Golden Abundance

 

 

 It's been a particularly abundant week this week - not only because there are finally things to eat out of the garden at last (hooray for turnips and radishes!), but also a friend of ours gavee us bagfuls of lemons and grapefruits from her trees.

The girls pulled some daikons from the garden and helped me grate them up and pickle them.  Just plain, salted daikon, nothing else.  It's very good.  Rose was said she could hardly wait until it was ready.  That's what seasonal eating will do for you.  Things you never would have thought fit for cravings become utterly desirable.  I'm thankful I've gotten to experience that - that sense of relief, gratitude, and pleasure in finally getting into a different food group after a long season.

I've realized something recently.  My daily work drags on me rather, especially at the farm.  But since I've been recovering, and haven't felt expected to have a great garden (I'm not sure who is expecting this other than me), it has been much easier to work in it.  It isn't  that I don't want to be doing it - but there is always a sense of discouragement about what I am working on.

It became clear to me when I was at the Morningside cane boil with Ethan and the Barefoot boys (they do the ax-hewing and stuff - this time it was splitting wood for shingles).  I saw their garden and homestead and the few animals they have left - when I went there as a child it was full of different animals - now there's only the cow, chickens, sheep and some really ugly pigs.  The cow looked hungry for green stuff.  I thought about how they could seed some rye on half her paddock, just to give her something fresh.  Or bring weeds to the pigs and sheep from the garden.  Or use the cow manure on the garden.  All kinds of ideas.  I started wishing I had time to volunteer and make it a nice little homestead.  Then I remembered we have our own little homestead to worry about (oh yes, that's why I don't have free time).  Somehow it seemed like it would be funner and easier to work for someone else.

It's like the Buddhist analogy of the road over a chasm is the same as a road across a field - only the mindset of fear makes the one over the chasm more difficult.  I feel it is the same - the mindset of feeling that everything must succeed and be perfect always is rigid and difficult.

I have been trying to change this as I am going about my work.  It seems to give me more energy.  When I feel the drag, I pretend I am not working on my farm at all, I'm volunteering for something.  When the fear of unsuccess is out of my mind, I can work freely and enjoy it.