Filed under: Business + Politics, J840 Week 1 | Tags: business model, eco-systems, farm, sustainability
Can we ever return to greener pastures?
Building character is what my parents called it. Indentured servitude is what we called it. Today I call it a lost paradise.
My “green” perspectives are rooted in an 18-acre hobby farm in rural Minnesota where my parents transferred our suburban lifestyle when I was nine. It included a rundown, sad-looking ranch with barbed wire wrapped around trees, snakes everywhere and mosquitoes that carried away small animals.
My parents insisted we heat the house by wood stove, grow food in the backyard and wrangle cows. We chopped wood, broke ice in stock tanks, lived in sleeping bags and suffered frozen/bursting pipes. My brother and I hated it.
Today… I long for it.
I miss the prairie wildflowers, the groves of trees, the dry bed streams and the tall grasses. The air was clean, the diversity stable and the soil rich. Living in that world, I grew up strong, healthy and unafraid of hard work. The land sustained me, and I helped to sustain it. Not a bad working relationship.
Now I’m back in the suburbs, living with my husband and nine-year-old son, but as a freelance marketing communications professional and master’s student, this early relationship with nature continually inspires me to look again for another great working relationship.
Right now, I provide publication support, consulting and training to small and nonprofit business clients. As the idea of sustainability as a business model starts to take hold, I would love some day to market that momentum and inspire my clients to be the incubators.
But what does that sustainable, closed-end business loop look like? What system allows business, individuals and communities to prosper in each other’s backyards? What kind of business “eco-system” nourishes, liberates and honors the greater societal and environmental system?
Sustainability comes in many colors, not just green. I’m looking forward to hearing what kind of palette the class creates. It’s an exciting subject. What kind of working relationships are you searching for in your career or business?
Cheri L.
