Ah yes, the simple country life. No mortgage, no boss (almost!), no "nine to five", no twitching curtains, no sitting in traffic, no stress, no money worries, etc, etc.
Reading list includes "On Walden Pond", "How to be Free", "Hovel in the Hills", etc, to give you an idea of how it could all be, which are read on the bus to work.
Then you bite the bullet, put her money where your mouth is and get a field and a house and start digging.
Then it gets head-burstingly complicated and staggeringly easy at the same time. I'm not including K's work here, which ain't easy by a long shot. I'm just waffling on about self-sufficiency. Again.
To eat a good variety of food, you have to grow a good variety of plants and rear a good variety of animals. Each one is different and you have to know everything about each one, like why the sprouts have blown even though the soil's compact, and why brandling worms are living in them and what to do about it. On the Island, with it's mere handful of fruit bushes, a few wee trees, a veg plot and 4 chickens, that amounts to fifty things to keep in my head all the time, and this is winter when everything's slow and bare. Then there are the buildings and what is within them: the house, the gite, the hangar. All with their own problems, structures, daily tasks. Then there are the things you need to do now for the following year, like fencing, which occupies another slice of my brain and is a lot more complicated than it looks (have a look at the BTCV handbooks on-line - no, sorry, they've had the funding taken away and now sell them). Then there are the things to do now for the following 17 years, like setting out a hedge and tree nursery round the back of the polytunnel, to be planted in their final positions in 2 year's time and pollarded and laid in 15 year's time.
It's a bit like a game of 3-D chess with a hundred pieces played out over the next two generations. You're on one side of the board and slugs are on the other.
It is complex beyond anyone's reckoning. I think the reason the stereotypical country yokel is depicted as talking slowly and looking a bit glazed is because there is so much brain power being used up just keeping everything he/she needs to do in focus, there are no cells left for communication with Gore-Texed townies.
Where's the easy bit, then, you northern gobshite? Well, all you have to do is walk around with a spade, hammer, or paintbrush and use them where they're needed. Water what needs water, feed what needs food. Dig what needs digging. Repair what needs repairing. Wise Sifu say "when you start learning a martial art, a kick is a kick and a punch is a punch. Then you progress and learn the hundred variations of kicking and punching. Then when you become a master you realise that a kick is just a kick and a punch is just a punch." Tao of Jeet Kune Do: a good gardening book, surprisingly.
It's anything but simple and anything but hard.
I'm off to fix something.
