One of the current themes at the farm - other than whining about the gnats and mosquitos - is how unprepared we are for each “next thing” we have to do. I don’t mean prepared in the sense of lacking experience, knowledge or skills. Instead, it is a circumstantial unpreparedness that comes when events and responsibilities conspire to make things more difficult than they should be.
For example, I think we’ve already mentioned how timely the rains have been lately - in all of the wrong ways.
Rob: Look Tammy! We should be able to cultivate that vegetable plot this evening because it is finally drying out.
Mother Nature: Look Rob! I will send rain so you don’t have to worry about cultivating.
Tammy: Rob, I told you not to say such things out loud. Mother Nature is always listening and she likes her little jokes…
It’s actually not at all fair to lay the responsibility for our unpreparedness squarely at the feet of Mother Nature. Certainly, she has played a significant role. First, wet ground prevented us from preparing it to plant. Then, once we managed to get things in the ground, it didn’t allow us to cultivate. Now, we’re stuck with weeds in the rows we have to hand-pull (with all of our extra time).
The pastures grew faster than they have the past few years and we could not keep them cut down to make moving our poultry easily. So, that is also behind where it should be. As a result, we are stuck in JIT (Just In Time) mode, where things get done NOW simply because they absolutely cannot be done later.
The chicks are arriving tomorrow which means you have to get the brooder cleaned out NOW! But, there are still birds in the brooder, so they have to get moved out NOW! But, the place they are supposed to move to is also occupied…
Yeah, you get the idea.
It’s not like we haven’t dealt with these problems before. All one has to do is look at our past blogs or newsletters and you can find some of the same litanies you are reading in this blog. The Genuine Faux Farm is like most other small-scale, diversified farms. There is much to do and less time to do it all in. So, it is only natural that we often feel like things sneak up on us before we are ready. It just so happens that wetter than normal periods typically make things more difficult for us at our farm.
The real issue is that we have never quite reconciled ourselves with the fact that neither of us works at the farm full-time - which has been true since 2020. We both have jobs “off the farm” even if Rob’s job still sees him working in the farm office. We also have not had any additional workers at the farm since 2019. That means we have a very small fraction of the labors hours we used to have - yet we still cling to what are probably unrealistic expectations.
Then, if we combine our labor deficit with the holes we’ve dug for ourselves the past few years with various medical issues, it is no wonder that we feel unprepared. And maybe it’s not so much that we’re unprepared as it is the very real likelihood that we are overwhelmed.
Maybe Tammy doesn’t see it this way, but I still think we’re in late May or early June. I’m running a good six weeks behind in my own mindset and I just can’t quite get myself to understand or believe that it is mid-July and we should be doing mid-July sorts of things!
Of course, I am writing all of this from the perspective of the Genuine Faux Farm and the work we are still trying to do here. As far as that goes, I am still willing to put forth effort to raise poultry well, produce some excellent fruit and vegetables, and steward the land that is here. But, it isn’t just the farm that is getting in on the act.
There are those jobs Tammy and I have. It should be no surprise that we both always intend to do our work to the best of our abilities. And, of course, there are all of the daily “living” things we have to do. While we tend to discount these things as “just laundry”, “only the dishes and meal preparation”, etcetera - they still take time and energy. Then add in the things that we do beyond the farm and our jobs and the daily stuff and the home/farm repairs and you have…
Full lives like so many other people in this world.
Full lives that can sometimes feel overwhelming.
Still, there are moments when I feel like I’m getting somewhere. Optimism shines through and there is visual improvement that fan the flames of hope. Things like getting the henlets out onto pasture or finally getting conditions where I could push the wheel hoe around to some effect. Suddenly, my mind takes a flight of fancy as it envisions a not too distant future when I actually will complete some major task or another…
Along with all of the other tasks I must do.
Or I want to do.
Or I refuse to give up doing.
But, I don’t do them. I write about thinking about doing them instead. There’s a word for that and I’ll look it up later so I can use it in a future blog.
Still, I remain willing to do what I can as best as I can. But that willingness sometimes makes me believe that I can just push harder to get more done. And that may be my downfall. I hold on to the hope that I will magically find a way to DO IT ALL instead of do what I can as well as I can.
In the end, the thing I have been most unwilling to do (but need to do the most) is to recognize my limitations and adjust expectations accordingly. Choices need to be made and some things need to be let go.
But when it comes to taking a moment to make those choices, I find that I am unprepared to do that. And maybe a bit unwilling.
I guess I better fix that.
Have a great day everyone! I hope you are able to take joy in what you are able to do today and find peace with the things you could not manage.
"Cutting back on commitments" is like "downsizing your home"; stuff -- nice stuff, memorable stuff, still-useful stuff -- needs to go. Being ruthless isn't a trait many of us naturally have; we have to develop it. Good luck, Rob.
I bought a really nice headlamp/headband that can do red light (attracts less bugs). It's amazing what you can get done after the sun goes down if you aren't sleepy. Kinda fun working in the night world sometimes!