I’m a Mother, Not a Farmer

I have just discovered a kernel of truth that sets me free from the pressures of farming. I am not a farmer. I never was. I never will be. There is so much release in this discovery – here are some thoughts about this.

Lately I’ve been driving myself into the ground by comparing ourselves to all of the other farmers we know. I look at what they are capable of and I am in complete awe and wonder at what they accomplish. What they grow, how much of it, how early, where and how they sell it, what they charge – mixed with the other aspects of their lives that they are balancing (off-farm work, young children, off-the-grid farms – whoah!). Their entire process has been sending me into a feedback loop of shame.

I am ready to put down the sword.

Often I watch my children do what they do and I swear that my insides are about to burst with pride. Not because I feel I’ve had anything to do with their little beings. But because I have been given the privilege and honour of front row seats to watch them growing up. I have no idea how I scored such a good deal! All I have to do is show up, pay attention, love them relentlessly, keep them from hurting themselves whenever possible and provide food, shelter and clothing. On a good day I throw in opportunities to learn and a chance to rest when needed.

I didn’t make these children, you see, nor am I responsible for them. I am not their Master or their Creator. I might be a facilitator or a guide at best. I go along beside them, point things out, step in their way if needed, add an extra layer of clothing once in a while but I cannot be responsible for everything that happens to them. I am only their Mother.

Similarly, I am not a Farmer. I am not responsible for everything that happens on our farm in a day. I can put up a fence, build a shelter, fill a trough, put a cover on, plant a seed, but I can’t completely control the outcome. I can guide it, facilitate it, but it is not for me to decide how it will become.

I do not enjoy competing against other people. I don’t need to be better than anyone else. I am pretty insecure most of the time. I can tell you that my ability to feel inadequate has no limits. Therefore, my competition is to run the race against my perceived incompetence every day.

Who am I kidding? What a large load of ego it takes to believe I could possibly be in control of every little thing. When was I put in charge of the universe? Stuff goes right. Stuff goes wrong. You win some, you lose some. All we can do is our best and wait for the result (and take it all in stride etc. etc.). It is even unnecessary for us to judge whether outcomes are positive or negative before the whole story is told. How can we know that the bus we missed that made us late for work isn’t about to get in an accident?

I am so very grateful for the hard work of the successful farmers who grow excellent food around us. They have learned a dance with their land and living things that no other could emulate. What they produce from this dance is also unique. It is not envy I feel, just a small sense of not doing my share. Not showing up and doing enough or as much as is possible, apparently.

A dance with their land. And living things.

A child begins from the planting of a seed. We initiate the dance that brings that seed to life in the landscape we call our bodies but we do not control what happens next.

A farm begins when a person cultivates a piece of land in hopes of producing some form of food from it one day. The Latin origin of the word farm means to strengthen or make firm. The intention behind early farms was to secure a predictable lot of living things (and a profit to the landowner). This is a lovely idea. But whoever associated the idea of taking something uncertain and giving it structure as being a farm still must have believed that just one more tweak would be the ticket to controlling nature’s balance.

We are Mothers. Not Farmers. We cannot solidify our creations. But we can work hard, do them justice and hope we have offered something worthwhile to the world at the end of the show.

The word mother apparently literally means ‘breast-feeder’. Our purpose is to feed (oh, and a few million other things but that’s another blog post). I can do that. That I can do. I can feed people. Even my back-talking inner mean voice couldn’t argue with the truth of that.

I am a Mother. Not a Farmer.

The Easy Door

When days get hard around here, I often feel the presence of a door that marches along beside me, beckoning me to open it. For some reason it is labeled ‘The Easy Door’. What it refers to is me calling up someone I know inside that set of towers I once worked in and asking for a job again. But I am not fooled.

On the plus side, the Easy Door would bring a regular pay cheque, a chance to don my clean clothes, an opportunity to do thinking and writing work again, lunch with colleagues, alone time in my car on my way to the city listening to my audio books, and a chance to work in ‘the bigger picture’ on things that affect the world.

But I am all too aware that the Easy Door is actually a hatch. If I open it, down I would fall into the place where I no longer have control over how much time I spend with my kids. It is a place where I spend money to make money (clothes, parking, lunch, gas…) It is a place where I don’t actually feel good at what I’m doing. I actually am never quite sure what I am doing in the bigger picture. Apparently there is a Minister up there in that tower somewhere making decisions that may or may not include my excellent ‘scientific advice to management’. I’m guessing what I did matters not at all in the larger picture.

Here on the farm I get dirt under my fingernails (along with other unmentionable smelly stuff). I scrub out the dirt and join my family in a van ride to the city twice a week to deliver real food to real people. We get excellent feedback. Am I changing the world? I think not. Do I feel like I’m doing something meaningful? Oh, yes! Every single day.

My mother is big on reminding me when I complain about a hard day that this was the life that I chose. She is right.

A soldier goes off to fight for their country in a war. A mother awakens to feed her baby in the middle of the night. A person wakes up before the sun to put on running shoes for her marathon training. A farmer secures food for family and community. These choices are not easy in the day to day, but the larger passion that draws the person is what sustains them.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Choosing to grow and raise food is not easy. Things don’t always go as expected. The opportunities for complaining are limitless.

This morning I visited my pastured chickens in the field to make the daily move of their mobile pen onto fresh grass. Two things happen when the creek of the metal frame starts to budge. My thirty odd birds go crackers over every inch of new grass exposed to them. And three cows come trotting across the pasture to clean up any stray grain that may have been left behind where the pen once was.

Today I noted that only two of my three Jerseys came running. One was lamely limping her way over far behind the crowd. It was my old girl, Lilybelle. The one we’ve never been able to breed after numerous attempts. The one who’s eyes are saggy and she looks as though she’s 110 years old. We don’t know how old she actually is. She always looks pregnant so we are fooled every year about the calf that never comes. I scratched her on the side of her face when she arrived just as she likes it and realized that with this lame foot of hers may well mean we will be blessed with a mountain of ground beef very soon. This kind of realization is hard and heartbreaking. But the show must go on. And we all have to earn our keep. And my job is to put various meats in the freezer.

With every bit of might and will that I own I have decided to stay home on this farm and be closer to my kids, my land and my life. My life is definitely my ‘choice’.

We all have beliefs that guide our lives. Even the belief that global warming, peak oil and pesticide usage are only concerns for extremists is a belief system. Some risk their lives for their beliefs. I traveled to Africa in my mid-twenties because I was utterly obsessed with Louis Leakey’s ‘angels’ that had given their lives to work with Great Apes. Dian Fossey (played by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist movie) literally gave her life as she was murdered in her bed for the Gorillas she was protecting. Jane Goodall is, well, an undeniable hero for the animals that she has fought for going on 50 years of her life now.

Birute Galdikas was the third angel. I met her in Vancouver some years ago as we were working on the idea of a reforestation project in Indonesia. I babbled on and on about my dreams of working with apes the way she did. After apparently too many minutes of me talking she stopped me, looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘your reasons are too selfish. It isn’t about you. You have to do it for the cause’. Gulp. At the time I knew she was right.

We all bend (or break) for the things we truly believe in. That is how we know we've found our place. Whereas, we only dabble and dip into the things we kinda like and that rock our world, but the things we would DIE for? Bet you don’t have a long list for that. I know I don’t.

What I do know is that I would rather die than give up my health and happiness and family’s well-being for a pay cheque. I suppose what we are willing to die for is the corollary for what we are living for. When things get hard, we stick it out because we have truly made a choice that matters more to us than life or death itself.

I often wonder what sort of ‘choice’ I’ve made here. It is not the easiest choice if you look at it superficially. I’m sentencing myself to a lifetime of endless work, unfinished jobs, mountains of poop, needy living things and a tired body. But when I look at the alternatives, the choice to stay here on the farm is an easy one. I passionately believe in making nutritious food grown in a healthy environment available to my family and my people.

And don’t get me wrong, the complaining might be great but the perks are also fantastic. Fresh air, children who play wonderfully in their space, feelings of accomplishment, overcoming obstacles, tiny moments of pure pleasure and appreciation as a butterfly lands on your arm or a wind dries the sweat from your brow. Making a meal out of food that has come from our own hard work is the beginning, middle and end of fulfillment for me right now.

No matter how many times I consider dropping it all and walking (or falling) back to my cubicle in the city, I keep coming back to the same conclusion. I thank God for the health that we all have for today. This health is partially a product of a certain kind of simplicity we are letting into our lives. I cherish this immensely.

When things get hard, I remind myself that it is not a difficult life that I have chosen. If I were to give up farming, at this point anyway, I may as well lie down and go to sleep. Every part of me that cares for my family, my body, this earth, my community would have given up.

And I choose to live.

The Lottery

Admit it. You have at one time or another wished that oodles of money would come falling from the sky and solve all of your problems. Perhaps you will win the lottery. Perhaps there is a Great Aunt that you’ve never met who will die and leave her remaining relatives millions of dollars. Perhaps your friend who just sold her small high tech company to the big boys will buy you a trip to the Galapagos Islands.

Have you ever noticed that money seems to flood into your life during periods of abundance and flow? And other times you seem to need to fork out cash to everyone who cross your path and you can't get ahead to save your life? Perhaps your tax bill was a little higher than expected. Perhaps you bought something and it turned up broken so you had to go buy another one. Or you spent a bunch of money repairing something that still isn’t fixed. Perhaps you paid some folks to pick produce that the store didn’t want anymore (and it was too late to sell to someone else) because they had mixed up on their orders.

Why do we always have to live through periods of feast or famine? What regulates which phase we are in? Why must there only be two choices: deprivation or excess? I asked my husband this question and he answered that you can’t worry about money all the time as that makes it shy. My husband is a quiet sort but the wisdom that comes out of that boy’s mouth could move mountains.

Well, I have decided to do some work in this area. I am ready, willing and able to admit that it is very possible that I have a role in which side of the money equation I live on (positive or negative).

First, a little history. I grew up in a household where cash was popped into birthday cards and always offered during hard times. Money was a healer. A friend. A lover. A comfort. It was power. It was an excuse. It was an apology. The great equalizer. It was the gateway to everything that mattered. I wasn’t even a decade into my life when I decided what I really needed was not money. It was love and attention. Money was for other people.

Decades passed and I sought love and attention like a dog seeks a bum to sniff. I avoided the hunt for money like the plague. And guess what? I managed to scare all of it away. So I tried harder. All the while, money came and went according to its own schedule, not mine. I would not give it its due respect. People who cared about money were shallow. Love and attention, well, lets just say the forced approach wasn't much more effective.

Inside deprivation lives fear. Fear of not having enough. Fear of having nothing to offer. Fear of being needy, dependent, and unworthy.

But fear can also sneak a visit onto the other side of the coin too. Abundance can create a fear of losing it all. A fear of being taken advantage of. A fear (and guilt) that not enough is being shared with others.

Fear is fear.

And as a side note, there is not a very high likelihood that you will find that Great Supporting Aunt anytime soon. Further, studies have shown that many lottery winners have nothing to show for their winnings after a short amount of time. Although coming into money eases financial worries, what some researchers have found is that it does not change one’s personality or approach to life. Gamblers are gamblers, worriers are worriers, and people who have spent a lifetime believing they are deprived will continue to find a way to feel deprived.

Furthermore, the other flaw in a quest for money to solve all our problems is that we soon learn that money can most definitely not solve all of our problems. It can make life a little easier temporarily or in specific ways but it cannot make everything okay.

It has also been found that people who think money is the most important thing (no matter how much they have) are consistently the unhappiest people.

So there is more to our search than just needing money to fall out of the sky. There is a shift in our beliefs needed here too. I never did read that book called ‘The Secret’ but I gather it talked about attracting good things into your life, like money. I’m not sure I bought into the idea entirely, therefore, never read the book. But I do believe that we have a template for what we allow into our lives. The template can change, either by accident or intentionally, but we can only ‘fill in’ the parts of our lives that we have current spots for.

I think I spent the better part of my life convincing myself that I didn’t need money to make me happy. Even a great part of my recent experiment called ‘stay-at-home-farmer-mommy-person’ is about trying to live off less money and put more value on skills and what I can produce with my own hands. Who am I kidding? I DO need money. The guy at the bank who takes our mortgage payment thinks so. The credit card guy who lends me money to shop at second hand stores, go to restaurants and catch movies in the theatre thinks so. The fellow who we buy our seeds from so that we can plant a garden to sell produce thinks so.

I have spent the last year combing through my habits to try to find ways to save more dollars. Not spending money was my income and financial contribution to my family.

But just like we bring our set-in-our-ways selves into lottery winning, so do we bring our dear selves into our frugality/productivity experiments. It turns out I still like movies. I still need to go to restaurants sometimes. I miss trips on airplanes. I miss feeling self-sufficient and buying things because I feel I have earned them. Now I buy things and hide my credit card statement from my husband in shame. The news is not atrocious. I am not that bad of an addict. But I swear if I keep focusing on all of this deprivation I am going to turn into a closet shopaholic who hides heaps of unopened packages under her bed.

We experience only what we focus on. And if we focus on money problems, money will become elusive and the only lottery we leave ourselves open to winning is worry and debt.

I decided to make a shift yesterday. As we waited on the pier under the lights at the small ferry dock near our home, I watched as the water lapped against the cement shore in the night breeze. Each wave let go of everything behind it and moved on allowing new waves to bring new water, again and again. Behind the river was a thunder storm flashing light into the night sky in purple and pink hues. It was a stunning scene, watching the clouds tumble across the sky, continually finding new ground to shed light on.

I threw a chip into the water and made a wish (yes I buy chips, and yes I eat them often). Bring on abundance, waves! I will no longer get in your way.

I arrived home to a package that I thought I would have to purchase again as it had been a month lost in the mail. In addition, there was a cheque from a friend who owed us money. After my chip-throwing episode, I believed that the tides had turned.

I think I have always been on the right track when I refused to make money the most important thing in my life. But to pretend we don’t need it or try to drive it out of our lives completely is not realistic (and partially insane). At least in the culture I live in.

Money is good. Money is great. Fall from the sky, an Aunt, a job offer, the mailbox – I don’t care. Do whatever you gotta do money. I promise not to get in your way anymore. You can’t take my heart and soul. But you can buy me a pizza once in a while. And for that, I’m going to let your waves wash in again and again however you see fit.

The kind of cash abundance that is respected and valued but not revered (shown devoted deferential honour) is the kind that even I would buy a lottery ticket for.