Wild world

It’s been some time since I last published a blog. I have been doing less writing and more thinking lately. My “work” life has been a bit busier than I imagined it would be for the last three months. Our role as farmers providing food to our community has become more important than ever. I have quite a few blogs pending that need to be wrapped up and edited as time allows. For now I am going to leave you with these thoughts.

I have been thinking about our existence more and more recently. What it means to be alive and to live? The world is a wild place and it always has been. While the global COVID-19 pandemic has turned peoples lives upside-down life of the farm has stayed the same. I still wake up at the same time everyday and get into my rhythm as life on the farm has done in tune with nature for millennia. Don’t get me wrong, farming is unpredictable in its own way. Just as natures complexities of life and death go on, so does the farm. Drought has taken it’s hold upon us once again, but each time it rains I am reminded of the resilience of our landscape and the animals that inhabit it. I watch the cattle peacefully grazing in the pasture seemingly without a worry in the world. Chickens fly from their early morning roost and begin their hustle of scratching the soil, foraging for insects and seeds just as they have done for millennia. Why are we so fearful of the unknown that lies ahead? This new world forging in front of us. Perhaps, we will be forced to live a simpler life in the future? What’s the worst that could happen? Darkness always leads to light.

I listened to a podcast just recently by Peak Prosperity and they made a really good point, one that that I had never thought of before. The jist of it was that only for the past 100 years of so have we lived with a mindset that if we get sick there are antibiotics to cure us of our ailments. Antibiotics have sort of been this magical elixir for human health and prosperity. They “cured” people from severe infections and other ailments. COVID-19 is a virus, and viruses don’t respond at all to antibiotics. Just until the dawn of the 20th Century people very well knew that if they had a fever it may be the last of their days. To put it a little harsh, we basically had a good run with antibiotics while it lasted. We are merely a blip in the long history of our planet.

I think farming has given me a deeper insight that I could not understand otherwise. Watching plants and animals live, grow and then die. The world is full of unimaginable risks, but living in fear isn’t living. Life will continue. The Earth will continue on with or without us just as it always has. Live, one step in front of the other. Forging your path towards new horizons.