[FM Discuss] updated IBD

[Daniel James]

Hi Mick,
> I was surprised that lots of people who do nothing in the garden, and
> who sometimes walk and cycle from miles away come and pick the fruit. I
> struggled with this a bit at the beginning. 

There's a difference between free culture and freeloading. What starts
as cheeky ends with outright theft, if those people get away with it. It
stems from a lack of respect for the people who did the growing. Trading
information on other sites where fruit can be stolen is no substitute
for helping grow more trees.

> But now when other
> volunteers get angry at these people I try to gently suggest that this
> is the nature of an open access garden and you can either enjoy the fact
> that our work is providing eatable benefits for other people or
> basically you can stop and try to build a fence around it or move out
> into the enclosed suburbs.

You can be relaxed about this situation if you have enough fruit for
your own needs, i.e. a production surplus. Imagine those people picked
every last item of fruit and then sold it, then demanded that you
maintained the trees (for free) so that they can do the same thing next
year.

> However I'm not saying that people's fear of getting ripped off isn't
> valid. Let's face it a lot of us live in a pretty sheltered environment.

It's nothing to do with being sheltered, it's the bitter fruit of
experience :-)

Cheers!

Daniel