December : I have seeds in my pockets, noticeably longer hair tied back with a sharp sliver of bamboo, and a niggling worry that I now smell like the enthusiastic Billy Goat who is doing time with my ladies. I have plans, plants to propagate, books to read, manure to wheelbarrow, leaves piled up and plenty more leaves to collect. I have tools I covet, hand tools made by hand to make things with wood, and bigger tools that would need plenty electricity like a band saw and a belt sander and perhaps a lathe to play around with wood and metal. I need a new hot water bottle and I hope they still have the ones I like in the hardware I got my now deceased one.
I now have a few patients and am learning to work as an Homeopath : as in my life, I am apprenticing and being. The wind out there won’t blow me away from myself.
Is the wind just not strong enough or is your self just dug in deep?
the winds were truly wild as I wrote… the heels of my self are well rooted in
Heehee. My daughter worked at a goat dairy one year and told me about the males’ modus operandi to attract the females. She has a sweater that she says still smells like goat. I don’t notice it though. Your make winter and farming both sound so appealing. Good luck with your work as a homeopath. That’s exciting!
Thank you !
What farming life does for me (starting with a plain fondness for the countryside, nature, silence, etc.) is to save me from the temptation of Existential Angst as a depthening (?) agent for my personality. In Paris it is what you are taught to do. Instead, at all times, I know my existence has a purpose : fix that shed ! clear that drain ! plant that tree ! feed that animal !
I do get exhausted, fed up and frustrated (as for instance by my failure to get adequate gloves in my minute hand size), but nothing that a couple of good nights’ sleep won’t cure. And a lot of daylight hours spent actively outdoors make one quite fond of one’s bed, especially in the winter. I guess winter means something else altogether for you in your southern abode… Enjoy ! (especially if you do end up back up North in the near future).
That makes sense about the existential angst in Paris. The term must have been coined there after all. Even just eating the way I do (I ferment a lot, cook from scratch, no corporate food) and writing my blog gives me purpose. I think a farm would even more so. We officially have winter here in Northern California, but that means the farmer’s market sells mostly root vegetables and I have to wear an extra sweater or even a coat (so nothing like back home in Canada).