Country Enterprise - determination to succeed and ability to withstand criticism are important characteristics

<P> The final assets required to succeed in a country enterprise are the ability and determination to sell your product. This is very often the biggest stumbling-block. </P><P>Unless you accept from the outset that what you produce must one day be sold, you are not going to receive any income from your venture. The thought of producing enough to eat and drink for your family from your own resources became immensely popular a few years ago. The independence to be gained was seen as a worthwhile goal and certainly home-produced food is extremely nutritious. The drawback to the concept is that unfortunately in our modern world we have to produce a surprising amount of cash to survive. Rates, rent or mortgage payments cannot be made with honey; even if you burn wood to heat your house and fuel your cooker, you will still probably appreciate electric light and if you aim to live well on your home-grown produce, then a deep-freeze is a great help. Also many people were so good at producing to feed themselves that they produced gluts that needed to be disposed of. </P><P>This leads on naturally to producing extra especially to sell. The satisfaction we felt when we first sold our hand-raised pies to local pubs and restaurants still glows today. The pork in them was home-produced as was the lard in the pastry. There is a tremendous amount of pleasure to be had from this kind of venture. There are, of course, always bad days. </P><P>The hurt you feel if someone criticises your produce is unbelievable until you have felt it. Even if you can see that the criticism is unfounded and that the customer is just letting off steam, it will probably haunt you at night. That is one of the problems of working with such personal projects: the satisfaction is tremendous on good days but bad days are worse than you can imagine. An essential asset is to be able to ride them. </P><P ALIGN=RIGHT> <A HREF=assets7.htm TARGET=mainframe STYLE="text-decoration: none">...the strength to succeed</A></P>