These days it’s like Alissa and I are reenacting Green Acres… we have been conflicted about where and how we want to live. On one hand we love the cultural opportunities of urban life, on the other we want to grow our own food and have the ability to shape our home.
As a kid my home was perfect for this – we had 1 acre in the city, where behind our house there was ample land to grow a lot of our own food. It seems that it was a rarity then, and in the Boston area it seems like a distinct impossibility to have that without a couple of million dollars in the bank.
So here we are… oscillating between the two options. One day I want to live in Cambridge, making due with the meager square footage we’d surely have, another day I want to live on a few acres of land and embrace life in a totally different way.
It occurred to me that one needn’t give up one for another, (Oblique Strategy - “Faced with a choice, do both”) that perhaps we could live in an urban area and buy some land on which to farm. On this land could be a small home that functions as a studio and a place to clean and prepare fruits and vegetables. We could even “camp” here from time to time.
Perhaps in the future we could even build our own home here.
I had been reading the Harry Potter books and was intrigued by the idea of being a naturalist. So when we visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History I brought my notebook.
In retrospect I wish I drew the stick it was mounted to.
Hobbit Meals: Eat smaller, more frequent meals.
Why a Paper System?: I decided to jot down my reasons for making a paper system of organization, before I forgot.
Think of it like an Amish digital system.
Since 2007 I‘ve been taking photos like this. This is how to make a photo for Under This Tree. Sometimes I pick photos for the blog at Under This Tree.
How to make an Under This Tree photo (by Erik Mallinson)
2010-05-21 UPDATE: Drawing this was quite cathartic. I wrote about it here.
