Not the Least Bit Boring

A boy and a basket

Down the field this early morning I moved the cows and meat birds under a dimming moon. The moon was full or nearly so, fading by the minute under the pressure of daybreak. I was dressed in long sleeves and happy for it – there’s been a hint of fall in the air recently, a certain urgent chill and slanted light at the fringes of the day. It’s been an idyllic summer, weather-wise – long, sweet stretches of sun and warmth interrupted by rain only a day or two before our feet start kicking up dust as we make our rounds.

The pack basket workshop exceeded all expectations. Or all of my expectations, anyway. To transform a simple log into something of such function and beauty using only the most basic of tools is something everyone should get to experience, if only because it dents the false logic of so many tenets upon which the modern market economy is built. Convenience. Expedience. Reliance on industry. Our dwindled human capabilities for labor and craft.

I think that’s what I like most about gatherings like the one this weekend: Like the beaver hide tanning workshop Nate led this winter, and like the fiber dyeing workshop Prin is facilitating next month, and like the many more skill-share gatherings we hope to host over the coming months and years, it was an embrace of the sort of self-determined logic that allows one to prosper on equally self-directed terms.

That, and as Nate wrote in his original workshop description, wearing a pack basket is a reminder that life is in fact not the least bit boring.

•      •     •

One of the things I’d like to improve about this space is my responsiveness to questions. Truth is, I have a finite amount of time I can devote to writing here, so it often feels like a choice between answering specific questions or incessant rambling on whatever strikes my fancy. For some reason, I seem to keep choosing the latter. There’s also the issue that I actually can’t answer many of the questions without guidance: Penny is the reservoir for much of our collective wisdom regarding cultivation specifics, so answering these questions generally means that first I have to push away from my desk, tromp downstairs, stumble across the boys’ detritus to the front door, fling it open, scream “Peeeennnnyyy!”, follow the sound of her return shriek from down the field or deep in the woods or wherever the hell she’s shrieking from, pose the question, saunter back to the house, stumble back across the (muddy/sharp/explosive) detritus, hump myself back up the stairs, settle into my desk chair, and try to remember what my wife told me.

Ok. So it’s not always that complicated. But you get the gist of it.

(And, rather ironically, here I am having wasted approximately as much time writing about how I don’t have enough time to answer questions as it would’ve taken me to answer a few of the said questions)

Anyway. I’m gonna work on it. There’s a bit of a backlog (kimchi recipe, insect/pest issues, and probably some others I don’t recall at the moment) but for the time being, I’m intrigued by this one: Does your family have tricks to fitting in all the food processing with cheery smiles?

I like this question because I think it hints at one of the primary stumbling blocks to a life of decreased dependence on industry (I almost wrote “a life of self-reliance,” but I believe self-reliance is a flawed ideology, so I didn’t): Namely, that the work essential to this decreased dependence on industry often feels overwhelming.

There is a large number number of excellent resources teaching the “hard skills” of growing and processing food and other essentials. In part because of this, learning these skills is the easy part. For me, at least, the much more difficult aspect is developing the “soft skills” that enable me to apply the hard skills effectively. I’ve written of this before, though I can’t remember exactly when. But the thesis was – as it remains – that simply maintaining my sense of equanimity in the face of the occasional overwhelming nature of our little holding is a far greater asset than the actual skills themselves.

To an extent, these things go hand-in-hand, because as one becomes more skilled and experienced, tasks that once overwhelmed become almost routine. To put this in the context of the question at hand (remaining cheery during food processing, if you’ve forgotten in the intervening ramble), I think of tasks like processing pigs or putting up our annual 60-quart stash of kimchi. Both these tasks were, at one point, daunting to us. But through repetition, both have become routine. No, that’s not quite right. Not quite routine. More like ritualistic, but in a way that demands little forethought, the preparation and motions having been honed by years and years of practice.

Here’s the thing, though: No matter how much we know and learn, no matter how many skills we acquire, there are always more on the horizon. And our ability to continue acquiring these skills and the knowledge and experience they contain is dependent on us maintaining that sense of equanimity. Otherwise, we’d always be too overwhelmed to even consider tackling something new.

To bring this ‘round to the specific question yet again: I think the best trick we have to fitting in all the processing with cheery smiles is to simply keep smiling. To remember that we are four of the luckiest people walking this great, beautiful, spinning orb. To not lose sight of the fact that being able to live in accordance with the self-determined logic I spoke of earlier is no small thing and is worth almost whatever it takes. Maybe you could even scratch the “almost.” Finally, to remember that all of this tasks are just like wearing a pack basket: A reminder that life is in fact not the least bit boring.

Oh, and you know what else works real good, especially with kids? Pea shelling races.