Days like these

On days like these there is not much you can do but just smile, wipe the sweat off your face and keep moving. Get out as early as you can and come in when you cant breathe and if you have to go out again wait until just before sundown. These days are temporary. I try to keep this in mind. I try to use the idle time in the house to rest, to catch up on paperwork, write and to plan.

I start back up at the Wellness Center next month so I'm planning my classes and getting recipes cued up to test. I'm looking forward to getting back to OSU. It will be a crazy September for me but I'll make it fun. Interns are wrapping up and next week I'll find myself on my own. I'll really miss Kathleen, she is quite an amazing woman and I can see if she decided to farm someday she has the wherewithal to actually do it and do it well. A big lesson I have learned is stamina trumps strength. It doesn't matter if I can bench 200 pounds, If I cant be out at the crack of dawn ready to hoe, harvest, tie, water, brush hog, through a hot day with a big fat grin on my face, I might be handy but for the long hall I ain't worth squat, at least on a farm.

But I'm thinking about next week when Kathleen is on her way back to School and Linda is back at work and I wonder what its going to be like. I'm looking forward to the quite contemplative days but I wonder if I'll be lonely. I don't think so. I have plenty to keep me busy and the animals to me are sometimes the best kind of company, and I'll be going into Stillwater a few times a month. Where will my mind go? What journeys will I take myself on? What will the quiet sound like? Maybe I wont even notice.

I've been reading a book called A Handmade life - in Search of Simplicity- by Wm. S.Coperthwaite
I love the book and Its helped me during this busy and stressful time to recognize that my work is a spiritual practice, to keep in front of me my intentions. I think about the pastoral ideal, or idea and I've come to realize the pastoral is not a place or a time its a state of mind and it does exist. Its the way you sip your coffee in the morning or the way you honor a challenge. Its your thoughts as you push yourself to your own physical and emotional extreme. Its pain, its poverty, its wellness and respect. Its gratitude and questioning. But Its quiet and you have to listen for it, and the scenery changes frequently so you have to keep your eye on it. Sometimes its easy to miss but its there.

A chapter in the book called- Work-bread labor- Copeerthwaite states what he as young man was seeking in "work"
- be intellectually and physically challenging
- encourage creative thinking
- advance the cause of a better world
- provide for basic needs

Another great quote from the book:

If we have not been helped to see how our life can be

useful to the world beyond ourselves, we fail to

harvest the full return of our labor.

On that thought I think I better go out and milk some goats.