Tiny Sustainable Life

You may be familiar with the phrase “Perfection is the Enemy of Good Enough”. The Mad Farmer’s father, the Mad Welder, was often heard to say “If you don’t have time to do it right, you will be finding time to do it over” (the first thing I ever added to the Wisdom Nugget Toolbox). In all fairness the Mad Farmer’s dad aka the Mad Welder was also often heard saying things like “not there, move that light to your other right”, “where is my hammer?” and “what the “H-E double hockey sticks (you know the real word) do you think you are doing” and the ever popular, “hold down the brake pedal” (while he was working on the carburetor). So, some of the real pearls did often fall between the cracks while innocents cowered and offenders were taught the life lessons that form the foundation of character.

Anyway, the Mad Farmer has discovered a phrase that will not be joining the Wisdom Nugget Toolbox is “I’ll Fix That Later”. “I’ll Fix That Later” is the enemy of Good Enough, Near Enough, Probably Good Enough and all of their cousins and extended kin, without even bothering to mention Perfection. Last fall at the Tiny Homestead we had a couple of really sad trees that were growing in our easement (what the Australian’s call “the Parking Strip”). In Kansas, at least in Topeka, the Department of Making You Sad gets upset if you remove trees from the easement. It’s technically land that the homeowner owns, is responsible for maintaining and pays taxes on but the city has the right to do anything they like there and the homeowner is not allowed to make major changes without city approval. Pretty sure it’s things like this that are driving the Mad Farmer straight into Voluntaryism (but clearly that’s a post for another day).

The trees were a Sweet Gum, also know as “The Terrible Monster Tree that Distributes Small Spiky Balls of Death that Can Kill, Wound or Seriously Annoy When Expelled at High Speed From the Whirling Blades of The Mower”, and a diseased Maple that had been struggling since we purchased the property and was never going to get better. It was suggested by someone that the Farmer call the City Department of Making You Sad about Trees and see if the trees could be removed. In possibly the most surreal sequence of events in the Farmers life, while he was on the phone with the City Department in charge of Tree Sadness requesting that someone come out and look at the trees that were impeding homestead progress Miss Mercy relayed that a city vehicle had just pulled up in front of the homestead and a city worker exited said vehicle with a clipboard and started looking at the aforementioned trees. After thanking the Tree Department of Sadness for the prompt response the Mad Farmer and Miss Mercy went out to talk to the city employee.

The city employee told us he happened to be in the neighborhood when the call came over the radio so he stopped by. Still super surreal. Even more surreal was that the employee agreed with the assessment of the diseased Maple and the imminent danger posed by the Death Ball Tree and told us the Department of Sad Trees would be out to make these Trees Super Sad by removing them. And, in less than a couple of weeks, a large City Truck and several support vehicles arrived on site, workers swarmed and the trees came down and disappeared. So what does this all have to do with Perfection, Good Enough or I’ll Fix That Later? Well, once the Parking Strip trees came down the only obstruction to garden sun and happiness at the homestead was a sickly elm that was also facing the street but was on homestead property, not the Parking Strip, so the Mad Farmer was allowed to remove it if he wished, and he did wish.

So a sunny afternoon, a chainsaw, some well-placed cuts and one not as well placed and the elm tree was no longer an obstruction and instead was in many log-shaped pieces and lots of branches and limbs. Because the Department of Making You Sad does apparently care about things like piles of log-like items in the front of the homestead (and because random strangers kept coming up and asking the Farmer “Do you want those?”), the Farmer tossed everything over the homestead fence. Intending to “Fix That Later”. This is where the Farmer learned that “Fix That Later” is the Enemy of Everything. The Farmer didn’t fix it later. The rains came, the Winter came, the snows fell and everything stayed in piles, against the backside of the fence. Then Spring came, the wettest that Farmer remembers (not that his memory is that great), but also the wettest many other people could remember. The unfinished pond filled up, the rains continued, then, for the first time in years – an actual Spring.

Growing things covered over the piles of limbs, brush and logs that had been thrown over the fence. Birds bringing in strange seeds that grew into vines, stickleburrs, thorny random weeds and cover crops gone berserk. And then the sunshine came out intermittently, the plant life flourished and got higher, denser and more out-of-control. Briefly it looked planned and “meadowy”. Then it looked like something your neighbors would complain about to the Department of Making You Sad, but because it was hidden from prying eyes, no complaints. The only other person who could see the forest primeval attempting to take over the honestead was Miss Mercy. The good news is Miss Mercy is super cool and only mentioned things were getting out-of-control occasionally. The bad news is, it was a mess. So Miss Mercy took a road trip to catch up with her life-long best friend (maybe she will guest blog about that trip someday) and the Mad Farmer did his level best to get the out-of-control meadow under control. The Farmer made some progress, but not nearly enough. Thus was hammered home the lesson that “Fix It Later” doesn’t happen, and, when it doesn’t it makes a mess.

The moral of this story is that people are human and human systems aren’t consistent (Paul Wheaton has a spot-on theory about this). People say that Perfection is the Enemy of Good-Enough because if you overthink or wait for the perfect moment or sequence of events then things never even get started. If you start something and it’s “Good Enough” it means it’s working at least a bit, that means you have the opportunity to tweak it, tune it and correct it – all things that can’t happen if you never started. Those are all good things. If you do things in a hurry, because you think you are going to get “right back to it and tidy it up correctly” it will probably really move you backwards. Not doing things correctly in the first place is going to cost you more time than if you had done it right the first time. Sometimes you might not have a choice, but if you do, take the time to do it right if you can – you’ll be happy you did.