Fracking the Homestead

Colette O'Neill

11 years ago

Recycled bags and containers at Bealtaine Cottage

Home used to be a place where everything that was needed to live well was grown or made on site by family and neighbours.

Michael Kennedy Mug and Westport Potteries bowl on locally made chopping board

A place in which food was prepared several times each day and shared by all present.

Many basic necessities were stitched or nailed together by those who used them.

Perlagoniums and cats on the window sill

Home used to be a vibrant, thriving project in self-sufficiency, with what was needed to be bought in, purchased on a rare trip to town, or ordered several times each year, to be delivered and stored.

: Missy relaxing on a hot water bottle to ease her tumour…it works well!

Home included a pantry or larder, a cold-store and a well used and scrubbed kitchen table where food was prepared and eaten.

: Valerian growing in the gravel around the cottage

Today, as part of the massive disconnect from our lovely Earth, we have fitted kitchens which are made from chemicals and constantly cleaned with chemicals.

: Orange waste infusing the air with beautiful aroma on top of the stove

The emphasis is on keeping a show-house type of environment, where these expensive kitchens are not used to their full potential.

: A great cure-all…hot water bottle for Missy Cat

Our lives are chemically infused…with clothes, bedding and bodies immersed in chemical solutions on a daily basis.

: Washed in soap, rinsed in rain water and blowing in the wind

Washing machines pound the clothes we buy with chemicals that are washed out into our rivers and oceans, killing life on the way.

: The Bealtaine Cottage angel ponders it all…

We wonder how cancer, autism, asthma, allergies and depression are so rife within our communities?

We seek doctors and drugs to help us live and be well, without paying too much attention to our living state and what the corporations are doing to our environments.

: Recycled floor

Pharmaceutical companies are the most powerful corporate bodies on our planet.
In the US alone in 2011, the pharmaceutical industry spent nearly $29 billion on drug promotion with most of that money targeted at doctors!