Purpose VIII: Entrepreneurial Agriculturialist

(Another in our continuing series of "Let's Make a New Life", based on Craft the Life You Want: Creating a Blueprint for Your Future at artofmanliness.com. Today's exercise, based on prioritization of roles, is to define a purpose for each role).

Today's Purpose: Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist(and Gardener)

(From here, things start to get fun.)

I freely admit this is something of a made up role. It's based on a combination of concepts from Gene Logsdon, Masanobu Fukuoka, Joel Salatin and others. The concept is not that one is just a farmer or rancher or gardener or beekeeper, but that one approaches it in such a way with an innovative and business mindset, the way one would do any start-up. For my purposes, it also incorporates a concept of low impact sustainable agriculture - trying old practices in new ways.

It also meshes deeply with one of my heartfelt mission goals in life: To preserve The Ranch as much as possible, to make it a functioning (or functional) example of Entrepreneurial Agriculture, to preserve a piece of mountain wilderness which is sustaining and where one can still hear the voice of God amidst the wind through the trees.

Pretty heady stuff for a guy who, at the moment, manages three rabbits and a fairly small garden. At the same time, I would say that outside of Author, this is the role that sings to my heart the most in terms of life purpose.

The eulogy I'd like to hear? "TB was an enterpreneurial agriculturalist who sought to manage the land in such a way that it was preserved and it produced healthy and sustainable food. He passed a love of nature and growing/raising food to all those around him."

I confess I get somewhat excited reading that. I'm cognizant of the fact that it doesn't capture crop failure, or the hot sun and cold rain, or losing animals to the local predators, or the generally low wages we pay the people who we depend on to raise our food. But it touches something deep within me - something that my day by day pushing of paper cannot even hope to ever touch.