On the Path to Food Tyranny

“It can happen. It is possible. As a Russian proverb says: ‘When it happens to you, you’ll know it’s true.’ But do we really have to wait for the moment when the knife is at our throat? - Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

This week, we learned how the brand of the working man really feels about the laboring class. Carhartt, who ironically posted on social media a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. which says, “ So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs,” overlooked the personal freedom and medical autonomy of their employees, stripping them of their Constitutional rights. Those small job laborers will have to choose between submitting their bloodstream to an experiment or figuring out another way to feed their family & pay the mortgage. It’s a shocking decision in the face of mounting evidence of the ineffectiveness of the gene therapy in combating the virus. 

But even if the inoculations worked, it would still be an oppressive overreach of power, disregarding natural immunity and the privacy of doctor/patient relationships.

If you’re comfortable with this medical tyranny, you better start getting comfortable with the coming food tyranny too. If you don’t realize that expanding the control of the food supply is next you’re just fooling yourself. 

Beautiful pork stock canned in my kitchen this week from 2 hogs we butchered. Selling the surplus is illegal.

“A growing food shortage is apt to constitute an increasing pressure to cause people to drift along with a growing authoritarianism which promises solutions. As insecurity grows, greed- with the goals of personal peace and affluence at any price- grows. If these pressures do continue to mount, which seems probable, do you think people, young or old, will at great cost to themselves, at the cost of their present personal peace and affluence, stand up for liberty and for the individual?” - Francis Schaeffer

The reality is they’ve taken much of our food sovereignty already. You only think you have a choice about where to buy food. But, in reality, if you wanted to buy a side of pork from your neighbor who butchered on their kitchen table last week, you can’t. A productive, ambitious young mother with a bountiful strawberry harvest can’t mash the sun-soaked fruit to a pulp, mix in a bit of sweetener, pectin, maybe fancy it up with a grating of ginger, boil the mixture until it thickens and bottle up the freshest, most flavorful strawberry preserves that will ever kiss the taste buds, then sell them to her community. 

We’ve already ceded “reasonable” control to the bureaucrats. You can eat whatever you choose, but you must choose it from those whom we say you can, processed and packaged how we say and by whom, and sold only by approved vendors.

According to GAPS protocols, my produce is unsaleable because the chicken coop is adjacent to the plot.

 So what then? What is the solution? Homesteading? Is that our guarantee to have a steady supply of food on the table no matter the fear they’re peddling? Perhaps it’s a start. But, unfortunately, it can no longer be the solution for all. 

With land rising in price and decreasing in availability, as corporations snatch up acreage, it’s increasingly difficult to break into the market. Moreover, as homesteading became trendy, the market for tools, chicks, seeds, supplies, etc. has skyrocketed to a mind-numbing extent. I remember when day-old poultry was between $1-2, depending on the breed. And I’ve only been homesteading for 15 years. The “fancy” birds were $3-4. Click around a hatchery website now and you’ll find chicks going for a jaw-dropping $10 and up. Their little lives are so fragile. They may be full of vitality and spunk one moment and wobbling with a drooping head and half-closed eyes, dying the next. You’d have been better off to toss your ten spot in the wind. 

But even if we make it to our land, we mustn’t think for an instant that small-scale home-based food production is off their radar. Every year bureaucrats blast out the same, tired warnings about backyard flocks being the source of salmonella outbreaks. Be afraid for your health. We’ve been hearing for decades that cows are killing the planet. Be afraid of the changing climate. Are you so selfish that you’re willing to kill an actual planet and the billions of souls that inhabit it just to satisfy your belly with a ribeye?  Make the sacrifice. Do it for your grandmother children. 

The craft of manipulating a population for the greater good has been perfected. They know our tender hearts want what’s best for our neighbors. All that must be done is to convince us that a course of action is the one to choose.

There is nothing new under the sun. Throughout history, the food supply has been manipulated to control the population. I don’t know why we consider it such a dystopian prospect. During the Scottish Clearances, they took advantage of the famine in order to remove the Highlanders who had already been pushed to the margins of society centuries ago.  They took the land for profit (or pleasure as a hunting ground), forcing emigration from their homeland. During the World Wars, they took food from the farmers and forced the redistribution of it. For the war effort, of course; do your part. Millions died during the man-made famine, Holodomor, as Ukrainians were starved in an effort to exterminate the stubborn peasants. The examples that could be named are endless and span the history of civilized man. When societies depend on the wealthy, governments, or now corporations to provide food, the system is ripe for manipulation and abuse. The 21st century isn’t immune to the wicked devices of evil men. It can happen today. 

In fact, it has already begun. Supply chains have been disrupted. Grocery shelves are single-faced or bare. We’re already being called to embrace the scarcity.

The difference between then and now is that subsistence farming could have meant the difference between surviving or starving. Will that be the case again? Only time will tell but the world is much, much smaller now and shrinking every day. Satellite mapping means you can no longer tuck away on your farm and husband your land without oversight. It may be decided that you can no longer eat eggs from your hens because it isn’t safe. It is for your own good, don’t you know? And you might not get away with it. 

Will that be the final straw? Would that be enough for you to stand up and demand they stop interfering in your life? Or will it still be easier to ignore what is going on and make do? Whenever we get to that breaking point, will it be too late? 

This isn’t political. Right now, there isn’t one side that is virtuous and good. There are no leaders fighting. No one is advocating for your rights. This is something we must demand ourselves. 

We have two choices: Draw a line in the sand or bury our heads in it. It will go well for us if we choose the former. And the sooner, the better, the easier. 

No, this isn’t about a false dichotomy of red or blue. This isn’t about political fandom. This is about saying you cannot touch my body. You do not own my children. God gave me these ensouled gifts and the right to raise them as the Holy Spirit leads. I’m perfectly capable and willing to take responsibility myself. 

Indie gives us the most beautiful Golden Guernsey raw milk, butter, and cheese. It is illegal to sell these goods directly to consumers.

My great-great-grandfather immigrated to this nation from Slovakia at the beginning of the 20th century. I wonder what prompted him to uproot his life from all that he had known, to leave the small town where his people had lived as long as records have been kept, to tear his microbiome from the soil that had colonized his body with the bacteria that gave his health vitality. I wonder if it was the turbulent political crisis brewing in his homeland that would, a few short decades later, be gripped in the clutches of Communism. But I don’t have to wonder how horrified he must have been to find America wasn’t the land of freedom and prosperity he had imagined. I don’t have to wonder because I know the rage he must have experienced to wield an axe when they tried to lock him out of his own home when it was under quarantine. The newspaper article says he chased the health inspector off. I don’t have to wonder how it tore at his manhood to have to steal out of desperation that he might put bread on the table for his 5 small children.

But I do wonder what his wife and children thought of this free land when he lay dying after having been bludgeoned with a fence post for defending his son in a fight. Family lore says it was a Klansman that murdered him. Knowing how they felt about immigrants, it’s plausible and the thick Eastern European accent of my ancestors would have made them an easy target on their backs. He made the ultimate sacrifice for his child.

I may have never been born had he not given his life for his son. My children and grandchildren wouldn’t exist. Do we deserve for their little voices to ever lisp, “Mama,” “Daddy,” if we aren’t ready to do the same? How easy is simply speaking out for their well-being in comparison to dying that they might live?

I like to think that Martin’s feisty spirit lives within me. He had a growing family to feed and defend. And he fought to the death to fulfill his duty to those in his care. I hope that I would be able to do the same.

I’m grateful that I still have enough freedom to express my outrage at the events that have come to pass in the last 700 or so days without fear of repercussion. I’m thankful that my family is in no way dependent, as so many sadly are, on muzzling ourselves, hiding our beliefs in order to continue paying the bills. I pray that if we were I would have strength enough for my behavior to remain the same.

CAFO-raised chickens butchered in inspected facilities are deemed safer than those free-ranged and harvested from an isolated flock.

Are we willing to relinquish comfort and ease in our time that our children’s futures may be bright? Can we let go of friends, income, loved ones, if it must be? If they, for whatever reason, insist we bury our heads in the sand in exchange for their fellowship?

For the sake of our children, we must come to the point in life where we no longer care if we’re liked, have followers, clicks, & views. In the past, I could see my dependency growing. The hypocrisy twisted and writhed in my gut until I had to let it go. Now, I’m free. Be free with me. 

We mustn’t live by lies. Even those of omission. If someone or thing insists we’re not free to live a quiet and peaceable life, raising our family and food according to the dictates of conscience then it’s time to shake the dust from our feet. The line must be drawn in the sand. We mustn’t hide from the grim realities of this medical tyranny because brushing it under the rug of our minds is the only control we have at the moment. Our bellies may suffer the consequences in years to come. The sovereignty and free lives of our children depend on it. 

Our children and grandchildren will own land, they will work cheerfully with their hands, and they will be happy.  

But only if we are brave enough to stand up for them.