Homestead mailing list

["Lisa K.V. Perry" <lisakvperry AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 22:06:37 EDT, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:
> Getting here has been like tying a knot in your rope of days and saying to
> yourself that you will not slip back beyond that.  Like a barb working its
> way
> in, each small advance is safeguarded against going back.  And the
> inevitable result is that you get somewhere.

Like what you've said here, thank you.

Another thing that put us on our way was adopting the mode of, as they say
> in Gaelic "beag is beag" (little by little).  The road needs a well defined
> drainage ditch on one side where the road is steep.  I put a shovel and
> mattock there and every time I pass, I dig two more feet, then quit and go
> about what I was going to do.  A great many "big" projects around here are
> like that.


In Japanese, the term is "kaizen" and it means "change for the better" or
"improvement."  Yesterday I found a book to read entitled One Small Step Can
Change Your Life:  The Kaizen Way by Robert Mauer.  The publisher says:  The
book demonstrates how small, gradual changes can have great consequences and
how gradual, subtle steps can eventually lead to worthwhile goals.

I now have a new way to function.  I tend to think you have to get the job
done in one day or two and stick with it until it's done.  If not, then for
some reason you have failed at some level.  This is ridiculous. Reading
about kaizen was illuminating, then the clansgian post was an "of course!"
followed by a dope slap.

Everyone speaks of homesteading as a process, but I've thought homesteaders
have an ultra-productive gene that I lack.  My paternal grandparents were
farmers, should have already learned this lesson.

Then I recalled reading the Nearing's books, visiting their homestead in
Maine, and how they lived:  they worked on their farm for four hours before
lunch, had lunch, then spent the next four hours doing what they wanted
(reading, hobbies).

Lisa