CONSEQUENCE VS. CONVENIENCE

            As I look at the shortfalls in my life, too often they've been the result of choosing convenience over consequence.  In general, when I've chosen what was inconvenient, the long-term consequences were better.  When I've chosen the convenience of the moment, the consequences were decidedly poorer.

             The relationship between convenience and consequence takes a lifetime to appreciate, but the sooner we recognize the connection the better off we'll be.  Borrowing money is convenient, but it has big consequences.  Watching TV instead of reading something instructive may be convenient, but it has big consequences.

             Industrial fast food is convenient, but it look at the consequences.  From athletes taking steroids to venture capitalists showering money on the latest fad start-up, convenience generally has an ugly underside.

             Disciplining children?  Inconvenient, but if you want teens who aren't brats and adults who have life ambition, early direction is critical.  Here at Polyface when we train the laying hens to the Eggmobiles, it's pretty inconvenient to crawl under there for a couple of nights to get them to learn to go in at dark.  But the benefits to early and aggressive training are a summer of their daily return and the smooth functionalism of birds sanitizing fields.  Not to mention wonderful eggs.

             When we started here on the farm, my dad sought both private and public consultants' advice on how to make a living.  Every solution was about convenience:  apply chemical fertilizer (not compost), plant corn (fast crop), graze the forest (take what's easy today and forget tomorrow's forest health).  I remember hand shoveling hundreds of tons of compost prior to buying a front end loader.  That was inconvenient as I watched neighbors hire a chemical fertilizer truck to come and spread material.

             But today we have moved our soil organic matter from 1 percent to 8.2 percent and our production on former rock piles and gullies spins circles around county averages.  That's not bragging; it is recognizing and paying humble homage to a lifetime of doing the inconvenient thing.  The most common argument against pastured poultry is "it takes so much labor and time."  Yes, but do you want a chicken fit to eat?  And do you want a landscape benefitted by birds and air that's breathable?

             Sometimes convenience is in the eye of the beholder.  At our farm, we do what most folks would consider inconvenient--like move cows every day to a new paddock and give them expensive seaweed minerals--but the consequence is we virtually don't have a vet bill.  Leaving them in one place all the time and buying cheap fillers for minerals may be convenient, but to me it's better to do the inconvenient today for the positive consequences of health and almost no vet bills later.  Not to mention increased fertility and soil development.

             Much of the time society chooses the convenient approach.  Public policy suffers from this as well.  Is it more convenient to fix Covid-19 with a vaccine or with fundamental immunological vibrancy?  As our country enters darker economic and social times, we'll see politicians take the easy route and try to increase taxes, soak the rich, print money. 

             Blame is convenient.  When Dr. Sina McCullough and I wrote BEYOND LABELS, we realized that labels are convenient.  In fact, we love to label ourselves to make excuses and enjoy victimhood.  That's easier than rolling up our sleeves and dealing with the circumstances of life.

             What do you think best illustrates the propensity of all of us to choose convenience rather than consequences?