Simple Living
And High Thinking

This is a shot of myself surrounded by one summer's bounty of winter squash or pumpkins.  Most of these will keep all year in a garage or other cooler room.  They are a most excellent source of nutrition and according to Ayurveda they are all rasayana in nature which means very nourishing and easily digestible for our bodies.

     All devotees of the Hare Krishna Movement know our philosophy is to live as simply as possible, utilizing nature's resources to keep our body and soul together in the pursuit of self-realization and God consciousness.  The actual Vedic example is one of rural living, where one grows much of his or her own food, and in this way can maintain excellent health. 
     Typically brahmanas would live outside cities, if possible, because county living is sattvic, whereas city living is raja and tama guna.  Because this is kali-yuga in which we find ourselves, it is nearly impossible for most to live in the country, and the reason is mostly economic necessity, although we see many non-devotees also living in the country.
     Srila Prabhupada wanted us to establish country ashrams to show the world and ourselves how a vaisnava can live very simply, by growing his or her own foodstuffs, regularly maintain their families, grow in material and spiritual ways and in the end go back to home, back to Godhead.  This can all be done without the problems associated with modern city living, which we all know is becoming more and more problematic.

     Therefore I have thought it prudent to show those who view this website how myself and my wife have made the conversion from city to country in a few years time.  As you view the photographs, you will see how much food one can easily grow on a very small piece of ground.     We don't buy much food at the regular stores anymore, only dairy, because we don't have any cows, and a few other items we cannot or don't want to produce ourselves.

   Once you have access to your own food and water sources, you are on your way to being independent of the rest of the material world.  To be moving towards self-sufficiency is such a great feeling in your mind, because one of the qualities of a vaisnava is that he or she  is independent in their living.  They are really moving towards being dependent upon Lord Krishna and not anyone else.  As Krishna states in the Bhagavad-gita-the devotee is not dependent upon the ordinary course of activities in this world.  This means he or she is really depending upon mother nature who is-Krsna Himself.

    As of 1997, a statistic showed that more than 77 million Americans considered gardening their most popular outdoor activity!  This means to me, that we as human beings find it most comfortable living in the outdoors and finding pleasurable ways to understand our place in the natural world in the area of gardening for our own foodstuffs like fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, greens, flowers and more. 

    In fact a modest sized plot of about 100 square feet (that's 10 feet by 10 feet) can yield to the gardener from $20-$50 dollars per month in fresh produce which adds to the family food staple and economic security. Organic homegrown food has a taste and texture which can compare to no other foods-and this includes store bought organic food-what to speak of commercially manufactured and highly chemicalized foods found in our nation-wide chain stores.  When we can go on a daily basis, outside and grab some fresh greens, or other vegetables for our dinner, there is nothing in this world which can match this for quality of taste and nutrition. And besides this, gardening is also great exercise, and helps to bond us with Mother Nature, friends and family.  Gardening is also a very important component to community food security where households are providing more of their own necessities themselves, thereby understanding and feeling that their destiny lies in their own hands and not in some megalithic corporation who really cares little for you.

     That being said, let us begin by seeing how a few hours of pleasurable work outside in one's garden can provide immense amounts of luscious, nutritious and beautiful foods.

Here is our backyard plum tree which has three different varieties on its branches.  Also seen here are jars of plum juice, plum pulp plum syrup, plum butter and some jars decorated for Christmas gifts.

Next is one of our garden maha-turnips.

Me in the garden in middle summer taking out the potatoes with pitch fork.  We grow three types, Yukon Gold, Yellow Finns and Plain Reds.  As you can see from this shot in our garage we have a lot of bins of spuds for the coming year, which keep very well  in a cool room.

This is a picture of our light wire fence which holds up a long row of sweet sugar peas.  I planted them early spring and late summer for two crops.

This is my wife cleaning off the husks from the Filbert (Hazel) nuts. We know it is time to pick them when the Stellar Jay birds show up en mass.  We each get out quotas.  These nuts are a real treat for making into lots of different preparations.

Here is one of many filbert bags, which we get from our nut trees. 

This is a wide shot of the driveway arbor, house trellis, raised beds, fountain with pond and a cornucopia of flowers, herbs and other useful plants.

This next photo is a tray of fresh picked grapes from the fence which surrounds the front courtyard.  The following photo is the same tray of grapes but after being in the dehydrator-they are now raisins.  But these raisins taste like grapes, not raisins.  Only a person who has dried grapes themselves will know what real raisins taste like.  I might also mention that besides the grapes growing around the front courtyard fence, we also have peach, apple and cherry trees which all provide sweet succulent fruit to offer to Krsna.

This crisp picture is of a bowl of fresh-picked ripe tomatoes
with some Tulasi Devis

Next is a tray of cut up tomatoes ready for drying in the dehydrator.

Now we have some of the results of growing tomatoes-namely tomato sauce and dried tomatoes which are fragrant like roses.

Here is a picture of me in one of the cornfield sections of the garden.  I should mention here that our main garden is approximately 3000 square feet or 30 foot wide by 100 foot long.  Also photos are of corn cobs, husked corn kernels cut up and put into boxes ready for freezing and we also leave some corn husks to dry for grinding into flour.

Me by some pole beans, essential for vegetarian protein.

We can also see the result of growing beans - literally hundreds of types you can store in jars for years of usefulness.

Here are rows of cabbage, basil, beets and turnips.

As you can see, we pick the basil leaves by the wheel-barrowful and then strip them off their stems, clean them, mix them together in a blender with nuts, some olive oil and asafotida power and then freeze them in jars for all-year-long use.  Pesto sauce over noodles is delicious--Hmmmmmm, Tasty!

This next shot is especially beautiful.  Elderberries in a colander ready for processing .  The result is Elderberry sauce and pulp-an excellent source of vitamin C to ward off winter colds and flu.

Winter Pumpkin Squash and 101 ways to use them

Fresh-picked garden vegetables and the next is the result of all the work done in the garden- Krishna Prasadam 

Statements by Srila Prabhupada advocating a simple way of life:

720527SB.LA    Lectures

...you can say that "if we are engaged in real business, then how the  economic question will be solved?  We have to work."  That's all right, you work.  But...there is milk, there is fruit, there is flower.  Anywhere you can live peacefully.  Whole economic question is solved.

750403MW.MAY    Conversations

Prabhupada: Yes. Why don't you solve?  There are so many land.  Come here and grow food.  Grow fruit.  That is ...that is the desire of Krsna.  Annad bhavanti bhutani.  Produce food and...ask, "You have to pay this price."  And you have to pay.  And if you grow your own food, there is no such question.  The simple economic problem, solution, this rascal cannot take...

750801SB.NO   Lectures

...A nice place.  And the grhastas may come here, have some small cottage and grow your own food grains, vegetables and have your cow's milk.  Get nice foodstuff, save time.  Why should you go...and again hundred miles come back and take unnecessary trouble?  Stick to this spot and grow your own food, your own cloth and live peacefully, save time, chant Hare Krsna.  Very nice program...

751002SB.MAU    Lectures

...I see in your this Mauritius land, you have got enough land to produce food grains.  You produce food grain.  I understand that instead of growing food grains you are growing sugar cane for exporting.  Why?  And you are dependent on food grains, on rice dahl.  Why?  Why this attempt?  You first of all grow you own eatables.  And if there is time and your population has got sufficient food grains, then you can try to grow other fruits and vegetables for exporting.  The first necessity is that you should be self-sufficient.  That is God's arrangement.  Everywhere there is sufficient land to produce food grains then we can feed ten times as much population as at the present moment.  There...purnam adah purnat purnam udacyate, purnasya purnam adaya purnam evavasisyate.  If wed don't produce food grain-- you require it--and put unnecessarily men into sacrcity, that is sinful...

690323LE.HAW      Lectures    245873/530501

We have created a civilization that one must earn thousands of dollars, then he can live like a gentleman.   Is that successful life?  And for earning that thousands of dollars he has to work so hard, just like animal, beast.  No.  That is not successful life.  Successful life is that we should make our bodily necessities of life as far as required, not more than that.  I want to eat something.  God has given sufficient food.  You grow.  You live anywhere.  You grow foodstuff.  You grow grains.  You grow fruits.  You grow vegetables.  Keep cows.  Take milk.  You can live anywhere.  You haven't got to go fifty miles off with a car to attend your office as six o'clock with velocity of hundred miles' speed.  Is that successful life, do you think?  So where is  successful life?  We are proposing  successful life.  

730722RC.LON    Conversations     339138/530501

Prabhupada:  And yajnad bhavati parjanyah.  And when we regularly perform yajna, then there is regular cloud in the sky.  And when there is cloud in the sky, there is regular rainfall, and when there is regular rainfall, there is sufficient production of food grains, fruits and other vegetables so that both the animal and the human beings, they eat sufficiently, they grow strength, they become happy and again perform yajna.  And the animals supply, the cow supplies milk.   In this way, the whole society becomes happy.  These are the prescriptions, or directions, given by the Vedic literature.  So if people take advantage of this instruction, the whole history of the human being can be changed.  There is no difficulty.  But whether the people will accept of not, that is the business of the leaders of society.

751028MW.NAI    Conversations     400991/530501

Prabhupada:  If you open farm for financial help, then it will not be successful.  You should take to farming for supporting yourself.  That's all.  Grow your own food.  Grow your own cloth.  There is no need of financial help from outside.  You get your food grains sufficiently, rice, dahl, wheat, vegetables, milk, sugar.  Bas.  You get everything.  From these five, six items you should be economically free.  That you have to do, not for trade to get money.  Then it will be failure.

740314.MW.VRN    Conversations    354470/530501

Prabhupada:  Business means if you have got extra grains of extra foodstuff, you can sell where there is necessity, there is want.  That is business.  We are not going to open mills and factories and...No.  We are not going to do that.  That is sudra business.  The real business is that you produce enough food grains, as much as possible, and you eat and distribute.  That's all.  This is business.  He does not require and so high technical education.  Anyone can till the ground and grow food.  Is it difficult?  This is the business.  The first thing  is that everyone, man and animal, especially the cows, they must be properly fed so become very stout and strong.  Cows will supply milk, and man will work hard, without being suffered by dysentery.  He must work hard.  Any capacity.  Work as a teacher of work as a ksatriya, work as a ploughman.  Or work as a general assistant.  He must work hard.  Any capacity.  Either as a brahmana or as a ksatriya, or as a vaisya, or as a sudra.

751019MW.JOH      Conversations         400136/530501

Prabhupada:  Lazy intelligent means brahmana, and busy intelligent means ksatriya.  So the catur-varnyam maya srstam.  The sudras, they are busy fools.  Therefore they are to be guided.  They are to be guided.  If there are, hundred workers are there, then one leader must be there to give direction: "Why you are doing this?  Why you don't do this?" Otherwise he'll create havoc.  Busy fool.  So the whole world is full of busy fools.  That's all.  In the Bhagavad-gita you will find that for brahamana, samo damah satyam saucam titiksa arjavam, jnanam vijnanam astikyam brahma-karma sva... There is no recommendation that "You work hard day and night."  The brahminical qualification is controlling the senses, controlling the mind, truthful, clean knows everything nicely, practical application of the knowledge, full faith in sastra and Bhagavan.  Jnanam vijnanam astikyam.  These things are recommended, not that a brahmana should become very busy whole day and night for getting food.  So sastra says, "There is no use of becoming busy for your food.  Food is already there."  Food is already there.  He'll get his food.  That is arrangement by God.  But they are busy fool.  They do not understand the God's arrangement.  Only for food they are busy whole day and night like cats and dogs.  Now this land is there.  You can...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, manufacturing it.  You see?  Tire tube, then atom bomb, then this and that.  They are busy.  They are busy fool.  Actually they are fools, and they are very busy.  Everyone is busy.  There are so many parts in the motorcar, three thousand part, and they are busy in manufacturing three thousand parts of motor parts.  So everyone is busy in producing things unwanted.  But they have created a society in such a way that they have to do that.

770215ED.MAY      Conversations                    472194/530501

Prabhupada:  Yes.  Farm project is very nice.  Krsna gives.  Krsi-go-raksya-vanijyam vaisya-karma svabhava-jam.  This is economic problem solved.  And brahmana, brain problem solved and ksatriya, protection problem solved and sudra, labor problem solved.  Four things combined together, live peacefully, happily.  Chant Hare Krsna.  Introduce this farm project.  In America there is enough scope.  So much land is lying vacant.

770322RC.BOM      Conversations      477642/53050

As Krsna says, Catur-varnyam maya srstam guna-karma.  There must be ideal brahmana, ideal ksatriya, ideal vaisya, as Krsna says.  That is Krsna consciousness movement. It is all-inclusive.  economic question?  Annad bhavanti bhutani.  Grow food.  Practical.  Just like when I was going to the pandals, millions of clerks were coming --"Education. Educated."  And who is growing food?  And they have to be provided in these pigeon holes and depend on ration.  Is that civilization?  And throngs of people are coming, just like machine, ants.  Ants are coming.  I saw like that.  And go to the village side--all vacant land.  Nobody's interested to produce food.  Everyone is interested to live within the city, in these pigeon holes, and go to the cinema and go to the brothel, go to the club and learn how to drink, how to become gentleman.  Is that civilization?  Human life's aim is lost.  You do not know why you are going to the office, why you are eating, why you are... Keeping them all pet animal's mentality, doggish mentality.

SB 7.14.5P      Ideal Family Life  2/5

A wise man, however, learns from the sastras and guru that we living entities are all eternal but are put into troublesome conditions because of associating with different...under the laws of material nature.  He therefore concludes that in the human form of life he should not endeavor for unnecessary necessities, but should live a very simple life, just maintaining body and soul together.  Certainly one requires some means of livelihood, and according...is the basic principle of Vedic civilization. One should be satisfied with whatever means of life comes automatically.  The modern materialistic civilization is just the opposite of the ideal civilization.  Every...the so-called leaders of modern society invent something contributing to a cumbersome way of life that implicates people more and more in the cycle of birth, death, old age and disease.