PHOTO: “Love, Peace, and Chickens” by Faith Carr
Faith Carr, after working hunched over a desk for 35 years, ended up disabled. Exhausted after even more years of progressive political activism with no success, she turned her hand to her own backyard. The 25 square-foot herb garden turned into a homestead. Come the revolution, she’ll bring the eats.
CB: Tell us a little about your background, where you grew up, your family, and the work you’ve been doing in recent years. I know that question is really a three-part question, so take plenty of time to answer those parts.
FC: I was a comfortably spoiled child raised in the Chicago Suburbs. The only thing that saved me was my rather bohemian mother who hauled me around to her speaking engagements, political meetings, and garden club functions. This was in between her teaching me to comfortable with just about any fine art material.
For the past 5 years I’ve been relearning all the gardening my mom ever stuffed into me and using my starter gardens to learn the rest. Having come from Chicago, learning to grow things in Florida required the tossing of a great deal of horticultural knowledge. Unless we bring it in on boxcars we’re never going to have black dirt here in North Central Florida.
It takes a lot of patience and effort to make sand productive. But I’m getting there. Of course with garden expansion every year manure and mulch have become seasonal rituals. But it still bothers me when the gardens go to sleep in the summer instead of the winter. I had no idea I could grow during three seasons a year! Four if you don’t mind sweating for 3 solid months. Who knew?
CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about collapse? Please elaborate on that.
FC: While it has danced around my consciousness since I lost my job at a NYT newspaper, it really hit me when my husband was laid off from WebMD in 2004. We crashed particularly hard, and I knew then that we were just part of the first wave of the economic tsunami that would hit the rest of the world in 2007 and beyond.
I’m an exhausted progressive political activist but throughout, I’ve kept track of legislation that would affect my personal world. I had one eye on the stock market (I’m not a player)and read reports about world wide crop information. I already knew firsthand about the housing bubble.
My friends began calling me Cassandra. Now they are calling me to see if I have any extra eggs or produce.
Then there were the little under reported news stories.
About the only thing I can’t predict is the timing. I just know I’m better prepared today than I was yesterday.
CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you?
FC:In order of appearance
1. Flower garden
2. Herb garden
3. Salad garden
4. Experimental hybrid garden (waste of time and money)
5. Real veggie garden
6. CHICKENS
7. Potato and Onion Patch
8. Fruit Trees as “root stock”
9. More CHICKENS. More MULCH. More COMPOST
10. Expansion of everything
A lot of things influenced me, but it was mostly those small (some not so small) incursions into the flow of our society. The spying, torture, war, Christian zealotry–the corporate control of our government, the banks, the manufacturing and agricultural components of our country.
And of course, peak oil. We downsized our main vehicle and bought a small 10 year-old pickup we could repair ourselves, one that got great mileage I might add. I have my bumper sticker in place: “Peace, Love, Chickens”
It’s as if I’m working a 10,000 piece puzzle and each section that gets completed clicks into the next section. I like to imagine that I’ve got all the outside pieces together. All the green pieces are in one pile, the blue in another. I sure hope the small pile of red pieces turns out to be a tractor. Sure could use a tractor.
CB: As you were finding yourself on this journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, “What on earth am I doing?” Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of your senses?
FC: On the contrary, I felt as if my life was brand spanking new! I loved raising my 3 children to adulthood and welcomed the “Grands”. I was once as thrilled with my “big time” advertising career. Had the big house, and it was wonderful.
But the giggle at my rooster at 5 AM? More than wonderful. The winter garden dying down? Ah, but it’s only waiting ‘til spring.
When the deep South freeze came, I harvested early and brought about 50 pounds of produce to our local food bank. I can look in the mirror just fine.
CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you’ve made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that?
FC: My family thinks I am totally insane now, but they actually like me better. They worry about me less. And they know the new homestead is a place they can go if they get even close to homeless. They know that there would be work to do but with something real to dig into, hold on to, and simply, stuff to eat.
CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call “staring collapse in the face”, what kinds of feelings emerge? How do you manage those feelings?
FC: I’m much more stable now that my personal panic has passed. We have a long-term food storage system in place, plans for water independence, and solid sources of a variety of food. I feel safer now than I ever did under the previous administration. As for our credit cards? Come the hard times, they can, well, kiss my ass.
There were some really rough patches though. There were two major surgeries and eight minor ones to deal with. It’s amazing what you can do with an Aspen Neck Brace on. Then this year predators took out 2/3 of my laying flock. A big loss for me. Quitting sat on my mind for a few days while I better secured my remaining hens, bought a young rooster to help make my flock sustainable, expanded the run area to accommodate a much larger flock, and got ready to add meat birds.
It’s really hard for me to stay apathetic or disconnected when living things depend on me. I get a bit weepy and frankly quite angry, over it.
Putting my bare feet in the dirt and digging with my mother’s garden tools allows much needed time to allow emotion to work its way through. To enjoy being mad, sorrowful, regretful, disgusted. Then quiet, relaxed and ultimately invigorated by the entire process. You can dig quite a few rows with that kind of energy.
CB: I’m wondering what the role of community is in your life. It’s a lonely, if not hostile, world out there if one is talking to most people about collapse. Where do you get support?
FC: The neighbor to the left of me shares in the eggs and produce and returns finished products. She is skilled at canning so those items go to her. There is a family owned mini-market down the road that buys some of my small output. Our larger community is struggling to start a Co-Op which I plan to participate in as soon as my production is large enough to eat some, give some, sell some.
CB: Not everyone would say that they have a spiritual path or perhaps any interest in spirituality at all. Do you have a connection with something greater, and if so, how has it informed your life and the changes you’ve made? As you know I’ve just published a book on this topic, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse because it became so clear to me that just as collapse has enormous energy, food, climate change, healthcare, and other implications, it is the consummate spiritual phenomenon of the twenty-first century. I also wrote the book to provide a roadmap for preparing emotionally and spiritually for collapse.
FC: What has completely amazed me is that the closer I get to sustainability and the deeper involved in my community, the more of an atheist I’ve become. There seems to be less of a need for “god”. And this coming from a recovering Catholic, Wiccan, Buddhist, Pagan, Unitarian. Is my life spiritual? Not from my point of view. But I imagine someone else would see it so.
CB: What is your passion these days? What gets you up in the morning and gives meaning to your life?
FC: Planning and plotting mostly. We’re building hutches so we can start raising rabbits for meat. I’ve discovered that we would be the only rabbit meat producer in our county. And the local processors are anxious for me to get started. Then there are the plans to enrich our front acre as a combination orchard/pasture over the next couple of years. I’d like to add mini-milk cows, and raise a few goats for the market in Miami.
The planned expansions are to make the “farmlette” sustainable, for ourselves the neighbors, my community. And to do that we need to produce income. Slow and steady has gotten us this far. So we continue. Small expansions in existing areas and only one big new project at a time. Big repairs and additions while my husband still has a job, and we don’t have to deplete any more of our small savings,
which by the way we moved prior to the meltdown in September, 2008. Just another of those puzzle pieces that got sorted early.
CB: I have just one last question for you. I’m wondering if you can comment for our readers on life purpose. That is, what have you come to understand as your purpose in life at the present time? What did you come here to do?
FC: To fill my life up to the brim of the pitcher and over so that there is plenty to share. At the end when my ashes get scattered, I’d like to think that my family and friends will find the way to do the same.
