So much for resolutions! Perhaps I am just innately contrary. Or compulsively fickle. Whatever the reason, the morning following my adoption of Resolution 947 (“To be as idle as possible until Simon’s return”) found me outside in the sunshine with a wheelbarrow and shovel, flagrantly breaching the terms of the said Resolution, and once again tackling the uphill-rolling-of-the-boulder-like task of clearing the lazy winter’s worth of llama poo from the freshly sprouting pasture of the big field. I suppose there’s something about giving yourself permission to not do something that takes away the pressure of it, and changes the way it feels. I wasn’t doing it because I thought I ought to, or because I wanted to please anyone else. I was doing it quite simply because I felt like it.
And for the first two barrow-loads it was an utter delight. The sun was brilling, the wind unwinding. The birds were babbling. The brook was singing. The animals were all snoozing. And then it struck me. It struck me that there was something not quite right about this picture of rural perfection.
As I straightened from my back-ache inducing bend and stood up, shovel-load of poo in hand, to look around at the llamas, the pigs and the dogs all lying contentedly in the warm glow of the early spring sunshine, it occurred to me that they have life sussed in a way that I most definitely haven’t. They don’t ever work. They eat when they feel like it, sleep when they feel like it, play when they feel like it, and generally do what the hell they want, while we run around after them, busily providing them with all the ingredients for a happy life, and then picking up their crap.
And why? Why are we doing this ‘work’? It seems that we work so that they might live. But where’s the point in it all? Given the state of the planet, and the shortage of food for masses of the population, is this really a good thing to be doing? Does the planet really need more llamas or more pigs?
We set out to have a llama-breeding business, with the intention that we could enjoy raising llamas and ‘being farmers’, whilst hopefully earning a modest income from sales to keep us going until pension day arrives, and whilst also gaining access to Health and Social cover, through dint of being registered ‘agriculteurs’, and paying cotisations to the MSA (Mutualité Sociale Agricole). But in two years of owning llamas we haven’t sold one. And, apart from the cria that were born to the two llamas that were pregnant when we bought them, we haven’t actually bred any either. And another funny, and not entirely unpredictable thing is that we have not yet availed ourselves of any aspect of the French Health Care system, to which we contribute so handsomely.
But of course none of this would actually matter at all, if it wasn’t also for this nagging, underlying feeling I have that, somehow, this way of living just isn’t quite right. It seems somehow self-indulgent, and not very ecologically sound. And I couldn’t help thinking, as I slaved away at the never-ending poo-control activity, that it might be better – more pointful – to be putting this effort into something that produced something more directly useful and planet-friendly. Like food!
Here we are, with all this land, putting in all this effort, and for what purpose? I was suddenly seized by the conviction that we should be putting more of our efforts into growing food, rather than indulging whims. And although I may not particularly enjoy digging and weeding and pruning and watering things, I don’t dislike doing them any more than I dislike endlessly picking up animal crap and filling up water buckets. And at least, at the end of all that digging, and weeding and such like, there is a tangible outcome. Something to show for all your hard work. Something fresh, and healthy, and delicious that actually keeps you alive.
And as I stood there, with my poo-laden shovel poised like a question mark above the half-full wheelbarrow, and my troubled conscious brain poised mid-thought, I felt something click. I felt the tock of a metaphysical clock as its heavy, pointing hand moved decisively on to the next minute of my life’s journey. And as I continued my physical toil to complete the monumental task of ridding the field of excrement, my thoughts scurried up and down the crowded corridors of my mind, working to frame the terms and conditions of Resolution 948 in readiness for the sharing thereof with Simon upon his return.
