Gifts from the earth

It's the third week of November and I'm kneeling in the garden, wind biting my exposed skin, cold and wet seeping through my green coveralls. I want nothing to do with this frost-bitten piece of earth. I want to be back inside, on the couch, in front of the fire, carrying on with day three of my spectacular pity party. I'm talking epic: drinking pots of tea (wishing it was something stronger), staring at the wall, out the window, at the ceiling, for hours, wondering how the hell did I get here -- on this couch, on this farm, in this life.

But instead, I'm outside digging for potatoes. I'm angry at the weather for its betrayal, the spuds for not digging themselves (read: not having anyone to dig them with), me for not doing this sooner. Another job I didn't get to this season.

I push myself to stand, shove the spade into the earth and take chunks out of the first clump of potatoes. Dammit. I can't even dig potatoes right. I drop back to my knees, fumble around behind me for the hand trowel, sit back on my heels and take a deep breath. Fucking relax and just dig. Not everything has to be a battle.

And so I begin, scraping away at the top layers of soil with the trowel, tentatively at first, until I unearth the tops of the spuds. Then gently, now using my fingers, I dig around the edges until I can scoop each one by hand. It's a good crop this year -- plentiful, creamy-skinned, blemish free, spared from blight or the ravenous potato beetles. And delicious. (I know this from having grabbled* a few for Thanksgiving.) Potatoes that taste of the sweet earth.

I've grown a small crop of potatoes for the past few years and harvest still leaves me a bit wonderstruck. Like a kid again. Earlier in the season you dig a trench, layer in compost, plant cured chunks of potato with at least one eye each, and then hill the plants with soil or mulch as they grow. For each chunk planted, several potatoes grow, the number dependent on moisture, soil nutrients and temperature. Perhaps love. One becomes many. Nature replicated.

As I work I relax into the task, like walking meditation, but digging. I think less of the couch and more about where I am. In my garden, on my farm, surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods, a place I dreamed about for years. The biting wind and my cold and cramped knees become less nuisance, and more a reminder that I'm alive. Here. Right now. In a life I chose. Yes, this moment is a choice. And the next moment, and the next. I can moan about the cold and the work and being alone, or celebrate this place and the food I've grown. Will continue to grow, for I'm already thinking about next season. 

I feel the darkness lessen its grip. Gifts from the earth. Real buried treasure.

* Grabble: v. to rob potatoes here and there from the edges of the hills.

First snow

Yesterday was the first "big" snowfall of the year. Later than some years, earlier than others. But the chronology doesn't matter. Just that it's here now. It was only about 6" of accumulation but enough to cause the school board to cancel buses. Enough to coat the land with white frosting and dust the trees with icing sugar. Enough.

The kids were thrilled -- snow day! Sledding and hot chocolate and warming cold toes by the fire. And me -- rumbles of dread and panic began burbling inside my chest. Winter is no long coming, it's here. While the snow absolves me from many farm responsibilities and covers a multitude of sins and unfinished projects, winter also makes other day-to-day tasks harder. But it's not the practicalities that fill me with anxiety -- it's the unexpected, the unknown, the whats, the when. Will the power go out this year and if so how will I get the generator out of the garage? What if the barn pipes freeze like last year? What if the winch on the plow breaks again or if it stops running all together? When will I run out of wood/hay/money?

How will I manage the darkness?

I tell my kids there are no such things are monsters, but that's not entirely true. Those are the monsters that haunt my mind and leave me tense, short tempered and fearful. The monsters that fill my thoughts with their disparaging words, their put downs, their judgements, their 'you don't deserve this' and 'you can't handle it.'  

And yet.

Today I walked to the barn under a canopy of peacock blue sky, sunlight captured in the snow. Dancing. Like fairylights. I breathed in the cold air tinged with a tease of woodsmoke. The taking of breath. Breathtaking. I could hear the goats and sheep bleating, the pigs barking (more incessant than oinking), the chickens clucking for their breakfast. In this morning my chest ached with beauty. And possibility. And purpose.

Sometimes I wish my soul was drawn towards an easier path. Living on a farm can be hard; doing it alone can be terrifying.

And yet.

I recently found photos from before the move, when we lived in suburbia in a small semi-detached house that we bought because it was in the right neighbourhood with a small shady garden that grew hostas and patchy grass. I recognized the place but it was like looking at a stranger. I am so different from that woman who went to bed at night gazing out at the neighbour's rooftop wondering, is this all there is?

Stronger. Tougher. Harder. Smaller. Fuller.

The seeds of growing self-reliance, of finding meaning, of realizing a purpose, were there, but dormant. It took moving to the farm for the seeds to grow. Not all seeds flourish; some fail to germinate, others grow weak and spindly, and there are those that die from disease or neglect or for no reason at all.  

I grieve for the woman in the photos who thought that moving to the farm would be a dream come true. In many ways it was, still is. But that dream came at a cost. Fairy tales never talk about what happens when happily ever after ends. But I never wanted to be like Cinderella anyway.

So for now, this day, I think of the healing power of winter. A time for rejuvenation, reflection, next steps. Author and poet Brian Brett wrote that farming is a profession of hope. There is always next season. Forgiveness for last year's mistakes. Another chance. A fresh start.

The seeds are waiting.

Believe

Blomidon, Nova Scotia. August 2011.

Believe. Believe in love, in second chances. Believe in forgiveness and fresh starts. Believe in tears and belly laughs, in words that move and words that stop you in your tracks. Believe in the breath and in the release. Believe in humility and open hearts. Believe in life and in living, in holding hands and letting go. Believe in digging deep and standing tall, in flying high and lying low. Believe in hope and dreams, connection and creation; in fear and transformation, in darkness and in finding light. Believe in you. Believe in me.

Weathering life's storms

The radio announcers said that a major ice storm was coming. It was expected to land in my area last Thursday, bringing with it freezing rain, ice and hail. Thursday came and went and there was nothing, save for clear skies and a gentle breeze. Not even a sprinkle of spring rain. Friends several hours west of me reported icy conditions, but I thought the storm would die out before it made its way east.

Friday morning, 5:30 a.m., I woke to the sound of pellets smashing against my bedroom window, the bottom screen already encrusted with opaque ice. Standing on my tiptoes to peer through the upper window pane, I could just see in the dim early morning light the tree branches, the bird house and the clothesline, all perfectly encased in glass.

By 8:00 a.m. I was outside doing chores and splooshing through ankle-deep puddles of slushy ice. The trees -- cedars, tamaracks, white birches and pines -- bowed in deference to the storm, their thin backs hunched like very old men. "It won't get too bad," I thought. And still the icy rain fell.

I came inside just as the power flickered on and off and back on again. And still I clung to my convenient belief that everything would be fine. But by 10:30 a.m., the wind had picked up and I could hear ice shards crashing to the ground, shattering. Then from deep in the woods I heard shots like those fired from a muzzle-loaded gun. Trees falling.

I made sure all the animals were safely in the barn before shutting it up tight. Back in the house I told the kids (home as buses had been cancelled) to stay away from the trees. Better yet, stay inside. Still I ignored the nervous gnaw in my stomach and held firm to the belief that things wouldn't go bad. Minutes later, the power went out for good and the house fell completely silent.

We've been through this before -- twice in 2011 when windstorms knocked out power to 150,000+ homes. Back then I said, no, vowed, that next time I'd be better prepared. And yet as soon as the power and my comfortable life returned, my plan of preventative action was shelved. I didn't stockpile food or water, nor set up a permanent location for the generator, which is too heavy for me to move on my own.

I've written articles about emergency and disaster preparedness and I'm the first to say (preach?) that planning makes the actual emergency far less stressful than ignoring it and hoping for the best. But Google "ignore disaster warnings" and you'll find 8.2 million hits and hundreds of examples of people who fail to heed warnings of floods, storms or other major natural events. While sociologists have various theories on our propensity to ignore warnings -- sometimes it's because people feel they have no other choice (say when their home is situated on a flood plain) or because they believe things won't get bad -- I think I ignored the warnings because I simply didn't want one more thing to deal with.

Lately I feel like I've just been keeping the floodgates under control and one more drop of rain will cause them to break and a torrential cascade of water to flow. Lucas is away this month and while I know that he'll be back in May, he'll be going away again. As I've said before, his path takes him away from the farm and while I don't yet know what that means for me, or us, I know I'll be facing more challenges on my own. While it's easy for me to fall prey to "I'm such a victim" and feel sorry for myself, I want better for myself and my kids. I want to show them that I am self reliant and strong and I can manage, even when faced with a raging storm.

For three days I vacillated between moments of explosive frustration and surreal calm that descended in unexpected moments, like when I found myself gazing upon my daughter happily colouring under a halo of beeswax candles, or when my son came to me with a hug saying, "It could have been a lot worse, mum... this is actually a really great weekend." He was right.

My children helped me see the beauty in the candlelight, the profound quiet, the absolute darkness, and inspired me with their sense of fun and adventure. They felt safe and secure, despite the storm both outside and within me. I helped create that. And so while this past weekend gave me a practical life lesson (again) that it's up to me to better plan for the next inevitable power outage, more importantly I learned that I'm strong enough to get my family through this and future storms.

Wilderness experts say that it's not necessarily your training that gets you through a survival situation, but how you handle it -- do you stay calm or crack under the pressure of it all? As one expert put it, having survival skills is important, but having the will to survive is essential. Stress can crush or create a person, bringing out strengths and willpower he or she never knew existed.

Today there is once again clear skies and a gentle (now warm) breeze, and except for the downed trees that litter the farm's landscape there is little evidence of the storm. Nature doesn't hold on to her anger, and every day is fresh and new. That, too, is a good life lesson.

Between two worlds

I've come to dread mornings. It's not that I mind getting out of bed per se, though on days when the wood stove has almost gone out and I'm snuggled under a pile of wool blankets it can be hard, but it's getting the kids up, fed and out the door for school that makes me want to lose my mind. Especially since I know I get to do it all again the next day. And the next.

I know the value of routine and giving kids lots of time in the morning (especially if they're dawdlers like mine) but no matter how early we get up, or how many lists I write, and how much warning and prodding and eventually hollering I do, there is almost always a last minute scramble followed by running down the driveway for the bus. The routine seems to deteriorate as the week progresses: on most Monday mornings the kids are ready to go a full 20 minutes before the bus arrives, and they're rewarded with time to read, draw, listen to music -- whatever. But by Wednesday, my carefully crafted routine has fallen apart and once again I'm yelling and they're scrambling and usually one, if not all, of us ends up in tears.

Sometimes I wonder if my expectations are too high because as soon as I ask them to do more than the basics -- eat their breakfast, brush their hair and teeth, and wash their face (they pack lunches the night before) -- there is a cacophony of whining, talkback, attitudes, and sometimes even temper tantrums. I admit to not always being consistent with them -- sometimes I make hot breakfast as a treat, other times it's up to them (usually when I'm making something else, like today it was homemade granola for tomorrow's breakfast) and while we need to bring in wood every day, I don't always make them do a load, and as Ella forgot to wash eggs last night I asked her to wash all eight of them this morning (which she proceeded to do in a sink full of her yet-to-be-washed breakfast dishes… ugh) and that evidently takes a ridiculous amount of time and before I know it Jack is still in the woodshed, Ella has yet to have her hair braided and the bus is at the end of the driveway. (We're lucky in that the bus passes our farm twice, but the kids always want to get on the first pass so they have extra time with their friends.) They's only missed the bus a handful of times in 4-1/2 years, but too many times the kids have left their "other" responsibilities (the abovementioned dishes, wood, etc.) and I'm left to clean up the mess.

I know my reaction doesn't help -- the more they drag their feet, the more impatient I become and the more my tone starts to rise. Before I know it I'm cajoling and prodding and hollering again, because I'm just asking them to pull their weight and is that really too much to ask? You always hear that the country is a great place to raise kids because it teaches them responsibility, but in our case it seems to be teaching them how to push mum's buttons until she explodes. (And yes, I'm being somewhat disingenuous here.)

As I've always been home, they're used to mum being there and picking up the slack when they don't get things done (like their laundry or dishes or taking out the recycling), but I have other jobs beside being a mother, like working to pay the mortgage.

And while I believe that mothering is my most important job, I often feel caught between two worlds (and I know I'm not alone), especially now that the kids are getting older (Ella is eight, Jack turns 11 tomorrow). I believe that to become functioning and contributing human beings they need to learn the value of work, responsibility and seeing tasks to completion, but against that, I want them to have as much time to just be kids. They're only young once, and before I know it they'll be off to school and I'll have just myself (and the barn animals) to look after.

Growing up my mum was always home and while that provided security when I was younger, it became stifling as I grew older, especially as she fell deeper into her alcoholism. She had no real life of her own, beyond my father's and mine, and as I grew from a pre-teen into a teen, and tried to find my own way in the world, she stewed in her codependency and inability to take an active interest in her own life, instead sinking hooks into mine. I know this made her deeply unhappy and this, in turn, fueled her drinking and her rages against my dad and me, but as much as I committed then to always be there for my kids, I never wanted to lose myself like she did.

And therein lies a seemingly impossible conundrum: always being there for your kids without losing oneself. I know that parenting is like reaching for an ever moving target and the kids and I are always changing, but too often I seem stuck in the middle between two opposing armies -- one side doing too much and the other not enough, for them and myself.

I want to model that women can be strong and independent and have lives that are theirs alone (while teaching them the value of real food and "simpler living" in our materialist world), but I've also committed in my heart to home-cooked meals and family sit-down dinners, help with homework and baked after-school snacks, bedtime stories and pre-dawn snuggles. Can I do all that and still retain some sense of me? I don't know yet but on mornings like this it feels like neither side wins.

sufficient

You know that awkward feeling when you pick up the phone to call a friend who you've meant to call about a dozen times but every time you do something gets in the way or you get distracted or you don't really feel much like talking anyway and so months and months pass but  you know that it's too important to put the phone call off yet again, and you really don't know what to say and however you start it sounds sheepish and self-deprecating and you really wish you could just pick up the phone and pretend like months and months haven't gone by, but you know you can’t and you really need to explain your absence even though you feel like a self-indulgent and self-absorbed tool for doing so? Well, this blog post is a bit like that. It's also a bit like an awkward, over-sharing confessional that I may regret a day, month or year from now. 

Deep breath, Fiona, and away we go...

In the relative downtime of winter, I try to spend time catching up on my accumulated piles of books. (Some women have a shoe fetish; for me, it's books.) The latest I'm reading is "Sufficient" by Tom Petherick (Pavilion, 2007). His basic premise is that it's time for us to become more responsible for our rampant levels of overconsumption and to change to a more self-reliant way of living. In his words, "It is a book about feeling satisfied with what we have -- in short, 'sufficient.'"

His idea of sufficiency speaks to me on many levels. What drove us to the farm in the first place was a need to find a simpler way of living. It was about scaling back, making do with less, growing our own food and reconnecting with the things that matter -- family, good wholesome edibles, and the wondrous earth that supports us and all living things.

While we knew this kind of living wouldn't actually be easier, this life off-the-beaten-path was the only one that made sense to me. Having grown up in Toronto and spent seven years in suburbia, I knew that I needed to get away from the corporate ladder and from the 'keeping up with the Joneses' mentality that elevated compulsive shopping to a form of therapy, or worse, recreation. I was tired of the noise, the traffic, the stuff, the concrete and the disconnect between us (as in our society) and the natural world.

I wanted desperately to move to the farm, to raise kids, grow food and write about it (among other things). Simple, right? Yes, but not easy. The first six months on the farm was blissful, filled with long walks in the woods, trials in the garden and the deliciousness of fresh air and silent nights (except during cicada and spring peeper season - it's noisy then!). 

But then I let my bliss get the better of me and I started bringing critters home to the farm. In quick succession we went from a family a four plus a dog, to a family of four plus a dog, two cats, 12 chickens, six ducks, three goats, two donkeys and a geriatric horse. We went from simply living on the farm to a complex life juggling a tribe of creatures with differing needs, all while figuring out how to get us through the winter without running out of wood, running out of patience, or most crucially, running out of money.

Job-wise, I was able to make the move to the farm fairly smoothly in that as a freelance writer and editor I was able to take my work with me. But Lucas had to largely start from scratch in the summer of 2008 when the recession hit hard and he lost a long-term contract that he was relying on to get us established in our new home and community. To say it was tough is a gross and laughable understatement. Looking back, it was foolhardy and hugely irresponsible to rush into getting so many animals (and those of you who have been following the blog since the beginning most likely saw that), but I was impatient to be living the dream. Now. (I even knew fairly early on that it was foolish and foolhardy but I resisted "fixing" my mistakes because that would have been an admission of failure. Yes, seriously.)

But we continued to struggle along, dealing with frozen barn pipes, predator problems, depreciating savings and an overwhelming sense of "I have no idea what I'm doing." Eventually Lucas got a two-year contract (now ended) and I cobbled together enough contracts to make a living wage, including a job that gave me a steady paycheque but left me feeling depressed, short-tempered and miserable. But by this point, Lucas was spending 60 hours a week away from the farm and I was spending more time in front of the computer than out in the fields. Slowly the dream was crumbling, bit-by-bit -- or so it felt (keeping in mind I have a shocking affinity for the dramatic).

Tensions at home started to rise because I didn't feel like I had enough help and Lucas felt like he was drowning in responsibility while trying to follow his own dreams that didn't involve shovelling poop or digging in the dirt. The simple life was anything but simple and the bliss that permeated the first year was, by year three, intermittent at best. This isn't to say that it was all terrible -- I fell head over heels in love with beekeeping, discovered the aliveness and gorgeous taste of fresh homegrown veggies and fruits, and reaffirmed my love of working with animals, both feathered and furred. I rediscovered knitting, found peace and solace in long wandering walks in the woods, and unearthed a passion for kitchen and traditional remedies, as well as cooking real food with real ingredients. Jack and Ella had blossomed into happy country kids and we truly felt that we were raising them in the best possible place.

But the stress brought on by shortcomings in what I thought I should be doing and what I actually had the capacity for doing kept growing. Lucas wasn't interested in farming, and the kids, who I'd envisioned helping me in the barn and the garden, simply were busy doing other things. There was my dream, my lonely reality, and a huge chasm in between filled with unfinished projects and a never-ending to do list. I felt betrayed, let down, bitter and above all, deeply sad.

But then last summer I went away on a solo camping trip for a week. I brought with me only some essentials -- a tent and sleeping bag, a small one-burner stove with some simple foods, a few changes of clothes, my hiking boots, my camera, some reading books and my journal. I spent the week hiking, reading, writing and thinking. It was sufficient, it was enough, and I was happy. During this time I realized how much my decisions had placed unnecessary strain on my family and yet rather than assume responsibility for that, all of which were mine, I was blaming everyone else for my missed expectations and unhappiness.

The farm or my family hadn't let me down -- I'd given up on it and on me. It was a realization that was both liberating and crushing -- so many people would give anything to be where I am, and yet here I was moaning about how things weren’t working out as planned. I felt humiliated and humbled. It was during this time that I disappeared from the blog, turned inward and tried to rekindle my sense of direction, without expectation of what things should look like. Writing can be like turning a magnifying class on yourself, warts and all, and I needed some time to rebuild my confidence. What's more, I needed a break from comparing myself to everyone else.  

But I've been re-visioning the farm and my place in it. I've also quit a job that has left a hole in my bank account but some space for this new dream to grow (which I'll be writing about over the coming months).

While the farm is still blanketed in snow and my plans are still largely on paper, I admit to running the risk of ramping up the complexity of my days (it's about reaching for a dream without falling over the precipice's edge). The difference now is that I don't have expectations that Lucas (or the kids) will be walking this path beside me. While they're 100% supportive of my dreams (and they appreciate the benefits they receive), this farming gig is mine alone. (I don't say that with any sense of self-pity either; not anymore, at least. This is meant as a declaration, not a resolution.)

I've always struggled with my own perception of being enough, and I often label myself as falling short. I let these insecurities fuel the fear of failure that's inherent when stepping outside one's comfort zone to reach towards a dream. I've written about this before (at times that often correspond with these lengthy blog absences). But I'm so very tired of that sad story. While it's damn hard to work, run a farm, keep a homestead and raise children, it's harder on my heart to not. In the year that I turn 40, isn't it time for me to finally feel satisfied not only with what I have (which is easy), but what I am, warts and all?

As Petherick writes, "This then presents an opportunity to look how we can become more self-reliant, particularly on the home-production front. There is little point in lingering on how badly wrong things have gone -- the question is what can we do to effect change for ourselves and the community around us… We are at the beginning of an exciting time when our true worth will come to the fore."

This year I'm looking forward to moving back to my simpler living roots, reaching for the stars and for being gentler with myself when I inevitably fall short. Besides, life's too short to take everything so bloody seriously.

Gutted

As I was walking to the barn yesterday to start my morning chores, I noticed an unusual huddle --a wild turkey and a few crows picking at something down by the pond. The something was snow white, which puzzled me, as I knew all the chickens -- including the few white Columbian crosses we have left -- were safely locked in the barn. 

I struggled to think what it could be -- the wild ducks that we've seen visiting our pond are all dark and brown earthy colours. Then I remembered: two of the Muscovies, one male and one female, refused to come into the barn the previous night. I tried to chase them, shoo them in, but they simply flapped away from me. As I left the barnyard I felt uncomfortable leaving them outside as we'd seen a mature fox just the week before, but the male duck can be a vicious beast, so I told myself the lady would be ok.

As I walked towards the carnage crew, I realized I was wrong. As the wild birds flew away, I saw the lady duck, gutted; her chest and body cavity ripped away, with bloodied feathers scattered around her.

I didn't cry or freak out; in fact I felt strangely disassociated from what I saw. I was disappointed, sure, but we'd lost ducks and chickens before (though usually all that's left is the feathers) and my mind started spewing platitudes of all sorts -- "Where there's livestock, there's deadstock"; or "It's part of farm life"; and "Nature can be cruel."

I picked her up carefully by her limp neck and started walking back up the hill towards the barn, stopping only to grab a shovel. I continued past the barn and into the woods at the back of the second paddock, the donkeys and horse following me in a bizarre funeral parade.

I quickly dug a grave and buried what was left of the lady duck, saying some sort of cursory 'return to earth' blessing, ending with an apology. Then I returned the shovel and continued on with my chores. This is part of farm life, I told myself -- buck up and get on with it. It's just a duck.

But for the rest of the day I felt agitated, uneasy, fragile, and the more I tried to dismiss that, push it away, the more it grew. Until finally, just before the kids got home, Lucas called me on the phone to see how my day was.

My eyes started to gloss over, my throat tighten and a sick churning began deep in my belly. The details of the story gushed out and I wanted to share with him, unload, all of the gory images that were weighing heavily on me -- the shocking contrast of the blood to her feathers, her breastbone picked clean of all flesh, her unseeing eyes, and how just the night before, after giving up on trying to get her back into the barn, I had taken a moment to admire her form, her beauty, her aliveness and gentle personality, as she paddled off into the darkness after her mate.

As I shared the story, I could sense the pain lose its grip on me. I didn't feel any less sad that the lady duck had been ravaged this way, but I could feel the sadness and not suffer by it.

I thought of a passage that author Jon Katz recently wrote on his Bedlam Farm blog about how these sorts of losses are a part of life:

"This is a familiar part of life on the farm, this sickening feeling seeing things you are responsible for and live with killed suddenly, and then the process of sorting through it, because you know the foxes or raccoons or whatever will return... It is a nice life, not a perfect life, and there are no simple or easy solutions... So there is the happy time cuddling a lamb and the other time picking up body parts of animals you were talking to the day before…. It is disturbing, yet also oddly routine. It happens, anyone with a farm and livestock has experienced it. This lesson, I learn again and again. It is not a crisis, not a drama. It is life itself."

In trying to remove the drama, or what I thought was drama but was actually just feeling, I stifled a piece of my humanity. Rallying against these inevitabilities creates suffering, but so does not fully acknowledging the pain that accompanies these losses. Keeping animals on a farm is such a gift, but if you're not careful, it can become a burden, and I've wondered before that perhaps I'd be better off if I didn't keep animals as I get so attached to them. But that would deny me the happy times. 

So what's the solution? I'm learning that allowing myself to completely appreciate the joy of their life, then fully acknowledging and experiencing the sadness of their death, before finally letting both go, leads to greater feelings of peace, acceptance and ultimately freedom. It's something of a roller-coaster ride, but then again, that is life itself.

Taking steps

I was supposed to go to a soil workshop today but work got in the way of my plans. I was looking forward to the opportunity to learn from an expert speaker and tour an innovative organic farm. But it was 1-½ hours away (one way), and such a visit would take too much out of my day.

My mind started wandering down the path of disappointment, but then I stopped. While the workshop would have been interesting and useful, is it something I really need to do right now? Would this knowledge inform that tasks that need to be accomplished today, or even this season? Then I started thinking about how often I prop myself up, even distract myself, with research. I look outside for information -- I turn to books, workshops, experts who can tell me what to do and how to do it -- while I have the best teacher right here: the land itself.

It has so much to teach me and while conventional learning is vitally important, experiential learning -- digging in the dirt, nurturing, growing, being there -- is where the magic happens. But sometimes that kind of learning scares me -- what if I'm missing something, what if I make a mistake, what if I fail?

But really all life is like that. You can prepare all you want for a certain task, a job, or even parenthood, but it's in the doing where you reach the highs and shoulder the lows. That's where the living takes place.

And that takes trust, a certain leap of faith, and ultimately, a letting go of the results because despite our best actions and intentions, what happens after the work is done is completely out of our hands.

While I feel safe in my smallness, doing my reading and research until I have learned enough, know enough, about whatever work I'm doing -- whether it's how to grow vegetables in my particular soil, or how I can do the work I love and support my family financially at the same time -- none of that is enough.

It's about taking a step in a direction, learning from that step, and then taking another one -- perhaps in the same direction, or possibly a different one. Failure doesn't come from action; it comes from inaction, from getting stuck, from staying small.

Wendell Berry wrote, “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Well, my mind is certainly baffled, but I can continue to feed the discomfort around not knowing what to do, or I can simply start doing. Participating in life makes one complete. And I don't need a workshop to tell me how to do that.

Why small farms matter

I just finished writing my "Editor's Message" for a farming publication that I, uh, edit, and I thought I'd share it here simply because I think the message is important. I also think that everyone should go see this new film...

* * *

I recently saw a new documentary "To Make a Farm” by filmmaker Steve Suderman. It follows five young people through a year growing food and raising animals on their small-scale CSA farms.

It’s a beautiful feel-good film and I was moved, uplifted and inspired by the passion, dedication and drive of these new(ish) farmers to grow food, steward the land and connect with their communities despite challenges that would test the most seasoned farmers.

After the film there was a brief Q&A with Suderman and two local farmers. While the consensus was that the film was both cinematically beautiful and inspiring, a few audience members dismissed these farmers as “romantic idealists” -- while it was great that these “city folk” wanted to move to the country, farm and save the world, could it make a difference on such a small scale? Was it realistic? Was it enough?

I didn’t respond at the time but on the drive home I ruminated about what I wish I’d said. And here it is:

Passion and idealism drive many people to their profession, be it doctors who want to save lives or lawyers who want to right wrongs or teachers who want to enrich children’s minds -- why must it be different for farmers?

While coming from a long line of farmers, or growing up on a farm, has its advantages, I don’t think either is a prerequisite for farming. Farming isn’t a birthright, it’s a choice, and the fact that city folk are deliberately choosing this life is something to be celebrated. In fact, it’s young farmers who are essential to the future of agriculture. Even if idealism brought them to the land, it’s clear-sighted realism about the benefits (and costs) of this life that enables them to stay there.

Yes, small-scale farming is physically demanding. It’s work that tests the body, mind and spirit. But as Wendell Berry writes, “We must learn to think of human energy, our energy, not as something to be saved, but as something to be used and to be enjoyed in use. We must understand that our strength is, first of all, strength of body, and that this strength cannot thrive except in useful, decent, satisfying, comely work.”

Farming is filled with risk and uncertainty, but it’s also transformative and joyful. (Ed note: I referred readers to two stories in the magazine that don't have much relevance here, so this sentence was actually much more interesting and relevant that it sounds.)

I’m not saying small farms are the solution to the complex challenges we face related to agriculture and food production, but they are one solution -- and one that shouldn’t be dismissed solely on scale.

So to those skeptics in the movie theatre, I’d say that for the local communities that are savouring the food grown by these farmers, for the land and animals that thrive under their care, and for the future farmers who are inspired to follow a similar path, “It’s enough.”

photo credit: Tarrah Young of Green Being Farm