So we all need money, right? Cash flow, safety net, nest egg, what-have-you to get by in the world. The most rewarding work – building the website for the ranch and its various links on the web, moving the irrigation water, cleaning house, making a great dinner, building relationships with people – none of these are paid activities, but are more rewarding than the “9-5″ things we do in order to buy laundry soap and vegetables in winter (maybe we’ll have the greenhouse up by next winter and we can while away our earnings in other ways by this time next year.) This seems to me to be a disparity – a skewed set of values, maybe? Priorities? We do need to eat, and eating vegetables is a good thing… Should we all go back to the barter system? Should the grass we grow using the irrigation water be traded somehow for vegetables in the winter or laundry soap?
I have been thinking about this a lot lately because the job that pays my bills does not pay me through the summer months. (I’m a school bus contractor.) I have to either save my pennies for the rainy days from May to August or find seasonal or temporary work (no doubt not very rewarding) that pays enough to live. So, how do we live in this beautiful place, working in ways that are rewarding, and actually “make a living” without those external sources of income? That is the questions…not “why are we here?” or “what is life?” or “what happens when we die?” That is what we are all doing at the ranch trying to answer.
Tomorrow we’re headed to Clayton to spend some of my nest egg to buy a few new goats. We’ll have plenty of milk, cheese, butter, soap and goat kids for years to come for that purchase - but alas…no vegetables or laundry soap (unless I learn how to make goat milk laundry soap in a hurry.)
rainbowranch
Kelly
