just wait!

This morning I counted up all the places I've lived in the past ten years, since I moved out of my parents' house one week after graduation. Fifteen. Fifteen times in ten years I've packed up everything I owned and moved somewhere new, unpacked everything and tried to make a house (or apartment, or room, or studio, or barn) a home. Four of those moves were to different states. I doubt we'll stay in this tiny cabin forever, but it feels good for now.

When friends ask what our plans are at this tiny cabin, sited on 2500 acres, where we have so much space to grow food as we wish – essentially the sort of ideal situation we've been working toward for years – I struggle to explain why I have no immediate plans, as such – not yet. I am not even planning to bring the chickens right away (making "chicken tender" a misnomer). Predators are a very serious risk here, and Tuna is swiftly making himself known as a house-dog, not a guardian for livestock. 

(This is just not the face of a killer, amiright?)

This is the sort of thing that requires practicality – certainly it's not as much fun as developing plans and scouting for new animals, but for long-term safety and security it is an absolute necessity.

I won't even be gardening, not right away. The middle of June is so very late for starting a new garden. I made plans for gardening, and started seeds, way back in February, and then I spent time and money and energy, so very much energy, developing raised beds on the terrible clay soil at the farm. I'm trying not to brood too deeply on the investment I left behind. Last I saw it, the pullets had breached the fence and the bird netting and were happily shredding my squash flowers, uprooting my greens and overturning my tomatillos; the beans plants were suffering, the peas were shot, and that was all I could stand to see before turning away. What can I do about it now?

There is a very large garden site about a mile away with an endless water supply (whereas our cabin runs on a 450-gallon cistern). This garden once fed 20-30 people in the summers. Thanks to a plentiful supply of horse and cattle manure, the soil is very good quality, but also heavily compacted from cattle grazing after the garden was shut down. The fences are falling down, but there's so much lovely potential in that site. The thing is, I can't get to it right now. Sure, I could haul out a tiller and rip up that soil and force my way into it, and under other circumstances, I'd do that without question. Because how can I not grow a garden? Especially after years and years of aching to do so and being unable?

This is possibly the most valuable lesson I collected from my time on the farm: go slowly. Don't force it. Don't get ahead of yourself. Because if you do, the result will be nothing short of disaster. Research and contemplate deeply. Talk to the land. Yes, really open your mouth and speak. She does have something to say to you. 

After deciding against working in the big garden right away, I turned my attention to the cattle corral across the lane, intending to develop a small kitchen garden – nothing fancy, just a few tomatoes, some greens and peppers, maybe a melon or squash. I didn't even need to stick that shovel in the soil – I knew, just standing in that spot, that I'd be disrupting something important. I let it be.

One of the reasons I decided to leave the farm was my sense that too much was happening there. For two complete novices working from book-memory, every minute of the day felt heavy with catastrophe. I didn't see myself learning anything in depth, just skimming the surface of disaster recovery. I could never catch my breath, and I felt I was learning the wrong things – principally, how to come upon a mess that was at least partially of human making, make a half-assed attempt at correcting it, and then give up because something worse had just happened.

I was going back and forth in my mind, constantly worrying over the question of whether we should stay or leave, when I had a significant conversation with a friend who has operated a biodynamic farm for many years. She's one of the gentlest, wisest people I know, so I asked her one day how she handles the issue of “having too much going on at the farm,” especially regarding the husbandry and purchasing of animals when basic infrastructure isn't in place. She explained that her family didn't even have animals on the farm for a very long time. She said that in biodynamic farming, when you first arrive on the land you focus on developing the mineral level – the soil. When the soil is healthy, you can start growing vegetables. When that level is stable, you can introduce animals into the environment. And then you may bring in people, to work or visit, and the final level is culture – extending the magic of the farm into the community at large. Each level builds on the one before it, and you can't force a move on to the next level until the preceding ones are well-established.

Hearing this bit of wisdom lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. Instinctively I'd felt uncomfortable on the farm, but not being the least bit practically experienced I didn't know how to explain or quantify this sense. But now I could put words to it, and I could also accept that it was time to move on, to learn something else, somewhere else.

And now, here, on this land, I can examine my impulse to plow right in (literally and figuratively) with a critical eye. Sure, I'd love to have a milking cow. And chickens. Having to buy butter and cheese and eggs and beef again really sucks. We'd like to raise rabbits. And maybe a few sheep. Not to mention a garden huge enough to feed us every day of the year with extra to spare. The thought of not growing a garden, when the space is available to me, gives me a hollow feeling. But I want to leave this place better than we found it, and not blast in waving a shovel, grimly determined to force bushels of tomatoes from the soil whether it likes it or not. Instead, I'd like to take a couple of seasons to build the soil, and the infrastructure around the garden, so that when we are ready the land is also ready, soft and yielding, ripe and willing.

I feel unhurried for the first time in my life. I feel expansive and quiet, able to simply enjoy this environment, doing such things as hunting for wildflowers and sitting on the porch reading books and listening to the bellowing of cattle far off in the hills, which we like to tell the kids is dinosaurs. I'm excited to get my hands and feet in the dirt, and eventually to set myself to the project of building a chicken tractor so I can watch Chook TV again. But I am in no rush, not inclined to push headlong into another situation so complicated, so unmanageable and unhealthy.

Yesterday morning I was sitting beside Tuna on the back deck, drinking coffee and watching the sun rise over the green pastures, when it occurred to me that the principal lesson I've had to learn in adulthood is how to wait gracefully. I've been rushing all of my life. I graduated from high school very early, moved out of my parents' house immediately, adopted a double-major fast-track college program, got married at 19, gave birth at 20 and again at 22, raced to find the home of my dreams, and to do the work I feel called to do, whatever that happens to be that particular month, and during all that time I have been impatient, breathlessly on a tear. I've half-joked with Jeremy that I wonder if I'm fated to die young because I'm trying to pack in so much, so fast. I am rarely able to enjoy much, or to reflect on lessons learned, because I am already on to the next thing.

Always, it's been my inclination to do-something-different, if this thing isn't working. It would be hard to overstate how out of character it is for me to make the willful, even joyful choice to sit still for a while, to do-no-thing. But I have the feeling that this may be the most important thing I don't do.