QUALITY OF LIFE

Today was a day of cooking great batches of meals for Easter visitors to Coll and Tiree. My parents are visiting from abroad and they helped with all sorts of things – looking after children, chopping onions, recipe advice… In the void left by so much assistance, I got to thinking…

About why on earth we spend so much time on fairly low-earning projects.

Chatting to a fellow farmer’s wife yesterday, we contempated what makes a farm diversification worth pursuing. If you factor in the value of your time and the huge costs of freight – on and off the island – which affects everything from food production and butchery to house-building and capital investments of any kind, then there are precious few diversifications that are viable in a tiny community like this. Our discussion evolved to demonstrate that we both felt that quality of life was a key element in choosing business prospects.

And today was a perfect illustration. It may have taken me a whole day to slow-cook BBQ brisket and Beef in Ale, but the day also included:
a) a glorious (lingering) lunch with parents and kids in the bright sunshine (indoors!)
b) listening to my mother playing with my youngest and his great buddy
c) chatting to my parents and the children as I cooked
d) interspersing the whole slow-cook experience with walks outside with the lame dog/collecting eggs/ looking at the sea!

In our case, ‘quality of life’ has to include some element of believing in your work. Our decision to sell meat locally bucks the more logical, less time-consuming trend of selling at the mart and allowing some other farmer to fatten and slaughter. But we want to know what happens to our meat. We really don’t like to sell into a vacuum and not know what happens to our beasts. We want to control quality, prevent our animals travelling great distances and produce meat that people know has never set foot off the island until that very last moment. If it’s a bit of a palava to run a business on such a small scale, it’s worth it. We cover the extra costs, but we do not bring in much extra profit. But the sense of doing something we feel passionate about is worth far more than an extra few bob. It’s as much a part of ‘quality of life’ as gym membership might be – or holidays or beautiful clothes…

When we moved to Coll from London, it was in order to embrace a better quality of life. Rather than slaving away in an office, hoping some day to retire somewhere nice – why not move somewhere nice and work there instead? Cooking and selling proper home-made food from your own kitchen (instead of from an industrial processing unit) could never be recommended as a money-spinner. But as an element of good ‘quality of life’ – for me – it really works!