I find it no small coincidence that various meanings of the word “practice” are constructed from the same root. We “practice” yoga. We “practice” religion. We “practice” medicine. We “practice” meditation. Et cetera ad infinitum. Because, when you get down to the core of it, we are just practicing living, aren’t we? We learn and grow from experience and mistakes, and then do it again, but (hopefully) better. Everything is practice. It's hard to believe somedays that we have been practicing farming here on this land for 16 years. There are so many moving parts to running an organic market farm. The inner workings of so many moving parts often reside only in our heads after 16 years of practice. They’re so embedded there that we don’t even realize they’re there until we decide to leave in the middle of the season and we’re trying to prepare the farmily for our absence. This is the first time we’ve ever left the farm in July and it felt monumental. I might need more practice in taking vacation in July, but the farmily, of course, handled everything beautifully while Jason and I got away to practice our hobby (which, of course, needs more practice).
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I used to be indifferent to Canadian Geese. Most-or at least many-people detest what said people might call the nasty things. I get it, I do. They make a mess, have been known to be a bit on the aggressive side, and just don’t come across as majestic in the same way, say, a heron or egret does. But now, Canadian Geese bring me much delight. And this is why: my mother counts herself among the people who detest those nasty things. My parents live along a creek where some Canadian Geese might be inclined to congregate. Don’t take this wrong—there is plenty of space elsewhere along this creek for the geese to gather and make their noisy messes—it is, perhaps, just in the nature of geese to choose places they’re most unwanted (I wouldn’t put it past the nasty things). She told me a story where she was sort of chasing a goose away from their yard and it kept attempting to return a little further up from where she was, but still in their yard. She was animated whilst telling me how she scolded the goose “Oh don’t you dare!” And so, every time I see a Canadian Goose, I am filled with delight at the image (movie? GIF?) that my imagination conjures of my mother marching, red faced (I did mention this is entirely the conjuring of my imagination, right?), pointing her finger at a goose and scolding it in plain English as if it were a toddler. I even gave my mother some rubber boots (that I’m pretty sure she doesn’t own) to complete this picture. It’s an adorable image (I’m so proud of my imagination!) and thus, brings me delight. Part of this delight comes from the fact that I worry, sometimes, about my imagination. With the advent of smart phones, and social media, YouTube, et al, I worry that my imagination doesn’t get enough use. That it is shrinking in that “use it or lose it” sort of way. But this movie—very loosely based on a true story—that appears automatically every time I see a Canadian Goose, is proof that there is still some life left in this old imagination. We love to hate meteorologists. We say, “it’s the only job where you can be wrong 75% of the time and still keep your job”. But our minds are primed to remember the negative, and I doubt those numbers are accurate. Would Brad Panovich have such a following if he really was wrong 75% of the time? (are you a fanovich?) One of the things I love about Brad Panovich (besides his ample communication and explanations of weather happenings), is that he owns it when he gets it wrong. And explains why. However, I’m not here today to fangirl over one particular meteorologist. I’m here today to say: I’ve never been more impressed with the weather predictions than I was yesterday. We (a group of lazy river enthusiasts) try to lazy float in tubes down one of our local rivers once a month each summer. We missed June because June didn’t June like it normally Junes and 3 hours with butts in the river at this year’s June temps was just going to be unpleasant. And this was my only available Sunday in July. So admittedly, part of my sudden meteorologist trust was born of a desperation to dwell in the laughter and ease that is a lazy tube float. But the prediction was: storms, some of them nasty, in the a.m., clearing between noon and 1p.m. (our usual put-in time) with temperatures in the low to mid 80s (pretty perfect float weather), then clouding up again in the evening with a few scattered thunderstorms. It looked nasty in the morning. There were some skeptics, but most of us hung on as I did my best to spread my (sudden? Newfound?) trust in the meteorologists. We left the farm- tubes, sunscreen and hats in hand-under cloudy cool conditions, but we trusted. And sure enough, just as we sat down in our tubes in the river, the clouds dissipated revealing a generous sun which lingered with us as we eased carefree down the river, bathed in the joy of just being and just being together. When you’re with yourself every step of the way, it’s difficult to gauge how far you’ve come. Sometimes it takes some outside perspective to highlight the trail you’ve bushwacked to get to where you are. Sometimes, it takes a student tour to put it into perspective. I’ve never turned down a farm tour and perhaps, this is why. We can tend to forget how ignorant we were when we jumped into this whole farming thing (some of you have been with us since then and can attest to this!), and how much we have learned since then. I remember looking at pictures of the farm from circa 2012 on my mother’s laptop and being horrified. “We’ve got to update those!” I cried, “it looks so much better now!” Looks aren’t everything, to be sure. And we are still not a weed-free farm. But we’ve learned to manage weeds at critical times and let them go at less important times when our labor is better spent elsewhere. In fact, we’ve learned to manage. And so, as I’m walking around talking to the App-State Ecological pest management class, I find myself not only explaining our current pest management techniques, but our evolution—our learning process in developing those techniques, and suddenly it’s like I’m standing outside myself looking at the path we’ve bushwhacked to get to where we are. It’s a rare treat to look at your own path like this—a little injection of pride that you survived your own ignorance and used lessons learned to improve. We’re still on that path. Still making mistakes and learning from them. And looking forward, we’ve got a long way to go (I know, there is no end to the path of learning, no actual destination). But sometimes, it’s encouraging to look back at the past, cringe, and be proud that you made it this far. Sometimes, it’s good to host a student tour. Did you know that you can perceive genuine joy in a photograph? I’ve only recently discovered this delightful fact. I first noticed it while perusing my old college friend’s vacation photos. And then, more recently, in perusing my sister and brother-in-law’s Colorado vacation photos. My brother-in-law is someone who works way too hard—is never truly “off duty”. I know you know what I’m talking about. The one who’s cell phone rings at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve and he answers it; the one who brings his laptop to the Easter vacation because…clients. I’m not judging him, I’m just saying his work follows him around all hours of the day including holidays, nights and weekends. And I’m here to tell you from experience that even if you love your work, it’s still work. And some amount of a life outside of the work turns out to be beneficial, I think. And my brother-in-law, judging from pictures, finally managed to create some separation from his work in their trip to Colorado. I’m not saying he’s a grumpy guy: he has fun, enjoys his family and his hobbies, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen such joy portrayed on his face as I did in those vacation pictures. I think this is why I love the rivers so much. I mean, the reason I fell in love with Appalachia in the first place was its rivers, and creeks, and mountains old enough to impart wisdom we could never understand. It’s hard for work to follow you there. It’s out there, immersed in the beauty of the natural world, with no cell phones or laptops (because technology and water don’t mix, right?!) to pull you back to that other reality called work, with nothing else to do but be in the moment, that joy is abundant. This is true even of rivers that run through towns. Where you float beneath highways. Even there, the noise of the traffic fades into a background, buffered by trees and water and wildlife and the beauty below the pavement. Even there, the rivers are a refuge. And so even when we’re plum exhausted from a wild week of running wide open in our work lives, when our minds tell us lies like” just chill out at home and watch a movie or two (if we stay home, we’ll find work to do), we try to defy that instinct and get on a river—even if it’s “just the Yadkin”. Because even if we think we’re too exhausted to do much more than lazily float, that brief separation from work provides access to the joy that sustains us for another week of running wide open. “My wife has finally realized that she has a tendency to over book” my brother says to me and the concept doesn’t quite register with me. He says he understands that they only get so much time with their kids and don’t want to miss out on any opportunities, but…And my head is slowly nodding although I’m still not sure where I draw the line in this struggle. Because in theory, I recognize that there is some importance to idle time and rest. But it’s sometimes difficult to recognize the value of idleness on my infinite path of joy. I’m always looking to fill our one day off with fun, fulfilling, challenging, socially-connected, quality activities. It is not, after all, called “Sunday Funday” for nothing! And I learned in “happy class” (did you know you can take an on-line Yale course on increasing happiness? You can and it’s free and I recommend it), that all those things lead to a more joyful, happy, fulfilling life. But sometimes, the path of infinite joy is quite exhausting. It’s difficult to fit all that fun into one day a week (I know, I know, it will all balance out in the winter, but we’re talking about the here and now at this moment—winter seems a long way away), and sometimes, you just need to do the stuff that gets done on Sunday like mowing, and cleaning, and giving the dog her really bad summer haircut. Oh, and resting. That gets done on Sundays too. So I don’t know if I’m going to lay off the cramming of the fun, fulfilling, challenging, socially-connected, quality activities on Sunday Funday, but perhaps I might be slightly less inclined to freak out when those plans fall through and I’m suddenly staring at an empty Sunday calendar. After all, there’s always a list-in-waiting of things that get done on Sundays that I put off in the name of fun. It will always be there for me in case of idleness. The stoics have this practice called “negative visualization.” It’s the stoic principle I’ve struggled the most with because in some ways, it feels a bit like dwelling on the negative, which just can’t be good for mental health right? But it turns out, this is more like training. It’s both practice for what to do when things go badly, and practice in acknowledging how much worse things could be and how good it actually is. Seems a bit counterintuitive but I see where they’re going with it. And today, I decided I should try my hand at it. See, I had a “bad” day (I mean, I’ve already put bad in quotation marks, it’s already working!). On the grand scheme of things, it was nothing, but I was frustrated and angry in the moment (okay, let’s be honest, several moments), reacting poorly to things out of my control—to the gap between expectations and reality, and immediately was staring down an existential crisis. I am past the emotions now so I can easily laugh about it, but perhaps, just perhaps, if I had trained for that moment, I could have avoided the emotional pitfalls that come with the expectation that the world and everyone in it should shape their behavior to suit me. It's an interesting thought experiment anyway. Seems simple sitting this far from my emotional reaction. But how in the world do you visualize every little thing that could go wrong? I mean, geez, that could really take you to some dark places. But maybe I’ll give it small scale try anyway, and see if I manage to ever have a “bad” day again. You know, other than basic literacy skills, I never quite understood why we pushed kids to read just any kind of book. I didn’t understand that reading comprehension is a skill that can be improved even through fiction. I mean, I loved getting prizes for reading as a youth, don’t get me wrong, but it was well into my adulthood before I understood the real purpose of getting kids to read yet another Nancy Drew book. In fact, it was probably when I read the Harry Potter series as an adult. Because it was Harry Potter who taught my grown adult self that the idiomatic expression “for all intents and purposes” was not, in fact, “for all intensive purposes.” Those are two very different concepts. I mean, intensive purposes reek of blood, sweat, and tears, of focus and determination and mind over matter, etc., which is all fine and dandy for someone with intensive purpose, but sometimes you just want a more casual gathering of intents, and maybe some purposes too. You know, if you want to, totally optional, sort of thing. It makes sense that in my youth I would have heard “intensive purpose”. After all, we’re just sort of figuring out who we are and what our purpose is and that can be awful intense. We lean heavy into absolutes before we discover there’s no such thing (I love how I just switched subjects there with the assumption that this happens to everyone in their youth. Maybe it was just me, but I doubt it, and I didn’t want to feel so lonely I guess, so I switched to “we”, but I’ll switch back now because I’m pretty sure thinking the idiomatic expression was “intensive purposes” is not quite as universal). So “intensive purpose” must have resonated with my youthful self until well into adulthood when I finally got to read Harry Potter and experience the casual, voluntary joy of a truly well written story and learned the proper use of an age-old idiomatic expression. And so yes, we can learn, even in adulthood, from fiction. I never understood brand loyalty. I just bought the cheapest version of whatever every time and thought nothing about it. Until I needed things to last, or be right, or something that relied on me talking to a human about a problem I was having with their product. I discovered that “cheapest” often means absence of said human. You’re on your own, buyer beware, etc. I discovered the value of customer service. I learned that sometimes it’s worth paying a little bit more for the security of knowing I’ll be taken care of if I ever have a problem. I see complaints in many of my market farming forums about how “expensive” Johnny’s seeds is, which is one of my favorite seed companies. But Johnny’s Seeds is the company that discovered through another customer that their pea seeds had been damaged by weevils in the warehouse and reached out to me to credit and replace those seeds before I even opened the package. We were having trouble with some of our wholesale labels not sticking to the boxes, which wasn’t a problem I had encountered before. I reached out to the label printing company and not only did they, without question, replace the labels, but they also wouldn’t let me pay for the replacement labels! The Nantahala River is extremely cold. Our first descent down that river left my teeth chattering in the middle of July. So in plenty of time before our next trip down that river, I ordered a dry top. The company sent the wrong item. I contacted the company, who sent a return label, but didn’t mail the replacement correct item until they got shipping notification of the return item. Then there was some hitch in shipping (not the company’s fault) that informed us that the replacement dry top would not arrive in time for our trip. So the company (Outdoor Play if anyone is interested in my brand loyalty), overnighted ANOTHER dry top to ensure it arrived before our trip before the original replacement dry top arrived. Talk about correcting a mistake! (We did return the second dry top when it arrived). And so, not only am I brand loyal to these and other companies because of customer service, I’ve learned to hold them up as examples in my own business. Because here’s the thing: companies are made up of working humans, and humans make mistakes. And humans have relationships and business is really about relationships. So when humans make a mistake and are given an opportunity to fix that mistake and they REALLY make it right, I feel seen and cared about and I develop loyalty to that relationship. I want those humans who care about me and my satisfaction with their product to be able to keep doing that good work and that is worth paying a little bit more for. Hence, brand loyalty. Ten years ago I would have shaken my fist to the sky and despaired. I would have questioned all the choices that led me to this moment and wondered how I was to go on. Today, however, barely warranted a shoulder shrug and, perhaps, a slight eye roll. Some might call this resilience, and perhaps it is. I call it being old (er). I have to add the “er” lest my elders anger to the implication that I am as wise as they are. That is not, in fact, what I claim today. Today, I am simply much older and more experienced than I was ten years ago. This is no longer my first rodeo, so to speak. It’s no longer the first dreadful weather event. It’s not even the first time this particular structure was damaged. And still here we are farming. You know, I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past several years “working on myself.” It’s funny how I grew into that. In my youth, I was ever the sensitive soul, quick to anger or despair. I was, in the words of the father of positive psychology Martin Seligman, a “catastrophizer.” Even though I knew my sensitivity was a character flaw, it never occurred to me that I could change it. Isn’t that strange? George Bernard Shaw declared “youth is wasted on the young.” Never was a truer statement made, I don’t think. But the last several years have taught me things that my elders had been telling me with blue faces, but that I had, for some strange yet inevitable reason, to come by on my own. Things like: worrying or despairing over something doesn’t influence said thing at all; life will go on; and everything will be okay. Twenty years of farming has taught me that no matter what mother nature throws at us (this is NOT a challenge, mother nature), we’ll probably still be here farming. Age has taught me that if not, it will still all probably be okay. These lessons, and the change in me that they instilled, has opened me up to a joy I never fathomed as a youth. My elders, in all their wisdom, never quite conveyed the delight of middle age. I suppose I should keep this surprise to myself as well. For perhaps surprise is the great enhancer of the very joy of which I’m confessing. Ah well, too late, the cat’s out of the bag. The young won’t listen anyway. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2024
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