[Physical Fuel] Selfish is Sustainable: How to Stop Caring & Start Changing

This is the story of how I discovered that caring doesn’t work and started making more sustainable choices by becoming selfish. If you just want the step-by-step guide, skip down to the Process section. (:
— Andrew, F the Lines

July 2007—The first time I visited my brother’s farm, I didn’t get it. My mom and I rolled down the dusty road to his house in rural Missouri and piled out of the car like characters in a city-folk-visit-the-countryside comedy.

“Is this the right place? Oh, there’s Eric!”

I grew up in an old farmhouse, so the stillness and isolation felt familiar to me, but I wasn’t prepared for the implications of staying on an actual farm.

Eric and my sister-in-law Joanna were running a local CSA at the time, so as soon as the pleasantries were over they “invited” my mom and me out to the fields to “experience” some land management (aka weeding).

This is bullshit! I thought. Not since getting math homework on the first day of second grade had I suffered such an injustice. My high school brain could feel spring break slipping through my fingers like Missouri soil.

If this is “the right way” to live, I’d rather be wrong.