GOOD TIMES-----?
'The Good Life-----?'
Back along - !970's? - there was quite a movement in the UK for self-reliant living involving amongst other things, growing own food and suchlike, which attracted the tag 'the good life' (and a TV series based on the same). Then the wave of personal borrowing and consumerism hit, and simpler more 'economic' lifestyles appeared to fall out of fashion. Now though, living with the after-effects of such a strong materialistic way of living, such as high personal debts having to be serviced at high interest costs, and seemingly ever-rising living costs (without corresponding increases in income for so-called 'ordinary' folk), there seems to be something of a revival of the more self-reliant approach in spite of the pressures within the system to 'consume more' (eg. via advertising), with, for instance, allotments (patches of land for vegetable growing) having been apparently taken up far more readily in the last year or two. A report in a weekend broadsheet paper just now, tells of the higher eco-spec new-builds now have to have, and that some come either with allotments for their new owners, or even a small farm to be a shared resource for the new owners.
Having operated the 'eco' organic micro-holding ('small smallholding') here in the UK midlands for quite a stretch of time, the semi self-reliant lifestyle has in itself given much satisfaction, and solving life's needs 'economically' has offered both challenges and then good senses of achievement in meeting them. The latest has been to try to build a rustic porch for the backdoor of the cottage out of wood and materials accumulated around the place, now to be 're-cycled' into a (hopefully) useful edifice. The planning and design stages pretty much concurred with the construction phase, 'on the hoof' as it were, in the grand tradition of 'bodgers' everywhere, and gradually a shape and a construction emerged, which seems quite sturdy, capable of 'doing the job', and reasonably reasonable on the eye.
The objective of it being a 'non-spend' project worked well up to the point of having to buy some roofing felt, a bag of cement and a couple or so of bags of sand and gravel to solve the flooring side, and then having to buy a bit of paint and varnish to protect and beautify it, the actual on-cost though amounting to a satisfactory less than £50. The feeling of having made 'something from nothing', and turned spare, 'redundant' materials into something useful, is satisfying, and something that's maybe being foregone in today's 'consumer' culture( - ?) - a bit like the good feeling of making something 'good' again, hopefully to be experienced with one of the next jobs - repairs to the conservatory, making it 'sound'. Kevin Mcloud, the UK TV house design guru was reiterating such sentiments on a TV programme recently. 'Doing, making and sharing can lead to good satisfactions', he said.
'goodies------'
It's sort of harvest time on the micro-holding, with plenty of produce available - cabbage, potatoes, onions, peas, runner beans, lettuce, spring onions, landcress, radish, tomatoes, cucumbers, beetroot, carrots and turnips, all of which have done ok - quite a good, bountiful growing year in fact, and with the warm/hot weather, good to be able to nip out and pick fresh, tasty salad stuff for lunch most days. The next wave of crops such as swedes, spinach and leeks are looking ok - the only less good area is some of the winter veg. One earlier bed of purple sprouting is doing fine but the plants of the same and of curly kale put in when the good crop of broad beans finished, seem to be struggling a bit - you can never seem to 'win 'em all'. Some broad beans are still in the ground - they're being saved for seed and will be picked shortly as the pods are going black; likewise there are some peas being saved for seed - all helps with the cost side.
Most years, for instance, the broad bean bed is 'costless' - no seed, fertiliser or spray costs and no cultivation costs. If sown early they're pretty easy to grow; this year as usual only having one weeding, for instance. There are all the beans from it, fantastic when picked young, and mostly destined for the freezer for winter use. There are then all the furry pods and the haulms to go on the compost to make fertilser for two years down the line, and, the 'coup de grace', they leave nodules of fertiliser (nitrogen), which they've 'fixed' from the atmosphere, in the ground to feed the next crop (as long as the stalks are cut off at ground level) -can't be too bad, an essential part of the crop rotation needed for organic growing, and part of 'husbanding' the land, a process all organic growers and farmers have to practice.
'Husbanding' involves having to think of the impact in the future of what's happening in the present, seems to build a sort of overview awareness, a 'longer view', which also can lead to, for instance, a care-full approach to using resources, as well as an appreciation and awareness of the all-pervading natural forces and processes involved.
'good sense-------?'
On TV the other evening the main UK programme about the countryside and farming ('Countryfile') looked at different ways of keeping cows: the traditional way where they are in buildings inside for the inclement winter months and fed on preserved forage - egs. silage ('pickled grass') and/or hay (dried grass), and then in the spring/summer grass growing months, go out in the fields to graze grass, v. the modern-trend method of where the cows are kept in all the year round and fed inside on diets of preserved forages and food industry 'waste' products - a system which is also designed to fit in with getting high milk yields and keeping a lot of cows in one place (one TV programme showed a unit in America with 30,000 cows under cover in one place, for instance).
The latter system ties in with the modern call for 'economies of scale' and its associated theme that 'you can only make money if you're big'. In the UK the price paid to farmers for their milk production appears to have been squeezed with the intention, according to some, to squeeze out smaller herds making room for the larger-scale units. Logically this can presumably make some sense, fitting the prevailing rationale that 'big is best' and that 'success comes with size', which in practice though, could be an over-generalisation - some of the rural businesses showing high profit rates are smaller, lean-overhead family-type operations, for instance. One recently expressed reservation was that the 'big is best' trend could in fact be based on a simple assumption that 'more is good', which as a generalisation, could well be suspect.
One likely effect, for instance, already happening in fact, in the farming world is that the smaller, independent businesses then 'go to the wall', with the loss of independence, self-reliance, and the like - all good 'freeranging' qualities. Some might well say that such is the plan, ending up with a scenario in which bigger business will control most of production, as of course in some areas, it already does - look at the UK energy industry. Is, though, one of the potential costs the loss of individual autonomy and independence, not the best of news though for 'freeranger' types - ? Another potential cost could be ecological/environmental, in that if, for instance, the majority of cows are going to end up indoors all the time, then their natural behaviour patterns will have little room for expression, a side the TV programme makers seemed to ignore, seeming to go along with a 'fait accompli' situation of 'big' being best. Recent history reveals the quite a few - many even - would have innate reservations concerning the industrialisation of farming processes involving animals and some significant systems have been modified already to take into account consumer concern.
The trend of egg production, for instance, has in the UK changed away from being a mainly indoors industrialised process with the hens 'inhumanely' caged, to far more outdoors 'freerange' type systems, and yet seemingly, the dairy industry is ignoring such modern trends, going for the indoor, industrialised mode. The innate/intuitive feeling that animals should be treated humanely and fairly, allowing reasonable chance for expression of natural behaviour patterns, in the service of humans, is perhaps not likely to be shared by the 'industrial route' producers, who appear to be mainly about fairly single-dimensionally maximising production and profits. Reservationists also probably feel that man should have more regard for the animals, achieving a balance of their needs and man's needs and less focus on quite such a high extent of exploitation, and again, such issues were not covered in the programme mentioned.
'good grazing-----?'
Cows are in fact quite an interesting 'freerange' example. Back along in the 1970's in the UK, most cows were grazed outdoors but the grazing systems used, such as rationing grass behind an electric fence, could be quite competitive, resulting in older, bulkier cows getting more than their fair share, and 'new', younger cows in need of 'extra' nutrition to grow as well as to give milk, losing out. As most herds comprised of around 50% of first and second calving cows, the overall negative impact on herd results could be significant. One pioneer farmer in Buckinghamshire then took the brave step of opening up the whole of the grazing area to the herd, which then noticeably exhibited natural 'roam' grazing characteristics, and became considerably less stressed (eg. not having to rush out to compete for a given amount of grass).This new system was 'set-stocking' and was the 'freerange' dairy equivalent of, say, free-range egg production, passing any animal 'holistic' welfare test with flying colours.
The current trend of moving towards large-scale indoor production, it might be argued, is moving away from the fuller 'animal welfare' concept, which makes an interesting contrast with the rationale put forward by the promoters of the larger-scale indoor production systems: that the indoor systems offer better welfare to cows in that nutrition is better, being controlled and accurately rationed, that cows can benefit from shelter in summer (eg. from hot sunshine), and that the cows' health is better catered for, with regular vet checks. Counter arguments, though, do exist. Nutrition for instance, can be more variable when cows are grazing grass, both in terms of quantities consumed and variable quality of grass itself, but that with the availability of 'buffer' feeding (feeding preseved feed eg. silage whist also providing grazing grass), there is an adequate system to counteract variable supplies and quality of grazing grass. Shade can occur naturally (eg.under trees), and/or cows can come back to get shade under their winter quarters buildings, and whilst regular vet sessions may be provided in indoor systems, quite a few might well argue that they are needed more, in that cows tend to get more feet and leg problems kept indoors full-time.
The probable answer from the 'industrial' style producers is that the controlled conditions offered by the indoor system offers them a better chance of achieving very high outputs from dairy cows, which could well have a measure of reality to it. What isn't addressed, though, and nor did the TV programme address it, is whether 'man' should be expoiting animals to this high extent, thus denying them, just like those laying fowl in their cramped cages, the opportunity to behave naturally - a case of 'profit before humane-ness' - ? - and that man should work 'with' animals, not 'against' (in the exploitation sense) them.
'commercial good------?'
The seemingly strong focus on material gain, particularly maybe in the form of aggressive high profit chasing which the so-called 'free-market' conditions have facilitated, may though, not work particularly well in the longer-run. Already some of the newer 'captains of industry' (eg. current top man at Barclays Bank) are themselves suggesting that business focus has been too one-dimensional and that a better balance, particularly with social needs is needed for longer-term stability and business performance. A recent example of business/social imbalance in the UK could be the current concern being expressed by some politicians (and others) relating to the modern system of 'zero hour' contracts, some of which almost unbelievably prohibit people seeking additional work elsewhwhere, even though their zero contracts might not be supplying them at the time with work. How people are mean't to manage under such variable conditions goodness knows, and the existence of such contracts begs the question as to whether the degree to which some appear to want and are able to control others for their own benefit is getting too strong - ?
Some commentators on modern life such as Yamate Kunihiro in his interestingly entitled book 'The Way of No-Mind' have argued that modern man's addiction to material gain is in effect a palliative trying to assuage the negativity of man's 'alienation', and that the 'real' answer to this problem lies in 'connectedness', both to others and society, and to nature, which in a way is the track the Barclays top man appears to be on. A long-term healthy society as many might see it, might well need to cater as far as possible for a reasonable level of satisfaction of a variety of sets of needs within it, with government carrying out its 'refereeing' role, resulting in a stable balance, and maybe importantly, the committment and motivation of the majority of those within it, which in themselves could be useful longer-term constituents of on-going commercial success - ?
'good vibrations------'
The micro-life on a small patch of land is perhaps unlikely to be making any headlines, thankfully, but in fast-changing times which seem to be geared often - mainly? - to the gaol of wealth creation, it can offer a retreat, a 'haven'. A potential problem with a heavily money-orientated culture for some -many? -is that longer-term, deeper and non-monetary values can get shorter-shrift, potentially depriving people of sources of satisfaction (ref. the (near) 'penny-less' porch above). John Cleese, the well-known comedy actor, recently referred to this on TV, saying 'money has spoiled everything'. Fortunately the micro-holding lifestyle still offers such alternative intrinsic satisfactions, and the semi self-reliant style of life, in which money is a 'good servant' rather than a 'bad master', can help to keep things in some sort of perspective.
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