It was hard to get out of bed this morning. I probably hit the snooze button on my alarm half a dozen times. I eventually got up and rushed out of my hut, it was 6:30 a.m. and I was pretty cold.
I decided to skip my yoga this morning since Jake was still sleeping and I wasn’t in the mood. Instead I headed straight to the kitchen, put some clothes on and started a fire on our wooden stove. After that I ate some oranges and got ready for our morning meeting.
My New Favorite Job?
During meeting I decided to take a “hands- free approach”. I simply laid back and allowed everyone to choose the job they most wanted to do and simply waited to see what was left last. To my lack of surprise, the last job available was weed whacking, commonly known as the job most people hate.
It was my first time doing this job. To be honest, I had avoided it all along because most people hate it so much. After doing it for two hours I can see why: Weed-whacking entails putting on a huge apron, gloves, googles, mouth mask, face mask, ear protectors and an extra face cover to walk around the farm for two hours nonstop, while holding a weed whacker which makes a ton of noise while it cuts and throws tiny pieces of grass and bushes everywhere. The job is super monotonous and you can’t talk to anyone while you are doing it. It is also loud and by the end of it you will most likely want to take a shower, somehow the grass bits get everywhere…
I actually ended up enjoying it very much. Just like cutting cane grass with a machete, weed whacking helps me feel productive and I it is set up to do alone. As a matter of fact, I liked the job so much that after our work day, I asked Bill to walk with me around the front side of the farm so I can better understand what needs to be cut down and what we want to let grow. Now that I have the big picture in mind, I feel more empowered to go at it and get the job done.
Take Life to Give Life
I find it interesting that the two jobs I have liked the most since I moved to the Kanekiki Farm are specifically about killing plants. One entails killing them with a machete and the other one entails killing them with a power tool.
I was wondering how this can fit into my fruitarian philosophy of eating fruits to let plants live. I thought that a fruitarian lifestyle was totally aggression free but after living in a raw vegan community in the tropics for a month it is clear that it is impossible to sustain a farm without at least killing some weeds. I am curious to find out how Mango Wodzak worked his way around that, after all killing plants for any reason doesn’t seem to be part of Eden Fruitarianism.
I also thought about the difference between killing plants to grow fruit and killing animals to eat. The difference is huge: When we kill weeds at the farm, we do so to create space for fruit trees to grow. Without this space, the weeds and vines would suffocate the trees and kill them overtime. In a way, we are literary saving the trees. Surely enough we do it for our own selfish benefit, but the result of our killing is life, life for the fruit trees and life for ourselves.
On the other hand, animal farming is a process of death that leads to more death. The animals die, the workers suffer and the consumers get sick. The air, water and soil are polluted, killing more animals, plants and human beings. The net result from the animal product industry is absolute death in every direction while the net result of killing weeds and vines at our farm is life, health and happiness.
Fruitarian Diet and Flexibility
This obviously shows that the fruitarian diet requires certain degree of flexibility. That is because life itself requires flexibility in everything we do. We need flexibility in our determination, in our relationships, in our expectations and pretty much everything we do, otherwise we would face ever present dissatisfaction.
Some people need more flexibility than others. Right now I feel like I am quite strict, at least if I compare my life to that of my old self. If I had asked me to do this five years ago I would have immediately turned my back. “No Way!” I would have said. Now I find myself loving it and asking for more abstinence and stronger dedication to my goals.
I think that nature has its ways of finding balance through flexibility of its own. After all, everything in nature involves change and all change requires flexibility, otherwise the system would break as it bends and flows from one phase to the other.
There may be a day when we can grow fruit without killing any plants or animals at all. For now, we need to weed whack and we need to spray the soil with some insecticide to kill fire ants, otherwise it is impossible to grow or harvest our fruit. We also need some amount of gas and oil to run our power tools and drive the car we use to run errands. We are not perfect, but we are getting there and well on our way. =D
Writing My Fruitarian Books
Today I went back to working on my fruitarian books. One of them in particular, it needs me to do a lot of research and get a bunch of quotes and facts to prove my points. I was avoiding doing this part of the job but it has proven to be easier than I thought, I just needed to get organized.
I picked some of the raw foods books that are here at the farm and also began to look for credible sources online. There is plenty of information out there to support the idea that the fruitarian diet is the best for mankind. I am actually quite exited now to get on with this part of the process. The more proof I find, the more comfortable I feel in this path and the easier it is to talk about with others.
That is all for now,
See you tomorrow,
