The 2020 growing season has been very productive with a good start courtesy of the sun in April and May - the opposite of the dead squib 2019 season. There's been lots of beans, peas, calabrese, salads, onions and potatoes, as well as no end of bees and butterflys about the place, and stir-fry home grown veg lunches have been frequent.
Good to see well-known presenters extolling the 'grow-your-own' self-reliant style of life as the route towards personal satisfaction as against wealth accumulation, and maybe the current virus-restricted conditions could lead to a revival of more self-determination - ?
Smallholding has as ever been quite busy this spring with quite a sowing and planting workload, but this year too additional activities such as cottage painting, which has spruced up the place nicely. Some drainage issues have been dealt with, the largest of which was the main soakaway pipeline becoming non-functioning, but now with an alternative solution. The lockdown in Wales finished just in time to have a good and needed chilling out break at the static caravan on the farm in west Wales, as gorgeous as ever.
With so many large organisations about and so much support for 'big is best' type operations, it may well be importent for 'freeranger' folk to be able to 'counter' to be able to retain a level of independent thought and action - ? One result of the growth in 'larg-ist' operations and their 'economies of scale' battle cry, may well have been the narrowing down of key business objectives, ultimately to just the 'maximising of profits' level. which some, if not quite a few, might find restrictively limited - ? A study of independent rural lifestyle enterprisers found that in fact there were quite a few objective areas rated as important/very important -sixteen areas in total in fact, from personal development to environment care, to community contribution -- to achieving profit sustainability levels, and so forth - life being rated as somewhat more complex than the single objective view - making max profit - would suggest ------
