A Year Without Jam

2011-2012: Our year without jam

Giving things up for a trial period of one year challenges us to overcome habitual, lazy thinking. People often automatically figure that they could never live without a whole range of vitally important 'necessities'. Often a 'year without' project can challenge these ideas.

There are a lot of things that inquisitive people have given up for a year in order to test themselves and their notions of what is really required for a happy, content life. There are thousands of such challenges, including going a year without:

• paying for groceries
• heat 
• Disney 
• alcohol 
• plastic
• TV 
• shopping, and 
• buying anything new. 

My favourite is Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams and his year without fear project, or "My Year Of Living Dangerously", as he quipped.

What I have never seen, is anyone that has done a year without jam, something we did over the past slightly less sweet 365 days. "Who would want to do that?" you may ask. It would be like going a year without candy (which has been done). But as crazy as it seems, we did it.

We didn't only go without our own homemade blackberry jam, we didn't buy any jam either. No jam at all.

Last year, after picking several kilograms of blackberries, we decided not to make our usual batch of jam. Wanting to skip the dreaded 4 cups of berries to 7 cups of sugar, we chose to freeze the berries instead (freeze on a cookie tray first, then transfer to a ziplock bag). We used them throughout the year, no sugar added.

Our anti-jam status was partly a result of our urge to simplify things (it is a process to make and can jam), part health consciousness and wanting to avoid the 'white death', and part wanting to see what would happen if we tried to live without our perfect preserves.

All my pampered life I have had jam on toast, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and biscuits 'n jam. I would have thought that I would have had withdrawal symptoms when we went jamless. Or at least experienced some irritability or anxiety when we didn't get our purple sugar fix. But no - it was wham-bam-forget-the-jam, and on life went. There was no hardship, no drama. It was almost too easy.

It is easy to get used to luxuries, but it is also true that it is easy living without them. If we never try to give up any of what we believe is essential to our happiness, how can we know if they really are essential? What if we are wrong, and life without them is better?

A "year without" project usually ends up teaching us that we can live without most of the stuff we are working so hard to attain. It also shows us that we can be resilient, rise to the challenge, and be a better person going forward.

Scott Adams, after his year without fear, found that he had sustained a few more minor injuries during his project. However, they were all worth it, he said, because he enjoyed being the kind of person that does not hesitate, and says YES to life's opportunities.

During our year without jam we learned a bit more about what is really necessary in life (very little as it turns out). Also, we learned that we like to be the kind of disciplined people that can say no to pathways that do not lead to healthfulness and happiness in the long run.

Our past year may have been slightly less sweet, but it was so much more satisfying.

Emboldened by our no jam success, we now figure that we could live without a lot of other things, too. Toilet paper? Driving? Negativity? Money?

So much to give up, so much to learn, so little time.

Valuing Berry Patches And The Commons

"Rather than by your culture spoiled,
Desist, and give us nature wild."
- Matthew Green

I have been gleaning late season blackberries this week. My pink, purple stained hands are a work of art with angry red slashes and dots recording my encounters with piercing thorns. Still, what joy to experience a part of my world that has not been privatized, put behind fences and gated off. The ample blackberry brambles along roadways are still in the commons, and are free to all willing to pay the price in a bit of pain.

Small thorns are still in my fingers, not-so-gentle reminders of my brush with the brambles. While picking I thought of how out of place the practice of free berry picking is in our current system. There is no monetary value assigned to these berries, and enclosure has not struck... yet.

But occasionally I expect to show up at my favourite location only to see the berry patch surrounded by a chain link fence, and some 'businessperson' at the gate collecting admission fee. What a sad day that would be, however expected the outcome. Land-grabs are still taking place all over the globe, including in our own back yards. We must protect what is left of the commons before they take that, too.

About 500 years ago, before capitalists started assigning everything a monetary value, the planet was our supermarket, our mega, mega mall. It was all the commons, and humans gleaned freely from it.

"The commons were traditionally defined as the elements of the environment - forests, atmosphere, rivers, fisheries or grazing land - that are shared, used and enjoyed by all. It refers to resources that are collectively owned or shared between or among populations. These resources are said to be 'held in common'. In some areas the process by which the commons were transformed into private property was termed enclosure."

We can not even comprehend the freedom of the commons in our money based economy. Today we are more familiar with commercial complexes called "The Commons", which is a complete bastardization of the term. More generously, we define the commons as parks and places where we recreate in order to recover from being privatized to near death. At one time we knew the value of the commons, and the struggle against enclosure was, and is, persistent.

Today we know, as Oscar Wilde said, 'the price of everything, but the value on nothing'. Most of us have no other way of valuing the world around us except with money equivalents.

However, the experience of picking the berries has great value for me, and it pays off in mental well-being. I value being outside in nature. On one day of picking, the soft warm rain was an added bonus. As was the quiet that surrounded me, punctuated only by my occasional cries of "ouch!", and the guttural vocalizations of the resident ravens. The air so fresh, the berries on the vine so shiny black, the spiders and their webs so HUGE. Bending, moving, stretching, reaching. I am doing a slow motion Berry Dance. How many money equivalents is this experience worth?

And then there is that jam, that sweet, purple profusion of perfectness. And frozen berries to put in smoothies in the morning. Many things have great value, but are beyond our limited ways of pricing things arbitrarily. It seems to me that the things that can not be bought with cash are the most valuable of all.

Things like friendship, love, play, and watching the fog lift off the hills. Berry patches, the commons, and home made jam spread on bread fresh out of the oven have no price. These are, hopefully, forever beyond enclosure and the range of the for-profit soldiers and their price guns.

Old Skills For A New World: Canning, Baking, Gardening on The Upswing

Modern society moves at a bewildering pace. Hardly able to keep up we succumb to the enticements of technology, entertainment, and the fast life. We are busy having fun, but along the way we have forgotten how to take care of ourselves. Basic skills of self sufficiency are dying with our elders. Increasingly, people are looking to low tech 'heritage' methods of living.

Progress and prosperity have made us into the largest collection of humanity in history incapable of taking care of ourselves. Houses and cars have become wombs, government and big business the umbilical cord. What will we do as we are born into a new world of expensive energy and deteriorating environment?

Our fault is to feel safe and secure in our habits, as if the way things are now is the way they will always be. Recent global economic turmoil has shown us the precariousness of this illusion. Things can, and will change, and we best be ready.

Heritage skills, as we refer to them today, are tried and tested instructions for taking care of ourselves. Activities like sewing, canning, and kneading bread seem like quaint pastimes from ancient history. Victory Gardens are making a comeback, as are food preservation workshops.

VicinSea, commenting on a previous post here, let me know she is a 20 year simple liver and part-time heritage skills teacher teaching food preservation, basketry, sewing/repairs and other self-sufficiency workshops in the Seattle area. It looks like she is keeping busy.

We are dependent on technology and low cost fossil energy to provide us with what we need. What happens when cheap energy is gone? Will you reach for the power can opener, or its hand-powered equivalent? What happens if trucks stop delivering food to our supermarkets, or the food they deliver is so expensive we can't afford it? We can learn skills to take care of our needs within our communities. Victoria, B.C. has a variety of options for learning.

Who has time to bake bread, let alone can your own produce? Make your own clothing? Right. But when cheap energy is gone, or we have lost or quit our job, we will need to look for healthier, less expensive alternatives. Life skills from days gone by will serve us well in the future.

Choosing a less complicated lifestyle is about freeing up time so I can live in ways that are beneficial to myself, others, and the environment. You either spend time in the blackberry bramble and the canning corner, or you spend time at work so you can pay someone to pick the berries, process them, and ship them to your local store.

I would rather harvest the berries and risk the bramble thorns. I would rather tend a bubbling cauldron of blackberry jamiliciousness. I would rather live a slower, less money-oriented, independent existence.

I love having the time to choose to pick berries and get scratched... in the rain. An added benefit is that I know what is in my food. I am in complete control of ingredients. No MSG, no high-sucrose corn syrup. And it saves me money.

If you are a life-long student, creating a simpler, slower-paced lifestyle could be for you. My household has already had Blackberry JamFest 2009, and a case of the freshest Blackberry jam available awaits the whole wheat, home-baked bread. We have had time to learn about a whole food, vegetarian diet. It has not been a burden, this change to simpler, lower-tech living. It is an interesting, thrilling, and tasty adventure.

Now my partner and I are learning how to cut each others hair. This is a money saving idea that is sure to be popular with the women, most of whom would rather go out in public without makeup than let their partner anywhere near their hair with scissors. Go slowly - you can always cut it shorter, you can't cut it longer. What could be next? Rock wall building? Hide tanning? Flint knapping?

What will you do when the power goes out? How about setting your songbook up on your inert laptop, take out your acoustic guitar, and, using your old-style ipod shuffle as a slide, sing the power's-out blues. Then have some home-baked bread with your own canned jam, followed by canned peaches by candle light. When it is time to turn in you can crawl under the bed cover you quilted with scrap pieces of fabric from your electric blanket. Heritage skills, not just for your grandparents any more.