by Anastasia, Wise Woman of the Siberian Taiga
Hi, Credulous Westerners!
And a big hello from me and my Siberian tigers and ocelots! I'm Anastasia – you probably know me best as the blonde, best-selling, samizat ecological warrior, resident of the mysterious Taiga wilderness, in modern Russia.
Happiness is the subtext of my popular series of Green-themed meditations. For who among us doesn't really want to be happy? One of the things I believe is that everyone has it in them to be happy, especially if the State also gives them 2.5 acres of land to farm.
Now, you might say: Anastasia, I'm not a farmer, I don't have a green thumb, I don't want to live in the countryside. Pish! That's just because you haven't tried it! Farming – and organic farming in particular – is easy. It's just like having a big garden. It's not the small, savvy, hipster farmers that resort to suicide, it's the ones who've bought into the big agribusiness trip – in the US, or Brazil, or my own country in Communist times – that are up before dawn, trying to keep their tractors running, cutting their throats on an old rusty scythe in the barn.
Big-scale agribusiness, like forced collectivisation or mass deportation of dissident rustics, is wrong. It's inhumane to the farmers, and unplantlike to the crops. It doesn't lead to happiness. Farming 2.5 acres is a different kettle of high-grade, vermiculture compost worms! You don't even have to get up early. When you do, just wander out and dig twenty or thirty beds of virgin earth – preferably two spades deep. Remove all the stones and mix what's left with well-rotted compost, plus the worms, of course. Plant seeds in it. Weed and water. Voila!
Now, I hear one or two of you saying, perhaps: well-rotted compost – ugh! But don't worry – you're wrong! Well-rotted compost doesn't smell anything like rotting corpses in a newly opened mass grave, or things like that. Compost has the cleanest smell imaginable: like fresh water. This alone (along with good health and a loving family, obviously) makes a self-sufficient, small farmer happy.
And when I say "small" farmer, of course, I don't mean to refer to someone's height. You can be any height, and any race, or faith, or creed, and still be a successful "small" farmer, as long as you follow this simple prescription for happiness. Anastasia's Prescription also applies to people of no faith, although, paradoxically, not to people of no skin pigmentation. If you're an albino, your skin is already very sensitive to the sun, and you shouldn't become a farmer. I'll deal with Appropriate Professions for Albinos in an upcoming diary. In the mean time, stay out of the sun and always wear dark glasses, gloves, and a hat.
Assuming you're not an albino, once the State's given you title to the land, and you've got your 2.5 acres of garden up and running, you and your family will be just as happy as clams (don't forget to build a house on it, during the summer months – in many places it gets very cold in winter!). Happy, at least, that is, until the deer, squirrels and other woodland pests discover it.
It's funny to go down to my local feedlot (formerly the People's Great Struggle Collective Che Guevara Feedlot; today Yeltsin Feed Solutions PLC) to buy squirrel traps, or 9mm shells to blast the deer, and greet my neighbours buying bags of grain and other rich foods to feed those selfsame bambis! How the feedlot associates (formerly feedlotovarishniki) laugh to see me and my neighbours spending our money so assiduously, to thwart each other! It is sad, yet funny, too. Even things like this can make one happy, when one farms 2.5 acres of land, assuming it has water and one doesn't forget to build a house on it before winter.
Anyway, the best solution to keep the deer out is a stout hedge – and if you're going to have a hedge, why not grow one out of trees? Trees last forever, pretty much, unless they're struck by lightning or cut down by uncaring loggers or multinational timber companies. Now, of course, some of you may ask: Anastasia, doesn't it take a long time for trees to grow from a small shoot to a hedge thick enough to keep deer out? And the answer is: well, yes, it does – but that's no reason to be unhappy! It's the way things are – trees take a long time to grow, deer and squirrels eat our crops, and oligarchs run off with the People's money and live in London.
Of course, we'll be even happier when the oligarchs are dead or in jail, and their stolen fortunes returned to the Maternal Patrimony, and the tree-hedge is full-grown and an impenetrable barrier to forest pests. But in the mean time, no need to be sad, either: just keep a Kalashnikov by the kitchen garden window and a samovar of fresh venison bubbling on the stove!
Next month: What are we supposed to eat in the Winter? Anastasia's tips!
Idi y smotri!
Anastasia.