What’s Your Goal?

We agree goals are important. We also agree that a written goal has a better chance of becoming reality. Finally, if we don’t have a goal, we agree with the following quote by Zig Ziglar.

A Holistic Goal

When we began our research into starting a beef herd, it didn’t take long before we were reading information from folks promoting and utilizing Holistic Planned Grazing. Along the way, Doug has completed a number of Holistic Management International Training courses. As you might expect, establishing a Holistic Goal is a critical first step and referred to in all of the courses.

We will not share our entire Holistic Goal in this blog post but we encourage you to do the difficult task of working through a goal setting process that works for you. Below we share some components of our holistic goal.

Holistic Context

Leading into a holistic goal, we first needed to establish the context within which we strive to operate our lives. Here is one of the key bullet points from our Holistic Context:

• Stewardship of resources
  • What does this mean?
    • We are part of God’s creation, called to be good stewards of ALL our resources. We try to follow God’s patterns or created order as expressed in nature and revealed through the Bible. We work as sub-creators within our farm’s ecological context.

Behaviors and Systems

Here is one of the important behaviors from our holistic goal that we need to do, over and over again:

• Be willing to investigate and try new things.
  • What does this mean?
    • We understand that we can never know the perfect way to steward our resources. In fact, as you learn more about Holistic Planned Grazing and the Holistic Decision Making Process, a key step is to ALWAYS “assume all decisions affecting nature are wrong”. We live in a fallen world and many of our decisions, applied to stewarding complex natural systems, will be wrong.

Future Vision

The Future Vision is the summary of your Holistic Goal. Here is one of the bullet points from our future vision. What we are working towards, what we are trying to create.

• We embrace diversity and complexity as a way to find balance and stability between all living creatures. We focus on health and life with respect for how death plays a role in this process. Our farm will mimic nature in an attempt to align with natural processes designed by our Creator. Increasing energy flow through our farm will raise all aspects of our operation.

What do we mean in the above definition of our Future Vision?

• We actually do not “create”, but being made in God’s image, we are creative and act as sub-creators.
• We know that the current creation is not what He called “good”.
  • The current state of our natural world has been “bent” rather than what it is supposed to be. (C.S. Lewis)
  • This makes what we see in nature all that more amazing AND it makes the future “creation restored” all that more unimaginable. (Johnathan Fisk, Echo)
• As we strive for our “ideal” farm, we cannot take the principle of “ideal” from nature, as there is no principle in nature. (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)
  • Since we cannot get the “ideal” farm by looking at nature, we must have our own vision or goal.
  • Work for what you want, have a definite vision. Do not manage against what you do not want (i.e. invasive species). (See also Alan Savory, Holistic Management.)
  • God has provided us the resources we need for our ideal farm.
  • We must be fond of this world, in order to change it. We must be fond of another world in order to have the vision to change it for the better.
  • Chesterton prefers to call this effort, managing toward what you want, as “REFORM”.
    • REFORM implies FORM, that we are trying to shape the world into, in a particular image, to make it something that we already see in our minds.
    • REFORM is a metaphor for reasonable and determined individuals, it means we see certain things out of shape and we mean to put it into shape.
    • The farm we are stewarding has a certain FORM and we are in the process of REFORMATION, working and managing for what we want, our Future Vision..
      • What do you want?
        • Chesterton says “My ideal at least is fixed; for it was fixed before the foundations of the world. My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be altered for it is called Eden.”
        • The Future Vision we list above is our attempt at forming a small slice of Eden, here on earth, as we see it.
          • We know Eden was destroyed during Noah’s flood and as noted above, this world is bent. We wait for the new Eden or Paradise, to fulfill our TRUE longing to walk again with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
          • Working in a fallen world makes our Future Vision flawed but it is the best we can do here on earth at this time. The Stewards that follow us may have a different vision based on the FORM that we leave behind.
          • The “order” we try to impose on natural systems during our REFORMATION must always submit to design that we don’t necessarily understand. (Joel Salatin, ACRES USA, Order vs. Wildness)
            • Here is where following Holistic Management steps makes good sense. We consider our decisions are wrong, monitor, and have an on going REVOLUTION as we work toward our goal.
            • We agree with Tony Malmberg’s post, and approach God’s Creation as Humble Stewards. We do not want to control nature, we simply apply influence.
              • Plan For What You Want > Apply Your Management To Influence Nature > Monitor Your Influence > REPLAN.

A creature is not a creator, and cannot be. There is only one Creation, and we are its members.

Wendell Berry – What Are People For?

Goals Should Be Measurable

How many times have you heard it said that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. We agree and as noted above, monitoring is part of our stewardship activities. A simple, but Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goal (BHAG – Dave Ramsey) is to see our average Soil Organic Matter (SOM) reach 8%. It takes a lot of energy flow for soils to store excess organic matter. Much of our pastures are currently around 3 to 4% but recent results of 5% SOM show that we are moving towards our goal.

We encourage you to put your goals on paper. Take the small part of this world that you have been entrusted to steward and influence it toward your vision of Eden here on earth.