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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 30. The Products Group
Dreaming: Reflection…I worked hard in a limited field and probably poorly served my children and my wife and village; …Reflection on reflection…I did not purposely make a bad decision …or work to get even … for spite, or…at something illegal.
Reflection on reflection on reflection…How very limited we all are… at least this one.
Get to work! Serve! … Reflectless. Just dreaming…
| After a comment, the hypothetical work of The Group on its 20 physical products is on display. |
"What are you going to sell?" was the first question from the small-business-creation advisor. That seemed to me to me to be the beginning of my problems in describing Rural System. I wanted to sell the system. I should have listened. I wanted to sell a way to improved regional employment, better communities, and a way to get improved natural resource management. I worked on the question and later forced myself to say "services and products," denying the other categories of benefits that provoked discussions leading to skepticism.
If Rural System must be justified based on the profitability of its set of products, then it probably won't last. I did not know where different analysts placed extra "cubic feet of wood" as a product of the Forest Group or increased antler size deer as a product of the Deer Group. I was selling both. I was selling e-chapbooks from the Floats poetry group and lunches from Brown Bag. I was selling server space for life history wisdom in RuraLives. I was selling data to be entered into models that produced numbers that could be displayed as multi-colored maps (called GIS layers) that helped land owners understand their land and improve crop and fence layouts. I did not know what in this list that I was selling would make a good answer. The Sculptors Group had products produced by members of that group and the financial gains were personal with a small percentage going to Rural System. That group, as did a dozen others, had a membership that received an electronic newsletter … which could have been viewed as a product for sale. I remember my embarrassing non-response to the first question of my selected advisor. There were many other poor responses.
Land "produces" things. These may be negative (e.g., chemically-bound substances that cannot be used), neutral, or positive. I called these things that are produced "product units." They may provide service, aid in work, provide pleasure (art and recreation), provide or enhance memories, enable and augment membership, and stimulate ideas. Though many products from the System are not trees, animal, soil, water, or fish, the product unit sales contribute to achieving the central profit-making objective of Rural System.
I was selling the services of foresters, fisheries, and wildlife specialists … hours spent. I was selling reports, the results of hours spent. I was selling "value-added" processes … extra money from the old products. I was selling protection from litigation, from soil erosion, from vandals, from wildfires, and from migration to the city. I was selling landscape beauty and groundwater recharge and funding for schools … but first I had to make bankable profits … in any legal and decent way.
Another advisor said to scrap the whole Rural System idea; at best it was just a friendly group of established natural resource consultants and artisans, cooperating when convenient and only talking about managing for the future. He still may be right.
***
I was seeking reasonable returns from very satisfied customers and low prices. I was intent on having them return or for them to encourage others to return to the cyber-catalog of Rural System's General Store of the Products Group. I saw that a variety of products and crafts could enhance the overall Rural System experiences and allow many benefits to be recalled and appreciated for many years. Some of these I imagined as being the good souvenir… small, practical, useful, beautiful things, not roadside plastic junk. I thought they could add significantly to the experiences of local people as well as visitors to rural the lands and waters. In the first years, we placed with local sales outlets a variety of locally produced units. The major sales outlet was that of the e-catalog, especially for sales during holidays. During Christmas we promoted antique photographs, books of poems, contemporary photographs, sepia images of the topography of each nearby county, computer maps, and watercolors by local artists, greeting cards, and jewelry from our forming franchises in Senegal and India.
There were high seasonal demands for goat meat but that seemed trivial so we developed a small unit to assist The Goats Group in sales of standard dairy products, hides, cooked products, bone meal, grazing services, photographs, locally-made bells, pure-bred sales, and transgenic products. By working with the Marketing Group and The Cattle Group, we substantially improved packaging and delivery.
Our wooden toys were made from thinned trees of the managed forests. The wood was maintained in a chain of custody to assure it was certifiable as being from a sustainable forest under Smartwood. Each was marked, numbered and dated and came with printed information (from an affiliate printer).
We offered an unusual gift certificate, a unique wooden square of wood from a certified forest. It was marked, numbered, and dated and was suitable for use as a cup coaster. It was sent with information about Rural System and the donor.
I had tended a sourdough "start" since 1967 when I left Moscow, Idaho. Its donor said it had come from Alaska "before 1952." It had to be "an antique" and we offered it with recipes for its many uses, especially pancakes. A mysterious sociological phenomenon emerged as people wrote about their sourdough, shared recipes and stories, and "broke bread together" across the country. We collected wild yeast from significant wilderness areas and offered them later.
Rural Rounds, not a yeast bread, was a hard "pocket cookie" developed for hikers, anglers, woods workers, and students.
Years ago a graduate student had loaded bird seed into an old van and made a good living as a vendor to people feeding "their birds" in the back yard. We did the same, supplying seed, grit, bird feeders, suet, and watering devices. We offered bird houses (made locally from wood from our Rural System Tract forests) but offered the important services of installing them properly on our posts and providing annual maintenance (cleaning, etc.). Based on past studies of bird food preferences, we supplied quality seeds and offered a computer-based mix that provided customers with seeds that were specific to the birds likely to be present, given the neighborhood vegetation and its age.
Avid bird watchers were encouraged to join Nature Folks, buy literature and binoculars from the e-catalog list, participate in backyard wildlife projects, and visit AviGolf areas.
At cooperating sales outlets, we had displays where we sold unique beads made from local stream stones, coal fossil paper weight, "topics" or mobile garden decorations, and unusual "cooperator" flags that were becoming prominent region-wide, indicative of the Rural System spirit that was growing. Especially attractive to visitors, souvenir hunters, and students were the casts of local spear points used by residents over 9,000 years ago. Rural ruffs - leather boot and ankle protection devices also became noticeable through the region.
Having distinctive clothing or notable clothing differences among the people was part of the ranging (Chapter 18) activity. The ruffs were one small sign of success. The other was the large number of people who had pressed a Rural Red onto the right cuff of their pants leg. It was a symbol of loyalty, cooperation and willingness to participate in the region's successes. It was small and only the local people saw it and understood its meaning. We sold many of them with their small document of meaning.
Many members of the Wildland Walkers and increasing numbers of early-morning walkers carried the Rural System "stick," a walking stick with over 20 different uses and measurement options. It had the personality of a Swiss Army knife. I had explored the creativity of students as we tried together to design the stick with as many as possible uses. I had a vision of an instrument for the field that would be equivalent to the medical doctor's stethoscope, the instrument of first-use when diagnosing the "land patient."
Many of the hikers and others wore our colorful tee shirts that spoke to the total concept of conservation, long-term use, and rational use of resources and appreciation for the wildlands.
Many hunters wore The Big Bandana, an orange cloth pinned to their back. It had a pattern on it that was useful for analyzing the habitat density of areas as well as meeting the hunter safety requirements. It was becoming a part of the local "uniform," a scarf and belt for the ladies, a sweatband for the gents. It carried with it an on-going contest to find and have reported alternative uses for it.
Personalized wooden signs were sold to accompany the garden plots developed by the Gardens Group. Outrigger fences were sold for the gardens along with other fencing to protect then from deer and other vermin. Sales were high for alpha earth a certified toxicant- and hormone-free "soil" to enhance the developing array of private gardens. A Soil Texture Solution was sold for making rapid analyses in the field of soil texture components (sand, silt and clay). The gardens progressively became more dark, rich, and loamy. A rain-water collection system (containers, filters, stand, spigot, etc.) for sold for placement near houses for emergency uses and garden maintenance. Most gardeners appreciated composting and so many of them purchased our colorful autumn leaf-pickup cloth that came with an excellent composting and garden soil improvement advice.
We had developed the ecorods and they were beginning to sell. They were small rods of a special plastic used to monitor the rate of decomposition of organic materials in forests. I had had experiences trying to estimate such rates since they might be affected by pesticide spraying to control insects. The devices were being used in biology classes in a package we developed that augmented the "standards of learning." Others found them useful in monitoring decomposition of livestock wastes.
More researchers than landowners bought our passive air quality monitors, metal devices that weathered under different air quality conditions. A relative change over time was the intended expression of the devices. They formed one of many possibilities for establishing baselines measurements and bastions against litigation.
Many gardeners bought the Mopi, a small hoe for weeding, originally intended for on-going progressive pasture improvement, in-season, whacking the thistles and invading plants rather than using herbicides.
The Bass Box was especially favored near lakes, but many anglers bought them. They were hand-painted US Post Office mail box with certified wooden post from the Rural System Tracts. We sold some fishing plugs produced by a local craftsman shop and The Seckey, a device for evaluating some conditions of fishing waters.
We offered course material (CD-ROM) for students of "Modern Wildlife Resource Management Systems" and a similar small distance-learning unit on "Managing the Ruffed Grouse." The grouse unit encouraged purchase of "Drums" drumming log devices for male ruffed grouse and provided instructions and computer support for spring drumming counts to assess population abundance. This unit also encouraged purchase of GPSlips, packets of bright yellow tags used to mark places where grouse (and other animals) are observed. Later the tags are recovered by field workers and the GPS location recorded for GIS and habitat analyses.
The GIS Group sold computer maps and data but we sold a small set of regional three-dimensional views (e.g., local plant hardiness) suitable for framing. Part of our success was from others advertising within the e-catalog and affiliating with us in supplying products which we tested and recommended.
I was selling ideas and creativity and connections between resources and enterprises and people. I was selling improved quality of life in rural communities.
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