a culture of violence, bloodshed and animal cruelty. A dry, rough and scarred place, the Australian countryside.
In Western NSW driving towards Confest, a few people warned me not to hitch with locals, because they would generally drive you out of town then take your wallet and leave you there. It never happened to me, but what an awful prospect.
Hitching with Lithuanian country folk was like surfing on a cloud. The old man who stopped had the most comical grin on his face as he pointed gleefully in the direction he was driving, to ask whether I was going that way too. I nodded and got in the car. It was a husband and wife driving to the lake to go fishing. Their little dog was very excited by me, and kept yapping. They both were bursting with laughter at their silly little dog. The wife kept looking round at me and beaming a huge smile. I told her the name of the town I was going to, and they nodded, yes, yes. "Little dog," she said, motioning with her hands and erupting with laughter again at his energetically wagging tail. They dropped me off in town and I thanked them and said all the best in Lithuanian. They waved as they drove off, beaming with happiness.
Ok, they're driving cars, fishing, buying beer from the shop to enjoy by the water, just like in Australia. And the feel is so very relaxed... they're confident, not fearful of anything. You can tell they had happy childhoods, even though their parents must have lived through the world wars, there was an indefatigable gladness there, a real energy of excitement and curiosity at life.
Is it possible there's an underlying anxiety in Australia? A sense that we actually haven't mastered this landscape? Our population gathers more and more densely against the coast, while farmland decays and the desert grows larger...
In the Lithuanian countryside, there is an abundance of homegrown veggies, so many old fruit trees, berries, mushrooms, flowers, herbs and plums. It's not uncommon to see people riding horses with carts into the villages. I even saw a horse tethered up near the parking lot of a supermarket, under a tree.
In the city park near Miglė's place, there are pine mushrooms, raspberries, plenty of nettles, plum trees, apple trees and cherries. It all has a lovely feel to it. Often, people set up a stall with fresh forest berries in the parking lots of supermarkets.
It's not paradise here. Like everywhere, there's trash in the nature, plastic and car fumes all over the place. There are good things and bad things, and the general direction is like the rest of the world... some vague sense that the environment needs more care, but very few practical ideas about how to actually go about achieving that on a national and international scale.
Not far from here, political leaders met at Copenhagen to discuss climate change. A bit further west, business leaders met at Davos and agreed to help environment. There are some gestures in the right direction...
Next month I'm going to Russia to visit a settlement of family homesteads, a poselenie rodnavayikh pamestyi. It's called Vedrussiya, after the name of the Indo-European pagan civilisation that once spread across China, India and Russia all the way to western Europe and the Celtic lands of my nearest ancestors. They were the Celtic Vedruss, the people who lived in this territory before kings, lords, priests, churches, castles and armies arrived. The people whose history was burned in great bonfires and who were forced on pain of death to abandon nature and adopt artificial religious beliefs.
Migle reminds me that when the Christians arrived in the 14th century, they made their holidays on the same dates as the old ones. She said people went to church, then went into the forest and made their real celebrations. "It's the same today. I can go to church, la, la, la, but it doesn't mean much." She sang a few notes. Her father always told her, pagan is good, they had something that worked well. But he doesn't live a pagan lifestyle. He fits in with the rest, I suppose, but the roots...
In Vedrussiya poselenie (settlement) they're having a festival about vegetarian and vegan eating, healthy well-being, exercise and strengthening techniques, traditional dances, handicrafts, and information on how to set up our own settlements in other countries. They have an email newsletter, a website, several facebook groups and hold Internet seminars as well as conferences at their village. The latest one is a master class on microbial gut flora, how to optimise the health of our inner organs, intestines, stomach and digestion.
The village is based on the idea of rodnavaya pomestie. It Russian it means 'family homestead', but really Family with the sense of a family line with all the ancestors and descendants taken together. I mentioned this word once to a Russian woman, and her face lit up. "Oh yes, that's a strong word" she said, "but you can't translate it into English." So the word family will have to do.
Here's the basic idea:
family homestead – a plot of land from 1 to 1.3 hectares in area, granted to citizens of legal age, for their lifetime use, with right to hereditary transmission, without taxation of the land and harvest;
family homestead settlement – a populated area organized on the basis of local self-government, consisting of family homesteads and facilities of cultural and social purpose;
lifetime use – unconditional possession and use of the plot of earth, free of charge and without time limit;
living fence – vegetation consisting of trees and bushes planted along the perimeter of the family homestead and homestead settlement.
(From Volume VIII, the New Civilisation - Vladimir Megre)
This idea is really simple. But I'm already starting to feel there's something quite profound in it. From our contact so far, these villagers seem particularly happy, cheerful and helpful. They're certainly confident in their way of life.
And why not? They are moving swiftly towards self sufficiency and making distribution networks to sell their produce. Not just one crop, but a complete variety of many different plants, textiles, and animal products for those who want them. By settling together in villages, they enjoy a complete way of life, with all modern conveniences and many natural products that aren't available in shops.
Their children grow up with the best possible nourishment, a loving family, cheerful like-minded neighbours, and knowing that they have a home waiting for them when they grow up, either on the village outskirts, or on the very same piece of land where they were born. A special little homeland on earth.
The homesteads are designed to minimise work and effort. The fence maintains itself as a thicket or hedge, and a great mixture of useful plants grow all together in a meadow. There's a separate greenhouse or one built onto the dwelling. The house is made from natural materials, clay, timber, sods, straw, cob, or a combination.
The pomestie I've seen in Lithuania use some glass and metal, and are wired with electricity, hot and cold running water, and internet. But these might not last forever. The children and grandchildren might have their own ideas how to design a house on the same spot.
In these settlements, homesteads are arranged with at least a 3-4m laneway in between each one. Water sources, streams, rivers and lakes stay in common ownership by the community council. There's a large open common area with a village hall, store, ampitheatre, and the surrounding meadows are common land until someone chooses to build their own homestead there.
Most important is to make a beautiful and loving space to raise children, where they are totally at home. A place where they can rest. Completely.
I remember Skirmantas and his plan. To set up a stable home for his children that provides everything they will need: a loving home with a mama and papa, a garden, orchard and pond, a way to make money if they need some, and a network of similar people as neighbours, visitors and friends in faraway places. The children grow up knowing they have a splendid home, and Skirmantas and Yolanta grow old, cheerfully knowing there'll be their loving kids and grandkids to look after them and the garden.
With that super solid foundation, a mind and soul totally at ease, they will start in earnest the big restoration projects in degraded countries. First to provide for the self and the family, then to embark on improving the world. It's very rational.
I'll be happy to see the bigger villages I'm Russia. There are 215 settlements registered with the network now, most with 70 families or so. They organise conferences in the region and each send delegates to meetings of Rodnaya Partiya (the Family Party). The idea is to have parliamentarians found and settle in villages of this kind, to better integrate them with the population, and to provide a natural, relaxing place for them to think properly about important decisions for the country.
After the festival in Vedrussiya, I'm going to meet the author of the idea at a conference in Tallinn. His books haven't been published yet in English, so we're going to talk about how to get them printed and available in America and Australia. I'm speaking a wee bit of Russian now, but they asked me to bring a translator so we can talk freely.
For now, it's stinking hot in Vilnius so I'm going to take a bus to Trakai, a nearby historical town set on a huge lake. Time for a swim and to find a quiet place where I can think and reflect on all of this.
One day, I'll have my rodnavaya pomestie to relax in, but for now, this will have to do.
Warm regards,
Kemble.
--