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october 2017yogajournal.com.auWE LIVE A GOOD LIFE. We are so lucky.
These days, people take traditions —
like marriage, sharing dinner times and
everyday eating — lightly, but these
experiences are the things that make
up life. Not in a ‘you must wear a white
dress’ or ‘you must eat dinner before
dessert’ kind of way, but in an ‘it means
something’ kind of way, in a ‘making it
full of lasting happiness’ kind of way.
These traditions and experiences,
when done thoughtfully, are the key
components of life – and the happiest
moments of life. When you have a
connection with what you are eating
each day, in each meal; when you make
meals from the produce that you grow;
when you share the things you love, and
the things that other people love; when
you share meals and celebrate them,
each experience means something
special. It’s just a much more fulfi lling
way to live, a much deeper kind of
happiness. And life feels complete.
And it turns out there is a reason why
this lifestyle and way of eating, and the
resulting happiness, feels different, feels
so fulfi lling. We have realised that it is in
us. That it’s innate. It’s what our
ancestors did.
We will never forget the fi rst time
that we made wine. We hand-picked
the grapes, stomped on them and
fermented them — and it was the best
wine that we had ever tasted. We
suddenly understood why, in the past,
people had proudly held out their
homemade wines. To us, they tasted
average at best, but to them, they tastedlike the best wine in the world, as if
they were the embodiment of all of the
wonderful experiences that led to their
making. And so it goes with any food or
drink that you grow or make yourself.
There is just something indescribable
about experiencing your food in this
way. And once we had, there was no
going back.
The feeling of experiencing and
understanding where everything came
from quickly infl uenced every facet of
our lives, enticing us to reduce our
waste, learn lost but fundamental life
skills, and get to know the people who
made everything, from our clothes to
our toothbrushes.Matt & Lentil
> Believe that health and happiness come from real, traditional
food, a warm home and a mastery of life’s fundamentals.> Farm 6 acres of vegetables, fruits, flowers, meat, eggs and
dairy and supply produce directly to restaurants and people.> Do their best not to create waste. Instead they feed it to their
farm — collecting it, composting it and returning it to the soil.
Love to trade without money.
> Consult, write and speak about traditional food preparation
and preservation, ecological farming, trade without money
and how we can all live a more sustainable life.Extracted from Grown & Gathered. by Matt & Lentil Purbrick.
Available now, Plum, RRP $45.Our story
is about our
experience of
learning to live
alongside nature,
returning to a way
of life that people
lived thousands
of years ago, and
discovering how
to do that in a
modern context.