Recently one of our subscribers and friends visited the farm bringing along a friend visiting from out of town. She and I have many things in common and had met through our previous professional lives. I admire her very much as she has even more of a thirst for life and a curious state of being. I had worked quite a bit that day to catch up from being out of town and was starting to finish up my daily farm chores. Her arrival with sketch supplies in hand handed me a sharp reminder that I need to stop and enjoy this sanctuary I have built as well. Not just curate and share but also remember that I need this place just as much as I know others do, I am the guide but this place has it’s own spirit. Don’t get me wrong, to those of us that spend time here weeding, planting, watering, etc. this gift settles us easily into a simple state of being that allows the soul to rest. Shoving our hands into the dirt is magical and its an entire new world when you look closely. Most of the time I feel the need to remove my gloves and feel the earth (yes, I end up with dirty fingernails and slivers), it makes me feel alive and with a reduced need to multi-task or get it all done. I recently listened to a podcast that discussed the fact that since we live in a constant state of multi-tasking, we as a society, now find it very hard to stop that process. It’s certainly one of the reasons I teach yoga. Where before we needed to learn to juggle or balance everything in our life, now we need to learn how no to. To live, we must bring our awareness down to the level where living begins.
Creating this farm doesn’t happen with out a constant status check on not letting it consume me but to also bring me closer to peace as well. So far, keeping my mind in an intentional place helps. I give myself a big window to accomplish small things. I don’t over ask from my helpers either so they can enjoy the immersion into their work and experience. I don‘t humor myself with ideas that things are going to be perfect or in place, farms are messy, we constantly battle the elements of wind, rain, animals and weeds. These things aren’t going anywhere and they simply will make it on the chore list so that we don’t get easily distracted in our work and find ourselves in multi-task mode. Leave it on the list, it will eventually get done, and if a physical list is necessary, make one.
On the mornings I am able to get out very early I really get to enjoy the farm. The quiet beauty of the world waking up. The flowers deciding if today is the day to bloom, when they do it’s magical. A slight breeze tends to blow up here and it gently wiggles everyone awake to start the day. As the sun starts to hit the farm it kisses everything hello at a slow and gentle pace. The pace in which nature intended and it’s valuable to be reminded. Nature has it’s pace and it wont be rushed, or scheduled, or manipulated into anything other than what it is. Where there is an empty space, nature fills it in. So I must learn to work with nature and not against it. If I don’t want weeds growing somewhere, I better give the dirt something else to do, because nature wants to be abundant.
All you need to do is spend some time with the elements to see that the world is full of abundance. We can curate and grow, manifest and plan, pause and observe. Doing so allows us to work with a permaculture approach of how things function in a relative manner. I was in the garden yesterday with my friend and helper Lisa and taught her about purslane, a super food that grows abundantly as a weed here. We can fight it and label it an unwelcome weed, but that doesn’t mean it’s couldn’t feed us when we really need it to. Where I mistakenly planted raspberry bushes last year and moved into a new location too late, there is an abundance of them coming back and thriving in that area and even under much neglect. Things may not be perfect, things may not be as you want them to be, but that doesn’t mean there is lack.
Consider the words you welcome into your state of mind every morning, pay attention, write it down if you need to, and then shift it into cultivation, positivity and abundance and I promise you will state to see the world in a better state. Remove blame, remove those and themes, remove nots and name calling, be forgiving and allow spaces for people to make mistakes and grow, your world will start to become a better place. Try it out, worse that can happen is you grow weeds.
