There's never enough...

Flick Hawkins (Ullapool) told me about how they used to live self-sufficiently: pigs, vegetables etc; but "in the end," Flick said "we don't regret doing it, but in the end, it was just financially easier for James to go to the studio and paint". I thought, that's saying something, that it's easier for them to sustain themselves by making and selling art.

Farming on a small scale - simply growing your own food - can't be about saving money. I thought about this this afternoon when Neil and Sue asked me to prepare vegetables and cook dinner. This took most of the afternoon, and when I was thinking about it, peeling off the manky outsides of brussel sprouts, thinking about the time it was taking me to prepare them, let alone cook, and thinking about all the time someone else had spent composting, digging, planting, I thought, it would be so much easier just to get a job, work in a shop for an hour and buy the bloody things.

But that's really not the point; and of, course, on a practical level, life on Eigg can never work like that with only 80 or so people here. And yet, I'm still not hitting the nail on the head; there's something else; why is it that I equate convenience with value? Why do I assume that the shortest route possible (my time) is the best process by which to achieve the end result of food? My life is so divorced from the production of the very things (food, energy) which sustain it, that I consider them necessities only, almost irritating consumers of time and energy. And yet the preparation and consumption of food can be a major source of satisfaction, enjoyment and health. Of cultural importance and value. I find myself, doing these things, having a stimulating time, satisfyingly tiring and even meditative, working in the garden and with the animals.

But I don't have much time to make art (except for this). Hmm...