In my teens, I remember one of my older brothers reading a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” and telling me how much he enjoyed it. This was probably around 1976 before the book became such a household staple, then films, then an industry! I was then, and am now, enamored by the simple, collective, rural farm life that was displayed by Hobbitown and all the other villages of the Shire. They were to me, based off the very foundation of rural England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the colorful traditions could be traced to a village pub, an annual festival, to the grinding of grain along a small stream. These images have always inspired me, excited me, and built my dreams. I actually read the Hobbit and the entire Ring trilogy every year – it is like an old friend that I meet each fall, when the weather has turned cold, and we chat by the fire, enjoying the familiar company.

What is it about that book that really hooked me in? As an adult, reading more from Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis, lead me to other writers such as George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton leads you down so many roads that the rest of my life will likely be spent reading from oblique or obvious sources he mentions. One of his essay’s that I enjoyed, dealt with the concept of Distributism. Written at a time when the prevailing global Capitalism was under siege by Collectivism – more familiarly Communism/Socialism, and by the form of Collectivism labeled Fascism, it was an attempt to understand how Capitalism failed the majority, and how any form of Collectivism was bound to fail the majority. While Chesterton wrote from an almost nostalgic appeal to a better time – a Medieval time (and you have to read Chesterton to know how positive the word Medieval is) – his close friend and fellow writer, Hilaire Belloc did not. He wrote from the perspective of his modern world, where the enslavement of man was very real. For him, it was the Servile State, and I won’t go into that in a short post. What I will go into, follows!

The entire “Back to the Earth” movement of Regenerative Agricultural fans – Homesteaders, and such – even those that are preparing for societies crash, harkens back to Belloc and Chesterton and a couple of Roman Catholic Pope’s, that believe man is best served with “three acres and a cow.” That the means of production of your food, your clothes, your implements, is best in your hands, and the hands of a like-minded community of owners of their own land and time, and not doled out by an overreaching government or by the monopolistic powers of Capitalism. And these arguments, in short, lead me back to Bilbo Baggins and Hobbitown.

As most of us spend our lives trapped in traffic, encased in a cubicle, and dreaming of that far off day where we can “retire,” and maybe enjoy a few golden years, the reality is, you’ll never really find that nirvana. By the time you spend 30 or 40 years working for a wage, and hoping the retirement package or the 401K will really be enough, you’ve been beat down into a former shell of what you were when you first signed that contract of employment. Think about that, and then reflect on what you can do to change that paradigm. Might be scary. Might seem insane. But walking outside your small, but cozy home, to pick an apple off your tree in September, while your chickens run around your feet is actually closer than you know. Like Bilbo – the adventure begins when you do the unexpected.