Dear Curiosity Journal,
There’s an often unobserved farmer wisdom that wades through the nuances of watching and waiting. Of course we notice the obvious “doing” – the acts of seeding, watering, trellising, pruning, and harvesting. However these actions only fill a fraction of the growing days. Between tasks, there is a running mental tally of crop needs, priorities, and usually at least one crisis, mechanical breakdown, or animal dilemma. Thousands of real time (sometimes life or death) decisions, depending on a multitude of unpredictable factors, drive us to tend to the highest need. I’ve heard another farmer refer to this as “figure-it-out fatigue” – the non-stop problem solving, uncertainty, research, trial and error, riddled with crop loss, animal death, drought, flooding, and people letting you down, all while trying to scrape the money together to do it for another month. I’ve heard other farmers refer to it as an addiction, or even a peculiar madness. Whether it’s inconspicuous insight or insanity, there does seem to be a curious magnetism between farmers and farming, a drawing in of authenticity, autonomy, and an ever-clocking awareness of the land. These are my people, rooted in the wisdom of a place, watching, and waiting.
~Joy
