on the farm

Every Tuesday afternoon, you can find us here.

It's a place that's been a part of the rhythms of my years for so long, and so it brings great joy to share it with my children. The work that we do is simple: measuring the grain, filling the buckets, pushing the hay, feeding the animals, gathering the eggs.

The rewards are incredible. No matter the world around them, the children greet this part of our week with excitement. They are learning a new way of marking the passage of time, evidenced in the subtle shifts to be seen here... the thickening of winter coats before the cold has fully set, the return of eggs in the hen house when the days grow imperceivably longer, the rhythm in the cycle of crops and harvests, births and milk, festivals and work.

I'm sure that having the pleasure of tending to the chores without worrying about the details allows a certain poetry; we're not relying on these fields and animals to tide us through winter (though we're certainly grateful for what they yield), nor are we concerned with profits, fence lines, breeding and buildings. But it feels good to have a sense of how vital this work has been and to be close to the source of it all. It adds to the rhythm of our days, the rhythm of the seasons and, surely, to the rhythm of our years to be here sharing this work.