Goodwork Almanac

Category: Goodwork

  • Replacing your lawn

    Photo by Shazard R. on Pexels.com

    I cannot think of a more tedious and wasteful chore than the upkeep of the typical lawn. Personally, I have always detested the work required to maintain a lawn and have somehow been roped into caring for one in some form or another since I was a kid. Pushing a lawnmower around in the summer heat, watering on a schedule, fertilizing, weeding, troubleshooting dead or dying grass with any number of issues. And for what? The fruit tree bears fruit and the lawn gives us work, that is all it does.

    While this is meant as a how-to, I have inadvertently begun this article as a why-to. For me and for many others, there are ample reasons to get rid of a part of (or the entirety of) your lawn. 65% of homeowners now prefer a lower maintenance yard. And there are promising trends in the percentage of people investing in sustainable or edible gardens, pollinator gardens, as well as drought-tolerant plants and landscape designs.

    There are some other promising and useful statistics out there as to the incentives to replacing a lawn. Sufficient landscaping can reduce the heat of an area anywhere from 5-10 degrees. Native plants use 50-75% less water than turfgrass, landscaping mulch can prevent erosion, and xeriscaping saves 50-70% on water bills. Native landscaping cuts pesticide use by 80%. Bird-friendly landscaping can increase bird populations 40%.

    There’s a lot there to unpack, and some incentive for just about anybody. Lawns can cost some real dough – the average family spends about $500 per year on landscaping services but that does not factor in time and energy spent by the average American taking care of their own lawn or yard, not to mention the amount of money spent on water, tools, and materials if one would do this work themselves. Switching to a lower maintenance yard can save money, and that money saved year after year after year is going to mean the kind of green you can really get enthusiastic about!

    If you are interested in being a part of the natural landscape and being involved in the wildlife of your area, then you’ve got all the motive in the world! Helping bugs and birds thrive, making your yard more habitable to everything (including YOU), and being able to enjoy the beauty of a cultivated but wild landscape that bursts with color and life. Sounds like a dream!

    Elements to include when replacing your lawn

    Flat and green. Low-maintenance ground covers can be drought-tolerant, foot traffic tolerant, require little mowing or none at all, and can still provide the blank canvas for activity that a lawn is typically sought out for. Families with children who want a large, open area to play in seem to gravitate toward flat groundcovers that still look healthy and feel comfortable on the bare foot, should the need arise.

    Photo by Ted GoldBerg on Pexels.com

    For low maintenance groundcovers, I would recommend the gardener to look into blue star creeper, Corsican mint, veronica, clover, or creeping thyme. These grow very low to the ground and require little to no maintenance, can be tolerant to foot traffic, and even have little blossoms that can be a pretty addition to a lawn which grasses do not provide. Preferences will decide which would be most suitable to your landscape and climate, as well as your personal taste in aesthetic. Mixing and matching could create a neat patchwork of different smells, textures, and appearances that would make your lawn even more interesting.

    Rocks. I think the strategic use of rocks in landscaping can add interesting texture and naturalistic aesthetics to the yard. But when they are used incorrectly, they can add a lot of headache and extra work. I have seen people spread rocks over the entire surface of their yard, acting as a mulch. The issue with this is that rocks make reworking the landscape much more difficult. If you need to access irrigation or replace older plants, you are in for quite the chore moving layers of rock whereas a true mulch is lightweight and easy to work with.

    Photo by Haneul Trac on Pexels.com

    Another issue with rock as a mulch is that it absorbs heat, often making your yard or garden noticeably hotter and more uncomfortable during the afternoon or early evening hours, when you are most likely to be in your yard or garden. Many people think that putting down weed barrier or landscaping cloth then covering it with rock will be a great way to prevent weeds and reduce their need to water. While this certainly does reduce the need to water, weed seeds will still accumulate in the nooks and crannies between rocks and will sprout on top of the weed barrier and grow well with relatively little material for their roots to grow in – I mean, these are weeds, there’s a reason they are hard to get rid of: they grow really well in just about anything! Then you will be forced to kneel down in the rock mulch (ouch) while it radiates its heat (oof) as you pick through layer after layer of rock to pull the weeds out (yikes).

    If your goal is to reduce weeds and watering, I would recommend filling your landscape with native plants and a deep mulch of some lightweight material. The native plants will not require much watering, if chosen for your climate, and the deep mulch will retain more moisture and reduce weeds while feeding the soil as it degrades.

    As for the proper use for rocks, I would recommend using them sparingly to outline beds, separate different slopes to prevent erosion, or to accent natural features. When used with the other elements listed here, they can provide a lot of different benefits to a varied and interesting garden.

    Native plants. Obviously, this was going to be mentioned several times in this post. The interest in lower maintenance or sustainable gardening is on the rise and native plants are the mainstay of these new gardens. They are naturally adapted to your environment and so require the conditions that are readily available in your area – they do not need extra care or extra labor to thrive. There are so many different types to choose from that the combinations are nearly endless. Flowering perennials are my favorite, as I love to watch them return in the spring to signal the end of another long winter, and then to follow their progress through the season. I love to see them grow tall, flower, attract insects and birds, and finally to fade and decorate the landscape once more in the fall. But you can also spread seeds of annuals in the spring and watch them burst into life.

    Photo by Aliaksei Semirski on Pexels.com

    You can grow just for greenery. You can choose your plants so that something is always in bloom throughout the year. You can attract specific types of wildlife if you do a little research to see what they like to eat or where they like to make their homes. Something will always grow in the garden, whether weed or flower, why not choose what grows and make it something useful, productive, and beautiful?

    Water features. This is a landscaping element that often gets left out of the garden plan. But if your goal is to attract all sorts of life to your garden, you’ll want some type of water feature. You can start fairly cheap with bird baths or basins or introduce a pump and some power to make flow. Building a shallow pond could provide the habitat for a frog’s entire lifecycle, or the breeding grounds for dragon flies, damsel flies, and a dozen other insects.

    Photo by Emir on Pexels.com
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    Photo by Liz Earl on Pexels.com

    Edible landscapes. Nowadays, I get caught up in the perennials and the habitat aspects of gardening but it wasn’t long ago that I focused almost entirely on productive edible gardening. For most people, when they hear gardening they think of vegetable gardens. I would love if one day I could have thousands of square feet for gardening fruits and vegetables but right now I content myself with what I can grow in my containers.

    Photo by Ingemund Sku00e5lnes on Pexels.com

    An edible garden doesn’t have to be your main source of food or even very serious, it can be a handful of heirloom tomato plants because you like the taste of fresh summer tomatoes, or pumpkins because you like to watch them vine. Many people have found joy in raising a vegetable garden and harvesting delicious food, along with raising chickens or goats in their yards too. Having an edible landscape is nice because it reminds you of your intimate link with nature. Food does not come from a shelf or a bag, it must be grown. Whatever one can do to increase their relationship with this process, it does something to help with mind and spirit.

    Trees in your landscape can reduce ambient temperatures and create a pleasant atmosphere while providing habitat for local birds and insect life. Mulch can increase soil moisture and lessen your water bill. Water features will attract all sorts of life from all around. But at the end of the day, make sure to provide a space and habitat for that one elusive creature that keeps the garden going year after year – you! Plan walkable paths, beautiful aesthetics, relaxing corners, and mobility-friendly plans that do not put a huge strain on your body. Raised beds can reduce your need to stoop or bend. The right tool can reduce your work by half and make it more enjoyable in the meantime. Make sure you can easily gain access to any part of the yard or garden that you would like to interact with or work on. And whatever you decide to do for your yard and garden, make sure it is something you care about and have a passion for, something that you are excited to see in the morning and tend to in the evenings.

    My yard is around 900 square feet. Because it is a rental, it is part lawn and part gravel. If it was my yard, I would plant two or three trees, some flowering shrubs, build ten or so raised beds for vegetables and then border the fence with all sorts of perennials. I would have a small pond for frogs, toads, insects, and birds. Maybe some bird feeders and houses for the odd robin that wants to make this their home. I like to imagine what a space could be and to imagine the changes I could make to the wildlife in the area, as well as to my own wellbeing. It would feel good to take a barren yard and to create a little oasis. These are the things I love, what kind of yards and gardens do you love? Make it your own!

  • Midsummer

    Growth is not the Goal

    We have arrived at the longest day of the year once again. With this and other astronomical events, I have always enjoyed a meditative pause on the passage of time, the slow evolution of the season, and the deepest expressions of nature that pour out of every corner of the landscape and become like recognizable features of a close friend. You can get to know them and see their moods and traits returning each year and you can celebrate them and love them. This year is no different. We celebrate the longest day, bask in the generous helping of summer light that we are given, and meditate on what this means in itself as well as what it means for the months to follow.

    As I look around the landscape, it is overflowing with lush, green foliage that felt almost impossible just four months ago. The longer days give themselves to an abundance of activity and you can see it in the faces of the people you pass in the street. We are all going somewhere, doing more and planning more, overwhelmed with the possibility a day holds which in winter was only a hope. Getting off of work in the dark does not really add to one’s motivation but when the sun is out until nearly nine o’clock, suddenly the day takes on so much added possibility, you are inclined to take advantage of the extra time. We may never think of it consciously but our internal clock, the wisdom of our bodies, remembers the cold and dark nights that last so long in December and January. It is urging us to explode with as much life as the landscape in which we find ourselves.

    It is important to stop and note this longest day, as it will soon recede into late summer evenings, and then the crisp days of fall and finally, like a rising tide, the winter will come again. On some level, we must remember how constraining the winter can be so that we can more fully enjoy this summer season. Here we stand on the precipice and then we begin our descent again. It is a time filled with meaning and passion, here for us to act upon if we wish.

    Nature provides us with many relevant metaphors for the living of our own lives and this season is no different. I looked around the garden the other day and realized an important truth about gardening and life in the midst of June: everything is overgrown and almost heavy with life and yet this pinnacle of light, the solstice, cannot be considered the end goal of all this abundant growth. It is almost as if this outpouring of growth is the construction of an intricate background which will decorate the stage on which the real activity will begin to play itself out. Growth is not the goal. Growth alone cannot be called fulfillment or purpose. Growth plays toward the fulfillment of some purpose outside of itself.

    Imagine a fruit tree which becomes dense with new branches and leaves in the spring and is thickly covered over with this life in midsummer. How ridiculous it would be to assume that this was the endgame of all its efforts. Of course, we can say, this is only really the beginning of its effort to set flower and fruit, to become full and heavy by late summer and fall, to strive toward that all-out expression called the harvest. The attainment of perfect expression for a flower is its open blossom, not the thicket of greenery it produces in late spring. All of its effort in unfurling its leaves is effort towards attainment beyond itself.

    Growth is not fulfillment. There is a distinct difference between growth in certain areas of your life and finding purpose and fruition in these areas. The difference can be seen in the separation of quantitative measures of success and qualitative measures of success. You may have a lot of money – this is quantitative success. But what are you able to do with it? This would be a qualitative answer. You find yourself overwhelmed with activity and surrounded by relationships but what meaning do they create, where are they going? You build muscle in the gym, maybe lose a certain amount of weight, you can lift XYZ number of pounds in deadlift or squat. But what do you do with your bodily strength and energy? Perhaps you build strength for its own sake but the purpose of strength can be found in some applied good, some purpose outside of itself.

    This midsummer, I wanted to meditate on the idea of measuring success qualitatively. We may be used to ascribing a numerical value to our successes because this is the easiest way to measure progress but our progress can also come in how we feel in our daily lives. We can progress in how much we believe in the effectiveness of our effort, how much we believe in our internal locus of control, essentially. The timid and unsure novice attains experience, mistakes, and finally the proof of their success. The evidence of their success may be quantitative but the fact that they proved to themselves that they were capable is a qualitative measure. We could measure our success by the level of independence we have created – perhaps we no longer rely on the day job and we can do more of the things we are truly passionate about.

    A huge achievement for many would be creating a life you do not want to escape from. This cannot easily be measured quantitatively, it is a quality of life we must find for ourselves. Doing the same things with much less fear and anxiety is a massive success but a success which is not as easily measured as money in the bank. Some people work tirelessly for tangible wealth while others work to be free from the people their circumstance has forced them to be around. Being able to live your life around the people you most want to spend your time with is a win. It means bliss and success.

    Often, we get entranced by convincing others we are doing well rather than pursuing the goal of actually doing well. Proving our success often inherently comes with quantitative measures, as that is the easiest thing for others to see and measure in someone else’s life. How many houses and cars do you own, how many vacations do you take, the list goes on. But the qualitative measures are personal, refined, and difficult to express to someone other than ourselves. Contentment, fulfillment, purpose, a commitment to life, a meaningful connection to others. These can be difficult to measure and difficult to display for others but if you have a trained eye you can recognize it right off.

    When you see someone truly living in their purpose, there is a hint of it in every move they make and every word they speak. They live comfortably in the world and in their skin without being affected by others or by circumstance. Their preternatural calm is infectious, their faith in themselves and their abilities dyes every moment with confidence. If you are attuned to this reality, you can see it. If you are not, you will be looking for some sign or quantity with which to measure their success and you will lose yourself to irrelevant calculations.

    This is not meant to discard quantitative measures entirely. This is not meant to dismiss growth in all areas of your life as unimportant. Because growth, in us as in the natural world, must precede the deeper expressions we can make of ourselves. As I mentioned earlier, the massive undertaking of growth in spring, at its height in midsummer, sets the stage for the fruition that takes place later. Wealth, strength, influence, connection – growth in these areas is an important prerequisite for qualitative success in other areas. Having resources means having more options, which means having the responsibility of impactful decisions. Having strength and energy means having the ability to do more for others and for yourself, it means developing a larger bandwidth for life, to show up for your relationships and community in ways you would not be able to if you had not developed such a capacity.

    The key is not to get caught up in quantitative measures for themselves. This is where shallow obsession with cash comes from. This is where the hyperfixation on GDP and economic growth comes from, separated from wellbeing and standard of living. Steroid abuse, diet trends, quick fix drugs, destructive mentalities tied to impersonal measures of success. The capacity for growth, turned back on itself rather than aimed at a higher purpose, becomes malignant and inhuman. The human world has gotten caught up in the sterile and numerical measures of life and, as such, no qualitative success can develop from it.

    On its surface, this may appear to be a strange lesson to learn from the longest day of the year. It feels necessary and relevant. Though we may not consider it, we are still deeply embedded in the ebb and flow of the seasons and the solar year, the movements of nature and its deepest lessons. It still informs our lives though we think we are separate, above it. Looking back to the shortest day, looking ahead to the dwindling light of fall and winter, we find ourselves on the precipice, bathed in light and potential. We take the time and the growth for granted, but we do not have to.

    Meditations and Practice

    Where in your life have you done well quantitatively? Net worth, athletic achievements, awards and accolades, number of projects completed? Now, what measures of qualitative success can you find? Which seem the most important to you and which would you like to cultivate over the next year, from this longest day to the next? How would you like to feel in the next year and what would you like your life, relationships, and work to look like?

    Practice the balance between quantity and quality. Try to make the same or more money (quantity) doing more meaningful work (quality). Try to spend more time (quantity) pursuing goals of connection, awareness, and authenticity (quality). Incorporate more projects or activities in your life which do not have a clear return or measure and see what qualities you can find in them or in yourself which you had not experienced before.

    Thanks for reading!

  • Masanobu Fukuoka

    Masanobu Fukuoka

    Spotlight on Goodwork

    One of the giants of the “Natural Farming” movement, as well as a proponent of a multitude of valuable nature-based ideas and philosophies, Masanobu Fukuoka embodies several elements which are common to the goodwork archetype.

    His dedication to his craft had him traveling the world, helping others implement his ideas, putting his philosophy down in writing, and working on his own farm until the ripe old age of 95. His ideas went so far beyond farming as to be considered a holistic view of the world – one in which humans would be developed in their capacity just as the natural systems Masanobu worked with, and not seen as inherently destructive or irrevocably flawed. Masanobu’s contributions are celebrated worldwide and I would like to shed a light on them today, as part of the continuing series of examples of goodwork.

    Born in Japan in 1913, Masanobu Fukuoka became educated in agricultural sciences, working in research in plant pathology. After a disillusionment with modern agricultural practices, he returned to his family farm to practice and experiment with new techniques in natural farming. His farm included citrus orchards as well as rice and barley. Unlike other farms in the area, the fields were not flooded for rice production. This was unusual at the time but Masanobu maintained that his no-till methods, paired with crop rotation and native biodiversity prevented the need for tilling, herbicide and pesticide usage, or even flooding the rice fields.

    In 1975, he published his most widely known book, “The One-Straw Revolution” – a book I would recommend to anyone interested in the ideas of natural farming or nature conservation efforts. It is a mixture of how-to guides, spiritual meditation, and philosophical musing over the relationship between human effort and natural ecosystems. There is a tone of hopeful endurance as well as a melancholic exasperation with the state of the world, and even the human spirit. This book provides much fodder for thinking on the continued integration of human and natural systems.

    After his book became popular, around 1979, Fukuoka travelled to assist in the work of returning productive as well as natural areas to equilibrium. This work included planting efforts as well as a series of lectures given on the benefits of his methods. He travelled to the U.S., Europe, Somalia, Ethiopia, Thailand, Tanzania, the Philippines, Greece, and China to mention only a few areas he touched.

    I find a lot of valuable ideas and inspiration in Masanobu’s work and efforts and I continually return to him as a person of intrigue and emulation. I like to imagine carrying the spirit of his work forward, and to embody his philosophy of nature in all aspects of my own life and work. I would love to work in a purposeful manner up to the age of 95, spreading seeds and inspiring people to return to balance. Included in this article are just a few meditations on the ideas Masanobu frequently discussed.

    The Integration of Humans and Nature

    “The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

    This is an idea that has intrigued me for several years. It seems that every animal in nature finds a home, a niche, and a way of being that is intertwined with all the systems of their surroundings. Yet we have so many degrees of separation from natural systems in our modern age. Our homes, our technology, our way of life is at odds with other organisms, ecosystems, and processes that we often find it necessary to completely separate the two ideas. There is ‘our world’ and then, when we find it necessary or interesting, we ‘return’ to nature.

    Masanobu Fukuoka’s philosophy entailed people becoming “natural people” again. That is to say, aligning their desires and behavior with natural ways of life. Natural farming, and the cultivation of nature, would not be possible unless people became natural people. As long as people viewed themselves as separate from nature, their behavior would lead them down the path of opposition and conflict with nature.

    This separation becomes strikingly apparent when observed through the lens of modern agriculture. In this system, we are dealing in the cultivation of natural organisms – crops, livestock – but we have also gone to great lengths to separate the organism from everything else.

    In a natural landscape, each organism is interconnected with every other organism in their ecosystem. Their inputs are someone else’s outputs; their outputs are someone else’s inputs. But in modern agricultural practices, a pig is not even a pig, it is a unit of output, and it is subsequently separated from any other organism through a system of constraints – fences, concrete, confinement houses.

    Repeat this for cows, chickens, even crops. No other organism is welcome in the field of a monoculture, and I doubt they’d be met with anything other than hostility if they popped up. To the monoculture, any other plant is considered a weed.

    This philosophy leads me to wonder what it would look like if humans were completely integrated into their natural setting like other animals. We would make our homes in our niche, part of nature and contributing to nature. We would find or cultivate our food as part of nature and contributing to nature.

    What advantages and disadvantages would this bring? Would it even be possible? Is this an all-or-nothing approach or could we still have technological intervention for disease and injury, some semblance of comfort? Is natural living necessarily hard scrabble living? Is there something in us that makes us act at odds with natural systems, and what type of spiritual evolution would have to take place to reconcile ourselves to the natural world? These are the questions that Masanobu’s work helps to explore; not always to answer, but to explore.

    The Do-Nothing Philosophy

    “There is no one so great as the one who does not try to accomplish anything.”

    Fukuoka’s philosophy was called shizen nōhō. Occasionally, it is translated as ‘Do-Nothing’ farming but this is partially a misnomer, in my opinion. More accurately, it could be called ‘Do Nothing Unnecessary’ farming, as there is still plenty to do in this philosophy.

    Fukuoka observed that in modern agricultural practices, people intervened in natural processes when they felt they noticed some inefficiency or disorder. This initial intervention then caused other things to take effect, which required another intervention. Each intervention caused another side effect which was not planned and which required more work, technology, and intervention to correct it. The process seemingly had no end.

    When Fukuoka began to practice his natural farming methods, he would often respond to issues by asking himself where he could stop doing something. By cutting back on interventions in natural processes, he found he could make less unnecessary work for himself and let nature accomplish the same ends using its own processes, its own effort. The question of what not to do would, in theory, lead to a final practice where nothing unnecessary is done and the farmer has become a ‘natural person’ whose existence is in harmony with nature’s process.

    Let’s take modern agriculture as an example once again. The soil is treated like any other part of this ongoing project – sterilized, standardized, stripped of its life and structure through pesticides, herbicides, and tilling. Then it is desperately tended to via systems of watering and fertilizing. This is a strange setup which seems to contradict its own ends and which makes more work than is necessary. First, the natural processes are minimized, interrupted, or halted entirely because they appear to be inconvenient or counterproductive, then they are mimicked by great interventions of machinery and technology.

    I think Fukuoka would ask, “Wouldn’t it be better not to intervene in the first place, and save yourself the work of all these later measures?” Instead of plowing and tilling, robbing the soil of its structure and ability to retain water, and then going back later to irrigate and manage watering systems, why not forego the plowing and the tilling in the first place?

    Biodiversity and Balance

    “The only sensible approach to disease and insect control, I think, is to grow sturdy crops in a healthy environment.”

    The way to begin handing these tasks back to nature was, according to Fukuoka, through biodiversity and finding balance. Nature regulates itself through biodiversity, with different populations of organisms growing and shrinking in relation to hundreds and thousands of others. It is not about ‘achieving’ a state of perfect balance but about allowing processes to work themselves out to find their own stasis. Water will find its own level through the process of waves, movement; nature’s movement is the same.

    One of Fukuoka’s initial efforts to return his farm to natural balance was to sow different varieties of seeds and to begin growing many different varieties of crops. When there is a single crop, all in one location, the pests that use this plant as a host find themselves in heaven. But if you begin to separate these plants with other plants, suddenly that same pest does not have the same chance to spread. This is what is meant when we say that nature regulates itself through biodiversity. The greater the mixture of plants and animals, the less likely it will be that explosions of pests and disease will occur.

    Economics – Advantages and Disadvantages

    The main criticism that is put at the feet of natural farming is that it may not be as economically viable as modern agriculture. It either does not have the same potential for output or it is not cost effective. When we look at it through the eyes of mechanized systems and economies of scale, this is correct. A confinement chicken house is economically successful because all its chickens are grown to be more or less identical – all the better for standardized machinery to process them. And each operation limits itself to one product, as having multiple products increases the cost of processing, requiring different types of machinery and technology for different outputs. You cannot pick strawberries with the same mechanisms with which you pick corn, for example.

    But the smallholding does not work in the same way that the large operation works, economically speaking. Its advantages are different than the advantages of a large operation. This is normal. As long as the smallholding does not try to act like a large operation, it can still be successful. By being exactly what it is and capitalizing on its unique advantages, it can still be economically viable.

    In this example, the smallholding may not produce as much as the large operation but it also does not have the same machinery costs and overhead costs typical of a large operation. Also, if the smallholding focuses on custom work or retail level sales direct-to-customer, they can increase the amount they get for their products. If they would attempt to achieve the same economies of scale as the large producer, they would take on far too many costs to make their product worthwhile. But keeping costs low and fostering relationships directly with their buyers, they can move in an economically viable way.

    I think this method applies to work of other types as well, especially craftwork. Those who do not match pure output still have much quality and value to offer. Often, that is their advantage: they still offer something human, and of high quality, that the large producers cannot mimic in their quest for standardization.

    Joel Salatin’s book, “You Can Farm” is also helpful in expounding on this idea. He recommends having a main enterprise and cultivating several side enterprises that are complementary in nature. (This also is in line with the biodiversity idea, applying it even to income streams.)

    Meaningful Work and Connection

    This brings me to the last lesson, one of connection and humanity. All too often, people decry their work as something that takes them away from life, away from meaningful experience, and provides only an uncomfortable alienation from themselves and from others. In reading about Masanobu Fukuoka’s life and contributions to his field (pun intended), you get the idea that genuine connection and meaningful work are massive forces that still live in us, just under the surface. This man travelled the world because people wanted to meet with him, learn his ways, and connect with him on a personal level over their shared interest and passion.

    There will be more posts in the future about the relationship between economics and ecology, as well as work in general, because I find it an interesting path full of questions. But at the very least, we should be able to recognize that we do not have to choose between a good income or meaningful work. We can have both. There is still opportunity to engage in meaningful work in such a way that we can provide massive value to others and receive value through income in our own lives.

    If Fukuoka’s example has taught us anything, it is that perhaps we have to do a lot less than we think we do in order to attain this goal. Whether your work is with plants or people, crafts or commodities, we can always take a closer look to understand how our decisions and behaviors can better align with nature. Through our work, we can transform ourselves and our situations so that we can become better, more thoughtful, more productive, less harmful. We can become natural people.

    For anyone interested in learning more about Masanobu Fukuoka and his natural farming outlook, I would highly recommend reading “The One-Straw Revolution” or watching interviews and videos available about Fukuoka and his longtime student, Larry Korn. Listening to them and reading their work inspires and educates.

    Meditations and Musings

    Is there some part of your work you could stop doing? Are there systems or interventions in place that you could get rid of to get to a more efficient and natural work? What do you do that could be considered unnecessary?

    What could you do to become a more ‘natural’ person? What role does your work play in developing yourself as a person, physically, spiritually, or mentally? What would your life look like if you made this natural work a part of your daily practice?

    Where could you cultivate diversity in your life to make yourself or your income more resilient, more productive, or more natural? What could you incorporate into your life that would complement your main goals, and help you in your effort?

  • Making the Leap

    Making the Leap

    Finding and pursuing your goodwork

    Many people will begin the journey of their life’s work doing something entirely irrelevant to their nature, their goals, and perhaps even their character. I started work at seventeen at my local movie theater, working the concessions counter part-time on evenings and weekends. From what I can recall, I was paid a low wage to get berated by the general public because they made the mistake of ordering movie theater nachos and hotdogs. This was my first encounter with work. And it was not great. It was also where I grew my appreciation for employees in the service industry, a place where brave hearts fear to tread.

    Throughout my twenties, I worked a handful of odd jobs. I traveled both Europe and the U.S. working on small farms in exchange for room and board. I worked in a bookstore, as a house painter, as a plumber. I worked one shift as an overnight shelf stocker at my local grocery store before deciding it wasn’t for me. In each job, I felt keenly that I did not belong. Each time I tried something that did not work out, I felt a lot like I was being rejected by the world, like I would never belong anywhere. There was always going to be this friction or resistance when I wanted to pursue some aim.

    What’s worse, I looked around and some people were actually passionate about their work. They didn’t drag themselves to their jobs, they didn’t complain about the ins and outs of their profession. They liked to work. And it wasn’t an isolated incident! You could see people working in restaurants, gyms, bookstores, offices, landscaping companies, and they actually wanted to be there. You could see it right off, it was something in their eyes.

    I wanted to have what they had, I wanted to do something that I felt connected to, that I could be engaged in. I wanted to make something that had utility, that provided value. I wanted to make something that could provide joy, guidance, and beauty.

    In my mid-twenties, I got a job in assembly manufacturing, gluing one part to another part and screwing wires into circuit boards. It wasn’t what I wanted but it was something. It was in this period of my life that I started to change how things were going to be. I had changed my attitude toward my path. I wasn’t going to quit at the first chance and I wasn’t going to let the negative aspects dissuade me from continuing on.

    As I was soldering circuits at work one day, I had my first mental glimpse into the future that I wanted to create. Since then, I have realized the various pitfalls common to this process and I have discovered some practices in mental outlook that have helped along the way.

    This, by no means, is to suggest I have attained success and prestige in the field of my goodwork but merely that I have found the path and have begun to understand the process. I hope the same for others. When travelers meet, they may talk about the places they have been and the experiences they have had there. They say things like, “Did you ever make it to Edinburgh? Me too, there was a little pub there I always liked.” And then maybe, “Oh yes, we went in late summer and the weather was nice but I returned some years later in March and it was much colder than I would have liked. But all the lines were short and the castles empty for us to enjoy alone.” That’s something along the lines of what I aim for here. Travelers meeting and exchanging notes.

    EFFICIENCY v. EFFECTIVENESS

    One of the first lessons you learn in any pursuit is that things do not go smoothly in the beginning. The beginning of any endeavor has us accruing endless costs and expenses and the few wins here and there can spur us on but certainly do not begin to cover costs, let alone provide for growth.

    When I began my various gardening projects, I wanted things to go smoothly and efficiently. Digging garden beds in the sun feels anything but smooth or efficient. But I would remember that the point of digging the beds was not to be efficient, as it only had to happen that one time. The point of these large time and labor costs was to be effective. To get it done and get the plants in the ground. So, it took several more afternoons than I had planned to get the soil prepared, and it took more than one trip to the hardware store for different tools and materials. The costs kept mounting and it destroyed my expectations of a smooth and inexpensive project. It didn’t matter. When the project was done, the garden was ready for the planting and I would never have to dig the beds out again.

    The same is true for other pursuits. School, for example, is not an efficient process but an effective one. It is more time consuming and more expensive than you plan on but the point is not to get to the end as quickly and efficiently as possible but to put the time and study in that is required for you to get your degree. Going through the effort to set up the assembly line takes the majority of the time and energy and then when it is running smoothly you can put your mind toward efficiency and productivity. You will not make a ton of money on your first few clients, or on your first transactions with a new client, because creating the new relationship is about effectiveness, not efficiency.

    Advice for this phase of your goodwork involves mostly mental rewiring. Because this phase does not involve the gratification of rewards but the collection of costs, it can be discouraging and frustrating. Try to adopt an attitude towards these challenges that reinforces your path – they are like milemarkers showing you the way. They may test your commitment, make you question your abilities, but they tell you that you are on the right path toward achievement.

    Try to separate your activities into projects and production. Projects are your high cost endeavors with no return in the short run. Production is highly rewarding and more efficient. If you make the mistake of thinking your project will be as efficient as your production, you may become unnecessarily discouraged and frustrated. Instead, take it for what it is. Keep the faith that this project will eventually lead to an increased capacity for whatever your goodwork is, and do the work with that in mind. High expectations and delusions of grandeur will burden your mind and your project and may turn into procrastination, overwhelm, and maybe even quitting.

    LOGORRHEA, THE ROLE OF PLANNING and ORDER

    Logorrhea is defined as the excessive use of words. The way I use it here, I am also including other logical forms like plans, dreams, expression, calculations, thoughts, and discourse. It is quite common that people will get trapped in a state of logorrhea when they go about beginning a project or task. They talk about doing it, they fantasize about it or the rewards they will get from it, they will read about it and watch videos about it, they will write out detailed plans and to-do lists about it, they will crunch the numbers about it. Going even further, they will chastise themselves for not doing it sooner or not doing it as good as someone else. They will hate the obstacles and focus their energy on them rather than their aim. They will look for recognition and accolades, they will search for reasons, answers, and reassurance. They will imagine the perfect circumstances, look for them, wait for them. But all of these things have one thing in common: none of them will replace actually doing the thing.

    To avoid this pitfall, try to keep your planning, accounting, and advertising in balance with actually doing the work, making the product, and pursuing action that brings substance. These planning activities should be limited to a small percentage of your time and the rest of your time should be used in working the plan and bringing it to fruition. There is always going to be a need for thorough plans and accurate accounting but the key is not to be carried away by the allure of purely abstract thought. You think, “Maybe if I change this around a little bit, I can make a few extra dollars per unit and then if I increase my sales by about ten percent a year it will compound to this amount after ten years and if I just capture one percent more of the business in the market I can make this much more money…” And soon enough you’ve done nothing but crunch numbers about goods and services that do not exist. You can’t eat a garden plan, so be sure to plant those tomatoes!

    Do not complain, do not explain. It is my impression that people engaged in work waste precious time and energy in two key areas – complaining about the work and explaining themselves. There is a time and place for the expression of these two things. If something is bringing about far too many complaints, maybe it is time to sit back and consider if there is a better approach. And explaining yourself to others will always be necessary in this world of navigating other people, until we become telepathic. But watch carefully that you do not give in to endless complaining that has no ideas for betterment – this is whining. And make sure you are not spending excessive time and energy explaining yourself to others, as this may build the habit of seeking validation from others rather than satisfaction in the results of your work.

    MAKING THE TRANSITION

    “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

    This cannot really be called advice but is actually an immutable law of nature. We have to focus on what we can do since the alternative is what we cannot do. We have to use what we have since it is impossible to use what we do not have. And while we may end up in different places and conditions throughout our journeys, we must recognize in each moment where we are in reality in order to make real progress. The grass is greener where you water it.

    People start their journeys toward their most meaningful work from all different backgrounds and positions. Some find a way to make it happen with relatively little education or support, these are entrepreneurs and business owners. Other lines of work like medicine or teaching require more educational inputs and involve a long process of improvement that is not as open to ‘overnight success’. I certainly don’t want to get surgery from someone who did not go to medical school and is just hustling for love of the game.

    Whether the journey to your work is long or short, it is common to start from a place that is far divorced from the path you’d like to be on. Personally, I have been working in assembly for several years now and am actively engaged in changing that path. I am not sure what that will look like over the next few years but I know I will continue to work to get closer to doing something I care about, which helps others, and in which I can become a true master.

    Patience is a difficult concept to grasp at times. The moment you think you have achieved patience, you start looking around for your reward… oops! That’s the point of patience! Keep going. There will never be a moment when you outgrow the need for patience. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to how long your journey will last but let’s just say, for the sake of ease, that it will last you the rest of your life. While you are on the way, make sure you are becoming the type of person you would like to be, someone you can be proud of. The daily work does a little work on us, too, reforming us like clay over months and years.

    Begin your journey where you are, have the humility to recognize and respect your starting point. It is easy to get used to the movie montage transformation, the zero-to-hero training sequence, the overhaul makeover, and the end credits rolling at the perfectly written conclusion. Our lives are not like that. They are littered with beginnings and endings of many different phases, interests, and personalities. This could be said to be the reality of goodwork. There is no end to goodwork because there is no moment in your life in which you would ever be content to live without connection, value, or creativity.

    CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

    The silver lining to the fact that you must start where you are is that you can also improve much faster than you think you can. As long as you are continuing to be honest with yourself about your limits, your resources, and your starting point, you can begin to make small gains in skills and resources that will compound over time.

    A pitfall to avoid: assuming that your progress will always look the same as it does now, when you are beginning your pursuit. If it takes someone six months to save one thousand dollars, they despair that it will take them decades to get to where they want to be. But they do not account for the process of continuous improvement that they will undergo as they keep to their journey. In this example, they may begin to earn more as a result of a job change, they may find unnecessary expenses to cut from their budget, and the money they have saved begins to earn interest. They thought it would take them several decades to get to their goal but it ends up happening at an accelerated rate.

    The prerequisite for continuous improvement is to commit to life and engage with the work. If you are constantly looking outside of yourself for happiness and fulfillment, you forfeit the ability to create your own. You will not be able to improve on something you refuse to work with, so you must be dedicated to this practice.

    It may be discouraging to begin with little gains here and there. Certainly, these first improvements will seem unremarkable or insignificant. You may even feel embarrassed that things are going so slow, or that you are not making the leaps and bounds you envisioned for yourself. Consistency above all else will win you continuous improvement.

    Conclusion

    So, you start where you are. It is anything but perfect. The goals you wish to attain are specks in the distance. The point is to begin. Not to begin perfectly, not to fulfill your potential all at once, but just to get started. This is one of those pesky lessons you have to keep learning all your life. To be honest, I am not good at it. I have always wanted to be the prodigy, the natural, the chosen one. I want to pick things up quickly and without effort. That is a habit we have to work on, to learn that effort and work are glorious things to undertake and not an inconvenience from which we should escape.

    Thank you for reading!

  • Vectors, Niches, and the Art of Placemaking

    Vectors, Niches, and the Art of Placemaking

    If we conjure up the image of a plain, manicured lawn, chances are there is no room for anything else. There are typically no other bugs, animals, or plants that can coexist within a perfectly manicured lawn. Only that one type of grass, that one length of each blade, perhaps even a sign that says to ‘keep off’. In fact, there are concerted efforts to rid the lawn of anything that may inconvenience it or compete with it. Millions of dollars are spent each year on chemicals the average user is entirely ignorant of, being poured out on lawns, driveways, and sidewalks to spare us the sight of the rogue dandelion, to kill the insects, to preserve that uniform mat of green lawn.

    Now, if we conjure up an image of a healthy and abundant garden, we reckon with an entirely different world. In order for it to be abundant and productive, we imagine there to be many different plants, many different insects, and a general happening of all with all, everything mingling together in some complex system we can scarcely understand. The beginner gardener starts out by learning that there are beneficial and harmful insects and they are careful not to be so enthusiastic about killing the one that the other is destroyed in the process. The intermediate gardener learns that there are even certain plants one can cultivate in order to attract the beneficial insects or repel the harmful insects. The advanced gardener knows that if they do their job well in organizing and arranging the garden for its health, then each will care for each and a certain balance will be attained that does not require their constant oversight or intervention.

    The two images I have just described are examples of the difference in creating niches or encouraging ‘vectors’ of abundance. This is similar to the idea of placemaking in designing public spaces. These ideas, arguably, are mainstays of the best practices of goodwork.

    A niche is that crevice, nook, or cranny of the world in which something can find its natural position. In ecological terms, a niche is a condition or environment in which a plant or animal thrives, encouraged to express its true nature. A vector is a directional magnitude that implies transmission, communication, or aim. I think of a niche as a corner of the world and a vector as all the possibilities that can pour out of this little corner.

    A niche is a foothold, from which something can launch into full expression. And placemaking, in this instance related to goodwork and to gardening, is about cultivating many places where a niche could support life and where life could then support vectors of abundance.

    Joel Salatin, a renowned farmer using regenerative agricultural methods, would refer to this practice as “Honoring the pigness of the pig, the cowness of the cow, or the chickenness of the chicken.” Each plant or animal has a nature which it most easily expresses in its particular niche. To honor that plant or animal is to create a niche that allows it to express its true nature.

    Joel Salatin in front of his flock at Polyface Farms.

    The pig is a forager; it roots around with its snout in the dirt for morsels of food. The cow is a grazing ungulate, partial to herd mobbing on a diet of grasses and forbs. A chicken is an omnivorous scavenger, picking and pecking through seeds, grain, insects, and grasses. So, what happens when you constrain the pig, cow, or chicken to a tiny enclosure, with no access to soil or sunshine, feed it a diet far-removed from its natural inclinations, and otherwise expect it to produce abundantly? Well, you get two things, the image of the modern farming method and a slurry of disease, waste mismanagement, and low-quality food. One practice is about creating places, honoring a niche, and being a part of abundance. The other is about wanting abundance, mimicking abundance, but otherwise skipping the work necessary to be a part of its true nature.

    This practice does not concern only natural environments or the components of animals and plants. It also has a great deal to do with how people relate to each other through the physical space they inhabit. Master sushi chef, Jiro Ono, is a great example of a craftsman with an eye for cultivating a place. His restaurant is like a niche in this way, which caters to a specific aim and sensation that he wants to communicate to his guests. It is a small and humble-looking restaurant, with only ten seats at a long bar-top. The lights are warm and low. The sparse design does not feel minimal or bare but sleek, clean, and harmonious. With a smaller seating arrangement, Jiro is free to cater to the guests based on his observations; do they eat with their left or right hand, what size sushi will they eat in a given time in order to keep the pace of the meal. And while the elegant simplicity of his place is felt deeply as graceful and easy, it is in reality built on many hours of disciplined work, attention to detail, and an attitude of mastery that makes Jiro desire to continuously improve his process over the years, even as he continued to work into his 80s, 90s, and now, having turned 100.

    Jiro Ono, in the film ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’

    There are also countless ways to make a place or niche for people in one’s daily life. Your own home could be an example of a niche which you form yourself day after day with the habits you keep and the ideals you hold dear. Making a place for yourself can be an art, a practice. You can make it open and welcoming to others as well. Those who come to visit may marvel at some unspeakable quality your home has that feels inviting, warm, and encourages connection. It does not have to be filled to the brim with shiny knickknacks or gadgets, it does not have to be decked out with expensive furnishings and decorations. It merely has to have that perfected quality of a place that is made with intention and a mind for harmony.

    Even something as plain as a conversation can be made into a place for stopping off, a place for resting, a place for an encouraging word or a supportive idea. How desperate people are in their daily lives for some sense of belonging or support that a conversation alone may be memorable enough to last them the year! Think of the last time you received a compliment, how long that impression has lasted. People can make places for each other in easy ways that make the process of routine actions more bearable and even beautiful. Letting someone go ahead of you in line, handing out compliments that come to mind, assisting someone in some dreaded chore. No task is so low that it cannot serve as a matter for our attention.

    A farmer who raises cows does not actually raise the cow but tries to create an environment in which the cow cannot help but grow healthfully. A therapist does not give the patient right conduct, good thoughts, or healing but provides an environment of communication in which all of these things are allowed to develop of their own accord. Feed the birds, the worms, the bees and your garden will feed you with ease.

    There is a subtle and indirect logic to this aspect of work, as opposed to the image of effort, skill, and discipline that is often conjured in the mind when thinking of achievement. There is a place for effort, skill, and discipline; these are indispensable things. But the indirect work of preparing a place may take you further, and with greater ease, than the repetitive and frustrated attempts to create something from willpower alone.

    How to make a place, a niche.

    Begin by organizing your corner of the world. This may sound bland or ineffectual. But you must remember that there are many people who seek to better the world by focusing on the weeds in other people’s gardens. This gets us nowhere. The people who succeed in making a place are those who do what they can, where they are. They plant a row of flowers, a native bush, they forego weed-killer or fertilizers. They help their neighbors rather than trying to save the city. That is oftentimes more heroic. This wisdom is handed down by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and practicing stoic. He noted how the insects put in order their little corners of the universe and kept the world going by doing the work that was natural to them. Our work may be drudgery sometimes; it may be joyful other times. But it is our work, and we continue to do it because we are helping to put together our corner of the universe.

    Design it with a visitor in mind. When you set out to create a place for something or someone, you must keep them in mind in order to make it inviting. You wouldn’t try to make a place for a mouse the same as you would for a cat. Mice like little crumbs, dark corners, and quiet. Cats like cozy sunbeams, high perches. Cats like mice. We must take into consideration the nature of those we wish to see thrive and go about creating a place that is best for them. The cows like tall pastures of polyculture forage, not dry dirt fields covered in dung. Chickens like to scratch and peck, chase each other a little bit. You learn to fall back in love with observation. The situation you create will invite the most suitable visitors, not necessarily the visitors you want. So, you must become adept at observing what your most desired visitors want, dream of, cherish, are fearful of.

    Be comfortable with silence. Silence in all its forms can create tension. Unanswered questions, untaken paths, an averted gaze. But constant noise and effort do not make the place, they simply make it uninhabitable. When you first make a niche, it may go unanswered for some time. You must keep the practice of cultivating this niche until your visitors find it. Practice silence and people will begin to tell you about themselves. The bees will come to the garden when the wind stops blowing. The water clears, the haze lifts, the situation becomes clear. Practice silence enough and you may even hear yourself again. Here’s a lesson from the worms: do your work in quiet obscurity and you will reform the earth.

    Accept it, Expect more from it. It is okay that things are the way they are right now. It is also okay that you want to make them better. Both of these things can be negotiated in time and patience. If you do not accept how things are right now, you will never be able to function in your work. If a sculptor did not accept the hardness of the stone for what it was, they would never be able to work with it. Part of accepting something is accepting that it may be disappointing, or not all that it could be. It is a beautiful thing that someone can take a neglected or disordered thing and make it into a productive or useful thing. That is why we can accept something and also expect more from it.

    Optimize the Unremarkable. We are drawn to herculean efforts, dramatic transformations, and fast turnaround times. When we do not get big returns, we are inclined to feel disappointed. This can also be called the lesson of compound interest. Small, incremental changes over time compound to create great change while short bursts of effort can leave us empty and fatigued. Kaizen, or continuous improvement, is a business term stemming from Japanese industries following World War Two, and it can be dissected as an entire philosophy unto itself. More on that later. But the point is to abandon the monumental task and focus on optimizing the unremarkable tasks. Of work, of life. How much better off would we be if we optimized our daily routine to get the best sleep we could? And the gardener who optimizes their soil health will find themselves far better off than those who optimize for straight rows.

    Conclusion

    There are many examples of places we can make for each other. The morning routine, the lunch date, the afternoon walk. The kitchen, the living room, the garden. The restaurant, the gym, the office. Each place should be regarded as something to be honored and treasured, as part of our goodwork and part of our daily lives. We can make it clean, make it easy to work in, make it pleasurable to share with each other. When you are finished exercising at the gym, you clean off the equipment and on some level you can say ‘thank you’ to that space for helping to make you stronger. When you are done with your dinner, you can thank your server and stack your plates neatly to be bussed. The clear delineations of ‘jobs’ don’t really matter here as much as the process of our goodwork, which belongs to the spaces we inhabit and not necessarily to specific people. Creating a place, cultivating a niche for yourself or for others, is about deciding what kind of world you want to live in. Would you like to live in a cleaner world, in a nicer world, in a more abundant world, in a more efficient world, in a pleasurable world? Good, me too. And we can do that by being clean, being nice, cultivating abundance, and bringing pleasure to people’s lives. In any manner of way, we can choose to do this each day.

  • Leonardo Da Vinci

    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Spotlight on Goodwork

    I have recently had the pleasure of exploring the life, work, and creative mind of Leonardo Da Vinci, mainly through Walter Isaacson’s biography which I highly recommend and also through Leonardo’s collected writings from his notebooks. Originally, I had wanted to know more about Leonardo because of a vague attraction to the idea of a natural genius, the Renaissance man, as well as the mystery that surrounded him as a figure. Before reading into him, I only knew of a handful of his most famous artworks and very little of his actual life. I will not attempt to reproduce his biography here, though I recommend to anyone who is interested to research him more at your convenience. What I will attempt to put down here is a list of lessons I had gleaned from the man and his life while reading about his endeavors, his beliefs, and his character. I feel these lessons relevant to goodwork and to daily life in general.

    Lesson One – genius is comprised of boundless curiosity.

    Leonardo da Vinci’s Recto The skeleton.

    More:

    Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

    Leonardo was born as an illegitimate son to a prominent notary. Because his father did not recognize him as legitimate, he was not expected to follow him in his trade as a notary. This was quite fortunate, as it gave Leonardo the freedom to indulge in many other interests and paths throughout his life. Perhaps beginning in this way, without a prescribed path, forced him to consider every path as possible. As a young man he explored all of these possibilities with an insatiable curiosity, always attracted to questions of natural science and never satisfied with routine information.

    A famously quoted entry in one of his to-do lists was, “Describe the tongue of a woodpecker.” This gives us some insight into the level of detail with which he viewed the mundane, the things which are often taken for granted. Leonardo obsessively studied the nature of water to the point of hyperfixation. His notebook is filled with elaborate drawings of water in various states of motion and he attempted to learn more about the mechanics of water over the course of his life, pursuing many inquiries into the budding science of hydraulics. Einstein, similarly, said that his genius was due mostly to the fact that he “stayed with problems longer.” Not content with initial conclusions or the dismissive attitude of convention, the very curious explore details as far as they will lead them – in Einstein’s case it led him into the subatomic realm. In Leonardo’s case, it led him into a deep exploration of the natural world. They often went further than others in an attempt to understand and as a result they could not easily be understood by others. But in each case, Einstein’s as well as Leonardo’s, it was a great deal owing to curiosity that their genius was so developed and so famous.

    Lesson Two – the desire to be useful.

    Leonardo wrote in his journal, “The power of my limbs will fail me before the power of being useful.” Such a simple sounding and humble desire, to continue to be of use as long as one can. I would hardly have expected this to come from a genius of the Renaissance, who I had assumed would be intellectual and concerned with theory, hypotheticals, and fantastical daydreaming. And of course, Leonard was well versed in those things. But he also had this drive to bring his creative ideas into reality in order to make things better, even by small degrees.

    An entertainer and aspiring engineer, he wanted to bring his intense curiosity and exploration of the natural world back into the world of enjoyment, usefulness, entertainment, and fundamental humanity. This desire is actually one of the main tenets of goodwork as a philosophy, to be of use whenever one can. There is also much to say about what this does with one’s relationship with work and with their community. Often, we can lose ourselves in self-referential and abstract work which we do not see completed to its end. In my experience in manufacturing, I have only ever been part of the assembly and construction of certain products, and only in my limited involvement. Feeling immense joy for the completion of a meaningful project and seeing its benefits conveyed to its recipient, the community, or the world is an unfamiliar territory for a lot of modern jobs. That being said, I do believe there are many opportunities to cultivate a sensation of accomplishment and satisfaction and pursue it as part of the purpose of our lives. Not merely to fulfill our own wishes and ambitions but to aspire to be as useful as we can be to others. And not to be contented with one narrow skill or activity which may be of value, but to explore many facets of ourselves that could have valued and useful applications.

    Lesson Three – the multitudes of humanity; jack of all trades, master of none… or one… or two… or…

    Leonardo Da Vinci was a polymath, a person of varied and comprehensive learning and skill. As a young man, he was apprenticed to a local Florentine artisan named Verrocchio. Verrocchio was himself a painter, sculptor, and goldsmith, which was not unusual for the time. Many workshops involved interdisciplinary work undertaken by trained artisans who found it natural to combine semi-related pursuits under one roof. As such, Leonardo was trained in the use of many different tools and skills, not only as a painter. This work would benefit him greatly later in life when he found it necessary to build some ingenious tools and machines.

    In the modern age, starting before the Industrial Revolution, people found it wonderfully beneficial to specialize in their profession and to pursue specialization to a greater and greater degree. This can accomplish great economic feats and makes for a highly effective and productive civilization. But the drawbacks, seen in extreme specialization, are a kind of a dehumanizing effect in which one becomes just another cog in a mechanized framework. For some focused and dedicated people, specialization is the name of the game and they may become decorated surgeons of one specific organ, deeply passionate intellectuals involved in one area of academics, or the many outliers who distinguish themselves in physical, spiritual, or economic development which others cannot fathom. And for still many others, the development of multiple interests, skills, passions, and accomplishments feels more human, dynamic, and nuanced.

    Having multiple interests can, in fact, help the development of each of them more than if someone were to develop a myopic view of their pursuit in a vacuum. Leonardo was one of the first people to investigate human anatomy. He recorded his investigations in many intricate and hauntingly beautiful drawings of the musculature, the skeleton, the brain and nervous system, the heart and circulatory system. His science informed his arts and his arts informed his science. Combining different pursuits may shake something loose which helps your development in an unexpected way. One might catch a glimpse at the underlying principles of existence, just by looking at the world from different viewpoints, first as a painter, then a sculptor, then a scientist, then an engineer. Maybe not those things in particular, but in any case, the multitudes of interests you find it necessary to follow in your life. Whether we explore many paths in our lives or dedicate ourselves to a singular ambition, we can do our best work when we are familiar with many different tools.

    Lesson Four – Commitment to life, commitment to mastery.

    The irascible genius who neglects the obligations of his daily life in order to achieve greatness is such a popular story in today’s world that it is practically a cliché. Stories of unfettered obsession and of surpassing one’s limitations excite the mind. In Leonardo’s case, his genius was certainly, at times, of the isolating type. But his story is not one of self-sacrifice for the sake of his work but a story of an extremely disciplined and curious man who did his best to muddle through life while entertaining his drive for mastery.

    Leonardo wrote in his notebook, “A life profitably employed affords a happy death.” He did not mean profitably employed as merely earning a lot of money throughout one’s life but rather being continuously engaged in work that is beneficial, ambitious, beautiful, and meaningful. At the same time as he was engaged in this work, Leonardo always struggled with his attention to detail and his desire to achieve perfection. This led him to leave many works incomplete, such as St. Jerome in the Desert or the Adoration of the Magi. His aim for perfection also led him to spend so long on commissions that payments were refused or fought over and entire artworks abandoned.

    Throughout his life, Leonardo seemed to struggle with a commitment to life and a commitment to mastery. At times, his commitment to perfection prevented him from fulfilling some of those aims that may have been extremely useful and meaningful. At other times, the need to be pragmatic and tactful may have denied him the pleasure of pursuing the perfection he envisioned, spurring him forward. I am sure many of us can relate to this paradox. The obligations and practicality of daily life have us dreaming of a far-off perfection. Our dreams of perfection prevent us from the meaningful work which we could cultivate right here in our daily life. It is a hard lesson that one must learn the hard way, again and again: to balance the commitment we make to life with the commitment we make to mastery.

    Lesson Five – The Magic Square; Collaboration and Individual Achievement.

    One of Leonardo’s ‘hobbies’ was to do mathematical exercises in his notebooks. There are some geometrical calculations that are ornate and useful, though there are some mathematicians that say that Leonardo did not necessarily provide anything new or valuable to the field of mathematics. It was simply another part of his endless curiosity and his exploration of the world in which he found himself.

    One particular mathematical exercise he played with over the years is called a ‘magic square’. These magic squares are grids of numbers that add up to the same value whether you are adding the columns, rows, or the main diagonals. (An example is provided in the image above). I do not think the symbolic and metaphorical quality of these exercises were lost on Leonardo, who enjoyed finding harmonies in a complex system comprised of individual parts.

    In fact, the artisan workshops of that age were very much like a magic square, in that collaboration between many individual artists created a harmony that far exceeded any particular individual’s talent. While the products of these workshops were collaborative efforts, it was also important that each individual express themselves exactly as they were, or else the ‘magic square’ would be ruined.

    There are many art pieces of magic squares in Europe that are engraved with the phrase “Whatever thou art, act well thy part.” Whatever you are, act well your part. Paired with this image of mathematical harmony, it is a powerful message about the individual being valued, developed, and attaining natural expression, all while collaborating with others in a harmonious way to create something larger than each of them.

    There are many extreme views that say that only collective realities exist, or only individuals exist, but they lose the nuance of humanity which Leonardo was well aware of and practiced every day; individual expression is just as much a part of humanity as is connection, communication, and harmony. Imagine if Leonardo’s talent was stifled in order to exalt the artists’ collective workshop. Imagine if Leonardo had never made these valuable connections, or never collaborated with other prominent artists of the time. In either case, we would have been denied the beautiful and transcendent works of a genius, of the archetypal Renaissance man.

    Conclusion

    After doing a deep dive into the facts of Leonardo’s life, I have come away with many valuable lessons. While this post is by no means intended as a biography of the man himself, I wanted to put down a handful of these lessons in good work (and goodwork!). For anyone who would like an actual biography of Leonardo, I would recommend reading Walter Isaacson’s ‘Leonardo Da Vinci’ as it is so thorough and thought-provoking as well as being an enjoyable read. If you are interested in hearing some of the man’s thoughts themselves, I would recommend checking out a book on his collected works, typically snippets taken from his many codices.

    As for me, I want to begin following my curiosity more, I want to dedicate myself to mastery and idealism, I want to embrace and cultivate ideas of the fantastical and purely creative imagination, I want to engage in meaningful and useful work each day, and find a workshop of likeminded artisans to share my passion with. For Leonardo!

  • Chaos Gardening

    Chaos Gardening

    C – Choose and collect your plants. This is a fairly straightforward step. It doesn’t have to be a specific type, it doesn’t have to be native plants (although that would be cool). The first consideration that you should make is what you like and therefore what you want popping up in your garden. Explore different colors and different heights, different textures. Try a mix of perennials that come back year after year and annuals that you start each season. Try to line up blooming windows to keep something always blooming in your garden throughout the year.

    I started out gardening with an affinity towards vegetables and that was basically it. It wasn’t until later I started to appreciate annuals like marigolds because of what they did for my vegetable garden. After that, I started to explore perennials. I enjoyed them because I didn’t have to start them every year. They became a big part of celebrating spring and watching the garden come back to life after hard winters. When the sedum would start creeping back out of the soil or the yarrow’s green leaves first pressed their way past the mulch, it fills you with joy that the winter is ending and the garden is returning.

    Over the years, I have also collected the seed heads from any attractive flowers I find blooming in our neighborhood. We take walks down an alleyway nearby and it is filled with Feverfew and Flax. Pinching the seeds off, I spread them in my garden and wait for them to grow. The added benefit of collecting seeds from local plants is that you know they grow well in your area with minimum care.

    Feverfew, in the daisy family. We collected seeds this year and spread them in our garden.

    We are currently growing Yarrow, Echinacea, Sedum, Mint, Anise Hyssop, Salvia, Bachelor’s Button, Knautia, Lamb’s Ear and Black Eyed Susans in our container garden. Our Chamomile, Prairie Sunflower, and Borage are such aggressive self-seeders that they are almost like perennials – I hardly ever have to plant any new ones. I enjoy annuals like Aster, Marigold, and Red Clover. The clover is nice because it grows prolifically but does not crowd the other plants, keeping low and sending up little red flowers here and there during the early summer. If grown densely enough, it can act as a living mulch or groundcover to help retain more moisture.

    H – Host plants. Once I began to appreciate flowering perennials, I took an interest in choosing native plants to our area in order to attract local pollinators and beneficial insects. Looking online, I could find native perennials as well as a list of insects that use these plants as hosts. This means they use the plants during a significant portion of their lifecycle, not only for food. I began to plant native grasses, as well as hardy groundcovers – some without flowers and some with flowers.

    Praying mantis. There is a native variety and an introduced variety.

    Once I took an interest in pollinators and beneficial insects, my gardening style changed dramatically. I was no longer interested in vegetables alone, isolated from everything else. I was no longer interested in straight lines and rows or arrangements. This is perhaps the moment ‘chaos gardening’ took hold in me. I began to buy wildflower seeds and spread them in every nook and crevice I could find. This year we are beginning a Goodwork project in cultivating milkweed plants.

    Milkweed is the host plant and main food source of the monarch butterfly. The prairie sunflower that grows so aggressively in our area attracts the beautiful yellow goldfinch that pecks at the little sunflower seeds in the early mornings. Our grasses attract dragonflies. The chamomile is a favorite of the hoverflies and the bumblebees. This post is not about insects, though they’d be elated if your garden went native!

    Milkweed seeds collected in the fall. Milkweed requires a cold period before germination.

    A – Abandon lawns. This one may ruffle some feathers. I understand the utility of a manicured lawn and I understand there is no doing away with lawns completely. But if I can inspire someone to turn a portion of their labor-intensive yard into a chaos garden, host to half a dozen or more species of beneficial insects and wildlife, I would be glad.

    In talking to the adults of my life who must care for their lawn, either as required by an HOA or out of a sense of duty and order, I have found that lawns tend to be expensive nuisances. They tend to become patchy during periods of inconsistent care, they require regular mowing during the summer months which either costs time and effort or money in outsourcing this chore. Water isn’t cheap and a good portion of it is wasted on lawns due to evaporation or runoff. Products for fertilization or the killing of weeds can become costly – as well as killing the beneficial biology in both the soil and surrounding areas. Not to mention the various mechanical equipment requirements needed – lawnmower, aerator, de-thatcher etc.

    Why not save your back and your budget by switching all or a portion of your lawn to low-maintenance, low-tech chaos gardening methods? Maybe keep the front lawn for appearances and turn the back into a tapestry of colors and textures bursting with all sorts of characters. Spare your back, save some cash, replace your grass.

    Purple blooms and a little green alien visitor,

    O – Organized disorder. That is the name of the game. The more straight lines and clean areas, the less life a garden is going to support. Gardening is dirty, it can be downright disorganized and ugly at times. That does not mean it is an unhealthy garden. The chaos garden doesn’t have different areas for different types of plants. Old, decaying material is not cleaned up right away. That’s okay, more space for bugs to overwinter and food for worms as it breaks down. It is all part of the plan – maybe not your plan as the gardener, but the garden’s plan as a unified and healthy entity.

    Your chaotic garden should also suit your needs and interests, too –after all, you are the gardener and you should enjoy gardening. One should account for seating areas, paths for easy access to every part of your garden, and the occasional marker in order to remember what is growing where. I love it when I can walk people through my garden and rattle off the names of all the plants I have going. Not sure if they care but I like it! And when you have a chaotic garden, it sometimes helps to have a little signage here and there to identify the main players.

    S – Sprawl and Serendipity. Happy surprises. It brings such joy to see things start to thrive in your garden. You can feel a sense of pride that you have created such a fertile corner of the world, that things grow naturally and without much assistance. A sense of creativity pervades this practice – you almost feel like you were the one to create this world, or at least that you had a hand in it, and this makes you feel close to divine.

    Black eyed susans. They attracted a whole bunch of different insects!

    This sense of mastery and creation is also overshadowed, from time to time, by the many little surprises that take place in the garden which you know you had no hand in. It may be a ‘volunteer’ sprout that comes up unexpectedly in the corner. We get volunteer radishes occasionally, due to some neglect in previous years that allowed several radishes to set seeds. Or maybe it’s a bundle of insect eggs you find beneath a leaf. An earthworm, a ladybug, a praying mantis. We found a handful of baby toads in our garden one year, using our thai red chili plants as protective cover from the hungry birds. It always made our day to see them hopping from plant to plant as we watered.

    As your chaos garden begins to thrive, you may notice yourself collecting the seed heads and spreading seed haphazardly. You may take an unprecedented amount of cuttings that all begin to explode with life. Don’t worry, there is always room in the garden for more plants. The garden has a special way of expanding each year. Let its sprawl slowly take over your life.

    A bee on our Black eyed susans.

    John Muir noted that if you pulled something in Nature, you would see that it was attached to everything else. These happy surprises in the garden remind us that we are part of nature, too, and witnessing that fact each day can do wonders for your mood and outlook. Wander the garden with your hands clasped behind your back and your eyes calmly fixed on each plant as you pass by. Smile quietly and take it all in as you meander through. When you slow down, when you pay attention, you get to be part of some truly remarkable events. Events so small and so quick, it is almost as if they hadn’t happened. Yes that is a line from Watchmen, that doesn’t make it any less poignant.

    Anyway, here are some photos for your scrolling pleasure.

  • What is Goodwork?

    What is Goodwork?

    My grandfather and great grandfather working on their family farm.

    Work is how we reconcile ourselves to our worlds, our surroundings, and to each other. Work is a natural process that unfolds in people as well as in other aspects of nature throughout all of time.

    As such, we should probably deem it worthy of some respect and attention, right? Yet a Gallup pole shows that, along with dissatisfaction, workers also report high rates of disengagement and unhappiness.

    60% of people reported being emotionally detached at work and 19% as being miserable.

    50% of workers reported feeling stressed at their jobs on a daily basis, 41% as being worried, 22% as sad, and 18% angry. 33% reported feeling engaged.

    Something is amiss if so many people report being unsatisfied with their work lives. People typically have working lives that span a period of forty years – age 25 to age 65, roughly. For those of us who started working in our teen years, that window of time is even longer. Would anyone want to spend that time feeling disengaged and unhappy rather than being engaged with meaningful work and productive behavior? So where is the disconnect, and what do we do to remedy these issues?

    Goodwork is Natural

    There is a misunderstanding about work, stemming from the definition we use to categorize work in the human sphere of activity. But if we look at the natural world for examples of work, we find it as common as the work we are inclined to do as people. The beaver goes about cutting logs and making dams. It is their home, and it is fundamental to their nature as beavers. In order to create it they must do good work.

    This is the same as with the bird’s nest, the dung beetle’s dung, the dens of any number of forest critters. In order to connect themselves to their world, they each must do their work. Even the worm, the greatest little workman the world has ever known, creates a layer of soil fertile enough for the rest of life to function in abundance, and they do this work unassumingly beneath our feet, content to churn through the dirt in obscurity. The worm’s work is part of his existence, it is woven into the fiber of his being, and it builds the world which we stand on.

    Composting worms are introduced to their worm bin.

    “If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed music, as Shakespeare wrote poetry.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

    Frequently, I have heard the lament that “Humans are the only animals that have to work.” And while I understand the underlying sentiment and the frustration that goes along with it, I would say that all animals must work in order to live. It is only that the work of the animals is hardly recognizable to us as work because it is so engrained in their nature. When we see a bird collecting worms or making a nest, we do not say to ourselves, “Look at that robin, hard at work.”

    Our goodwork should resemble something like this. It should be so tightly woven into our nature that onlookers should be curious as to whether or not it is actually work at all. Our work should not be something we ‘go to’ but something that comes from us. I have never liked the term ‘work-life balance’ and would instead like to strive for ‘work-life integration’, in which my work and my life are harmoniously joined together rather than demanding portions of myself be doled out equally.

    Goodwork Involves the Whole Person

    Part of the frustration in the work that humans have come to do is that it has become highly specialized, fragmented, and noncreative. For example, I had a highly specialized job once packing medical materials. I stood on one spot by a conveyor belt and would place one alcohol swab in the plastic pack as it passed by my station. That is all I did for eight hours a day.

    By fragmented and noncreative, I simply mean that the work is separated from any satisfaction that could be earned from an end product. It does not satisfy our need for creativity because nothing ever comes to fruition under our watch in these deadend jobs, we only contribute our small part and then clock out.

    In an ideal goodwork, one would find a path toward personal growth and self development. This would be part of the process that Carl Jung called ‘individuation’, or becoming yourself. Our work reflects this pattern, and if we are allowed to be creative, and to follow our work to the satisfaction of its end result, we can more earnestly develop our unique purpose.

    Some specialization always takes place but it keeps in line with the development of skill, craft, and engagement rather than disengagement or fragmented roles. I was tempted to say ‘repetition’ as an aspect of highly specialized work but I find that goodwork can be equally repetitive, though this may occur in a way that is satisfying rather than demoralizing.

    Our jobs have also become much more sedentary as they have become more about information and processes that demand we be more cerebral. This has led to an unsurprising decline in health. Our bodies and minds are most healthy when they are deeply involved in movement and engagement.

    Digging new garden beds in a field taken over by weeds.

    We are at our best when we are kept active in body, mind, and soul. Finding our goodwork means finding something that contributes to our mental and physical health as we attend to our duties. When I am attending to my farm and garden chores, I am using the muscles of my legs, back, shoulders. I get good exercise hefting feed bags or digging garden beds. My mind is engaged in planning projects, schedules, and organizing resources to fulfill the needs of my customers. These are just simple examples but one can see how such work can be fulfilling and engaging rather than stifling or overly monotonous.

    Goodwork is Peaceful, Voluntary, and Contented

    In this way, goodwork does not resemble the modern ‘hustle culture’ that you see online. Hustle culture asks you to just grind and hustle no matter the idea, the method, or the outcome. This kind of senseless frenzy may sound appealing at first but it is soon found to be exhausting, self-defeating, and empty. If you do not care what you are hustling for, what will you care when you achieve it? Don’t get me wrong, I believe in working hard, in self-discipline, and pursuing and achieving goals. But the way of the hustle is typically smoke-in-mirrors, empty promises, and multi-level marketing schemes that sell a dream rather than provide tangible value.

    Goodwork, then, sets itself apart from hustle philosophies and aligns itself more with conscientious, consistent work that builds upon itself until it compounds into something valuable and sustainable, providing meaningful work and wealth for generations rather than a flash in the pan windfall that the grind promises.

    Those involved in pursuing their goodwork are able to look their customers in the eye when it comes to upholding quality and consistency and these people often want to engage with their client base or community in long term relationships. Steady gain paired with consistent quality, all made possible by the principles outlined here, mean strong and resilient businesses and communities founded on mutual trust.

    When I say peaceful, I mean goodwork lacks much of the self-imposed stress that follows from meaningless grind and hustle culture allure. When I say voluntary, I mean customers know exactly what they are getting and from whom they are getting it, and the producers know exactly what they are producing and go to great lengths to be the best to offer their product. When I say contented, I do not mean complacent. I mean that the work is not filled with a desperate dash for validation or recognition but is allowed to unfold with the dedication necessary for a long-lasting enterprise worthy of respect. If you have aspirations of becoming the biggest, you may not be the best when you get there. If you aspire to be the best, you may become bigger than you ever thought possible. When you get there you will be able to stand by your systems with pride and confidence.

    Goodwork is About Connection

    As someone who has worked in many different roles and in different trades, I believe that our work is important and can be approached in a positive and healthy way, regardless of what we may be led to believe. I want to share my work with the world and I want the world to share its work with me. If I could be so bold, I would love to help others find their goodwork and help them to put their corner of the universe in order.

    “No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.” – Carl Jung

    Like nodes in a network, we connect and spread the information we need to grow in every way. The information I seek to discuss and share through this medium is not new or unique but it is my duty to pass along all useful experience to my network.

    My goodwork is Goodwork. Through this blog and other written works going forward, I want to discuss relationships with work, wealth, and nature. I am not an expert in any of these areas. These writings are about musings, discussion, and progress. Perhaps more than its fair share of daydreaming. I draw on the wisdom and practicality of dozens, if not hundreds, of people that came before me and are much more articulate and qualified than I am. The areas I enjoy exploring – gardening, psychology, soil science, history, economics, bugs, personal finance – have been around much longer than I have. I have no illusions of adding any remarkable insights into these things but wish to provide a field guide in order to explore them more easily. I want to synthesize the widespread information that others have made the effort to pass along. I hope I can present this information in a way that each person finds something relevant to themselves and their life’s journey.

  • Good Work Wastes Not

    Good Work Wastes Not

    Composting worms hard at work after a long winter.

    Poop is king. This may make me sound insane but once you get involved in farming and gardening, you really learn to love poop. Big ol’ piles of manure are like gold to me now. I fancy myself a collector of poop, a veritable poop connoisseur, if you will. Right now, I am actively collecting chicken poop as well as worm poop for amending the soil in our garden. Recently, I traded three dozen eggs for a trailer full of composted horse manure.

    Gardeners and farmers are not really in the business of growing plants or animals but in growing soil. From the soil comes all the abundance we are looking for so we must look to growing the highest quality soil we can if we are to accomplish our aims. Poop is the way.

    Okay, I’ll stop saying poop so much. Let’s call it “waste.” But what is waste, and how do we classify it as such when looking at the inputs and outputs of a system? Other than manure, what other types of “waste” can be made use of? Is the waste really waste if we can find some value in it?

    Let’s take a look at common waste streams as an example. In the U.S., it is estimated that 120-130 billion pounds of food goes to waste per year. From consumer and retail sources, this waste goes directly into landfills. There are a number of reasons for this food to be considered waste – it sits around too long and falls outside of its ‘best consumed by’ lifespan, it is post-consumption material that people would not consider worth saving, or it is deemed unacceptable for consumption by producers, wholesalers, and retailers and must be disposed of. No matter the reason, the core principle of this waste stream is: it falls outside of the circle of value to people. It is not considered as having value to people so it is not considered as having value, period.

    One of our garden beds, amended with composted horse manure we traded for eggs.

    The typical laying hen may eat approximately 1 to 2 pounds of scraps per week. Mine may eat much more than that, they are like little pigs with wings! Composting worms may eat approximately half their weight in scraps per day. Black soldier flies, another popular feeder insect, can eat about twice their body weight per day as larvae. And what are these critters eating? Food “waste” that humans have considered inedible.

    All three of the above-mentioned critters can eat fruit peels and cores, rotten and spoiled vegetables and post-process vegetable scraps. The chickens can typically pick through the leftovers of an old meal for the tasty morsels they really love, leaving the things they don’t like for the compost heap. Worms can eat coffee grounds and composted manure, as well. Black soldier flies eat ANYTHING you throw at them other than carbonaceous material (paper, cardboard, wood bedding, etc.)

    This means our flock of forty chickens can eat between two and four thousand pounds of food scraps per year. Our worm bins can process about the same amount of food scraps per year, depending on how their numbers fluctuate throughout the warm and cold seasons. The black soldier fly system is in its infancy but as it begins to rival the scale of our worm bins, it will consume roughly the same amount as the chickens and compost worms. That means about six thousand pounds of food scraps – material that nobody wants, material that people are paying to take to a hole in the ground – are turned into valuable resources. Feeder insects and farm-fresh eggs. This is the closest I’ve ever come to getting “something for nothing.”

    These old shoes were covered in plenty of poop! And my pants, and shirts and… all of it, really.

    And then we return to poop. I know, I have to say poop a bunch more. We got rid of the food scraps by putting it through these livestock and insect systems but what do we do now with all this s**t ?! Remember how I mentioned the farmer and gardener being a grower of soil? The worm poop, the soldier fly poop, and the chicken poop all make fantastic composted manure material that we can use for growing the soil. Anything they can’t eat is processed in a compost pile by billions of microbes. It’s almost as if this system was developed over millennia as a means of managing a multitude of waste materials created by diverse groups of flora and fauna.

    In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Every output created by one system is picked up by another system and used as fuel. Flocks of birds follow behind roving herds of ungulates, picking through their manure for fly larvae. The worms eat whatever is left over of the grass nobody munched on and the droppings they left behind. The soil keeps growing thicker and more fertile year after year. It is a closed system.

    It is only when we consider the human system in isolation to other systems that we get waste streams we don’t know what to do with. If we consider something without value, then it must have no value. But many people in various fields, driven by the desire to take advantage of these unappreciated and underappreciated materials, have brought them back into the fold of the human system. The more we do this, mimicking nature’s methods of “zero-waste”, the more value we can derive from human systems without creating resource mismanagement and untenable waste streams. What would a zero-waste world look like? What systems could create this, and what incentives would drive us to create the necessary processes? How would it reform the systems we have come to take for granted, and how would the institutions and systems of humanity be changed in order to achieve this level of organization?

    Many might think of business and waste as going hand-in-hand. Businesses create waste. Perhaps businesses are thought of as wasteful, in general. Here is where my experience in “lean manufacturing” comes into play. In the world of manufacturing, the old ways are being seen as ineffectual, unsafe, and downright inefficient. Made manifest in the principles put down by The Toyota Way, the philosophy behind manufacturing has changed in order to both respect the individual person and to continuously improve systems to lower the levels of waste present. Why? Because respected individuals are much more productive and lower waste means higher profitability.

    I would highly recommend looking into this philosophy and the systems associated with it. I may write more on these topics later, as well, as I feel they align with several principles inherent in the tenets of goodwork.

    Whenever I have need of visiting a landfill, I am somewhat overwhelmed and disheartened. They are feats of engineering and problem-solving, to be sure, but the implications of the systems that must produce these as a necessary tool are staggering. The amount of trash creates an image of post-apocalyptic wastelands. How nice it would be if we developed systems to render these pockets of sequestered garbage unnecessary. I am also not so naïve as to think that this will happen anytime soon. But we focus on what we can control and we make continuous improvement. If each family owned half a dozen chickens and a worm bin, that would be a great start! If neighborhood compost heaps became the norm alongside their community garden counterparts, even better. One step towards a happier, healthier world.

    Coming down from my soapbox daydreaming, I return to our daily work that we must do — our goodwork. I can talk about getting rid of XYZ waste stream and having ourselves a local food and gardening frenzy all day but what really matters is how this relates to the work we are doing now, today. Is there a waste stream in your work that you find inconvenient, unsightly, or high cost? Is there a waste stream in your personal life that may be draining valuable time, energy, or money? We take advantage of our food waste in order to feed our chickens, insects, and gardens, but maybe you take advantage of yours to cut down on expenses, save some time that you could spend with your loved ones, or give you more energy throughout the day to tackle the tasks of daily life.

    Whatever you find in your journey towards a more efficient, fulfilling life, I hope you keep going, keep getting better, and keep doing your goodwork.

  • Abundance is Natural

    Lessons from My Chickens Series

    When we started gardening, we harvested maybe two or three pounds of produce our first year. We were so proud of our shriveled, little radishes and our fistful of basil. Last year, we managed to produce in excess of three hundred pounds of produce as well as collected thousands of eggs from our chickens. We could not believe how simple it had been. I won’t say easy because, at times, it was some of the most tedious and grueling work I could have chosen to do. But after caring for the chickens into their adulthood, the eggs just kept on coming! Day after day after day, the chickens did their goodwork and laid egg after egg. In the later part of the summer when most of the vegetables were ready to harvest, we were drowning in good, quality food we had grown ourselves. It felt like printing our own money. We realized that this should not have been surprising at all. Nature is abundant and abundance is natural.

    I think there is a tendency for us to look at our work from the standpoint of pure effort. I built this house, I grew this food, I fixed this motor, I achieved this, I made that. When it comes to gardening and other pursuits that are more intimately related to nature, you may eventually realize something. That you never really grow anything.

    That may sound strange, but it is true. I don’t grow my tomatoes. The tomato plants grow themselves. I can’t grow squash or basil or peppers, only the plants know how to do that. I may put them in the ground and water them occasionally but the plant knows what it needs to do and does it even without my supervision. It is the same with the chickens. I may bring them feed but they are the ones turning their feed into eggs. I come along and collect when it’s time.

    Nature is inherently abundant. We simply arrange things to allow for nature to do what nature does best, which is produce things in abundance.

    This flies in the face of some preconceived notions I had about living this life. I thought the effort I was putting in was translating into the things I received. When I stopped trying so hard, things kept going on producing without me. It didn’t have to be about struggle, effort, and exertion. I still worked hard and was diligent about completing my part in the process but I didn’t have to exhaust myself in trying to achieve these things. I set the stage and then let nature do its thing. I think our nature works along the same lines.

    By our nature, I simply mean becoming whatever you are and acting this process out every day. I think we have all been around people who are not doing the thing they were made for. They are frustrated and angry, which are surface level signs that they are most likely depressed and filled with the anxiety of something that has not been allowed to become itself. We have met with the mechanic who doesn’t want to be a mechanic. A striking difference between them and the mechanic who actually wants to be a mechanic, wouldn’t you agree? In the first case, they are annoyed to the point of rage by any obstacle or setback, they are short and impolite with their coworkers and customers, and they treat their tools and surroundings with disdain and contempt. Why? Because they do not want to be there, and every part of their daily reality reminds them of that.

    To the person who is naturally a mechanic, a setback is just that and nothing else. Something to get through and get over. But to the person who is already at the edge of their limits, engaged in something they would rather not do, any inconvenience becomes a reminder of their underlying disappointment.

    We each have a nature that cannot be denied. It can be worked with, improved, built upon, and developed but when an individual denies their nature they are in for a world of hurt. The introvert is not going to naturally be inclined to public speaking, an extrovert outdoorsman is not going to be inclined to solitary work in a dimly lit cubicle. That would be like trying to milk a chicken or pull eggs off a tomato plant. If we align ourselves with our nature and with the limits and properties of nature in general, we can achieve great things.

    When things are aligned with nature. then productivity becomes a pleasant process. In the garden, plants that are healthy, happy, and allowed to fully express their nature provide in abundance. I have never seen a tomato plant harassed into abundance, or a chicken starved into increased production. This is why every aspect must be respected in due course. Natural things are productive, and productivity is natural.

    It may not be as obvious in natural settings that there are exchanges being made and mutually beneficial situations being sought out but it is quite common to see these kinds of cost/benefit relationships cropping up in the natural world. They may not use money and factories but make no mistake, plants and animals profit from different resources that are available at different times and they make the use of these benefits in order to grow, adapt, and overcome the challenges of their unique situation.

    Someone’s goodwork may be making shoes, welding, carpentry, teaching, accounting, raising children, cutting hair, sweeping streets, stirring a pot of soup. I believe all work has in it a certain sacred duty that the individual can be a part of and be proud of. We are, each of us, putting in order our little corner of the universe.

    Finding our goodwork means finding positive relationships with work, with wealth, and with nature. Building a community that believes in the benefits, nuance, and the potential of doing good work. Opening discussions as to how we will improve our work going forward, how we will build a world we want to live in and not one we just put up with. This is what Goodwork is about.

    I wanted to share this idea in case there were potential farmers or gardeners who were dissuaded from this pursuit by the thought that the workload would slowly kill them. It is also applicable to anyone who wishes to pursue their own goodwork and fears the immensity of the tasks ahead of them. Look to your nature, and to Nature in general. Nature does almost all the work we claim to do and does it silently, at that. It demands no attention and achieves all its ends.

    “Nature does not hurry and yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu