Mike Robin has worked in various jobs such as as a market garden worker, timber yard hand, farmhand, bus conductor, builder, barman, wildlife society recruiter, farming adviser/consultant, farmer, farm diversification consultant, academic journal editor and H.E lecturer in farm business management, acquiring an agricultural economics degree along the way.
His interests are biological growing, farming, rural community, the environment, longer-term sustainability, reading, music, golf, heritage railways, culture watching, human potential and spirit, and he imperfectly practices eco-living and small-scale organic growing on an eco holding (the ‘micro’ holding – a small smallholding) with his partner in the UK midlands.
Most of the veg requirements are ‘biologically’ grown on an allotment-size patch and fruit is grown on a new mini orchard in the small paddock. There is currently a mini-flock of hens providing home-produced eggs, re-cycling food waste back into usable produce. 'Tia', a gorgeous feline friend , completes the household, along with quite a wild bird population, facilitated by the considerable bank of vegetation here.
Wood is the main energy source; some is collected for free and some is bought and stored to dry in the grandly-entitled’ ‘Micro-holding Logs-istics Operation Centre’, a re-cycled concrete garage. Re-cycling is practised in as many forms as possible – cars, clothes, material requirements eg. furniture, tools etc. Solar power electricity production has also been installed, along with a device to use 'spare' solar energy to heat water in the hot water tank, and a stand-alone air-source heat pump, extracting heat from the air outside and blowing it into the cottage.
On-going projects are exploring the effective home use of the 'free' solar-powered electricity from the solar installation, the viability of a small domestic wind turbine and the possibility of having one of the two vehicles here as an electric vehicle, powered mainly by solar energy, although at the moment the cost of the vehicles seems to be just a bit on the high side. An electric bike has been a partway answer.
Another strand in the ‘portfolio’ eco lifestyle is the setting up of a small 'e' publishing operation in support of the free-range self-responsible and reliant lifestyle, for which MR write a monthly blog on his Free-range Living website, and has written a ‘Free-range Living’ series, of which, ‘Free-range Living for People’ is available in e-book form. (accessible on 'books' page of the website). Also available in e-book/booklet form from the 'books' page are: ‘Free-range Lifestyle Enterprise Planning’, 'Freearanging - Exploring the Ranges', ‘A Free-range Approach to Work’ and 'Freerangin'-- on-- Money Means'. ' Freerange Spirit and Values' parts one and two, an MR take on Fritz Schumacher's Small is Beautiful ( Is Schumacher's 'Small' Yet Beautiful?) and The Human Approach to People Management Can Give the Best Longer-term Results . The latest additions have been Wising UP --- or Dumbing Down', pts. one and two, explorations into 'expanded awareness' territory, and 'Freerangin' on Fuller Fulfilment'. MR has previously written ‘Rural Lifestyling: Whys and Wherefores of Starting a Small Independent Rural Enterprise’, a series of rural management guides, as well as sundry academic journal and conference papers.
Any queries/enquiries/comments/ publishing possibilities can be directed via the freerangeliver@gmail.com e-mail address .
