'Really------?'
'Real life----'
The weather over the last few weeks here at the organic eco micro-holding (small smallholding) in the UK midlands has been basically wet, after a summer which was a lot drier and warmer than the previous damp squib affair. The seasons seem to have jumped a month - everything has been a month behind so only now in mid November have the leaves changed colour, giving stunning local country vistas - there are quite a few trees in these parts. Even now the weather's turned colder, there's a worrying dearth of birds in the garden - normally by now there's erm, a rook of them feeding voraciously. It could be the latening of the seasons - on the other hand people hereabouts have reported seeing a couple of sparrowhawks actively hunting through the gardens. In fact only a few days ago there was a great commotion coming from the laurel bush by the front gate, for a sparrowhawk to then appear with a sparrow in its talons Ah, well, nature would'nt work without such hunting, but the perky gang of sparrows who live here are favourites.
Maintenance work has proceeded at a reasonable pace, not least due to a couple of electric hedgecutters, which if operated on a sunny-ish day, are sun powered by the solar installation, and hedgecutting has been completed earlier this year than ever before. There's two longish eight foot high paddock hedges, a short front hedge a longish ten foot high front hedge, a dividing Leylandi hedge, plus sundry here and there bits, so to have got them all trimmed is good news. Another autumn job has been to make a door for the re-cycled 'Penny-less' rustic porch erected in the summer. As with the porch, the door's been made out of recycled stuff lying about the place, and its 'bodge rustic' nature seems to fit quite well with the new rustic porch, which is proving to be a really useful facility for the micro-holding, storing easily accessible useful stuff like work coats, overalls, boots, hats gloves, sticks, dog leads and logs. The only real expenditure for the door was on a pair of gate hangars costing just over £20, now used to hang the door, and with then the useful facility of just being able to lift the door off its hanging pegs when the door-less porch is preferred for the summer. Good job jobbed, and good to be able to close it up in winter.
Ah yes - forgot - the other bit of expenditure (£13) was for a cat flap, making the back door now a 'double cat flap' experience for Tizz the Wizz, resident older feline friend, and who's now recently been joined by Tia, now nine weeks old and should have been called 'Dennis'. What a 'menace' she is -just as she should be of course, and already loved to bits by cat, dog and humans, Smoothing her hair and ears back, she looks like a wee miniature snow leopard, with gorgeous off-white, silver and thin-line black markings. And crikey, what fun she is.
The produce in the allotment-size veg patch is looking quite useful, with brassica greens, turnips, lettuce, swedes, leeks, potatoes, red cabbage and beetroot all availabe for fresh picking, and onions, potatoes and broad beans available from storage. The crop which was quite a disappointment this year was the runner beans, which seemed to give up the ghost pretty early on - if it hadn't been for a tripod of later set white flower runner beans, it would have been more of a case of 'has bean'. One year, a few years ago now, it's true, runner beans were picked here for one week short of five months - more by luck than design, it has to be said. Halycon days - although not too bad now, come to think of it - yesterday's lunch was home-made veg soup, followed by home-grown salad: lettuce, spring cabbage and swede leaves and landcress (like watercress) all freshly picked, with crackers, onion and extra mature Cheddar cheese - all very tasty. The swede leaves add a particular 'bite', as they do if included in winter greens, which here also include spring cabbage re-growth, curly kale and perpetual spinach, and this year as most, they should last right through the winter. Another satisfying job just started is digging green material (eg. self-sown grass and weeds) 'in', leaving pristine dug soil on view - good to see - and really doing two jobs in one: fertilising the ground via the 'green' manure, and preparing it for its next crop.
'A real fire---'
'Come home to a real fire' used to be the advertising slogan of the solid fuel people here in the UK. It does involve, though, just a bit more work than the ubiquitous 'press-button' systems. Fortunately here on the micro-holding it's all part of the lifestyle and the activities sorting the wood, the main fuel, are by and large enjoyable. Inroads have already been made to the wood in the woodstore, even though the woodstove's only been on generally from around 3pm on for about six weeks or so - surprising how the pile goes down. Still, yesterday, erm, saw quite a bit of that collected last winter sawn up, with an ace operator with his big chainsaw in action - a lot of wood can be sawn with one 'feeding' the sawhorse, the other sawing. The chainsaw operator is a good guy from up the lane - a real country boy with a lot of really handy skills, and an amazing chainsaw - slices through the wood like butter. The few bob it costs isn't probably that much more than doing a lot slower job alone.
The follwing job was to wheelbarrow the sawn wood through the tight fit of the side door into the logs-istics centre - a bit of a 'swizzle' needed to get it through the door- and load it up into the logstore. Half a dozen or so full wheelbarrow loads did it, nice work seeing the logstore fill up again. That'll probably be enough wood then to last through the winter, and cold, harder weather is already imminent, having been forecast for the coming week (second-half of November). Good job jobbed - good to see the logstore replenished and full again - real satisfaction - tree-mendous - ? The smaller stuff for the evening front room fire is cut using the small sawbench, useful in that again, the sun can be used as its power source, and again quite a bit can be done in a surprisingly small time, although it's now in need of some small electrical repairs - wood that eco micro-life could be straightforward ----.
'Reality danger-----?'
Quite often these days people will on the one hand decry and denounce the mega-size food retail outlets - supermarkets and hypermarkets - for driving the smaller, independent traders out of business - they do seem to want to have all the trade, no 'live and let live' with them - ? - and de-populating town centres, but then, maybe understandably, say 'what can you do?' - a sort of 'resigned' lament. One youngish couple, though, tried to put such resignation to the test, as reported in a UK national paper, resolving to have a go at living life in 'supermarket-less' mode - a good example of 'freeranging' in practice - ? The results proved interestingly positive, reporting within a few months that they were leaner and slimmer in body, due to not being tempted by strategically placed supermarket goodies, and even more interestingly, they had a fatter bank balance, having found that not only did they no longer 'tempt spend', but that they'd been able to quite easily source cheaper food than that on offer from the supermarkets (where customers are mean't to benefit due to competition, although how that might work in an oligopolistic situation (few powerful players in the market place) might be a bit of a mystery - ?).
They agreed that such a change in shopping habits had taken more time and effort on their part, which had as a 'challenge' proved to be worthwhile the spending; no doubt many might argue that speed and convenience are of the essence whilst living busy, fast-paced lives, but then again, could there 'in reality' be more people than at first may apppear who could do the same and benefit from it - ? (and undoubtedly there are probably more than a few who do practise quite a degree of independent buying).
To what extent, for instance has the change to supermarket shopping then contributed to the overweight problem that seems to crop up regularly in the media - ? Has the 'supermarket shopping' experience due to its prevalence now become a sort of 'modern reality', to which many - most - have 'succumbed', semi-oblivious of spin-off costs such as the loss of independent traders leading to the loss of independence itself within society, then contributing to what's been recently called 'a culture of conformity' - ? Another aspect that's been questioned is how much the 'supermarket' experience might have constituted a 'de-socialisation' factor - ? Wandering up supermarket aisles hardly seems to be much of a social experience, with seemingly little social interaction between customers, and then not that much on being 'processed' having picked up the required array of goods. There's even a gizmo now to be able to self-pay without any human contact whatsoever - 'soul-less' modern 'mass' life - ??
'Real--as in--authentic-----?'
The 'Rough Guide to Ethical Living' book highlights the above potential limitations to 'supermarket society' plus highlighting their tendancy to use their size and muscle to intimidate and coerce their suppliers (some supermarkets reportedly have better reputations than others in this respect) - it's common knowledge, for instance, in the UK farming industry involving many small producers, that these suppliers often have to 'jump through the supermarket hoops', although as before, there are the odd one or two seemingly trying to develop a more 'symbiotic' relationship with their suppliers. 'Free market' economics has been the order of the day and seems to have borne the message to many that it's 'do whatever you want' time, and maybe there's not been enough curbing of commercial behaviour - ? The basic economic situation, for instance, of supermarkets is that they exist in 'oligopilistic' conditions - i.e. a few large, powerful players in the market, able then to overly influence and 'bend' it, as can be seen in their capability to pressurise suppliers.
The notion of the 'free market' appears to stem from the economic principle of the 'perfect market' in which there are many buyers and sellers, all un-powerful enough not to be able individually or collectively to affect the true, authentic market price achieved within the supply and demand balance, reflecting in turn authentic supply (the selling side) and authentic demand (the buying side), hence, under 'perfect market' conditions, the market can be 'trusted' to decide, to set the 'authentic' price levels which reflect true supply and demand influences. Once, though, firms become large enough to individually and/or collectively affect such a balance, then the 'true' conditions of the perfect market are lost and there is the danger of imbalance.
Are then curbs (anathema to large concerns - ?) needed to ensure authentic perfect market conditions are maintained, such as, say, limiting the diversity of the range of products an individual, firm can trade in, limiting the scope of one firm's involvement with other firms in the same area of business, and so on. It might not be quite enough, for instance, that staff in the large powerful firms are instructed to be 'socially nice', wishing their customers, for instance, to 'have a nice day'( one TV travel presenter stated that he had to leave one city feeling that the culture was 'unauthentic': 'behind the smiles is a steely intent to get your money', he said, and felt that he then needed the time alone on his motorbike to get back his individuality). There has been research which indicated that if people are made to incant un-authentic 'customer friendly' stuff ('have a nice day' springs to mind again - ?), then this can adversly affect health.
'Real long game-------'
The longer-term concern that reservationists may feel about any unrestricted 'large organisation' power-play culture could be the same expressed by thinkers such as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, quite a few years ago now, suggesting that such a trend could lead to a 'power block' limited world in which the individual, being a 'non-power' organism, then gets short shrift. Was it Huxley who had his populace being force-fed 'happy' pills and monitored by the 'thought police', pretty much the opposite of the conditions in which the 'free-range' being might 'survive and thrive----? Faced with such 'biggist' (or 'Giantist', as Fritz Schumacher of 'Small is Beautiful' book renown said it) times, maybe it's important (i.e. for their own well-being) for individuals to 'freerange', such as independent buying or undertaking activities such as solitary motorbiking, to help gain/increase an ability to practise independence, retaining a 'sense of self', and to achieve that state of self-integrity, without which, the success of any 'fulfillment' quest may be questionable - ??
Some sombre thoughts maybe - time perhaps to get out into the fresh air of the 'free-range' micro holding and get the hose out to unblock a drain, back to 'reel' life ----- ?
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