One reason I like to get out in nature is to experience the abundant and regenerative power of nature. Yesterday I had to stop and take some pictures of the hayfield I was mowing so I could soak in how abundant and regenerative nature can be sometimes. All I do to grow this hay is cut it once a year and put the bales from it in my barn to sell to horse owners. I don't reseed it or attend to it all year except when I have to bale it. The hay is apparently quite capable of taking care of itself. It regenerates each year and comes in abundance with minimal intervention by me.

Last night I was listening to a lecture by Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison. He talked about two ways to figure out how to manage a farm property. One way is to plan what you want to grow and grow it. Another way is to look at what is already abundant and then figure out what to do with that resource. The previous owners of the farm must have figured out that hay grew abundantly and set aside most of the land to grow it. Whether the vines and apple trees I planted will yield as abundantly is still an open question.

In conclusion, the purpose of this blog is to underline a couple of nice experiences that can accompany working with or going out in nature, namely, a feeling that nature is abundant and regenerative. The hayfield can be viewed as symbolic of what most businesses strive to attain, namely, a state of abundance that can be sustained indefinately through regenerative processes. That is not easy to achieve but nature makes it look easy.

A final note. Abundance is not the same as yield (see the Obtain A Yield permaculture principle). Yield is what you get when you are able to catch and store energy and then make use of that abundance.