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There is absolutely no comparison.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Yesterday most of our local devotees visited Mother Anuttama and her husband Bhakta Bill, at their place for kirtan/program about 60 miles south of Seattle and for a day of learning how our American frontier ancestors lived on a daily basis.
We visited a living, working "farm museum" where the folks there described daily life and showed us the tools they used on a regular basis. From washing clothes on a scrub bucket, to scrubbing cinamam sticks on a finger grinder (it took 25 minutes to get enough for an apple pie!), to milking the local Jersey cow, and then seeing how using a flail to separate grains from the stalks and then put them into the grain thresher, and then use the hand mill grinder to grind that grain into flour and then finally, to bake an apple pie!! Whew, it was a lot of work. See the actual antique sign board in front of one of the cabins where the woman would sell a daily lunch for a quarter!! And it was a huge full meal.
Below is the man showing the coal heated forge where the local farmer would basically make out of steel any tool he needed, or to repair those same tools. There was no hardware/Home Depot stores nearby. And when they actually did need something they would take a day to go there and a day to get back. So about once every 6 months they would go into "town" to get what they couldnt make, grow, or fix for themselves.
This is called self sufficiency and it is what Srila Prabhupada wants us to grow into as people of solid character and eventually as pure devotees who depend totally upon God and not Safeway, Home Depot, or the local drug store.......this may take a while....
751005rcu.mau conversations... "You have got your food grains. Dont be dependent on anyone else. Become self independent. And dont be after money. Simple produce your bare necessities of life. Keep yourself fit, strong. And chant Hare Krsna, read book. Then you'll grow strong. Is there any difficulty?"....
...everyone can grow food if he works for two months. Everyone can grow his whole year's foodstuff. There is so much land. But no they'll not grow food. They will grow hammer,tires, manufacturing it. You see? Tire tube, then atom bomb, then this and that...So everyone is busy producing things unwanted....What is the use, just have a cottage and have a garden....You'll live very peacefully.
What is this rascal civilization, whole day "Where is money? where is money? where is money? where is money? Just like the hog, he is busy" where is stool? Where is stool? Where is stool? Where is stool? That is not civilization. Why shall I work so hard? The business of dogs and hogs, whole day and night simple working for getting food and sense gratification....
....they do not understand God's arrangement. Only for food they are busy whole day and night like cats and dogs.
In other words here Srila Prabhupada is saying that the basic needs, common to all life forms,-eating, sleeping, mating, and defense, can be very easily met by this above process and of growing your OWN FOOD.
But the materialists are wasting all their days and nights for this same need--which is met by the devotee in only two months time.....consider this deeply......
coal forge for making/repairing tools--hand crank gets the temperature to over 2000 degrees F ...you can melt hardened steel by this simple method...
Here, below, he is showing the use of the draw knife for slicing wood and bark off wood. A very simple but very effective tool.
This is your traditional 'flail' for beating the grains off stalks of wheat, oats, barley ,etc.. The Japanese had their own version called nun chuks which later became a weapon for them.
This is a grain thresher which basically separates the grain from the husk surrounding the inner kernal of grain. I am going to be making one of these when an out of print book I ordered from Ebay, arrives in the mail. I am going to be needing it soon because when the oats, wheat and barley I recently planted out back gets ripe, I do NOT want to be doing this same function below instead on my garage floor and taking a kalpa or two of time doing it. If your serious somewhat about growing grains, you need some kind of similiar (hand) crank machine to separate the grains from the chaff. Or a lot of bhaktas with a lot of empty time on their hands...
Here is our Riya drawing religious principles from a very friendly Jersey cow.
This below is a very effective flour machine for grinding the grain. Better than todays modern models because this old one has a huge flywheel made of steel whose basic heavy weight helps keep the wheel spinning with inertia instead of your muscle power.
Back at the modern day "ranch"-here Mother Anuttama and Mother Noble and her mother do their "kitchen kirtan".
And to make sure the Krsna Kirtan continues, we have Krsna Prasadam!! And what a feast it was!! Fresh sweet rice made from Jersey cow milk, samosas, subji with curd, and chapuris cooked in cows ghee.
There is absolutely NO COMPARISON to this kind of transcendental foodstuffs in the world--it is NOT of this world--it comes directly from Vaikuntha, as Krsna's mercy.....
So, everybody convinced this IS a BETTER way to live???
We may be convinced, or may not.....I guess you will have to wait for those oil prices go a little higher....
So to actually implement these practices takes time, purity of consciousness, sincerity, and dedication to the order of our spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada.
Hare Krsna
Damaghosa das
Sedro Woolley Wa