Mind and body!

I come from a fabulous family. Let’s everybody be clear about this. We’re smart and compassionate and place a high value on good communication. But we’re not perfect, and no family is – one such area being that we (most of us) do a majority of our living in our heads, at the expense of our bodies and sometimes even of our spirits. So while each member of my immediate family intellectually understands the importance of “exercising” and has found some suitable regular activity, we approach it perfunctorily, usually reluctantly, and almost always independently.

Given that, nothing in all my years of book-larnin’ had come close to preparing me for the physical lessons of farming. I don’t just mean learning how to work in the rain, cold, snow, heat, etc – those I accomplished with appropriate clothing and ordinary stubbornness. I’m talking about learning purposeful movement, how to work by drawing on the physical capabilities of my body rather than simply my powers of intellectual concentration. It’s certainly not a lesson I could have learned after a day, week, or month of farming – after two and a half years it’s only finally sinking in.

Old habits die hard – my brain, used to taking the lead, looks at a repetitive task like “weed” or “harvest” and more often than not checks out to daydream, and is very reluctant to be reined back in. So while I have learned to work with my body, distracted musing (I am ashamed to admit) keeps me from working as well as I could. When I can bring my thoughts back to my body I work smarter and more efficiently. Caffeine helps my focus, but I’m hoping that other non-chemical factors can too.

Living in one’s own body is a life-long journey. (Obviously). After many years of not acknowledging it, farming has affirmed the vitality of that journey for me.