An Ox-Cart Lifestyle

“In October he backed his ox into his cart and he and his family filled it up with everything they made or grew all year long that was left over.”

For the past three months Rose and I have been reading a book to Ennis several times a day.  It is The Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall and Barbara Cooney.  There are several reasons that we have been reading it so much: 1. It is one of Ennis’s favorites and with his new-found awareness of personal likes and dis-likes, The Ox-Cart Man has received great favor!  (He is pretty adorable when he holds the book out and says “oc ca” with a great look of longing on his face!)  2. The illustrations are magnificent, beautiful and complex, so every time you read the book you notice a previously hidden detail or pattern that adds to the beauty of each page.  3. Rose and I love the message that the book explains.  This last idea is what I want to talk about right now.  

Let me tell you a little about the Ox-Cart Lifestyle.

After the ox-cart is full of wool, a woven shawl, mittens, candles, linen, split shingles, birch brooms, surplus potatoes, surplus apples, surplus honey and honeycomb, surplus turnips, surplus cabbage, surplus maple sugar from their trees, and goose feathers the ox-cart man travels ten days at the ox’s head to Portsmouth Market where he sells all of the goods they have packed, the barrels and boxes the produce was in, the ox-cart itself and finally the ox (after he kisses it goodbye on the nose--this is one of Ennis’s favorite parts--he likes kissing...).  

He takes the money from these efforts and purchases an iron kettle for cooking, an embroidery needle (all of the way from England!) for his daughter, and a Barlow knife for his son as he is the carver of the birch brooms.  As a treat he buys two pounds of wintergreen peppermint candies.  Then he walked the ten days home with all of his purchases “and coins still in his pockets.”

The rest of the book walks through how when he returns home and has a wintergreen peppermint candy he begins to stitch new harness, his daughter starts embroidering, and his son starts carving birch brooms for next year.  Hall walks us through the winter, spring and summer activities that set the stage for the next year’s October trip to Portsmouth.  He does this with such a sense of purpose and ease that even though you know these activities (boiling maple sap, splitting shingles, making an ox-cart, spinning flax into linen) are not easy, the work you need to put into them seems like as much a reward as the harvest or the finished product.  This is an obvious area of appeal to me!  It reminds me of a quote from the Lebanese author and artist Khalil Gibran about work:

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret." -The Prophet

Let’s get philosophical, shall we?

So much of the way I have grown to view the world comes from a model of scarcity: a view that there is not enough to go around and that we need to take care of ourselves and expand our possessions while we can.  This goes into the idea that you need to work for your existence and that you need to work HARD.  This view has definite merits don’t get me wrong!  How do you think we have gotten to the place we are in now!?  Humanity has the ability to store up for a rainy day and thus we are able to survive!  This is amazing stuff, but it isn't too terribly inspiring...

But what about the ox-cart man and his family?  They work hard, but with ease.  They are entirely (or mostly) self-sufficient and have little need for currency other than the sweat of their brow and the satisfaction on their faces.  They live in a model of surplus: a place where there is always enough and where the overflow provides for improved means and a little indulgence, but where it is not necessary.  Imagine a poor growing year.  What would the ox-cart man miss?  His wintergreen candies?  Darn.  They spend their money on things that have purpose to their lifestyle and to what they use their time productively for.  There is very little waste in this kind of a life and very little spurious expenditure.

Rose and I would like to explore how we can live in this model of surplus.  We want to find a way to exist self-sufficiently and use our time as a family to educate, explore, and develop the world in ways that we can always know the currency of satisfaction and celebrate the surplus when it comes.  Many of the posts on this blog will stray from this idea it is necessary (I think) to explore a variety of perspectives/ideas to find your own, but this is our starting point.  What we end up doing will hold these points tightly; we will be a strong, working family with time and love to spare.

Quite idealistic, isn’t it?  Strangely, I can identify that it is idealistic, but I also can’t see any reason why it can’t happen this way.  So it is with many of my ideas.  They are challenging and different and often quite idealistic, but there are really few good reasons why they can’t happen.  Join me on this exploration!  Offer your ideas!  Give me feedback!  Together I am sure that we can find our own Ox-Cart Lifestyle.