A Happy New Year (150 days to go...)

by Max Akroyd

Well I’m looking forward to it!

It is a bit daunting stepping out of that short time of excess and into a cold, sparse and exacting morning. But if that brave first step leads to a simpler relationship with things, so be it.

Everyone’s had fair notice. I’m going to let others mourn the disintegration of the fake normal. The transition won’t be easy but most people will adapt. If, in the long term, it frees them from distorted and disorientating rewards derived from obscure activity and replaces them with simple abundance won from their hard work and ingenuity, then why not embrace it? Imagine a world, for example, where people just grew their food and loved their food. It’s not some strange utopia. Supermarkets, a dieting industry, corn syrup: I think the future will be better off without them.

At a personal level, the self-sufficiency I dreamed of through this blog is now a common sense expectation woven into the fabric of this family, not least in its budget! It’s moved from abstract theory and been restored to the practical core. We need to make the family’s food out of a field. The simplicity of this configuration defeats all that tenuous complexity. It can’t be bought or sold, just spoken – a garden based on hope, not design.

Just for the record, our humble take on this universal human endeavour will continue to be reported here. I hope you’ll pop in from time to time.

Wishing you an abundant 2011,

Max & family.