Times are changing in every sense of the word and those who want to live well, not just survive, need to adapt to the new conditions. The rest, who think they are smart by not adapting or evolving, will be left behind. These are the people you hear saying "I could do this or that" but they never do any of it because they can't and don't want to either.
My dad likes to make his own walnut liquor and needs 40 young walnuts for the flavor. If you think of it, 40 walnuts is not a lot, but in this case I'll show you it is. He has two walnut trees, one young, and the other is around 50 years old. 40 walnuts you usually collect from one short branch, but he was not able to collect 10 from 2 trees this year. Lucky him, his neighbor went foraging and found some walnut trees at the side of the road and brought him what he needed. The funny thing is, even if you don't have walnuts, you still have to clean the yard from leaves and that's an everyday job for a month or a month and a half. It is definitely annoying, but needs to be done as you don't want to walk in ankle deep leaves.
The reason why he has no walnuts this year (no one has any in that region) is the cold wave we got when the trees were flowering and pollination should have happened. It didn't affect just the walnut, basically most of the fruit trees have the same faith this year.
This damage was caused by cold and excessive rain, but it's not the only damage we have to deal with. After the rain and cold, comes the heat and drought, which kills the plants that have survived.
Needless to say that obtaining a satisfactory harvest is almost impossible these days if you are gardening the traditional way and you need to invest in technology and equipment to be able to get the results you want.
Easy to say, and easy to do when you're gardening on your own, but in villages where gardening is passed on from generation to generation and there is more than one gardener, things get complicated.
I remember when I was a kid, my grandparents wanted to teach us, grand kids gardening and things. Not that we were interested, but they wanted to teach us anyway because they thought what they know is the only way and only they knew everything. Back then there was no internet, you could barely find any information or studies, so what they learnt decades ago was used for ages. After things changed, information was widely available, people started to learn new ways and techniques, but the elders saw this as a threat to their knowledge and chose to reject anything new, saying it's not going to work and the only way is their way.
My dad has not been any better. I've tried to convince him to change things based on what I've seen in TV and on the internet, but took me years till he was ready to listen. Today we do things differently and he's more open to change and he's searching for new ways himself, but so many are still stuck in the middle ages in this regard. His neighbor is younger than me, but he's the most stubborn and pigheaded person I've sen, so he's still refusing anything new.
My granddad passed away 30 years ago, but I was thinking what would he say if he would have the opportunity to come back for a week or so. Imagine him learning about hydrophonic gardening or that you can harvest hectares of tomato with combine harvester and one man in an hour and the combine harvester can also separate red tomatoes from the green ones. What would he say when learning that you can analyze the soil and choose seeds according to the soil, to have a better result. I knew him very well and know his first reaction would be to dismiss any new invention, any new development and say this is an insult to gardening.
It would be fine as he's never coming back unfortunately, but the problem is there are so many like him still living and rejecting change because they feel threatened or it's just easier to not change anything and blame everything that is new. It's a way to hide their ignorance if you like. I feel sorry for those who are forced to live with their parents, grandparents and have to do what they are told till the day the older generation is no longer capable to dictate.
Things are even worse in countries where kids are taught to listen and obey the elders blindly and they not only never obtain their freedom, but they do the same to their kids as some kind of revenge. These societies are never going to get anywhere ever. Brainwashing people for personal gain, to show supremacy is the worst. Every revolution required some blood spilling, but the end result worth it :)
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