Free-Range Living

'All that glitters ----- '

'Golden days ---- '

 August always seems to be a bit of a 'hazy, lazy' month here at the eco organic micro-holding (small smallholding) in the UK heartlands. Maybe it's because there's a feeling of 'all safely gathered in' , and it's before re-activity in the countryside has really got going. Certainly the 'golden glow' of the corn fields stubbles helps to foster that 'harvest in' feeling, especially when the sun is shining and they're there, just glinting ----.  Dairy herds are disappearing fast from the fields in this part of the world, seemingly a victim of today's rational thinking mode, where 'economies of scale' appear to reign supreme. With the newer super-large dairy herds being kept now full-time indoors, there's little opportunity for them to act naturally and 'roam graze', and fewer and fewer cattle are to be seen out in the fields.

Plenty of caterpillars, though, to be seen here at the micro-holding - it's been the busiest caterpillar year for some years, and as spraying is not feasible in the biological-based growing system used here, then caterpillar genocide has to have been the order of the day and they've had to have been 'rubbed out', as it were. Not all of them, as a few older winter veg plants from last year were used as sacrifice plants to them - surprising how quickly they evolve. The current lot of de-caterpillared winter veg plants have still taken quite a hit, looking currently ragged and hole-y, but they've time now to recover, to hopefully provide fresh winter greens right through winter, which to be fair, they normally do. The leeks are looking good - no mid-season 'growth pause' this year, unlike the two previous growing seasons, and , fingers crossed, hopefully any alium leaf miner attack won't be too bad - the nettle juice is at the ready, just in case.

A recent UK TV programme featured Prince Charles who was concerned that 'rationality' was being taken too far, usurping innateness, intuition, natural-ness and basic humanity. Whilst large intensive indoor herds of milk cows might, for instance, be providing a golden age for the 'economies of scale' folk, it may not be quite the same in terms of cattle 'natural behaviour' welfare and for the welfare of the smaller, independent producers, squeezed out by the lowered milk prices (and so independence in general takes another hit --- ?) Curious, too, that in other livestock production areas - chickens and pigs, for instance, animal welfare is an improvement area, whilst dairying is going the other way, becoming more 'factory-ised' - ? No doubt, the ubiquitous modern general business aim of 'maximising profit' is a factor, whereas a more comprehensive aim of 'optimising' multi-dimensional 'profits' could be needed, an aim which could then incorporate a fuller range of impact-area factors such as the environment, animal welfare, independence, as well as those of an economic nature, and has the ability to include the longer-term implications, not just shorter-term results - ?

'Un-glint ----'

Talking of practical longer-term matters, this year's compost pile is 'piling up' nicely, which is good news for two years down the line, when it'll have made, and will be used. One of nature's little miracles really - the piling up of green waste from the vegetable growing area, from the veg preparation process and from the micro-holding in general, and lo and behold, some time later it's been 'magically' converted to rich, organic compost, without too much assistance from human hands. Well, that is here on the micro-holding, where compost has been successfully made by this simple, straightforward method for over thirty years.

Not so, though, according to one of the UK's leading TV gardening experts, who suggested that in the first place, the right balance of green and brown (i.e. dead) material must be (2nd) cut up and then placed in a compost bin, to be then (3rd) turned in the bin a few weeks later. The 4th stage was to move it into another bin - not too sure why - maybe to turn it again? There were then 5th and 6th stages involving more bins, but the plot had been lost by that time, along with the will to live --- Crikey, a heck of a kerfuffle, and of course a deal of extra work and equipment involved, against the simple three pile method here (last year's still in storage, this year's filling up, and one empty space, having been used this spring), and with it just 'making itself'. Here, there's no attempt to mix green material with dead material - not sure where that much dead stuff would come from anyway(?) - and no attempt to cut it up, and no turning of it, but it still seems to make good compost, with quite a bit less work and worry. Maybe that's because it's not a 'fast' compost process, and mainly green material is used - ? Could 'expert-itis', though, still be alive and well ----- ? And from last month's 'freerange' piece in which the case-study couple were growing exceptional crops - 'you can never have too much compost', they said.

' Gloden days  ------ '

 'We are stardust, we are golden ---', as the 60's 'Woodstock' song had it. If though, as some, and Prince Charles here in the UK, believe, too much rational 'head' has prevailed, by default then not giving enough prominence to other balancing factors, such as 'heart', then what the writer Gary Zukav ('The Seat of the Soul') called 'natural reverance' might have withered on the vine - ? Some believe that along the lines of olden days thinking, humans are 'cast adrift' and need to find their way 'home'. Such thinking presumably is though, un-provable via logic, and can only be 'felt' internally by the individual - yet if intuition has also withered on the vine in modern rational, logically-geared times, then ----- ?? Some individuals who have experienced what might be described as 'transcendant' consciousness states, do often seem to attest to the feeling of coming home in the sense of having become 'complete' - all the pieces of the jigsaw as it were finally coming together to then produce 'the bigger picture' -----, with the side dishes of joy, bliss and fulfillment  (forthcoming 'freeranger' piece for the books page of this site, with the current working title of ' Wising Up --- or Dumbing Down ---- ?')

'Glitterati ----'

Another of Prince Charles's comments from the TV programme indicated that he felt that the modern trend of success being the accumulation of 'fame and fortune', it then obscured some of the more 'down-to earth' goals and satisfactions that could be attained by people, if feet were kept more firmly on the ground, and so, in so many words : 'all that glitters is not gold'. Some while back it was pointed out that success in western style materialistic cultures tended to be via externally directed parameters such as wealth, position and so forth, which then prompted a counter impulse of 'inner directed' 'success' factors. If the individual is only measured by external (to them) yardsticks, they are then only 'validated' by such external factors, but surely, the argument went, people need also to take account of internal factors, such as their own self-worth, their own sense of contribution, their own sense of self-integrity , and dignity - ? And if such internal values do become victims of an over-external people validation culture, does that not then open the door to such trends as, say, corruption - ? Many individuals undoubtedly do operate in internal validation and value mode but maybe don't get too much recognition in cultures largely geared to externally-directed validation measures - ?

Awhile back, social research identified these two basic styles calling them 'outer directed' and 'inner directed'. The 'outer directed' related to a culture in which people responded strongly to external prompts -such as, say, wealth and position - to assess their degree of 'personal success' and 'personal worth', to which reservationists then pointed out that such a 'success style' omitted important 'inner directed' factors such as internal self-worth, self integrity and on-going self-development.  These latter factors could be considered important, vital even, if the overall aim of the individual is say 'longer-term personal fulfillment', as against, say, shorter-term materialistic attainment, which some, particularly freerangers maybe, might feel to be a little one-dimensional - ?

'Micro-hold 'glimmer'------ '

Not too much danger of external 'wealth and position' factors currently intervening here, so will have to hope that the internal factors can  suffice, which seems to broadly be the case, and seems to be more in keeping with the approach here. Maybe there is something in that old Chinese proverb :

'He (she) who plants a garden, plants happiness'

If there are enought 'internal goodies', then maybe the external stuff is then needed less and so becomes of less prominence (i.e. to that particular individual), and then, who knows, maybe just beyond the horizon, the golden times might beckon ---- ? In the meantime, it's always possible to down a pint of Holden's Brewery beer, aptly named, 'Golden Glow' ------