I can’t even remember where I heard about this one, but something about it (and the reviews it got) piqued my interest so I ordered it from the library. It had been sitting on the shelf for three weeks untouched while I worked on Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez but when I got the renewal email and realized that a) both books were on hold and so couldn’t be renewed, and b) there was no way I could adequately get through the one I was reading, I decided to spend the day with The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming by Masanobu Fukuoka.
At 181 pages, I figured it would be a quick, easy read. It was. But the ideas in the book were deceptive in their simplicity. The four precepts: no cultivation, no chemical fertilizers or prepared compost, no weeding by tillage or herbicides, and no dependence on chemicals, seem like a fairy tale, but in his experience have led to the highest, most consistent grain production in his region.
The book reads almost like a series of Zen koans or the teachings of Buddha, every word about so much more than farming. The anticipated how-to on pest and weed avoidance was really a call to re-evalute your relationship with food, farming, the world and yourself — oddly similar to Dominguez’ approach to money management. Interesting to have borrowed them both on the same day.
This book was a gentle but powerful reminder of what I already intrinsically believe and where I am hoping to take my life but which has been buried in the side-effects of my current day-to-day.