Free-Range Living

MODERN MACHINE MARVELS

Sitting now writing these few words at the living room table on the eco micro-holding (small smallholding) in front of the woodstove fire which seems to burn quite sedately with the stove doors open - surely one of winter's joys, warming the cockles as well as the body, although the marvel of fire's not too modern. The current woodstoves are a bit more modern - they're so easy to operate and the fire can be so finely controlled in them. Quite a few seem to be being installed in this rural neck of the woods - oops, the price of wood could be on the rise. This woodstove, ticking over with its doors open is keeping the living room and the adjacent kitchen, a combined area of around 40 square metres, acceptably warm on a cold, blustery winter's day - can't be too bad.

Another marvel came to light the other day, this time a real modern machine marvel. One of the 'Freeranger' 'E' books in preparation (with a prayer and a prevailing wind, should be three available to be accessed from this site by the end of March '12) needed to be hardcopy printed off for easier editing purposes - a laser printer spewed out just over 100 pages in about four minutes. When compared with typewriter ridden 'olden days', the modern facility seems nothing short of amazing, and it can all be done again at the touch of a keypad. Great stuff, although not quite so great when modern marvel machines play up, as was the case here recently when getting pics onto the 'freeranger' website suddenly and seemingly onaccountably became a problem, which then laid waste to an hour or two of frustrating and fruitless 'E' labour. Fortunately, though, the 'man who can' came to the rescue.

The spice of life----

Micro-holding work - sorry, 'labours of love', tends to be pretty varied at this time of the year, with hedging and tree trimming being the main 'on-going' activity - the trimmings can still be burnt here in the country, providing plenty of potash-rich woodash for the growing areas (potash being a good natural fertiliser). The patch of wheat grown for 'green manure' purposes has had to be dug in -not quite finished yet, and wheat because at the time of sowing (Sept on what was the onion bed) it was just handily available in a chicken feed sack. This is the only digging to occur here - the black loam soil can easily be simply loosened with a fork and stuff 'bunged in'. It's good, though, to see the newly dug area, all pristine and neat. The roofing felt on the newish - about three years old? -tool shed was disintegrating, so that's had to have a new covering of felt- hope that lasts a wee bit longer this time. Satisfying, though - that feeling of 'making things good'.

See the sawing-----

 The other key on-going winter 'labour of love' is the sawing of the wood. The wood that's bought comes in handy burnable-size logs and stored in the purpose-built logstore in the grandly-named 'micro-holding logistics centre' (a re-cycled concrete garage). The wood to be sawed is for convenience  currently residing in an orderly stack on what was the potato patch, and should hopefully be all sawn up by the end of winter to then release the ground for its growing purpose. The little sawbench is temporarily residing next to the woodpile, so everything is 'handy', and preferably on a day when the sun shines and provides the power via the solar installation, the satisfying task of sawing up some of this wood, which came with the big advantage that it was free, takes place. It's one of those activities which gives the feeling of 'life supporting involvement', with its own particular brand of satisfaction. The sawbench saw work up the lane for someone else recently, and when it was returned its round sawblade had been sharpened to better than ever, and a perished rubber drive belt had been replaced with a sound one - how good was that? They're good folk round here, most of 'em.

Battling on the domestic economy front---

Free fuel in the form of wood helps in the battle against what sometimes seems a voracious system, trying to get more and more dosh out of a person. One pundit wrote recently that the main culprit was the 'big, quick and easy profit' culture which has given the green light to profiteering - crikey, sounds suspiciously like what used to be called a 'wide-boy', 'dodgy dealer' culture, and undoubtedly aided and abetted by another of the culture's tenets - the 'get rich quick' syndrome. Such a culture appears to exert a degree of pressure on people to spend and 'have now', which would seem to be the likely cause of the considerable personal debt many people carry these days. A piece in the regional paper for these parts a couple of days ago put this debt figure at around £20k per person in the two larger towns in the area, a lot of which would presumably be plastic card debt, carrying high interest rates of around 25 - 35%.

 Assuming some is loan debt and an average rate of interest of 20% might well apply, would mean that there'd be a yearly charge of £4K per person, which at £80 quids a week may not be too inconsiderable a cost for many so-called 'ordinary' folk. Young people are encouraged by such a culture to join the debt society, many apparently leaving college and university with quite a debt already around their necks. One piece in a recent paper reported the distress of a young lady now being forced to be more frugal and 'cut her cloth', due, she said, to never having previously had to take such measures, and not being used to an 'economic' regime. The recent TV documentary on the financial crisis suggested that the nation's been living above its means, and now it was to be 'down to earth with a bump' time, a time of more domestic economy discipline. Given that this programme also asserted that the UK as a nation is now one of the highest debt-ridden nations - five times its GDP figure, perhaps it'd be a good time for those that have done pretty well out of the system in recent years to now re-claim some leadership responsibility and at least 'share the pain', a sentiment that seems to be heard more widely these days.

'Frugal' freerangers back in vogue----?

Perhaps freerangers well practiced in self-discipline and more 'frugal' living could also come into their own, leading in the near lost art of 'living within one's means' and then coming to know that good security feeling of not being financially 'over-exposed', and the joy and happiness experienced by Dicken's Mr Micawber, who's simple but maybe long-term effective dictum was 'happiness, 19s 6d in the pound expenditure, misery, 20s 6d expenditure in the pound'. Old money terms, but still maybe with a modern times message - ?

And as they say - 'there's nothing new under the sun' - ?