Every day, in some newspaper or another there’s an article raving on about how ‘spending time in nature’ is good for our health, wellbeing and mental stuff.
Thanks! Share it around if you feel like it :-) Yup, I forgot the boar but then again I don't want to bleak people out too much when it comes to veg production!!
Haha! I know that feeling! This year the voles have had most of my carrots, parsnips and celeriac, the snails are nibbling through everything and the boar trampled through my veg patch, turning everything as they went (which is not my idea of a no-dig approach)...and here I am trying to encourage people to grow veg!
Exactly! Trying to convince people to grow veg when your garden has been turned over by boar...and what is left has shredded leaves ...doesn't make it easy! Good luck!
Excellent rant about stating what, if people would take the time to think, should be obvious. A nice lot of relevant comments as well.
I practice TCMA (traditional chinese martial arts) and lots of people seem to think that it is 'good for older people' or 'meditative' neglecting the observation (and ignoring that 'tai chi chuan means 'great ultimate fist!) that while both can be true it isnt instant (often those 'older people' have been practising from a young age) and like most things worth achieving it takes time and to paraphrase the Buddha, 'diligent practice'. Daitoku-ji Zen temple is in a province of Kyoto of 120,000 people, so hardly a place of serenity, and anyone who has practiced 'zen' will know it is challenging and at times, noisy. Spending time in nature may be a 'restorative' for people already out of balance but they should then discover ways of maintaining that in ways that help everything, including people and nature. So many studies that show what makes us happy is 'being sociable', 'having something useful to engage us in collectively' and 'being active'. I used to have an allotment that was basically just hard work (with little reward as has been spoken about above) yet i found i was always more drawn to spending time and effort at the community garden with shared food and conviviality. I was invited, off the back of my community garden experiences, to run a workshop for an annual Public Health Conference (England) about the 'benefits' and the perceived expectations from them about 'fitness' (though if it's that hard, your doing it wrong) and health, whereas we showed that the greatest yields were from the shared experience , collective knowledge and information sharing and a communal agreement to try 'new things' (like 'grafting fruit trees, or 'no dig areas' etc). There was also the odd bit of organically produced fruit and veg but thank goodness for supermarkets etc or we'd have starved. Mollison and Holmgren really summed it up well in their early writings in regard to the 3 ethics of permaculture design. These they explained "Permaculture ethics are distilled from research into community ethics, learning from cultures that have existed in relative balance with their environment for much longer than more recent civilisations." As Bill said, 'the solutions are embarrassingly simple' But then where would the tour operators, snake oil producers' and tech companies be without, as a colleague said "needing us to find problems for their solutions"
I meant to include a bit about how people living in cities are more unwell, on average, than your humble peasant. All these studies look at what having a butcher's at some shrubbery does for your basic city slicker. A comparative study looking at the impact of an eyeful of 'nature' on a rustic V townie could be interesting.
Heard and very thought-provoking! Thank you. And... I see most industrialized folk as living on a high-tech cruise ship without knowing how to swim. I nurture educational environments where children learn how to survive off-ship, including traditional ecological skills (e.g., growing and gathering food) and attitudes, along with the modern ecology that supports those skills and attitudes. I agree with you that "nature is good for you" is an incredibly non-nuanced view, and I think it is vital for today's children to form deeper relationships with the rest of the natural world, including the realities you talk about. That's why I do what I do. https://peterkindfieldphd.substack.com/p/earth-centered-transformative-ecological
Thank you! Just read your blog, sounds great stuff, I'd have much prefered something like that rather than what I went through at school!
Year ago I a friend of mine took groups of inner-city kids out into the Welsh mountains. The first time out they stopped the coach by a field so as everyone could have a stretch. One kid wouldn't get out, he'd seen a cow and was terrified. He'd always thought that they were about the size of a hen.
Regrds a 'high tech cruise ship', in Poole where i live 'sun seeker' luxury yachts are produced and a friend, who works on them, said that they were asked to add a 'water feature' to the deck of one!
I walked past the Sunseeker bit of Poole harbour on my way to the ferry terminal recently. They could at least make the stupid things out of wood and put a sail or two on them. Mind you that'd probably mean falling in the water feature as you dodge the boom :-))
15 yers ago no one who worked for sunseekeer could afford to buy one. My dad, back in the 60's showed the original sun seeker (previously 'poole canoes') owners how to utilise GRP (glass fibre reinforced plastic) practically - they sold the company for millions while he, in his 70's still working out of an old farm barn doing fishing pole repairs. He is a very accomplished engineer and inventor, but a terrible businessman
Bloaved vad did-te ta vaut, Ha tyeguez di logod as the Breton say. Basically have a happy new year and a house without mice :-)
Great read as always....you forgot the wild boar trampling through your crops...🤣
Thanks! Share it around if you feel like it :-) Yup, I forgot the boar but then again I don't want to bleak people out too much when it comes to veg production!!
Haha! I know that feeling! This year the voles have had most of my carrots, parsnips and celeriac, the snails are nibbling through everything and the boar trampled through my veg patch, turning everything as they went (which is not my idea of a no-dig approach)...and here I am trying to encourage people to grow veg!
I also got the problem that people want to come and visit, that's ok most of the time but not after everything's been eaten :-)
Exactly! Trying to convince people to grow veg when your garden has been turned over by boar...and what is left has shredded leaves ...doesn't make it easy! Good luck!
Happy New Year Steve ! Just finished listening to a book called 'Stagtine'.. I know you don't raise animals,but it 's a good book... XoxoSusan ❤️🐞❤️
Bloaved vad did-te ta vaut, Ha tyeguez di logod !!
Thank you ! Being happy is easy enough, house without mice will require a lot more work and a couple of cats !! XoxoSusan ❤️🐞❤️
Excellent rant about stating what, if people would take the time to think, should be obvious. A nice lot of relevant comments as well.
I practice TCMA (traditional chinese martial arts) and lots of people seem to think that it is 'good for older people' or 'meditative' neglecting the observation (and ignoring that 'tai chi chuan means 'great ultimate fist!) that while both can be true it isnt instant (often those 'older people' have been practising from a young age) and like most things worth achieving it takes time and to paraphrase the Buddha, 'diligent practice'. Daitoku-ji Zen temple is in a province of Kyoto of 120,000 people, so hardly a place of serenity, and anyone who has practiced 'zen' will know it is challenging and at times, noisy. Spending time in nature may be a 'restorative' for people already out of balance but they should then discover ways of maintaining that in ways that help everything, including people and nature. So many studies that show what makes us happy is 'being sociable', 'having something useful to engage us in collectively' and 'being active'. I used to have an allotment that was basically just hard work (with little reward as has been spoken about above) yet i found i was always more drawn to spending time and effort at the community garden with shared food and conviviality. I was invited, off the back of my community garden experiences, to run a workshop for an annual Public Health Conference (England) about the 'benefits' and the perceived expectations from them about 'fitness' (though if it's that hard, your doing it wrong) and health, whereas we showed that the greatest yields were from the shared experience , collective knowledge and information sharing and a communal agreement to try 'new things' (like 'grafting fruit trees, or 'no dig areas' etc). There was also the odd bit of organically produced fruit and veg but thank goodness for supermarkets etc or we'd have starved. Mollison and Holmgren really summed it up well in their early writings in regard to the 3 ethics of permaculture design. These they explained "Permaculture ethics are distilled from research into community ethics, learning from cultures that have existed in relative balance with their environment for much longer than more recent civilisations." As Bill said, 'the solutions are embarrassingly simple' But then where would the tour operators, snake oil producers' and tech companies be without, as a colleague said "needing us to find problems for their solutions"
I meant to include a bit about how people living in cities are more unwell, on average, than your humble peasant. All these studies look at what having a butcher's at some shrubbery does for your basic city slicker. A comparative study looking at the impact of an eyeful of 'nature' on a rustic V townie could be interesting.
and a study on a 'rustics' view of being in town and the impact of that.
Townies rushing to be in the countryside and love nature. I call it the Packham Effect.
Hi. OK, do you mean Chris Packham?
Yep. Some folk love him but not me
Thank you for the laugh. As a "nature"-loving city-dweller (suburbs, but still) I need a little reality check time to time 😁
Heard and very thought-provoking! Thank you. And... I see most industrialized folk as living on a high-tech cruise ship without knowing how to swim. I nurture educational environments where children learn how to survive off-ship, including traditional ecological skills (e.g., growing and gathering food) and attitudes, along with the modern ecology that supports those skills and attitudes. I agree with you that "nature is good for you" is an incredibly non-nuanced view, and I think it is vital for today's children to form deeper relationships with the rest of the natural world, including the realities you talk about. That's why I do what I do. https://peterkindfieldphd.substack.com/p/earth-centered-transformative-ecological
Thank you! Just read your blog, sounds great stuff, I'd have much prefered something like that rather than what I went through at school!
Year ago I a friend of mine took groups of inner-city kids out into the Welsh mountains. The first time out they stopped the coach by a field so as everyone could have a stretch. One kid wouldn't get out, he'd seen a cow and was terrified. He'd always thought that they were about the size of a hen.
Regrds a 'high tech cruise ship', in Poole where i live 'sun seeker' luxury yachts are produced and a friend, who works on them, said that they were asked to add a 'water feature' to the deck of one!
I walked past the Sunseeker bit of Poole harbour on my way to the ferry terminal recently. They could at least make the stupid things out of wood and put a sail or two on them. Mind you that'd probably mean falling in the water feature as you dodge the boom :-))
i do advise anyone who could afford a sunseeker to invest in a proper boat, ie made from wood and under sail
15 yers ago no one who worked for sunseekeer could afford to buy one. My dad, back in the 60's showed the original sun seeker (previously 'poole canoes') owners how to utilise GRP (glass fibre reinforced plastic) practically - they sold the company for millions while he, in his 70's still working out of an old farm barn doing fishing pole repairs. He is a very accomplished engineer and inventor, but a terrible businessman
Thanks for that Gary. Like most of modern society, that's shocking but not surprising to me.