Farmers have very interesting relationships with fires. As you probably already know by now, we’re almost all quite fond of burning stuff (cough, we burned a giant brush pile last week).
But tonight I’m not referring to literal flames. Fire is the word Greg and I use to describe the experience of being in chaos. The kind of chaos where the stakes are high and you run the risk of losing something important or costly.
In our minds, there are really two ways of farming. One way is to scatter your energy across a lot of different things and succumb to the idea that fires on the farm is inevitable. They happen, more often than you’d like and you just do your best to react, do some damage control and then cut your losses and move on.
The other way of farming is where you stay organized and focused on just a few things. You do those things really carefully and you spend time (more time than you’d like) anticipating where the fires might happen and you take preventive measures to stop things from blowing up in the first place. This is where we like to live…
But this week, despite all of our best efforts, the farm hit us hard and we were putting out fires left and right. Here’s the tally so far: We didn’t realize one of our electric fences was damaged and we had what we think was a family of foxes attack our laying hens. This was our first real attack in almost 4 years and it just stinks. Next up was one of our pigs escaped from her paddock and was roaming around the back field solo. She required all sorts of attention and gentle reminders for why she’s happier sticking with the herd. Oh and then we had not one, but two major leaks (conjure up a geyser in your mind) in the main water line which required lots of fussing at the MOST inopportune times.
So here’s the thing that I know we need to remind ourselves of after a rough week like this. We’re striving for that place of perfect balance, where work and life just flows and there aren’t ferocious fires that need smothering. But, maybe this magical place does NOT exist on earth.
We will stay true to our goals for this farm and are always striving for absolute excellence. But I think the real growth comes from facing the fires as they come our way and finding the strength to get back up when we’re down. We were able to lean on each other and do this this together this week, and I think that’s something to celebrate.
Your Farmers,
Jenney and Greg