Farming: Not a Single Person Sport

           It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me why farming families of old were such large families….And why summer vacations were set aside so that school kids could be at home to help with the gardens. (Yes, this was the original reason for our 9 month school year. And given precious few school kids are living a farming life these days, it is also why folks are considering year-round school. Personally, I’d rather have the kids here helping out if we could get ‘em to work that hard.)

            It only takes one day or two out of commission to remind you super quick that farming doesn’t take a vacation…it doesn’t allow a sick day. If you’re going to go for this peaceful life, you better have a good back and an even better immune system (both of which are lacking for me right now). If you don’t have either of these, you’d better have good neighbors and good friends.

            Of all the things I’m learning as I go, the one coming clearest to me the quickest is how much you need a village. (I’m one step ahead: we already have our idiot.) Between critters to feed, food to haul, rows to hoe, weeds to pull..it’s an endless cycle (usually enjoyable, except when you’re bugged out and exhausted or feeling the sheer overwhelm of what lies ahead).

            After 12 hours in a cold sweat, waking up once or twice to down more water and eventually fresh fruit, it was all I could do to get out of bed this morning, much get less critters fed. But I had no choice. Once accomplished (and thanks to quite a bit of caffeine, which I was trying to limit, but today was not the day) it was back to the doctor for me where they pulled 4 vials of blood to test it for every tick-borne disease known to man (or woman, as the case may be).

            In the meanwhile and as a safety precaution, they loaded me up with antibiotics and prescription anti-itch medicines, and I was given strict instructions not to take a hot bath or any kind of soak right now, nor to cover tick bites with anything that could lock in what might be its little tick head still in me…(like Neosporin). Instead, they spoke of a baking soda paste…anything to pull the toxic residue from the skin. You don’t want things to lodge and do more damage was the gist of the conversation.

            Sadly, I did not save the varied ticks I pulled off of me (so eager was I to crush them and flush them down my toilet once removed). But for those of you experiencing anything of the same, “Save your ticks!”  (Who knew?) The say size doesn’t matter, but shape and colored things on their backs will help. (Sadly, I wasn’t eager to get too acquainted with the little guys, so we’re stuck waiting on test results from blood work for now.)

            After today, however, I have a new incentive to simplify life in every way possible. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” which means for everything I intend, everything I do, everything I plant, everything I buy, I should be allowing an equal window of time and space for the resulting action that, by nature, will follow. Instead, I contend that the reason so many of us are on overload right now (please allow me to type this, even if I'm speaking only to myself), is that we’re so enthralled with the first half of this formula, the second half gets overlooked with no time allowed for it (says the girl staring at her stack of “not-so-fun” bills to pay and junk that’s accumulating in corners and crevices because I always think I need more than I do when I’m standing at the checkout…Never once thinking that the counter balance to this equation means I have all the same items already at home, in spades…cluttering drawers and corners).

Were it not for the help of a very dear friend, I’m not sure I’d have made it through the chores of this day (and my thanks for the extra time expended to give me a jump start on tomorrow)…But while I end this day with heart of gratitude and a body full of antibiotics, I likewise end it with a mind now open to new ideas on just how one goes about changing a lifestyle of so many lifelong habits that leave one in utter overwhelm at the end of the day.

            So I go to bed pondering a modern day share-cropping formula and/or community gardens and even communal living as a way to share the burdens as well as the bounty. Much as I adore my privacy…for writing, for thinking, for reflecting, there is another part of me that realizes there is no way one person can physically take this journey alone.

            As of this day, I am convinced, farming was never intended to be a one man sport.