My wife and I are already learning a lot from Ian Mitchell-Innes. Today, he briefly talked about making a plan. Jessica and I haven’t developed a plan yet. However, the way Ian talked about making decisions was very interesting.
To start, you need to have a plan or goal of how you want your life to be and what you want to accomplish.
When making any decision you should ask yourself whether or not it will help you to reach your goals.
We, as human beings, are very good at thinking in a linear manner. When I do X, Y is the result. Linear. However, Ian brought up a very good point. He said “If you draw my blood and examine it, you know about my blood. However, you don’t know anything else about my body or me as a person. When in fact, there is much more to me than my blood.”
The “much more” part can be defined as a “whole.” There are wholes within wholes. The whole that you belong to might be the state of Nebraska. Within that whole is another whole, your county, and within that whole is your community, your farm, your house. You can go on and on. You also have animals and other critters that are apart of multiple wholes. Again, it comes back to “wholes within wholes.”
So, what do wholes have to do with making decisions? It comes down the fact that everything is connected. Whatever decision you make, it will affect another whole or wholes. Should you spray the herbicide? I don’t know. Carefully consider your goals and what you want to accomplish, the energy required to spray or not to spray and your financial situation. The herbicide will kill soil life. What is the dollar value of soil your soil life? How long and how many dollars will it take to replace the soil life if you do spray?
A lot of this subject is well defined and written about by Allan Savory. However, I’m trying to provide a more “boots on the ground” perspective for you as I continue to learn about Holistic Management with Ian.
Hope you enjoyed, take care!
