Hunters vs. Farmers. I had grand images before coming up of growing my food as well as gathering. The fact that I haven’t ever grown anything more edible than a dandelion in my life, was no deterrent to me, as I’d also never so much as hammered two boards together either. What I’ve found is that I’m a hunter not a farmer (though I’m also a lover not a fighter). This binary view is in accord with one of my overarching theories of life and people. Forget Myers-Briggs, I like to categorize folk along more specific lines. There are cat people and dog people, Ford folk and Toyota folk, Paris-lovers and London-lovers and rarely the twain shall meet. I’m not saying that they’re mutually exclusive (the rare person can be “bi”) I’ve just observed through unscientifical analysis that people tend to fall into one of the two camps.
Someone recently was telling me about something they read (yes, a weak citation I know) about how certain people are genetically predisposed to being nomadic hunters and others stable agriculturalists. You take a hunter and tie them to a specific plot of land and put a plow in their hands, they’ll wither on the vine. You take a farmer, and force them to roam constantly following game and they’ll pine for a tree stand where they might at least grow some moss. If someone’s one thing, you don’t try and force them to be something they’re not, just a you wouldn’t try to force a squirrel to be swimmer or a duck to climb trees. This is my long-winded excuse for not having cultivated any form of garden here, and my seeming relentless pursuit of venison.
I’ve eaten more meat here than at any other time in my life. My first deer, I ate in a month. There have been days that I’ve eaten venison for all three meals + snacks. Part of what makes it easy is that the venison here has no gamey flavour so I can simply throw venison steaks straight onto a cast iron pan with just a little pepper for a quick meal. Or I put bone-in cuts on the wood stove with onion, garlic, and carrots to stew all day. It helps that I have a high tolerance for eating the same meal (Find something that you like? ‘Hit it till it hurts,’ I say).
Being a former student of economics, I subscribe to the law of comparative advantage (or in business, the ‘win-win’ situation). I’ll continue to hunt and will just barter with local farmers for their goods. I admire the farmers, I realize that it’s just not me.
Incidentally, the friends who are visiting right now are avid mushroom collectors. One of their work colleagues was trying to understand their passion for gathering, and finally she said, “I get it. It’s like hunting, for vegetarians.”