IS MONEY IMPORTANT?

For the bulk of human existence humans survived without money, now we covet useless bit of paper and code. The little piece of plastic that lives in our purse is has become the most central part of our lives. It connects us through code, to the huge fake world. The whole global economy is made up of fake numbers, and real starvation and deprivation. We are sold a massive lie of million pound yachts and plastic surgery as some how you live without caring about money. But the CEO of Cartier said at conference he loses sleep that somehow the worlds poor will rise up and depose the rich global elite. It is reassuring to know the global elite have been so enslaved to their god they can think of nothing else but money. They are prisoners, they will build themselves gated communities, they will live inside their prisons. Freedom is not needing money, a hunter gather was more free than modern man. A life with no national boundaries, and very little in the way of food shortages, huntergathers had good lives. It is a fact in the UK, the population didn't really suffer mass malnutrition until the early norman period. I worked as a lab tech in the museum of London, in the finds department processing skeletal. Rickets, shortened adult height, and mineral difficencies are modern diseases, and one look around my local town and the bent legs of young people haven't gone away.

We decided to renegotiate our relationship with money. This is what going off grid should be, a return to the freedom of the people had before we were imprisoned by a ruling class. The problem is the game is fixed. You need money to live without money. This is trap set before all people that try to escape the prison. Land to live on costs, if you manage to buy land, you need to live on it. This is the point the ruling class starts really putting the shackles on. You need planning permission for your roundhouse, mudhut, yurt, or hovel. To get the planning permission costs money, to build to building code costs money, oh it is really expensive to get planning for dwelling that has no need for external amenities . Oh look did you try to escape? are you now trapped by the need for money? ok scrap the land idea, go live in a van, travel freely. Have you insurance?, at what postcode, are parked up illegally. You will need money for fuel, insurance, tax and maintenance. But hey you are doing well, you have partly escaped enough to find the state and the state agencies such the police and the court system are stacked against you. I have heard many stories of police pulling up on parked up travellers and committing acts of brutally and harassment. So go horse drawn, you will get less harrassment, except the traditional wide verge pulling up places fir vardos are about to made illegal under the new fly grazing act. They will be able to sieze to your horse. This is what I mean the game is fixed. They don't like escapees.

So the escape route: lose the need for money in your day to day life, but save enough to be able to drive, walk, cycle to your nearest ferry out of here. Save enough for solar panels, woodburners, laptops and good boots. Invest in being an awesome human being, get a good circle of friends. Find your tribe.

Hopefully I will show you how to make soap, repair wellies, and do a whole load of things for free. Meanwhile I am working out ways of making small amounts of evilness to ensure a future where I don't need  to earn anything.

Get growing

Get growing!!!

02-01-2016...8.20am

Growing your own food on whatever piece of space you can find is the best way of ensuring that you will have good healthy food in the future. Last year when I started feel the panic, the arbitrary sanctions where coming for people like me, I started cultivating both my front and back gardens to grow food. It is generally estimated that it takes one football pitch to grow enough vegetables for one person, but there are no firm figures. One planet development says 7 acres to provide everything from food to fuel but there are certainly successful urban gardens that grow nearly all their food requirements in extremely small spaces. What I am getting at is we all need to think out the box to feed ourselves good food, and we need to be doing now. There are too many people already being left destitute by this government and food banks don’t do fresh food. Your garden is your food bank.

   

From the left, Mashua, Oca, Pumpkins 

Mashua is 11% protein which is high for a root crop. Both Oca and mashua are from south america and grow well in the british climate.

 

 

This is a section of my front garden. It looks a bit sad and empty this time the year, but in the picture above are three trays of grub that I grew in that space. We harvested the pumpkins in October and we have already eaten half of them. The bright pink roots are a root crop called oca, and the big white ones mashua. Both of these are available from the real seed company. You don’t have to grow weird veg or spend much money, sprouted spuds from the veg basket, will produce a valuable source of carbohydrate and vitamins. The green leaves on the left hand side of the picture above are chard, whose lush leaves keep growing back after harvesting and have a better texture and fresher taste than spinach.  The mashua I found really productive, out of one root planted last march I harvested 2 kilos mid December. The only problem was that the front garden is a bit too warm and half them had already sprouted, oh well, looking forward to next Christmas and huge harvest of mashua. The oca roots were eaten a bit by slugs and wireworm, but nothing a good clean and not being fussy couldn’t cure. I am leaving the ground bare for the moment, and scattering dried mealworms over the ground. This encourages birds to come and eat at least some of the wireworm.The pumpkins spread everywhere, including into nearly into the neighbours. I grew two types onion squash and sweet dumpling.

Recipes 

Pumpkin Chana Dahl

1 Onion

1 small firm Pumpkin, peeled chopped and deseeded.

1 cup chana dahl (split chickpea)

 1 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon turmeric

Maybe some cayenne or some chillis

Soak the chana during the day, this isn't totally necessary, but turns out better it find. Drain off liquid.

Fry onion gently in some oil, add garam masala. Add pumpkin and chana dahl toss in fried onion. Add enough boiling water to cover, then add turmeric. Cook on gentle heat for about 20 minutes, stir to prevent sticking. Serve with chappatis or pitta breads. 

We are working on recipes for the mashua and the oca, at moment we are just doing potato type things with them, like boiling, frying and roasting. Mashua tastes like a creamy potato and the oca has a lemony theme. If I come with something amazing I will post it up.

This is Year Zero

01-01-2016......9am

Everyone starts a new year with those “this will be the year.....” internal conversations. Generally not a lot comes of those good intentions to change ourselves and the world around us. This is my internal dialog, this my promise to myself, my family, the country I live in and ultimately the future of this planet; that this is the year I am going off grid.

Where I want to be one year from now is living so far outside the system I won’t need more than one thousand quid of self earned money to be warm, fed and happy. I aim to be so far outside the system that I will not need anything from it, and hopefully system doesn’t notice that I am gone. You see this isn’t a yuppie escaping the rat race blog, I am an artist living with a small self earned income that is in benefit system to cover for living expenses. I am living in fear of brown envelopes, telling me my business plans aren’t up scratch, or that I am nonviable. I have grown tired of the fear of going to the cash machine and finding my tax credits aren’t going to be paid several weeks for some spurious reason leaving me with no money for food or heating. I have grown angry watching it happen to others. The choice I will face if I remain living in a house will be interacting with a system hell bent on inflicting as much stress and misery on the most helpless, or leaving this normal life, living on what I earn, and then blogging it, in hope that a pitch fork army rises behind me, and does the same. We are going to need skills to grow food, up cycle clothes, make our own medicines and build dwellings , but we will live without the system. This isn’t some pie in the sky dream, this is survival, the survival of people and the planet. This is Year Zero.