Tag Archives: 2012

Revelations

Apocalypse-proof skills ground us in a digital age

I crave an apocalypse. Not the sort where the earth implodes, or even the kind that wipes out half the population and creates a Lord of the Flies society. I want an apocalypse where we no longer have electricity, fossil fuels or chequing accounts. (Okay, maybe I’m not pro-apocalypse: maybe I’m just a Luddite.)

For years I’ve felt that our decadent, hedonistic North American society is a single Jenga block away from collapse.

Call it “peak oil” or “climate change” or “I can’t afford to stay home with my new baby because child care is cheaper than me not working”— call it whatever you want. We’ve built a tower so high that we can’t remember how or why we started. I want to see what happens when the pieces fall and we have to rebuild.

My desire to return to a simpler time is probably a reaction to how complicated life has become in the past ten years, not just for me as I aged into full-time work and a mortgage, but also for our society. We live in the Information Age, yet have no idea how our world works.

Where does pepper come from? How does a radio work? Such information is only a Google search or YouTube video away, but instead of asking the “why” of things we waste our time with Netflix and Facebook.

We’re confident that this information will always be available, if we need it. But in a post-apocalyptic world (with no electricity, much less the Internet), it will be too late to ask Google how to light a fire without matches.

Mission: Learn apocalypse-friendly skills

This feeling of becoming disconnected from the practical world, of realizing I no longer understood how things worked, first hit me at age nineteen — coincidentally, when I got my first email address.

In 1999, with Y2K looming, I inventoried my skills and realized I would have nothing to offer, should my desire for a simpler society come true and the Industrial-Technological Age be knocked to its pale, bony knees. Thanks to my university education I could write essays and parse a poem. My skills would not feed, shelter or heal anyone in the New World. I would have nothing to offer as society struggled to rebuild.

That summer I took action, in the form of a quilting class. And when I wrapped myself in the warm blanket I’d made, I tasted empowerment. I no longer depended on the industrial system — I could make my own blankets, thank you very much. I knew how to use a sewing machine, and sew by hand if necessary.

And once I understood the logic of how a quilt is made, of how a sewing machine runs, I could control the process. I could improvise, be creative and improve on the status quo. When I saw quilts that others had made, I was no longer detached: I saw the quilt’s components, admired skilled stitching and felt a connection to the quilt maker. Those few sewing classes made me hungry to learn more skills.

Years later, when my husband Brock proposed that we abandon our urban condo and start a ten-acre vegetable farm, my apocalypse fantasies became more practical. Maybe society wouldn’t collapse, maybe we’d still have a mortgage and hydro bills, but we would be growing our own food and building our own home. Living on a farm would test my mettle for the practical, grounded life I longed for. And it has.

My love of learning practical skills is necessary to my adopted role as a “farm wife.” When you have 600 tomato plants in your backyard, it makes sense to learn how to make and can salsa.

For one summer I worked alongside Brock on our farm and learned skills that will get me into any post-apocalypse commune. Show me a handful of seeds, and I can tell you what they’ll grow: I know the seed that looks like a mummified tooth will become Swiss chard, while the thin rice grain will leaf out into lettuce. I can distinguish cabbage from cauliflower when they’re still only seedlings (no small feat). I know exactly when a broccoli crown is ready for harvest, judging by the tightness of the head, and even how to cut it so the stalk will continue to produce more side shoots.

After five years on our farm I can make pickled beets, sauerkraut, jam, sprouts, garlic scape jelly, kombucha and cheese. I know which seeds can be saved for planting, and how to save them.

The Renaissance Women

Despite gaining all these useful abilities, in 2011 I realized there were still hundreds of skills I could learn. Through the farm I’d met many amazing local women who, with young families and/or businesses to run, were just as busy as I was, but whom I wanted to get to know better. It would be inefficient to cultivate friendships with so many busy people separately, so I invited these women to join me in learning a new practical skill as a group once a month for a year.

I limited my invitation list to the artists— writers, photographers, jewelry makers and other craftspeople— so the monthly gatherings would also provide regular inspiration for our art, and we could document the experience through blog posts, audio documentaries, paintings, et cetera.

At our first meeting I served sprouted wheat bread, cheese and kombucha that I’d made. We named ourselves the Renaissance Women.

A year and a half later, I can sew clothing from a pattern and have made pottery dishes. I can make bread from a sourdough starter, yogurt and soap. I know there’s a patch of heal-all growing as a weed in my front yard, and how to peel and eat a thistle. Last week I learned to use a fly rod and spin reel to catch fish. Compared to where I was at age nineteen, I would be an incredible asset to any post-apocalyptic community.

And sure, maybe the system won’t collapse. Maybe our society will continue to evolve (or not) and we’ll meander along, our smartphones getting smarter as we become more disconnected from the foundations of this world we’ve created, more dependent on the luxuries and conveniences our parents and grandparents invented so we could live a life of leisure.

All I know is that, as I learn more practical skills, I feel more grounded in this increasingly complex, overwhelming, abstract world.

“Apocalypse” comes from a Greek word meaning “uncover” or “reveal,” and I like knowing what lies beneath.

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Originally published in The Winnipeg Review on June 27, 2012.

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Writing My First Book

Want to know how it feels to have a dream, work really hard at it for a long time, and then have that dream come true?

It feels amazing.

I’ve wanted to write books since I was five. I know that because I have an illustrated flipbook I made in kindergarten that says: “When I grow up, I want to … write books.” Despite being an uber-responsible eldest child, I checked the box beside “creative writing” on a whim when filling out my university application form, and then reveled in five years of English literature seminars and fiction workshops with only the occasional panic attack at the thought of making a living post-graduation.

At age 24 I stumbled into a job in “corporate communications” and have sat at a computer for the eight years since. This career could have been a death sentence for my creative writing, and for awhile I did forget that I wanted to write books. Luckily, one day I was bored and depressed and asked Brock: “what’s my purpose in life?” and he said, “I thought it was writing.” And then I remembered.

So for the past two years I’ve been, once again, working on my writing. I started the Renaissance Women and this blog to motivate monthly posts. I found myself a wonderful mentor, Susan L. Scott, a writer and editor who sees themes and angles to my stories that I can then develop. And this year I started writing monthly columns about our life on the farm for The Winnipeg Review, an online literary magazine.

Island Grains: the project that gave me a book to write.

Then, out of nowhere I got an email from New Society Publishers. They saw a need for a book about all the amazing local grain-growing projects in North America, and they wanted me to write it because Brock and I had created the Island Grains project. I slaved over two sample chapters, put together a proposal and eventually signed a contract for my first book deal.

I’ve been writing this book for a month.

And ohmigod, I am so meant to write books.

Sometimes my heart hurts because it feels so right.

And then I feel a bit guilty, because not everyone knows what they are “meant” to do, and because not everyone is lucky enough to have a husband who invents innovative projects like Island Grains that cause publishers to cold-call wannabe writers.

Today I realized (while drafting the book’s introduction) that I am writing in my own voice, for my own purpose, for the first time … ever? I’ve ghost-written for CEOs and government officials, and composed essays to impress my professors. I’ve written confident how-to articles for magazines. I write perky marketing pieces for our farm. But my book is mine — at least until the publishers get it in August — and I don’t have to write in someone else’s voice, or consider brand, or even try to craft a piece of fictional art that literati will appreciate. It’s a story about something I find interesting, and I get to tell it.

(Okay, I just realized that this blog is kinda the same thing. It’s mine to write as I wish. But it’s never inspired the heady feeling of freedom I get with my 60,000 word book.)

I can use the word “apocalypse” as much as I want to.

I can insert a side comment that I think is hilarious.

And, I can start a sentence with “and.”

One more wee story:

I had a panic attack last Sunday. My manuscript is due in 73 days, and I work full-time and commute three days a week: there isn’t a lot of time for me to write. Although weekends are my book-writing time, I committed to making food for a family dinner. I got back from the grocery store, felt a tsunami of guilt from not working on my book, and imploded.

After a good cry and a hug from Brock, I realized that my book is mine (despite the contract and the publisher’s expectations): this is the dream I’ve been working toward for decades, and it is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be able to write books while also having a life that includes family dinners. So I calmed down, made the food and enjoyed the family time.

I am learning how to live as a writer.

Okay, now back to work.

[2013 update: the book is now available! We titled it Uprisings: A Hands-On Guide to the Community Grain Revolution. Check it out on the New Society Publishers website here.]

[2017 update: check out some retrospective thoughts on this “commit to writing a book before you’ve written it” experience.]