The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.

Proverbs 15:19 (New International Version, 1984 edition)

One of the hardest things about the last couple of years for me has been the need to largely reinvent myself. Or, at least, to significantly change how I viewed my role in society at large.

It’s one thing to be a highly skilled worker, especially in government or academic circles where pay is steady if not extremely generous and it’s hard, though not impossible, to get fired. It’s quite another to be a stranger in a foreign land with no working rights and, even when one eventually gets working rights, no demand for one’s skills. And yet, that’s no excuse to lie down. It becomes a case of wresting a living from the land, rather than having one handed to you on a silver platter.

There is also a literal application of the above proverb. The land we now occupy had been left untamed for nearly thirty years. Poison ivy and brambleberry bushes have run rampant. Barbed wire fencing has broken down. Only about a third of the total land area, which we think was occasionally cut for hay or let out to graze cattle on, showed signs of having been recently managed. Many of the paths across the land were literally blocked with thorns, the result of the decades of neglect.

So part of my reinvention has been to become the farm manager, which is a significantly part time job in itself. To call it merely homesteading, as if I were taking care of a vegetable garden and a handful of chickens on a one- or two-acre plot of land, is substantially understating the case. Nearly sixty acres to bring into order and make both sustainable and productive is a substantial undertaking.

One of the things I realised as my job search was unfolding, for I did look for conventional work in my field for many months, was that even if I were hired full time for a remote job, it would be inconsistent with running the farm, or for that matter with helping out with family duties when needed.

Starfish and I have also started up a business manufacturing and selling herbal remedies, body care products and household chemicals, in an effort to reduce dependence on industrially produced synthetic substances — as in, not found in nature. These substances are allergenic in susceptible people, and “susceptible” may include a large percentage of the population. Some of the chemicals, indeed, are irritating by their very nature, or even toxic when used as directed. We may advertise our business on this blog when we’re ready. We use some of what grows on our land for that purpose, and also some of the milk from our goats (when they’re in milk).

So there you have it. I’m still a chemist, as I was trained for; I’m a farmer; I’m a husband and father. What I am no longer is an employee for a government agency, or a university or some big business. In the short term, this is painful because our family has had to substantially tighten our collective belts. In the long term, perhaps it will pay off financially, and it’s probably worth it not to feel dependent on taking orders from the increasingly clownish CGA* for an income.

Thus: This is my job now.

* CGA = “Corporate-Government-Academia”. The hiring branch or nexus of what some term Clown World. It seems run by people who all think alike.

Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ;

When all think the same, none thinks much!