A Week of Refelections

I have spent the better part of the last week organizing my stuff and our lives in order to greet winter, the hardest part of the year for this Wisconsin farmer. This time the organizing has involved a great deal of purging as well. We have been on our farm for four full years now and we have finally come to the point where we know what we need and what is really just clutter. This has been true for the shelves of spare parts in our farm shop, I figure if we haven't needed this stuff by now, or if we still don't know what is goes to, after four years it can go in the scrap pile.

The same is true for piles of mail, articles and documents that I finally feel I can part with. These piles of information until now gave me a sense of security, if I came to a problem on the farm that I could not think of an answer to I could dig into these stacks, they served as a source of someone else's wisdom while I worked on building my own. There have been fleeting moments in the last four years when I felt I had "arrived" as a farmer, but they were quickly followed by times of uncertainty and self-doubt. I finally don't feel those feelings anymore, I trust myself and the decisions I make each day on the farm. I now know that I will make good smart decisions in times of stress and emergency. I still don't have the feeling I have "arrived" but I no longer need that feeling.

I am in the process of writing a speech about setting your values and goals, so ironically at the same time I am reviewing the contents of our farm shelves I have also been taking stock in my development as a human being. Reviewing old journals and personal thoughts has caused me to be overwhelmed with love and gratitude for who I am today. I have been thinking about the many people who helped me become this person, and I hope I can inspire others to be proud of who they are today and build a path to live their best possible life in the future.

Well that's all I have time for today, need to be to the house for supper at 6:30. This was not nearly as painful as I thought it might be, actually may be a cathartic way to end the day.