' GAMES PEOPLE PLAY-----'
Living in the UK midlands countryside on the organic eco micro-holding (small smallholding) 'oasis' is normally peaceful and tranquill, but not today with cattle from the local farm bellowing away - amazing how noisy they can be. Approaching mid-August life should be quite restful, but it's surprising how many small tasks arise, such as putting out leek plants, sowing more perpetual spinach (under glass), weeding winter veg beds then wire netting them against bird damage, cutting down pea plants and broad bean plants, except those still with beans on them being saved for next year's seed - they're cut when the pods go black. Peas and beans fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil so they need to be cut off leaving their roots in the soil to release the nitrogen from nodules on the roots. Picking the runner beans which started cropping the beginning of August is always a pleasant job - there's plenty of flowers on them too, so maybe a good year for them - last year was a bit 'hit and miss'. The best year here (out of thirty), they were picked for a week short of five months, which seems from recent experiences an awesomely long time.
'FAT OF THE LAND-----?'
Was it in Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' where they dreamed of living off the 'fat of the land'? It feels a bit like that now, it's a time of plenty - along with runner beans to pick, there's cabbage, lettuce, beetroot, spring onions, bulb onions, radish, land cress (like watercress), potatoes, tomatoes and courgettes to gather, with swedes, sweetcorn, turnips, leeks, parsnips (not looking too brilliant), cucumbers, celery, and winter greens all coming along. Considering the pretty lousy wet, sun-lacking summer here to date, not too bad a result -still more of a success than a failure. Some other jobs remain to be done - there's quite a pile of brushwood to be burnt (allowable here, and then provides potash fertiliser for the veg patch in the form of woodash). It's been delayed on finding a bird nest built in it, just under the couple of corrugated tin sheets keeping most of it dry.
In spite of the lousy summer the birds seem to have done ok - the supplementary feeding's probably been particularly needed in such a summer and it's been noticeable that they've hit it most when the weather was worst. There's a big gang of sparrows which is good to see as they're mean't to be under threat, but the birds that have charmed the most are the juvenile robins. Without their redbreasts they don't look much like robins - they are brown but with a very attractive 'barred' effect and appearance - but they do have the human-friendly natures of their elders, often coming within a couple of feet or so in the peace and quiet of the veg patch, within this 'poor man's walled garden'. Cases of people hand feeding robins have beens reported recently in the press. Imagine that, tiny little wild creatures trusting the 'giant' human enough to come that close - quite a thrill.
STRIKING BACK-----
More and more 'frugal living' pieces seem to be popping up in the papers in these straightened and 'pip squeaking' times, as one complainer put it in today's paper. One recently advised on running a vehicle for only £100 per month - useful but although not wishing to pour too much cold water, not the 'gold medal' level, which surely has to go to P, a freeranger acquaintance who runs an old pick-up given to him by a farmer he'd done some work for, and on which he'd had to do some engine renovation work, spending a couple of hundred quids on big ends and so forth - but that was it, and now runs it on bio-fuel at about half normal fuel cost. His monthly cost after three years and still going strong is around a meagre £50/month all-in.
Not only that, but he recently replaced his partner's vehicle - with her blessing - with a Nissan Micra runabout, bought from a car auction for around £300 and with a very meagre 28,000 genuine miles on the clock- runs like a sowing machine, says P. Keeping that for the next few years is going to mean a pretty low monthly cost too - freeranging can pay. The solar panels put in here at the micro-holding have done the biz too, along with one or two more 'eco' measures, nearly halving the electric bill, and with a recent change to a lower cost and definitely more consumer friendly supplier, maybe even more savings in the pipeline, so to speak. All good news - onwards and downwards.
'WIN:WIN'-----?
The London Olympics seems to have been a big success, and the top Olympic man has praised them for bringing back sportsmanship and a re-vitalised sense of fair play, which surely many would say has got to be good. Maybe it's a triumph for the public, reacting against a 'greed is good' culture and affirming' higher' human values-? Still would seem to leave the UK as a bit of a split culture, what with the Olympic humanitarian spirit on the one hand, and the 'big is best', aggressive profit-driven non-care ('there's no such thing as society', M.Thatcher)) culture on the other, in which 'winning' sometimes seems the over-riding single-dimensioned preoccupation.
Already, a day after the close of the games, there's headlines indicating that UK unemployment could go sky high and another concerning a group of public sector workers going on strike to protest against oppressive working conditions and unrealistic work targets. The profit-driven culture seems to have bred a 'control culture' target-driven work culture in which leadership (how seldom do you hear of it these days?) has been ousted by martinet styles of staff management. In spite of this, has true human spirit transcended and prevailed at the Olympics- a gold-medal level performance - and couldn't business take notice of this, changing coercive staff managing styles to respect-delivering and facilitating human spirit and internal motivation styles? Maybe that'd be a bit of longer-term legacy?
'WIN:LOSE'-----?
In the Olympics, the gold medal has attracted the max focus, maybe though to the point where the other medals may have at times come accross in the 'also-ran' class.. Some, though, maybe especially younger athletes, have 'reaching the final' as their realistic goal, so maybe 'winning' could be seen in relative mode as well as outright absolute mode. For an individual, for instance, presumably reaching a certain final could be as big an achievment as winning the gold medal.
Perhaps 'absolute winning' starts to become more all-important maybe in a 'youngist' celebrity-style culture (which Sir Chris Hoy tarrgets in a recent national UK paper) in which the main drivers are maybe still in the throes of establishing themselves and are strongly focused on 'competitiveness' - ? Can though, a fairly single-minded focus on 'winning' still prove to be counter-productive if the longer-term gets taken into account - ? For instance, negotiation technique used to be advocated on a 'win:win' basis, not going headlong for the maximum short-term gain, to ensure the other party also came away with a worthwhile deal and hence maintaining on-going trading possibilities ( maybe the large size of firms has affected this, and the 'balance of power' - some supermarkets seem to have have developed something of a reputation for instance of being 'bully boys' in relation to their suppliers - ?).
'LOSE:WIN'-----?
Can, in fact, 'losing be winning', in some instances? Top golfers, for instance, have often said that they learn more from losing situations, and that experiencing such situations, whilst not always particularly pleasant, is necessary to be able to then go on to win the big prizes. Parents, for instance, can often 'throttle back' to provide a fairer contest to let their youngsters win to encourage them, so sometimes, losing in the shorter-term, could be winning in the longer-term - ? Maybe it could be a bit like what's been called a 'happiness/sadness balance' - both are part of life and the negative side i.e. sadness, then actually serves over time to enhance happiness experiences - ?
'Not winning' may too have its further uses in the longer-term. Many successful business enterprises have had a degree of 'failure' in the past from which useful stuff has been learn't - in fact it's pretty hard to imagine situations where some 'non-successes' couldn't/wouldn't happen, and that the negative feedback from them then provides useful business information. 'Non-success' though, may not understandably exactly always be the most welcomed experience, especially in a culture seemingly geared to highish levels of materialistic success, in which 'winning' is then seen as virtually vital, but also then maybe creating socially-conditioned aversion to negative 'non-success' experiences.
Such experiences also probably don't appeal to those whose (limited-?) experiences deny them awareness of possible negative results. One consultant colleague, for instance, was taken to task by a group of would-be young entrepreneurs for raising the possibility of negative outcomes, even though his considerable actual experience told him that outcomes can be positive, neutral or negative, and that denial of possible negative outcomes can then increase the possibility of them happening, as potential pitfall and risk analyses will have not taken place.
One light engineering entrepreneur followed the cultural trend of 'growing the business' and borrowed money to expand his premises, equipment and staff, anticipating considerably enhanced profits. Things, though, did not go to plan, with the extra business needed to justify the now higher cost levels not materialising due to an economic downturn, and now putting the business at risk. He just about survived with the good help of a business aquaintance, having to 'bite the bullet' and take fairly drastic 'damage limitation' measures.
Such a case-study illustrates a couple or so of useful guidelines: beware of fixed cultural 'trend' objectives (i.e. they may not necessarily work for all situations and don't take individual priorities into account), the importance of then working out the priorities currently relevant for that particular business and the people involved in it (which could lead to non-trend actions), and that enterprise/business objectives are affected by conditions i.e. can be dynamic not static (and therefore need reviewing and re-setting periodically). To some extent, then, it could be healthier in the longer-run to take a 'business freeranger' route.
'Non-success' situations' can have their uses then, if the 'fear of failure' can be quelled, easier said than done maybe. Growers maybe have an advantage as non-successes come along most seasons, providing plenty of 'failure handling' practice. This year on the micro-holding mini 'oasis' here the recent 'non-success' activity has been to pull up this year's straggly unproductive pea plants. All is not totally lost, though within the organic growing system - they go on the compost heap to contribute to soil fertility in two year's time. Would have been nice, though, to have had a decent crop of peas.
Ah well, canna win 'em all !
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