Parish Goals.
Shared targets tied to things that are actually happening on a farm — lambing, harvest, the pressing season — rather than to a points total that means nothing outside the software.
What a goal is, and what it is not.
A parish goal is a number a whole parish is trying to reach together, published on the parish page, with a date on it. Six hundred packets at the seed swap. Forty metres of wall rebuilt. Eleven variety trials returned with honest yields.
It is not a points total, it is not converted into anything, and hitting it does not unlock a discount. The reward for a parish goal is that the thing got done, which is the only reward that survives contact with people who work outdoors.
Goals are set by the parish at a meet, not by us. Two parishes have never set one and are perfectly healthy without.
The reward for a parish goal is that the thing got done.
Goals currently running.
| Parish | The goal | Progress | By |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Cotswolds | Six hundred packets at the autumn seed swap | 412 | 6 September |
| The Dales | Forty metres of wall rebuilt this season | 31 metres | 31 October |
| The Fens | Thirty-one soil organic matter figures returned | 27 | 30 November |
| The Wolds | Eleven variety trials, yields published honestly | 11 — complete | Done |
| The Levels | Three old orchards restored | 2 | March 2027 |
| The Peak | Four rights-of-way working parties | 3 | 31 December |
| The Downs | Twelve consecutive walks without a cancellation | 26 — and counting | Ongoing |
| The Broads | Twelve places filled on the winter reed cut | 12 — full | 17 January |
Why goals are collective rather than individual.
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Individual targets sort people into winners and everybody else.
Give ten thousand people a personal target and you produce a few hundred who hit it and a great many who quietly stop opening the page. Every loyalty scheme that has tried it has produced the same shape of graph.
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A parish target has one number and everybody is inside it.
Four hundred and twelve packets of seed out of six hundred is a fact about a parish, not a judgement about a member. Somebody who brings one packet has moved the number.
Nobody is bottom of a parish goal, because a parish goal has no bottom.
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It is tied to a real date on a real farm.
Seed swaps happen in March and September because that is when seed is worth swapping. Walling happens when the ground is right. The calendar does the motivating, which means we do not have to.
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And it ends.
Every goal has a completion date, after which it is finished and archived. A permanent, ever-rising target is an insult dressed as encouragement.
Set by the parish
At a meet, not by us.
Collective
No individual target has ever been set and none will be.
Tied to the farming year
Lambing, harvest, pressing, the winter cut.
They end
A finished goal is archived, not raised.
The questions this one gets.
Nothing at all. No discount, no points, no badge worth having. The parish did the thing, and that is the entire mechanism.
You can propose one at a meet. Your warden puts it on the page if the room agrees. Nobody here can set a goal for a parish they are not in.
It says so on the page. Two goals have been missed and both are still listed with the final number, because quietly deleting a missed target is how a scheme stops being believed.
The leaderboards, and why they stop at the parish line.
A national table would make almost everybody feel worse. Here is the argument in full.
First sight of every drop
The things that sell out do it in minutes. This is the only warning anyone gets.
