Good Husbandry Quotes

“Remember that you control what you choose to believe in,” I said. Anyone could look at our farm lives and see toil and squalor, or look at the same lives and see purpose, abundance, and joy. Same plot points, different story. “Very different things can be true simultaneously, and choosing the one with the better narrative is often extremely helpful.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“The natural order of things is immutable. Seed, flower, fruit, decline, death, decay. Seed. Each stage has its own drama and its own particular beauty. If you can see it, you can accept it. The parts are graceful, and so is the whole.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“Everything ends. The natural order of things is immutable. Seed, flower, fruit, decline, death, decay. Seed. Each stage has its own drama and its own particular beauty. If you can see it, you can accept it. The parts are graceful, and so is the whole.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“I suspected that most marriages were more complicated than couples tended to let on. That summer, it seemed like every week brought news of another pair in our community who were splitting up. They were all around our age, most with little kids, trying to run their own businesses in a small economy. The evidence of those breakups directly contradicted the rosy way relationships were portrayed on Facebook, in public. I began to believe that future generations would study how we represent our long-term partnerships, and call us on our lies, in the same way we look at the way the Victorians depicted sex and know that it simply wasn't like that, not behind closed doors or in the hayloft. We hide marital conflict with the same sense of decorum. We'd do more good if we were honest and set realistic expectations for what it's like in the long run.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“Farmers are professional hopers.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“We didn’t need a new house after all. When something isn’t working, you don’t always need to tear down the whole structure. Sometimes you just pull down a wall, reinvent, put some new skin on the old bones. And it’s lovely.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“That’s the thing about misfortune and grief: they have a lot of weight but no mass. You can’t lift them on behalf of a friend. But at least you can bring food.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“The way that in a partnership, the idea of yield is everything. In order to work together as a team, you had to first overcome the natural urge to oppose. Instead of addressing all the ways it’s gone wrong, look for ways to make the other one right. And when things get wild, dark, or hard, make sure to separate your energy from the other person’s energy. Your energy is your energy, I intoned to myself, and his is his.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry

“vulnerability is necessary if you hope to find some grace.”
― Kristin Kimball, Good Husbandry